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i once thought that time accentuates despair / but now i don't actually care / because i am born, born, born
*
It has been raining all day. The sidewalks are starting to look like miniature canals to Toby, and he finds himself fascinated by the splash patterns thrown up by the incautious footfalls of the pedestrians passing by under his window. It is easier to watch them than it is to write because his deadline is three months away and there is a pile of balled-up paper in his trashcan testifying to how much a surfeit of time in which to over-think the problem of his prose can put him off his stroke.
His agent said that writing a novel would not be like writing speeches for the President of the United States. At the time this seemed like an attraction; now, he's not so sure. He sighs, and it steams up the window with condensation.
He misses the clatter of the key turning in the lock of his front door, or else takes it for a report of far off thunder. His ears are full up with the noise of rain. So he jumps a little when Sam says his name; the sound passes into the air like a single note of clear music under the beat of the rainfall.
He had called, this morning, to make sure that his presence would be welcome. Toby had forgotten. Now, here he is: Sam Seaborn, soaked through and showing every metre of the distance between his apartment (Toby's old one, in Morningside Heights) and this corner of Park Slope. Sam pushes the door all the way open with his fingertips and then takes two steps inside so that the door can slam shut behind him.
"Well," Toby says.
"Yes."
"You're wet."
"Yes."
"You didn't have, like, some kind of foul weather gear?"
"Yes, Toby, because I could absolutely have walked over here in a bright yellow slicker and rain boots."
"You know, I think I saw a guy walk past -- "
"Toby."
"You're wet?"
"Yes."
"You want a towel or something?"
Sam sighs down at the floor, sagging like Huck's robot toy when its batteries have run down, his shoulders stiff and his knuckles parallel with the floor. Toby smiles at this picture, sidelong.
"Hot chocolate?"
Sam doesn't look up.
"Goose grease rubbed into your chest?" Toby says, not far enough under his breath.
Sam's smile is angled at the floor, but Toby sees it.
"I hate that walk," he says, looking up and taking a deep breath. "I hate the fucking subway. I hate Brooklyn. I hate this neighbourhood. I ... " He sighs, stops. "Sorry. I guess that's been building up a little while."
"Yeah."
"I don't hate Brooklyn," he says, trying to look what Toby supposes is apologetic.
"This is Park Slope, Sam. Not Bushwick in 1977. I feel like a sell-out and it isn't entirely unrelated to your comfort."
"I said I don't hate Brooklyn."
"We almost have running water and indoor sanitation, after all."
"Toby."
"If it helps at all, I really do hate Orange County."
"Yes, it's full of sunlight, oranges, and people walking around with hardly any clothes on, I can't say I'm really surprised it isn't your favourite vacation spot, Toby."
"I don't mind the half-naked people."
"The half-naked women," Sam says.
"You wanna have this argument now?"
"No, I want to stop dripping on your hardwood floors as quickly as is humanly possible!"
Toby takes a look at him: the rain has leached the last of the California colour out of his skin, made him pale and dark-eyed, taken the hue of his irises, and the edges of his lips, a few steps towards purple. His hair is flat, and beads of water keep on forming at the end of each gathering of strands, and dropping down onto his shoulders, trickling down his cheeks, running into his eyes. He keeps blinking them back, hard, as if the water stings him. His coat is soaked and where it opens, at the neck, the rain has soaked through his shirt as well and turned its fabric pink with the colour of Sam's skin. He has started to shiver, just a little.
"Come here," Toby says, quietly. He can barely hear himself over the sound of the rain but Sam hears, and walks over. He looks like a small boy, like Huck, just before he bursts into tears.
Toby wipes the rain off Sam's face with his fingers; passes his hands into Sam's hair and pulls it back then takes his hand away and throws the moisture off his hand with a flick of his wrists. He strokes his hand over Sam's forehead and repeats the procedure, then rubs his thumbs and the backs of his fingers over his cheeks. Sam's skin is freezing cold. Toby kisses him gently, standing close as though the warmth of his own body might warm Sam's.
"Cold?" Toby asks him.
"Yeah."
"Weak. Pathetic?"
Sam smiles, a little. "Fuck you."
"Almost ... kittenish."
"You know -- "
"Can I get you a towel?"
"There's some stuff. In my drawer. Dry things."
"In your drawer."
"Yes."
"Pyjamas?"
"Yes, pyjamas."
"It's ... eight fifteen, Sam. On a Friday."
"I'm not going to bed in them! I just want something to wear that hasn't had half the East River poured on it!"
"D'you want, like, a blanket, or -- "
"If you offer me warm milk, or a teddy bear, I swear to God, Toby -- "
Toby squeezes his hand, smirking. "Pyjamas. Drawer. You got it."
*
Later, they watch the rain from Toby's bed. After he'd mocked Sam a little more for the pyjamas (the classic toothpaste advert kind; white flannel with blue stripes, in which he looked younger, sweeter, and utterly incorruptible) Toby had decided that the only sensible plan of action was to get them back off Sam as quickly as possible. The plan included well-judged application of liquor and the leftover Chinese take-out lurking in back of his refrigerator, which Sam ate up in a way which prompted Toby to ask him if that diet his secretary had told him might want to think about doing was going well. Sam just gave him a look, and pulled the Kung Pao chicken over to his side of the table. Finally, well-fed and warmly, pleasantly drunk, sitting on the couch with their thighs pressed together, Toby had kissed him. He made it easy, falling under Toby's hands like a flower bent back in the grass. Once on the couch, and then again in the bed, sprawling over each other, silent, all their thoughts transparent, and their bodies familiar.
Sam had smiled at him, and gone to sleep on his shoulder, their legs tangled together. Toby had watched him for a while, breathing quietly and feeling his feet and legs slowly go numb, then put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He didn't think that he fell asleep.
Toby still has his eyes closed when Sam says, "Look, this isn't a proposal."
"A proposal of what?"
Sam sits up a little, propped up on his elbow. "Look, it isn't, all right? I'm just sick of walking here. I'm sick of the distance. It's stupid."
"A proposal of what, Sam?"
"You make a lot of money -- "
"I'm sorry?"
"You're hardly starving in your garret, Toby. Like you said, this is Park Slope."
"Granted. Grudgingly."
"Anyway. You make a lot of money. I make a lot of money -- "
"Rather a lot more than I do, in fact."
"Can I finish a sentence?"
Toby inclines his head, as if to say of course.
"Okay. We're both well off, is my point. So I think we could probably afford ... you know."
"What?"
"To get a place together."
Toby allows his eyebrows to raise, very slowly. "I'm sorry?"
"See, this is what I mean. I'm not ... Look, this doesn't have to be like the other thing."
"The other thing?"
"With Andy. The big house, the grand gesture. I'm not proposing."
"Well ... good," Toby says, not entirely sure what he means by it.
"I'm just saying, we've been doing this for four -- "
"Five."
"Five years now. I think it's okay that we stop pretending -- "
"I'm not pretending anything, Sam!"
"That we stop sneaking around like two teenagers who need their parents' permission to be out after curfew."
Toby feels his face contract into that special expression of exasperation and incoherent disbelief that only Sam can properly inspire. "I'm not."
"Well. Maybe I feel like I am."
"Maybe that's your problem!"
"Oh, gee, Toby, thanks a lot. I thought we were, you know ... "
"What!"
"In this together. Partners. You know?"
"You know, I've made proposals before, and this doesn't sound entirely unlike the kind of preamble you get before one."
"I"m not proposing."
"Good."
"I'm not!"
"I said good!"
"I just think maybe ... maybe ... "
"Together?"
"Yeah."
"You want to live with me?"
"You know, when you say it like that, Toby -- "
Toby smiles at him, just a little, and presses a kiss against the protest that is bubbling over in his mouth.
"That's ... ah. Unexpected. Is all."
"I figure I pretty much know everything you can throw at me by now."
"I've never thrown anything at you," Toby says.
Sam smiles, and reaches for another kiss. "Well, quite apart from the rubber ball thing, you threw that dictionary one time."
"That didn't count."
"It counted in the way that it kinda hurt when it hit me in the head."
"Fine."
"I mean, I don't think there are any unpleasant surprises in store for me. I know about morning Toby, and drunken dissolute Toby, and I must mock my good friend Sam Seaborn mercilessly for hours on end Toby, and -- "
"Yeah, okay, your point is taken. Laboured, even, one might say."
"One might," Sam says, grinning. "From my point of view it's important."
"And what about me? Are there as yet unplumbed depths of idealism, foolishness, starry-eyed hope that I'll have to put up with? And what about when you go out running the very minute dawn arrives and then come back to bed and wake me, all sweaty and revolting?"
Sam is still grinning. "See, I kinda thought you liked that. Given how much sex we usually have on those mornings."
"I was protecting your feelings."
"Oh, well, thank you so much."
"I'm a considerate person, Sam."
Sam snorts, and then laughs, and then shifts in the bed so that he is lying on top of Toby, nestled between his thighs. He presses his hips down on Toby's, briefly, but not ineffectively. Sam kisses him, softly; all the softer against the jab of his hipbones and the heaviness of his chest.
"The thing is ... " he says, then turns his eyes away. "The thing is that I lo-- "
Toby stops him by holding his palm over Sam's open mouth.
"I know," he says, softly enough for the sound to be buried under the sound of the rain.
"Yeah."
"Me too."
Sam smiles, and Toby feels slightly shamed by how relieved his face looks. "Yeah."
"So, what d'you think?"
"Where?"
"I don't know. We'll look."
"Manhattan?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Queens."
"Not Queens."
"Jersey?" Sam says, grinning again.
"That's just idiotic."
"I hear they have running water too."
"It's a lie, Sam. A vicious lie."
He laughs. Kisses Toby again with both his hands pressed to his cheeks. "I'm happy about this," he says.
Toby rolls his eyes. "Yes."
"You're not happy?"
There is a note in his voice, underneath the joking. It ripples through Toby like the patterns following from a dropped stone in a body of water. He adjusts his legs around Sam's hips, puts his head back down on the pillow and looks up at his lover. He breathes out, then back in.
"Yes," he says, like he's only just realised it. "I think so."
Sam smiles, like he's surprised, and pleased, and as though he suspects that he's dreaming. He presses one more kiss against Toby's mouth, then rolls off him. It is only ten forty-five, but they both sleep as though it is much later.
*
For the first few nights that they sleep in a bed that is theirs and was never shared with anyone else, Toby sleeps heavily against Sam. He folds his weight around Sam's and allows his hand to indulge rather than learn the shape of the body beside him. Every other time, even after five years, seemed like it might turn into the last. He hadn't dared take anything for granted; he made his fingers take a record and his tongue an inventory; he kept secret the catalogue that he was so frightened of losing; he did not promise, or claim, because he all he remembered about having done so before were the times when promises were broken, and claims lost. Now he can fall asleep beside Sam without being aware of exactly how many hours are left before one of them has to leave; now he can trust that they will both be coming back.
*
i once thought i had numerous reasons to cry / and i did, but i don't anymore / because i am born, born, born