Page 106 of We Could Be So Good
Everyone duly praises the cat’s stupidity and Nick feels very pleased with himself.
He doesn’t know when it happened, but he doesn’t feel panicky anymore when he thinks about how Mark and Lilian know about him. Now he doesn’t feel exposed so much as oddly and unexpectedly warm, like he downed a cup of hot cocoa or put on a pair of mittens. It’s sort of how he felt as a little kid, when everywhere he looked there was an aunt or a cousin.
Maybe this is what it’s like, having friends, real friends, friends who know him. It’s—well, it’s a bit much, sometimes, and he’s blaming Andy for all of it.
***
Later that week, Nick’s source at the Property Clerk’s Office calls and tells him that the police department has changed their procedure for how they log evidence and how many cops have the combination to the evidence safe. It’s all but an admission that cops have been stealing evidence, and it’s a small—but likely ineffective—attempt to stop the practice. It’s not a victory, nothing that big, but it’s proof that Nick’s writing did something other than keep people entertained on their morning commute.
***
As soon as the ink is dry on the deed and Andy (and Chemical Corn Bank) officially own the building, something loosensin Nick, some old tension evaporating almost immediately. It’s alarming, because he isn’t expecting it—he had been a little ambivalent about Andy buying the building, but now that it’s done, Nick feels like he has about a dozen fewer things to worry about.
He tells himself that he’s only pleased because it means Andy really is here to stay, and maybe that’s part of it. But honestly Nick had already known Andy would stay and he doesn’t need a building as proof. It’s something simpler and more material than that: the guarantee of a roof over his head.
It’s the ability to lean on someone. It’s something Nick hasn’t had—maybe hasn’t let himself have—since he was a child.
It’s space. It’s room to breathe.
The idea of not having to worry about steady work lets Nick imagine a world where life doesn’t revolve around the predictable arrival of his paycheck. Andy already knows that Nick’s getting ready to pitch a couple of ideas to some magazines. A year ago Nick would have rejected the idea out of hand—he was a city reporter, and that was that. That had been the safest and best place for him. But now he thinks he can carve out another, better place for himself.
“I mean, you’re right,” Andy says later when Nick, abashed, explains all this to him. It’s late enough that half the lights are out in the newsroom, but Andy and theChronicle’s treasurer have been burning the midnight oil, trying to find money for the kind of equipment they need to put out a glossy magazine on Sundays. “It goes both ways, you know. If the paper folds, figuring out the next step is less of an emergency since you’ll probably have work.”
Andy says this so simply and with such total faith in the idea that Nick is on board with the entangling of their lives and their futures, Nick is momentarily speechless.
“Did I get that wrong?” Andy asks, his face going blotchy with rising color.
“No,” Nick says quickly. “It’s just—it’s good, you know?” A wild understatement, if ever there was one, but Andy seems to get the point. “It just, uh, made me sort of happy to hear you say that, I guess?” He feels deranged saying that sort of thing out loud, but it makes Andy so transparently thrilled that Nick has decided to get over himself.
Andy is sitting in Nick’s chair and Nick is leaning against his desk. They probably ought to move this conversation into Andy’s new office, but Andy looks too tired to move, and the truth is that anyone in the newsroom who was going to jump to conclusions about the two of them has already done it or will do it soon enough.
“TheSaturday Evening Postwants to pay me twelve hundred dollars for that article,” Nick says.
“Shit,” Andy says, because he knows that’s about what Nick makes in two months at theChronicle. “Congratulations.” He sounds like he means it. “When should I expect your resignation?”
“You shouldn’t. Not yet. I’m not sure yet if those offers will keep coming in.” This means Nick will be busy for a while, pitching articles and writing them while also doing his job at theChronicle. But Andy’s busy, too, and it feels like they’re building something.
“I was talking to Mark,” Andy says. “He used to give out a lawyer’s phone number to queer men if they were arrested.”
Nick thinks of the business card with the inked-in phone number that Mark had given him years ago.
“In any event,” Andy goes on, “I was thinking of giving the paper’s number out like that—along with the number of a lawyer, of course. I want to spread the word that we’ll publish stories about gay men who have been entrapped by plainclothes cops.”
Nick takes a moment before responding. He knows Andy’s running this by him because it’ll add grist to the rumor mill. But Nick is almost positive thePosthas run stories like what Andy’s suggesting, and nobody’s going around saying that Dorothy Schiff is queer, as far as Nick knows. TheChroniclehas always championed underdogs and been suspicious of cops; this is consistent with the paper’s unstated mission, and there’s a good chance readers will think the police are behaving unfairly. Nick doubts it will change anything, but he already knows that he’s a bit of a fatalist. Andy is not only an optimist, but—Nick is realizing—the kind of optimist who will cheerfully bulldoze anything that stands between him and the things he wants. “I’m surprised theChroniclehasn’t been doing this all along,” Nick finally says.
“We did,” Andy says, looking a little proud of himself. “A couple of times, at least. In the thirties.”
Nick caught thatwe, and wonders if Andy did, too.
This seems like a drinking sort of occasion, so Andy gets the bottle of bourbon out of the bottom drawer of Nick’s desk and pours a couple inches into a pair of clean-looking coffee mugs.
Nick takes his cup, holding it up in a silent toast, and neither of them need to mention what they’re drinking to. It’s too many things to fit into a toast anyway—it’s making peace with the future and also with the past; it’s looking forward but also holding tight to the present. Nick knows that when Andy thinks too hard about theChronicle, he still feels a little sick to his stomach, and Nick’s own demons make sure to say hi a dozen times a day. But they have one another, an unmapped future, and the bone-deep certainty that they can figure it out together.
Epilogue
Andy
It’s Linda’s idea to have the party on the roof. Andy feels betrayed.
