Page 49 of We Could Be So Good
“Mr.Russo. Drink your coffee.” Mr.Fleming’s voice is mild, and in it Nick can hear echoes of Andy. But there’s an edge in the older man’s voice. Something that speaks of decades of hard decisions and disappointment. “My son called me at five o’clock yesterday morning asking for the first flight to Washington. I doubtheeven knew what hotel he’d be staying at.”
Now Nick is alarmed. “Someone met him at the airport, didn’tthey? Andy’s plenty smart, you know that, but if he’s left to navigate a strange city on his own, I don’t like to think of what kind of hotel he’d find himself in.”
Mr.Fleming stares at him. “A driver picked him up at the airport, Mr.Russo.”
“Good,” Nick says, relieved. He isn’t going to ask where this driver took Andy. Andy will either get in touch with him or he won’t. And even if he doesn’t, they can talk when Andy gets home. He just needs time or space, hence the last-minute trip to Washington. Nick understands that.
He gets to his feet. “Thanks for the coffee, Mr.Fleming. And it was nice talking to you.”
“Likewise, Mr.Russo. I’m glad you stopped by.”
Dimly, Nick notices that Mr.Fleming doesn’t get to his feet when Nick leaves, which is odd because he seems like the sort of man to stick by his manners even when obliquely accusing someone of having caused his son to flee the city before dawn.
***
When Andy’s around, he and Nick either go out to lunch or sit together in theChroniclecafeteria, usually joined by whatever junior reporters are having lunch at the same time. But without Andy, Nick feels like it’s his first day at a new school, despite the fact that he’s been working here for four years and Andy’s only been here for one of them. The day before, he had lunch by himself at the Automat, but today he bites the bullet and goes to the cafeteria.
He gets a chicken salad sandwich (which makes him miss Andy, because he isridiculous) and finds an empty table, thinking he’ll scarf down his food and go back to work. But no sooner hashe sat than Mark Bailey comes over and pulls out a chair across from him.
“Thought you might want some company,” he remarks.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick asks, too defensive.
“Just that you’re wandering around like a lost dog without Fleming.”
Nick almost hisses at him to be quiet, but he hasn’t really said anything too pointed. The fact is that Nickiskind of moping around and Bailey isn’t the first person to notice. Everyone in the newsroom is giving him a wide berth, and Nick would be embarrassed if his brain weren’t busy with about half a dozen other emotions.
“Am not,” Nick mutters weakly, then crams his mouth full of chicken salad so he doesn’t have to say anything else.
“There you are,” says a woman’s voice. Lilian Corcoran bends to kiss Bailey on the cheek then hitches up her trousers and sits beside Nick.
It doesn’t escape him that the only two queer people he knows at theChroniclehave suddenly decided to have lunch with him. “What is this, a club?” Nick asks.
“If it were, we’d hardly even have a quorum,” says Lilian. “Only three of us? Please.”
Nick lets the ramifications of this sink in. Lilian knows of others? He doesn’t know whether he’s curious or panicked at the idea that there might be a secret network of gay reporters who have all found out about him.
“I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” Lilian goes on. “You’ve turned down two consecutive dinner invitations and I’m starting to think you’re mad at me. Maureen’s feelings are hurt.”
“I have Andy staying with me.”
“What, he doesn’t eat?”
“I couldn’t bring him to dinner at your place,” Nick says. This is blindingly obvious to him: he couldn’t bring Andy to the one-bedroom apartment Lilian shares with another woman.
Lilian regards him for long enough that Nick has to look away. “I see that it’s an advanced case,” she finally says, either to Bailey or to nobody in particular. Nick refuses to ask what she means. Bailey takes a bite of his apple.
“If someone can’t have dinner with Lilian and Maureen, they probably aren’t a very good friend for you,” Bailey observes mildly, apparently paying more attention to his apple than he is to Nick.
Nick bristles. “It’s not that. I don’t share other people’s secrets.”
“Who asked you to? We could have had a perfectly sane conversation. I ask you to dinner, you say,Well, actually, Lilian, I have your future boss staying with me, and either I stay the hell away or I bring him along.”
When she puts it like that, it sounds so easy, but what was even easier was refusing to think about it. He’s always known that Lilian probably guessed that he’s queer, but she never actually said so, just like she’s never come right out and said that she’s queer, either. He hasn’t wanted to have that conversation. Even asking whether it was all right to invite Andy would bring the topic of their shared queerness uncomfortably close to the surface.
He doesn’t want to be queer at work, which sounds asinine, but there it is. Everything is so much safer if he draws a line between those parts of his life. He honestly isn’t even sure he would have told Andy if he hadn’t found out himself.
But here are Lilian and Bailey, comfortably eating lunch and apparently not bothered in the least. Thinking back over the past few minutes, he realizes that the two of them are friends. Baileyknows about Maureen. He remembers the relief it was to be able to talk freely to Emily and briefly imagines being able to do that on a larger scale. It’s preposterous—absurd.
