Tucker Shaw - When You Call My Name

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For Steven

Ive never missed you more.

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.

Daphne du Maurier,Rebecca

The Beloved, Hello

Soon, Adam will know every part of the boy. Every plane, every crease, every shadow, every ridge. Hell tally and retally the freckles that swirl across his skin like constellations, over his chest and around his shoulders and into the shallow dimples at the base of his back. Hell know the vibrations of his voice and the lines of his palms and the steady rhythm of his sleep.

Soon, but not today. Today Adam only knows what he can see: a boy, or maybe a man, standing in the January sunshine with his collar turned up against the cold, waiting for an answer.

Will you come? he asks again. He is not impatient. He smiles.

Look at him. Look at how tall he is, a head higher than Adam. Look at his eyes, at how they are set asymmetrically, the left higher than the right. Or is that just the way hes tilting his head? Look at the rebellious curls at the edge of his watch cap. Look at his beautiful nose. Just look at him.

An icy gust swipes Adams face, blowing his hair into his eyes. He squints through the strands. He shivers. Why cant he ever remember his hat?

Adam twists one foot inward, making pigeon toes. He presses down to feel the sidewalk beneath his sneaker. Gravity. He studies the boys eyes, first the left, then the right, then back again. Clear eyes. Placid. Hopeful.

Will you come? Its a simple question. Adam knows how this works. Hes seen it in a thousand movies, rehearsed it a million times in his mind. A stranger stands before you. He says his line. He asks his question. Now its your turn. Answer, and your story will begin. Adam bites his lower lip, conjuring courage.

A taxi scrapes around the corner, dragging its damaged muffler across the asphalt as it rolls toward Christopher Street. The clatter sends up sparks and Adam can feel its vibration in his teeth. Its one of the old cabs, a Checker, and when you see one of those you get to make a wish. Adam makes his wish. The taxi lurches through the intersection and away.

His eyes drift to a gathering of freckles at the side of the strangers face, just there, just at the temple. Look carefully. See? A pulse, his pulse, steady and expectant and alive.

Will you come?

Adam will say yes. Adam is seventeen.

The lenses of Bens eyeglasses are smudged with pomade and the bus windows are fogged up with everyone breathing, so he cant see much as the Greyhound lumbers through Midtown. It rolls with excruciating sluggishness, taking a half hour just to cover the final few blocks into Port Authority.

Its slow pace fits the day. The ride down from Gideon should take an hour and change but today it took a lifetime. You cant ever tell with traffic. Bens already read, cover to cover, the copies of Vogue, Interview, and i-D that he bought at the station on the way out, and hes listened to the Beloveds Happiness CD all the way through three times. Hed listen to it again if his Discmans batteries hadnt died. He should have taken the train.

Ben pulls his hand into the sleeve of his sweatshirt and swipes it across the window to create a little peephole in the foggy glass. He knows its a clear day, but you can barely tell here in the shadows of Midtown. The sun is up there somewhere, but a hundred buildings obscure it.

Streams of people in winter coats of gray and brown and olive and black course along the sidewalk, gathering into antsy pools at the intersections to wait for the walk signal. They hold their scarves to their throats and turn away from the wind to shield their faces.

When the signal comes, some dart across, leaning into the cold. Others trudge slowly, each step a groaning labor. No one looks happy. Its all so beautiful. Ben loves New York.

Suddenly, a man in a shockingly bright orange bomber jacket breaks from the drab stream of pedestrians and steps off the curb, scanning the traffic as if to jaywalk. He looks familiar. Could it be? Ben swabs at the window again. Yes. It is him. Marco. Right there on Ninth Avenue. Ben would know him anywhere.

Two years ago, when Ben was a sophomore, a junior named Marco got jumped at the end of the school day. They pushed him into a maintenance closet outside the music room and broke off the doorknob, trapping him inside. They spray-painted QUEERS GET AIDS across the door and vanished. No one found Marco until the next morning, when a custodian dismantled the door and found him huddled against the wall, vomit covering his shoes. The administration called in a hazardous waste specialist to disinfect the closetthe door said AIDS after allbut they never called the police. Soon everyone was saying that Marco brought it on himself. You cant just walk around with earrings in both ears and a Culture Club T-shirt without consequences, they said. It was conspicuous. Marco got what was coming to him.

Marco stands tall, a confident posture. Just then, a swirl of steam from a manhole envelops him, the white cloud amplifying the electric orange of his jacket. It looks like a fashion photograph in one of Bens favorite magazines. If he were the stylist, though, Ben would swap out the orange jacket for something less obvious. Oxblood maybe, or emerald. Something just as arresting, but a little less garish.

Ben blinks, and Marco vanishes, swallowed back into the city. The bus pulls into its berth at Port Authority, and everyone jumps up and into the aisle, pushing and sighing and clicking their tongues. Ben waits until the whole bus empties out, then takes down his duffel bag and goes in search of a pay phone. He needs to call his brother. He needs to call Gil.

Will you come?

Its not such a big deal. The boyor man? no, lets go with boy for nowis only asking Adam to see Tremors, the new Kevin Bacon horror movie thats supposed to be more funny than scary. Its just that no ones asked Adam to the movies before. Not like this. Not a customer.

Sonias Village Video had been thronged all morning with harried customers stocking up on movies before the snowstorm Sam Champion promised on Eyewitness News. Sonia loves storm warnings, because nothing is better for the video rental business in New York. But busy days deplete inventory, and Adam spent most of his shift disappointing customers from behind the counter. No, you cant rent more than three tapes at a time; no, we dont have Drugstore Cowboy on Beta; no, we dont carry that kind of movie here, but check over at the Pleasure Chest on Seventh Avenue.

Soon it was one oclock, the end of Adams shift. The rush had slowed to a trickle. Adam peeled off his stiff retail smile and took his pale blue parka down from the hook. Im clocking out, he said, shrugging the jacket over his shoulders.