Thomas and I had arranged to meet at JFK Thursday after work, in order to catch a late evening flight to Detroit. I had been making good time, but as Elaine famously said on Seinfeld, no one's ever beaten the Van Wyck. After advancing about two sub-compact-sized car lengths in twenty minutes, I became paranoid that I wouldn't make it and that Thomas would think I'd blown him off and never speak to me again.
I still had him on speed-dial.
"Hey, I got started late and now I'm stuck on the Van Wyck," he said breathlessly the moment he picked up, not giving me a chance to speak. I craned my neck to look in case the Camaro was among the cars basically parked around me.
"Yeah, me too," I said. "That's what I was calling to tell you."
"We're not going to make it, are we?"
"Let's just get there. We can change flights if we need to."
"It's not like I really want to go anyway," Thomas mumbled despondently.
"Buck up, little soldier, and chortle," I quoted. He obligingly made that fake sound we both imagined chortling was, and I laughed. "Hey, it looks like we're finally moving a bit. See you there."
"Great," Thomas said listlessly and hung up.
I arrived first and figured that if Thomas showed up in the next ten minutes we could still board. I made sure the gate knew we were almost there (and Thomas having booked business and already checked us in certainly helped) and he made it with one minute to spare. I watched him run towards me, long legs covering ground effortlessly, a leather duffel bumping against his hip. God, how I'd missed just being able to look at him. Not counting my trip to Garden City to pick up my stuff, this was the longest we'd ever been apart from each other since we first met, except for summer vacations in college and the roughly two years Thomas had spent in the Peace Corps.
I don't know how it is these days with so many ways to communicate, but in the mid-80s being in the Peace Corps meant you were completely out of touch for months on end. Most of the letters he sent me reached me after he came back (and for the most part they resembled exceptionally well-written newspaper articles rather than personal letters, but he did write to me and that's what counted) and only six of mine ever caught up with him, although I dutifully wrote him about every five to six weeks. We'd thought we were awfully mature at graduation; we both had things to do and places to be and it wasn't like we'd ever seriously figured on a long-term future together. Afterward I realized that we'd simply been young and unbelievably arrogant, that we placed so little value on what we had together, that we assumed that finding love (though we never called it that) and friendship (that we admitted to) was easy, even commonplace, instead of something rare to be cherished and protected at all costs.
"Thanks again for doing this," Thomas said after we settled in our seats.
"I'm happy to help if I can," I assured him. "You know that."
He looked at me sharply, and I blushed. My intentions must have been all too obvious, especially to someone, who knew me so well and for so many years. And my timing couldn't have been worse; my very presence on the plane was proof that Thomas had bigger things worrying him. Surprisingly, he reached out and squeezed my hand. It was only for a second, but I could swear I still felt the warmth of his palm hours later.
I'd been wondering about the hotel rooms. The whole trip was on Thomas, he wouldn't hear of my covering any part of it since I was only in Detroit at his request, and I wondered if he'd booked a double or two single rooms. At the death of his mother he'd come into a lot of money – that's why he'd kept the house, he'd paid off our mortgage years ago, overriding my objections and stating that it was stupid to pay interest when we didn't need to – and he could easily afford the singles, but I didn't like what that implied about where things stood between us, that we couldn't even share a room as friends anymore. On the other hand, he wouldn't have booked a double without checking with me first, I didn't think. Of course he wouldn't, I repeated firmly to myself, determinedly quashing my irrational disappointment.
As I found out, Thomas had opted for a compromise, two interconnecting singles, so that we each had our own space and either of us could shut and bolt the door between us, but there was still a tacit acknowledgment of our history.
It had been a full day, and we were both tired. I hung up my jacket and pulled off my tie, then lay back on my bed, my legs hanging off the end with my feet on the floor, and I listened to Thomas' quiet voice in the other room as he spoke on the phone, presumably to his father. After a while, he knocked on the door frame between our rooms and pushed the door, which had been ajar, fully open.
"I've arranged to meet my father at this breakfast place in the Ren Cen at eight tomorrow. I tried to make it later, but he's always been an early riser, and I didn't feel like adding sloth to all my other sins."
"Okay. Do you want me there with you?"
He nodded, then wandered into my room and started re-arranging the brochures and leaflets on the small desk, lining up the edges, then placing them by size, then back into their original positions. I sat up and reached for his wrist, pulling him down to sit beside me. He slumped over with his elbows on his knees, and I rubbed his back in a circular motion I knew relaxed him. I didn't ask what was wrong, because it was pretty obvious, but I also didn't know what to say that might make him feel better and I could think of anything to break the silence between us.
"I haven't told my father we're not together anymore," Thomas said.
"It's none of his business either way," I assured him, trying to ignore the jolt of hope I felt at his words.
"No, but..." He sighed and leaned into me a little, though I doubt he was aware of having done so. "I don't want him to know I failed at this."
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he hadn't, but the truth was he had. We both had.
"We stayed together longer than a lot of couples and maybe against worse odds," I said instead. "That counts for something. Though since we're both men, probably not with Robert."
He laughed. "You're right. He'd have been a lot happier if we'd never met."
"Probably."
"I wouldn't have been, though," Thomas said in a low voice. "When we separated, right before, I said a lot of stuff I didn't mean and not enough of what I should have. You know that, right?"
"Yeah."
He laughed again, a quiet huff. "My strong and silent Scott. Always so polite, from the first second I saw you, when you shook my hand, even though you looked about ready to puke at the thought of sharing a room with me."
"Not you specifically. Any guy with a Mohawk and nose ring. And I wasn't that obvious."
"You were extremely obvious. There you were, with the prettiest blue eyes I'd ever seen in my life, and you couldn't stand the sight of me."
I didn't object to the description, particularly the "pretty'' bit, like I usually had in the past. "Well, you were an ugly skinny thing, weren't you? But I eventually got used to you."
He grinned, then took a deep breath, straightened his back and clapped his palms against his knees. Obviously the trip down memory lane was over.
