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Affenlight sat on the top step outside what had once been the Bremens’ house and tried not to think about smoking, or Owen, or the passage of time.
Ideally the day - no, ideally the entire week - would have passed by in a blur of crises and appointments. The more crises the better. Since last spring he had cultivated a great appreciation for anything that might divert his attention, first from each perilous beat of his own heart, and then from the many, many days and miles that lay between him and Owen Dunne.
Pella had wanted him to take it easy at first. Mike had wanted him to run laps before breakfast. He'd done some of both in time, from half-watching rented movies on the couch, his head in Owen's lap, to puking his guts out behind third base. Unreasonably bad genetics coupled with stress and a stubborn belief in his own immortality had led to one heart attack, waking up to what seemed like an entire world that had learned the very secret he'd gone to sleep pledging never to reveal. What were pledges and hopes and self-sacrificing gestures, after all, compared to the red-rimmed eyes of the boy who had dashed home from a championship-winning game just to maintain a death grip on President Affenlight's hand?
Affenlight had slept for three days: a blissful dream of drowning. He'd awoken to find all the arguments already voiced if not entirely resolved, Owen's mother more concerned than shocked, Gibbs and Dean Melkin still quietly suggesting his resignation while realizing there was now very little scandal to avoid, and Owen halfway through a somewhat damp and salty Moby-Dick.
Nothing had been easy, but Pella and Owen and Mike had kept him alive. Days at first had been exhaustingly pointless successions of pills and health food and walks that had started out as pathetically short ventures on Owen's arm. Both mind and body had seemed an inch or so removed from any real feeling, fogged with drugs and fatigue and all the soul-searching depression the doctors had warned him to expect. Expectation had done little to help.
He had politely tendered his resignation a day before it was required, his excuse perfectly convenient and unfortunately now true. Even if he could never avoid the inevitable questions about his moral integrity, even if he would likely never hold a teaching or even administrative position again, there had been no reason to go through with the inquiry. He had moved into the Bremens’ place with more acceptance of the end than anticipation of a new beginning.
On June 12, Affenlight no longer president, Owen had moved in too. “Moving in” at that point only meant two book boxes, a computer, a suitcase full of clothes, and an impressively expensive rug bearing more than a few soup stains (a still-absent Henry had been gifted the remainder of Owen's furniture and artwork). It only meant staying until September. But, in its own way, it meant everything.
It had taken until August for Owen to coax him into that great adventure of making love again, until he could brave feeling his heart pounding inside his chest without being terrified of the searing, clenching pain that had once almost crushed him in its grasp. He had been vaguely baffled by the way he could still get hard so easily in Owen’s hand, by the way the body that had betrayed him could still give him so much pleasure. Lying in the darkness with Owen’s arms around him, with his arms around Owen, he’d begun to think that perhaps he could still reclaim himself somehow, unfold within himself and make a new beginning out of whatever shreds of life he could find.
He had dug out his old novel, run a lap of the deserted summer baseball field to prove to himself that he could (which had led to the puking, but he had assured himself that running the same distance before the heart attack might have had the same result), and devoted himself to persuading Owen to leave.
Their walks by the lake, fingers tentatively brushing, had become seminars on the subject of Owen Dunne: Tokyo Beckons. He had still dreaded the day of Owen’s flight and the idea of solemnly hugging goodbye, but the guilt of making him stay would, he had convinced himself, be much worse in the long run. Genevieve had been more or less civil with him in their few conversations, although Owen often ended their phone calls upset and unhappy. Were Owen to stay, were he to cast aside his studies and ambitions and life for an old man and a fleeting crush…
“I’ll come back,” Owen had said eventually, and three words had suddenly become victory and overwhelming defeat all at once.
He had called. He had e-mailed. He had sent Affenlight a return airline ticket to visit him at Christmas ("I have to spend my scholarship funds on something," Owen had explained over the phone.). Affenlight had gone, packed off with pills and serious instructions from Pella to have a good time. He’d envisioned Owen surrounded by a gaggle of friends his own age, suddenly seeing him as not only old and sick, but boring as well.
Still, he’d dutifully worn a nice gray-blue shirt that matched his eyes, and Owen, a head taller than most at the airport, had taken his hands and kissed him quickly – before Affenlight could protest or before anyone could notice, he wasn’t too sure which.
His inability to imagine a future with Owen hadn’t precluded it becoming a reality. They’d had a wonderful week together at a hotel filled with people neither of them knew. He’d held Owen’s hand in public, telling himself that the inevitable stares were because they were Americans, nothing more. But it had been a vacation and not real life.
Now, June meant the end of Owen’s studies overseas and his return to Wisconsin, to Westish, and to the Bremens’ house. Affenlight was almost completely, almost cheerfully convinced that it would be the end of more, too. Owen had a life to lead, after all, a trail to blaze, and even if Affenlight was the very model of at least attempted health now, he was still sixty-two and retired with a life expectancy that never tended toward the optimistic.
He had been a wreck for the last week. That it had only been a week was a triumph in itself. After years of thrilling and then boring Pella with his literary fascinations, he’d discovered with some strange delight that he could now lie back and drink foul decaf and talk to her about boys. About Mike and Henry, about lovely Owen in a distant land. Not in too much detail – that would be crass, after all – but in romantic terms he’d suddenly begun to appreciate after a lifetime of failed attachments.
Sometime in his conversations with Owen, on casual calls made when one or other of them was half asleep, naked under sheets, he’d said “I love you” before hanging up. It didn’t mean anything in itself. He’d said those words to how many girlfriends over the years? Owen already knew, had to have known. And yet voicing it meant he worried why Owen had never said anything similar.
“I’m not even saying I like you,” Owen had said once, and it had seemed like nothing at the time. It was a hypothetical. An expression used to illuminate a particular point when he was upset and frustrated and trying to make Affenlight understand. But in his absence Affenlight could never help turning his professional need for over-analysis onto all his memories of Owen, every word he’d ever said.
Pella had kept him if not sane then something reasonably close, as if he were just a teenager with a confusing infatuation. But today was the day of Owen’s return and she’d made him promise before she left for the library to stay away from obsessively checking flight times on his computer. Owen himself had naturally forbid him from the airport. “I just want to come home like it’s a normal day, as if I’ve just come back from a game.”
Affenlight had therefore taken up residence on the front steps after lunch with some comfort reading, a cable-knit sweater as guard against summer winds, and an almost overwhelming urge to smoke. Naturally there wasn’t a single cigarette in the house, even though there were probably a few anti-anxiety pills that might have a similar effect. They might knock him out, too. If there were worse things in the world than being woken up by Owen, one of them would be letting Owen find him unconscious yet again.
Instead, he turned pages with a jittery half-anger, pushing hair back from his forehead. Contango had long given him up as a lost cause and gone to laze around on Owen’s rug in front of the TV.
Not thinking about things was a challenge. Simply remembering all the things he wasn’t supposed to think about was more than enough to keep him occupied for the afternoon. Flight times. Probable delays. Passport control and customs. Drive time. The possibility that Owen might change his mind and never show up at all. The possibility he would arrive just to calmly kiss Affenlight on the lips and politely tell him that their days as lovers were long gone. Just how good a cigarette would be. A scotch. Not even the alcohol, but the feel of that good thick glass between his fingers…
On any other day he would bang the door closed and take off with the dog for a run, or at least a reasonable attempt at a jog. But now his gaze never wavered far from the end of the street, searching for any hint of traffic.
When the cab finally did come he only experienced a strange sense of anticlimax. Could it really be this simple, for Owen to arrive on time, to wave and grin, to pay the driver and dump his bags on the sidewalk?
Marking the place in a book he had already read several times, Affenlight slowly rose to his feet, as if careful to avoid startling a wild animal. For an instant, as he studied Owen, his eerie remove from reality following last year’s heart attack returned. Owen looked older, but older for Owen meant perhaps twenty-five rather than twenty-two. Sharper cheekbones, bigger smile, new glasses. Nothing that made any difference. If Owen were missing a limb it wouldn’t make any difference.
But how did Owen see him? How had Owen ever seen him, even before that old photo that had offered up an image of his much younger self with unlined skin and football-player muscle and an entire life ahead of him?
Owen looked over and smiled, and left his bags where they were as the cab pulled away. “Guert, you’re gaping.”
“Sorry.” That didn’t seem right. “Yes. You’re here.”
“The airport was very efficient.” Owen stared at his sweater, frowned, tangled up a finger in the wool. “Aren’t you hot?”
It couldn’t be real. They couldn’t simply stand here in the yard and just do this so easily, as though they were real people on a real lawn, breathing real air. Owen couldn’t just come home and actually… and actually be home.
Affenlight kissed him, two fingers lifting Owen’s chin only slightly, and then Owen was laughing against his lips, saying something into his mouth: “Isn’t this a little too gay for you?” He recognized the tone if not the exact words.
Well. Everyone who mattered already knew, and he doubted that too many of his neighbors were even home, let alone worrying about the gender of the person he might be making out with on his lawn.
“I’m the crazy old professor now. It comes with some perks.”
Owen’s fingers were still curled into his sweater. “You look good, Guert. You look great.”
He shrugged slightly. Modesty. Nervousness. “No whiskey, no cigarettes, no red meat. You should be proud.”
“Still fish though.”
“Lots of fish.”
If he breathed, Owen might just dissipate in a breeze of smoke. If.
Owen tugged on his sweater. “I need to get my bags.” He didn’t move.
The bags wound up no further than the entrance hallway, more or less blocking the door, but at least Affenlight could close and lock it before deciding that if Owen thought he was still too fragile to shove up against a wall then he might as well be the one to initiate things for once. But Owen had disappeared from sight, was petting Contango on the rug in the lounge, pulling off his coat and backpack while loudly declaiming about the probable lack of any real coffee in the entire house.
“You really think Pella can do without coffee?” Affenlight quietly resigned himself to a life of celibacy and sank down onto the couch before realizing that, yes, he was ridiculous to be wearing a sweater in June. He took it off.
“I think she might put a combination lock on it.”
Owen’s remarkable sense of ease in any situation had been one of the reasons Affenlight had been so drawn to him at first. He seemed able to return after a year in Tokyo, throw down his bag, and act as if he truly had just been at a class for an hour or two.
“Are you all right?” Owen asked, looking up from Contango’s affectionate welcome.
“I’m fine.”
Owen pursed his lips slightly and got to his feet, bending down to unlace his sneakers. “I feel like we’ve talked every day. Like we still go to bed together and tell each other everything. It doesn’t really feel like I’ve been away. Except that I don’t know if there’s coffee. And I can’t touch you over e-mail.”
He toed off his shoes and knelt down on the couch, straddling Affenlight in those drawstring martial arts pants that must’ve been comfortable on the plane, his white t-shirt slightly grubby with sweat and dirt from his travels. Owen’s skin was hot and smooth under Affenlight’s hands, beneath his t-shirt. Had he lost weight in Japan? Joined a gym?
“You just have to tell me you’re okay,” he said.
One of the great mercies was that Affenlight had never had to arrive breathless and tearful from an inter-state flight to find himself gray and unconscious, a needle in his arm. He had never had to look at himself and wonder if he had stopped breathing, had never been shaken and terrified that he might never wake up, might never be himself again. But O had sat there, day and night, not to be dissuaded by nurses or his mother or the university staff, or even Pella who had since apologized a hundred times for screaming at him for breaking her father’s heart. O had bribed an orderly to bring him a copy of Moby-Dick from the hospital’s pokey bookstore, had sat there and read every word aloud, shakily underlining all the archaisms he would have to ask Guert about whenever he woke up.
When Affenlight had woken up, it had been to the taste of salt in his mouth, an ocean breeze speckling his eyelashes with seawater. He’d barely been able to speak, throat dry and crumbling like an ill-cared-for antiquarian tome. Owen had barely been able to type out a text message to Pella on his phone, his face genuinely wet: hopeful, terrified. Affenlight had barely been breathing when Pella found him. It all seemed so hideously improbable that she would chance into his office at that moment and that the body of Guert Affenlight would still retain his mind and soul, damaged but not entirely absent.
Affenlight smiled just a little and took one of Owen’s hands, pressed it to his chest over his own rumpled shirt. “I’m okay. Great. Not breakable. Do not handle with care. I have my latest EKG results around somewhere…”
He expected the kiss. He hadn’t quite anticipated the way Owen grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked, pulling it up and over his head, ruffling already-ruffled hair and leaving red skin behind. Owen was serenity defined. Even when they made love he was the one with a cool head, making sure Affenlight was comfortable, that any sort of pain was the good sort. And yet…
“I missed you,” Owen said. “I love your mind, Guert, I really do. But your body’s pretty nice too.”
Not talking had never been something either one of them had done well. Affenlight was usually at his happiest either lecturing or being lectured to, and Owen’s presence as an impassioned tutor on pressing ecological issues was always welcomed. But he already knew most of the minutiae of Owen’s life from e-mails and phone calls, and from Owen’s enthusiastically-updated photo blog. The one thing they hadn’t had was the purely physical, that one delight Affenlight had always twinned with intellectual discussion whenever it came to Owen. (Maybe it was a little less gay that way.)
Owen’s t-shirt came off faster than he had wanted. He would have appreciated the chance to study every inch of skin as though it was the first time. The real first time had been in an unimpressive motel room, where he’d finally seen Owen naked rather than just his arms up to his elbows, and from his navel down to his knees. He’d been so focused on the slender lines of Owen’s body, the unexpected weight of his penis contrasted with slim hips and the softness of his belly, that he’d been confused why Owen was standing there staring at him just as intently. He had a good body for a sixty-year-old – an excellent body in comparison to most of his peers – but nothing that could possibly be impressive to a twenty-one-year-old athlete surrounded by the youthful and strong and fast.
“You have a tattoo,” Owen had said finally, and burst into giggles that couldn’t even be blamed on beer.
Owen’s thumb was brushing over the black ink of the whale now, his kisses pressing Affenlight’s head back against the leather of the couch, his tongue a welcome taste. Affenlight’s hands strayed over Owen’s back, neither muscled nor bony, feeling that childlike smoothness, the peculiar perfection of his skin. The ties of the martial arts pants were easy enough to loosen.
“Pella’s not going to walk in, is she?”
Really too many people had the key to Affenlight’s front door these days, but he shook his head, watching Owen tug on the belt of the jeans he had bought Affenlight the previous summer. “She said she’d give us some time… We’re supposed to meet them for dinner later.”
“Them?” Owen stepped back off the couch, unbuttoning Affenlight’s fly and pulling his jeans and undershorts down to his ankles.
His heartbeat was insistent enough now that he had to notice it. At least it gave him no problems at all getting hard. Owen didn’t even need to lay a finger on him. “Pella and Mike. Maybe Henry and his young lady as well.”
Owen was rummaging in an outside pocket of his backpack. “Henry has a young lady?”
Well, perhaps their conversations hadn’t quite covered everything. “Mm. Allegedly. It’s very hush-hush.”
“Or a young gentleman?” Owen suggested, eyebrows high, ripping open a condom packet.
Affenlight bent down to remove his shoes and kick the jeans away to one side. Just sitting there, erection throbbing, made him rather self-conscious. “Stranger things have happened. Maybe we should go to bed?”
To Owen’s credit, the martial arts pants came off just as slowly as Affenlight liked, and then Owen’s skin was flush against his, maybe two shades darker, two degrees hotter. Owen kissed him, one hand toying with him gently, the other pressing the condom packet and a KY Jelly box onto the next couch cushion.
“Buy these at the airport?” Affenlight opened the box one-handed, dropping out the tube.
Owen nuzzled at his neck. “I was trying to flirt with the security guy. Didn’t work.”
Maybe if he’d been a gay teenager (at least, if he’d known he was a gay teenager), all these things would come naturally with the full force of passion and romance. But he’d needed things spelled out to him step by step in the motel when Owen had first suggested something different to their usual evening of oral sex. He’d needed the instructions more than the beer to calm his nerves, and fortunately Owen had understood.
He opened the cap with his thumb, had to use his other hand to pierce the foil covering. “You want me to…?”
“If you don't mind.” Owen’s penis pressing hard against his belly was enough of an ego boost to make up for a year of solo sessions in the shower. “Don’t worry, I’ve barely eaten a thing in 24 hours. Typical airline food. I only ate the peanuts.”
It was occasions like this that made Affenlight regret his bachelor’s degree. Literature had a tendency to make everything about sensation and sensuality, the slippery thickness of the jelly on his fingers, the warmth of Owen’s body, the smell of him missed for so long. Biology just made him nervous about the potential for rupturing internal organs.
Owen’s eyes closed as Affenlight's caresses deepened his sigh into a moan. “Feels good, Guert. Slowly, though.”
Slowly it was. Affenlight had every intention of using up the whole tube if it made things easier on Owen. But Owen stopped him after only a couple of minutes, rolling the condom onto Affenlight and shifting his weight.
Affenlight might not have breathed at all, watching Owen take him in so slowly, feeling that blissful tight heat around him and making himself remember not to force it, not to buck his hips upward no matter how much he wanted to. His lip was bitten white. Owen leaned forward and kissed it red again.
“You’re beautiful,” Affenlight said, words coming forth without any input from his brain, or at least not any conscious part.
Owen breathed laughter and moved, an easy motion that didn’t really require Affenlight to do anything at all, and perhaps that was why he had chosen the position in the first place. But it did give Affenlight the chance to touch him, feel the soft hairs along his thighs, his belly, nipples hard in the afternoon air, penis sliding easily through the sheath made by Affenlight’s fingers. To think that once they’d never touched, or touch had been a hand testing a feverish brow, a formal handshake.
“Guert…” Then again, Affenlight couldn’t exactly remember Owen ever being particularly formal, ever particularly swayed by his authority or age or standing in the academic community. “Guert, you’d better move. Please.”
Delightful as this was, Owen was still twenty-two, and a twenty-two-year-old who hadn’t been touched in six months (Owen had carefully explained his personal thoughts on monogamy before boarding the plane to Japan). Even if Affenlight could enjoy this for a great deal longer, Owen wouldn’t enjoy it quite as much post-orgasm.
Owen’s panting breaths seemed to mesh perfectly with every thrust of his hips, his dark eyes desperate. Ordinarily Affenlight would focus on whatever mental images would get him off fastest, but now those precise mental images were right in front of him: Owen squeezing his eyes closed, breaths becoming words that did nothing more than give voice to animal need: “Please Guert, need you Guert.” Affenlight hadn’t yet found anyone, no matter how eloquent in life, who managed to retain any articulacy at all in the bedroom.
Or on a couch, for that matter.
His climax came in a rush, ripping the breath from him, his heartbeat almost painfully fast (almost, he inwardly reassured himself), and then Owen was spilling out white-hot over his fingers. As Owen slumped forward with a groan of relief, Affenlight wrapped his arms around his limp, unresisting body while trying to get his breath back without sounding like he was trying to get his breath back.
“Guert, you’re hyperventilating,” Owen noted, cheek to his shoulder, a murmur by his ear.
Affenlight swallowed and closed his eyes, every breath of Owen’s one that guided him back to calmness, and almost, eventually, to sleep. He felt Owen pull away, remove the condom, mop up semen with a Kleenex.
It took ten minutes for the coffee mug to be pressed into his hand: KISS ME, I’M IRISH (Owen had liberated it from the McCallisters last year). Finding the real coffee hadn’t been such a trial for Owen after all, even though what was in Affenlight’s mug was decidedly not real coffee, and the chance of a cigarette to accompany it was almost nil. Owen usually had a joint on him somewhere, but certainly not immediately after passing through seven rings of airport security.
He sat forward and sipped his coffee and tried to think of a new post-coital routine that might seem as perfectly satisfying. Perhaps he should just welcome the fact that they no longer had to sneak around and covertly make love under cover of darkness.
“When’s dinner?”
Dinner. It had seemed an eternity away, as though he’d have Owen all to himself forever. “Seven?” Affenlight rubbed his eyes reluctantly. “But if you’re tired…”
Owen wasn’t tired. Or at least not tired enough to pass up seeing friends he’d missed for a year, with the exception of a few e-mails or words on the phone while Affenlight sat anxiously by, waiting for Pella to stop gossiping about Japanese boys.
Owen hauled a few of his bags into the bedroom along the hallway and was busy arranging things neatly when Affenlight finally stirred and came to see what he was doing. The drawers and closet space that had been his last summer were still empty, even if Owen had a new selection of clothes to put in them.
“Some of it needs to be washed,” Owen explained, throwing several t-shirts in a pile. “But I’ve got a suit somewhere…”
Affenlight sat naked on the edge of the bed and watched socks and briefs all slot into neat rows. The message was very clear, and yet somehow perturbing. “So you’re staying?”
Owen was frowning at some jeans, scraping at a stain with his fingernail. “Oh. I know we didn’t exactly discuss my plans, but I thought…” His long lashes blinked. “I could stash my stuff in Pella’s room.”
Now he felt terrible for even asking the question. “No, of course I want you to stay. I just… We didn’t exactly discuss your plans.”
If he didn’t ask, Pella would be sure to at dinner, and what if he learned the answers at the same time she did?
Owen dropped the jeans and turned around to take Affenlight's hands in his. “Guert, actually…” He stopped himself, took a breath. “I didn’t want to mention it over the phone. I thought you’d freak out. But I’ve been accepted to a PhD program at Harvard.”
“Harvard? That’s amazing. Congratulations!” It was as if there was some part of him, the proud professor, who could produce a genuinely selfless smile while the rest of him crumpled in upon itself.
Owen pressed his fingers to Affenlight’s lips. “I’ve deferred it for a year. I didn't think I had a hope of getting in, and I want to take some time off: do some reading, expand my interests. You made me give Japan a year, so I want to give us a year too. And then… so what if I’m at Harvard? It’s not forever, and you can come visit. They asked me about you, by the way.”
“Infamy, infamy,” Affenlight muttered against Owen’s fingertips. At least he could be reasonably sure that what was a scandal at Westish was nothing more than a joke in Boston.
“I think the professor interviewing me must've been one of your ex-girlfriends.”
“Oh god.” Realization made him slap a hand over his eyes and throw himself backward into the sheets with sudden embarrassment. He sighed, his proud past as an eligible Boston bachelor suddenly nothing but shame. “Actually, you might find that’s true of quite a few of the faculty.”
Owen grinned, sitting down. “Great, we can compare notes.”
“Please don’t.” Oh, the anguish of a former lothario in love.
Owen’s fingers trailed lightly over Affenlight's chest as he sat cross-legged by his side. “You know, it’s been a year. Mike told me they’d found you in your office barely even alive, and all I could think about was everything I’d never said that I needed you to hear. All the things you're not supposed to say when you've only been seeing someone for a couple of months, and I just assumed we’d have enough time for them later. And then those goons from admin started asking if you’d… if you could possibly have been trying to kill yourself. That’s how I figured out they knew about us, that they’d told you to resign and instead of just telling me, telling any of us, you tried to be so stupidly fucking noble…”
His voice cracked and Affenlight reached to take his hand. How like Owen to take two dots and somehow manage to extrapolate the entire picture. If only it had been of something more pleasant.
“I was going to find your hotel room after the game,” Owen said, his tone angry as he pinched the bridge of his nose above his glasses, flicking away tears. “I was going to bring champagne and make sure you knew I’d come back from Japan, that I wanted a future with you. But you gave your ticket to Henry. You never came.”
“O…” Affenlight sat up, carefully wiping away streaked tears from Owen’s face. “It was a year ago. I’m fine. We’re both fine.”
Owen gloomily stared at his fingers, at his toes. “You keep telling me that. You almost died, Guert.”
“I was there.”
Owen shook his head no, words for once eluding him.
Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth… He could recite the entire thing. Owen probably could as well. Neither of them truly had the heart for it now. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Owen carefully removed his glasses, wiping fogged-up lenses. “I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to know that whatever happens, wherever my studies take me, we'll make it work. You don’t need to spend the next year worrying what happens after the summer.” He inspected the results. “We could even get married.”
If Owen’s intent had been to relieve the stress of worrying about their relationship, he’d managed to bring up the one topic guaranteed to strike terror into the heart of any confirmed bachelor. Affenlight blanched. “Married?” he repeated weakly.
“Sure. We’d just go to New York for a few days. You could take me to the opera. The Guggenheim. And then we’d just sign some papers. We’re both adults.”
“Your mother would love that.”
“About as much as Pella would.” Owen’s mouth quirked with the very beginnings of a much-repressed smile.
Affenlight’s whole body seemed to fill with relief. “Nonsense, Pella adores you,” he countered. “ She’s only worried you’re using me and bound to break my heart.”
Owen’s grin lit up his eyes. “Are we talking about Pella or Genevieve?”
“Both, obviously. They have so much in common they’re the ones who should be getting married. I’m much happier living the carefree life of a bachelor with my gorgeous young lover who, by the way, may be giving someone else a heart attack if he doesn’t find his suit and take a shower.”
Later, Affenlight had no real idea whether Owen's insistence that they share the shower had actually saved them any time at all. Or any water, even if Owen had happily babbled about the latest conservation issues while rubbing shampoo into Affenlight’s hair and complaining about chemicals Affenlight could barely even see on the label.
Seeing Owen in a suit was an odd experience. It wasn’t that he didn’t look good, but rather that he always looked good whether he was wearing sweatpants or too-tight jeans, or falling asleep in his pajamas on the president’s couch. The suit just seemed like an unnecessary effort.
Owen straightened Affenlight's tie and kissed him, stepping back to admire the view. “I need to take you shopping again,” he said as Affenlight went to set out water and food for the dog. “You have the most beautiful suits, Guert, but you’re clueless when it comes to anything else.”
“I’m not clueless,” Affenlight protested without much force. “I just don’t care.”
“Just because you’re a crazy old professor doesn’t mean you can’t be stylish.” Owen adjusted his cufflinks, perusing the new pine bookshelves that lined the back wall. “You’re going to show me your novel, right?”
“It’s not exactly a novel. Maybe a novella. Maybe two thirds of a novel.” In his younger days he’d imagined perfectly-crafted tomes of poetry and insight. In reality every sentence was still a struggle. He was much better off with analysis and opinion. “About a hundred and fifty pages from thirty years ago, and another hundred and fifty since September. I’m not sure which is better. Maybe they’re equally awful.”
“To be perfectly honest, Guert, it sounds like a fascinating approach. Compare and contrast the perspectives of your younger and older selves.”
“Yes…” He found the car keys in the kitchen. “Let’s just pretend I intended that all along, shall we?”
Owen was already deep in thought, so much so that Affenlight had to gently steer him outside. “I might think of doing something similar. Not that I’m a novelist… at least not now, but how do I know what my future self might decide to do? And as time travel doesn’t seem to be an option…” He shrugged. “Maybe you’d like some company in your little lakeside shack.”
“If you’re the company, neither one of us would ever get any work done.”
Owen nudged up alongside him and kissed his ear as he locked the door in the darkness. “And that would also be a worthwhile way to spend a year.”
If the past year had seemed like an eternity, crawling his way back to health and waiting for Owen’s return, walking into Maison Robert was a cruel reminder that for Westish and its students barely any time had passed at all. It would be another three years before all but a few students who had known him were gone, and much longer before the campus found a scandal that was sufficiently interesting to tear their attention away from Guert Affenlight's indiscretions.
But then there was Owen, unmistakable in his self-assurance if not his beauty. If he had once been a gawky, insecure teenager scared of his sexuality, there was no longer any hint that he even realized the other diners in the restaurant existed at all. There was only Pella, playing with her phone at the table while Mike Schwartz explained some impenetrable facet of baseball strategy, only Henry, once-haunted blue eyes smiling now as he raised a hand to welcome them and then grabbed Owen in a hug that might have been better suited to home plate.
Pella hugged him too, but when Owen was busy being crushed by Mike’s massive frame she pulled Affenlight over to his chair. “Everything all right?” she asked, doubtless hoping for a resolution to a year of listening to her father’s anxieties about his needlessly complex lovelife.
“Everything’s fine,” Affenlight said, and smiled at the girl seated next to Henry. Once he’d known all the students’ names, but now he had very little cause to go onto campus and very little desire to make eye contact with anyone when he was there. He could only assume that Henry had already given her a crash course in the events of the past year or, if he had been feeling particularly gracious, simply that they would be having dinner with Pella’s father and their friend Owen, who had just returned from Japan. It was unlikely that he and Owen would be doing any smooching at the dinner table, after all.
Once he’d been expected to hold court at dinner parties, to tell a wide variety of stories from his repertoire (all of which Pella had heard numerous times since she was a toddler) and offer his opinions on everything from politics to the best off-campus fishing spots. But now he was barely expected to speak at all. This was Owen’s night, to either tell tales of flights and classes and Japanese culture, or to eagerly ask about Henry’s arm, about Mike’s old law school ambitions, about the chances Pella might instigate a vegetarian revolution against Chef Spirodocus.
Affenlight just smiled and listened, and ordered whatever Owen was having, which spared him the depression of actually having to look at the menu. Owen gave his knee a squeeze under the table. “We should have some wine too. Guert, you can have a glass, can’t you?”
Part of him wanted to say no, but even Pella wasn’t interrupting to point out how terrible an idea it would be. “Sure,” he said, and then the next statement was inevitable. “Owen’s been accepted for a PhD at Harvard. We should celebrate.”
He half-expected Pella to kick him hard in the ankle for lying to her, but Owen was quick to add: “Deferred for a year. It’s been hard being away from the people I love for so long, and someone has to babysit Guert.”
“Guert!”
Affenlight flinched at the sudden echo. Maison Robert was continually packed with refugee faculty members attempting to escape whatever meager fare was served to the students on campus. Naturally all but the very newest hires knew Affenlight, but not many would actually feel obliged to talk to him. Unfortunately Bruce Gibbs clearly could not resist the temptation to interrupt.
“Hello Bruce.” Affenlight got to his feet to shake hands.
“How are you? You’re looking very well. I must say we’ve missed you this past year. Still, time marches on, eh?”
“Indeed. I’m sure you know my daughter Pella?" Introductions were hardly necessary. If Gibbs knew any students at all, he had to know Pella and the boys.
“Yes, yes. Hello Mike. Henry.”
“And my boyfriend Owen?”
Gibbs must have known it was coming, had started the conversation anyway, possibly to assuage any remaining guilt he had from the events that had culminated in Affenlight’s resignation, possibly to obtain the maximum amount of gossip which, after all, was the currency of any small town.
Affenlight, who had never described Owen as his anything before, only wished for a second that he’d taken Owen’s mock-proposal seriously and said “husband”.
“Ah, yes. Owen. So good to have you back with us. Dr. Sobel was just telling me she hasn't heard from you about the playwriting class this summer? The drama department is absolutely insistent they must have you next week. When do you think we’ll have your response?”
Owen leaned over the back of his chair. “The lack of a response was the response, Mr. Gibbs. I’m sure you’ll forgive Guert. We’re in the middle of a celebration, so he really can’t talk as much as he’d like to. Such a pity you didn’t come to see him any time in the last year. It’s his first night out in forever.”
Owen turned back to his examination of the wine list while Gibbs stuttered out some vague niceties before returning to his own table. Affenlight sat back down, smoothing his tie, looking at Owen with a newfound sense of… What? He’d always known Owen was devastatingly intelligent, utterly unwavering in his confidence, loyalty, and bravery even if he was the skinniest, lightest, least aggressive boy ever to play baseball for Westish.
As Owen's fingers tangled up with his on the table, Affenlight realized that it was only the idea of him as a boy that had been wrong. Perhaps Affenlight himself hadn’t been quite a man at twenty-two, perhaps he still wasn’t, but Owen certainly was.
Owen sighed and passed the wine list over. “You choose, Guert. I’m a philistine when it comes to this sort of thing.”
After that, everything was perfect. He allowed himself two glasses of a formidably expensive wine, which after a year of sobriety seemed more like two bottles. They toasted Owen’s return and upcoming Harvard success, Henry’s future career in major league baseball, Mike’s efforts revolutionizing the college’s sports teams, Pella’s divorce finally in writing, and Guert Affenlight’s stubborn insistence on living and breathing.
“I suppose I should be thankful that breathing is viewed as an achievement these days,” he said to Owen on their return home. Home. He could get maudlin at the very thought, damn the wine.
Owen, moderately tipsy as well but hiding it rather better, was unknotting his tie. “You’re already a star, Guert. You don’t need to become one. The rest of us are still trying to keep up.”
“Youth is wasted on the young,” Affenlight said carelessly, and sat down with a thud on the couch, rousing a weary Contango from his sleep in the kitchen. His mood was caught somewhere between delirious happiness and the brooding half-depression he’d been diligently cultivating since Christmas.
Owen sank down beside him, leaning his head against Affenlight’s shoulder. “Which is why I’m with you. I’ve always been an avid conservationist.”
Affenlight couldn’t help but chuckle. He was used to hanging on every word of Owen’s, hoping for hints of a future to their relationship, and now he could finally relax and simply enjoy Owen’s company for what it was now, minute by minute. “Tomorrow you can read my book.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Night of the Large Few Stars… He’d dug it out of a drawer with apprehension that had swiftly transformed into bafflement. Just what had he been trying to achieve at the time? What was the resolution to the mystery, the goal of his hero, his entire point in writing the story in the first place? In the end he had come to much the same conclusion as Owen had, even though it had taken him weeks and Owen two seconds. The original author was long dead, taking his long copper-brown hair, muscular forearms, and youthful vigor with him. What mattered was what Affenlight made of the whole thing now.
“You were a little hard on Bruce Gibbs,” he said eventually, not positive that Owen was even still awake. “The college honor code is very explicit. Simply being seen with you at the motel meant I had to go. He didn’t have any choice in the matter. And it was certainly nothing to do with us being gay.”
For a moment Owen seemed to have stopped breathing. He turned his head. “Guert, did you just refer to us being gay? Us? First person plural?”
The semantics of it all now seemed a little redundant given that the entirety of his sex life in the last eighteen months had involved someone who, despite a certain femininity of figure and attitude, was indisputably male. Affenlight slid a hand down over Owen’s thigh. “We, first person plural, should go to bed.”
The first night they’d slept in the same bed without making love had seemed, at the time, a cruel indication of Affenlight’s feebleness in the aftermath of his heart attack, and a cruel jest to have Owen’s young, vital body wrapped around him without Affenlight having either the ability or much of an inclination to do anything about it. Now, though, there was a certain appeal in the lack of urgency. If they didn't make love tonight, there would always be the long lazy hours of tomorrow morning, not to mention tomorrow night and all the nights thereafter.
“You should call your mother,” he said on their way to the bedroom. If there was to be a future, some fences had to be mended for the long-term.
Owen yawned, playfully grabbed at his ass. “I called her from the airport. She’s probably flying out here in the next few days. I told her she could stay with us seeing as we’ve got a bedroom free – two as long as Pella doesn’t have a fight with Mike. Somehow I think she’ll still be staying in a hotel.”
Even if the romantic in him might have thought it would do Genevieve good to see them at their domestic best, he strongly doubted she would see it that way at all. What if that errant, peculiar spark of intrigue and desire he’d first felt for Owen had never come at all and he’d instead devoted his time to courting the very beautiful and sharp Genevieve Wister? He’d still be president of Westish, and Owen could even be his stepson by now… But no imagined alternate happiness could compare to Owen sitting on the edge of his bed – their bed – unbuttoning his shirt while talking eagerly about his studies in Japan and the prospect of Mike letting him do some batting practice over the summer.
“I miss hitting things,” Owen sighed, stretching out nude under the covers. “I know it sounds awfully barbaric, but at least baseballs don’t feel pain.”
Affenlight switched off the lights and curled into him, his right leg hooked over Owen’s right, his palm stroking Owen’s belly. Like this, he could hear Owen’s heartbeat, steady and strong, and all but ignore his own.
Before them lay an entire summer, traditionally the period for laziness and debauchery among the collegiate crowd. Affenlight made a mental note to try and convince Owen to reconcile with the drama department, if not Gibbs, in the morning. Teaching a few hours a week would be good experience for him, and there was no sense in burning perfectly good academic bridges.
Then there was the rest of the year, full of whatever they cared to do. And then? Studies at Harvard, travel… And now that Owen had mentioned it, however frivolously, maybe making their relationship something more official in the future. Even Wisconsin’s limited domestic partnership laws, which Owen had muttered about darkly on a few occasions, would provide for hospital visitation in the event that…
Owen stirred with a murmur, rolling over onto his side and holding Affenlight tightly as their mouths met in a wine-tinted kiss.
The future, Affenlight observed, had already displayed its tendency to occur whether he expected it to or not. Perhaps it was far better to dwell on the present: on Owen finally here, and here to stay.
“Take heart, take heart,” he whispered against the heat of Owen’s slender body, and resolved for once to take his own advice.
Things were simpler than they seemed.