Page 29 of Torn
In fact I was feeling so British, I thought I’d try out an accent. I’d been listening for so long that I thought it would fairly trip off my tongue.
“Fancy a kebab before we get home? Maybe do a takeaway? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Boutros stopped in the street to stare at me. He narrowed his eyes. “Whoareyou?”
“Your mate, Ricky.”
Boutros made atsknoise and shook his head. “Listen, if you think you sound remotely British, you’ve another think coming. Trying to ape the accent makes you sound even more dreadfully American than you already are, so quit it.” He turned abruptly and kept walking.
I followed, mumbling, “I’ll take that as a no on the kebab, then.”
THAT NIGHT,Boutros had a date of sorts. Not a romantic one, but to meet up with a fellow compatriot in the creation of art—a cartoonist who had enjoyed some success on this side of the pond. His visions of a pair of gay Peter Pans, everyone knowing they were well past their prime but themselves, had been syndicated in gay newspapers across Europe.
He and Boutros, brought together through the magic of mutual friends plus email, had corresponded over the years. Tonight was Boutros’s first chance to meet him, live and in the flesh. Because there was the possibility this could morph from a casual meetup into an erotic encounter, I was not invited, which was fine with me.
As much as I loved Boutros, I needed some time alone. Introverts are born that way. Too much proximity to people with whom we even have great affection for tends to drain us. My tank was empty.
So once he’d left, in his muslin shirt and ripped jeans, I took a bubble bath and dressed casually for an evening out in a pair of gray button-fly Levi’s and a red Chicago Bulls T-shirt from which I had artfully cut the sleeves. I thought the ensemble, paired with a three-day growth of dark beard and my Nikes, made me look sporty and butch, despite the nelly queen hiding in the shadows.
There was a pub not far along on the subway line called the Royal Vauxhall. Boutros had mentioned their drag shows being legendary and that the place attracted a good crowd on almost every night of the week.
The promise of alcohol and entertainment, surrounded by gay peers, was welcoming to me. The old Ricky would have once gone along thinking he’d find a sexy stranger with whom to spend the night (okay, or five minutes in a bathroom stall), exploring each other’s nooks and crannies with heedless abandon.
But meeting Walt had changed me, had put my taste for anonymous sex on hold. Temporarily? Who knew? All I did know was that the promise of being able to disappear into a crowd, where the focus was not on the next pretty boy but a raucous drag queen on a stage, seemed comforting and appealed to the introvert in me.
Hadn’t someone once said that we are never more alone than when in the midst of a crowd? If we want, we can disappear into a crowd.
I set out into the night, just as dusk was beating a hasty retreat, leaving the sky above London a palette of gray and lavender, tinged at the top with darkness and the first few stars beginning to emerge.
As I headed toward the station at St. James’s, I passed through a little park, as opposed to the big park for which the tube station had been named. This was a tiny city park on a corner—a few trees, a few benches, a little green, some litter, a pigeon-shit-ornamented statue of some battle hero whom no one remembered.
Intent on getting to the station, and more than a little worried that I might get lost forever in the London underground labyrinth, I heard someone call out my name as I passed by. At first I didn’t stop, because among the millions of people in London, who would know me by name?
The voice sounded again, louder. “Ricky?”
I stopped and turned around, peering into the gloom of the park. There was a male figure sitting on a bench, but I couldn’t really make him out well because he was hidden in shadow cast by the leaves of the tree above him. The orange sodium-vapor glow of the streetlight didn’t reach him.
Cautiously, I made my way toward him. And when I was within a couple feet of him, those features that I so loved shaped themselves into a familiar and welcome image.
“Walt. It’s you.” I shook my head. “You seem to have a bit of magic in you.” I sat down close, our shoulders touching. God, I didn’t know how much I’d wanted to see him again until I actually did.
“How’s that?”
“You turn up in the most surprising ways. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were following me. Or that I had the power of wish-fulfillment.”
“Well, since actually following you would be almost impossible, what with me traveling by car and you by train, let’s just consider the possibility that fate is keeping our paths crossing. And maybe….” He placed a hand on my cheek to turn my face toward his and leaned in for a quick kiss. “Maybe you and I being together again is exactly what the universe has planned for us.”
I knew what Boutros would think of such a line, how he would scoff at it. But I was charmed by the idea that something beautifully strange and wonderful in the world kept bringing us back together.
As though it were meant to be.
I pulled away. We were in public, and we were still years away from when two men kissing in a public park would be acceptable by everyone, if it ever would be. I said softly, “I’m so glad to see you. This is a surprise I didn’t even allow myself to entertain.”
“It was meant to be, sweetheart.”
The fact that he called me sweetheart caused a little chill to pass through me, a tingle like an electric shock. And then I felt warm.
Werethings meant to be? Was there a grand plan for all of us?
