Page 43 of We Could Be So Good
Nick hurries, thinking that maybe he’ll be able to snatch the coffee and disappear. But as soon as he opens the cabinet, he hears footsteps behind him.
“Just pour yourself a cup,” Bailey says. “Mugs are on the left.”
“I’m looking for the instant. Our coffee maker’s broken.”
Bailey opens another cabinet and pulls down a jar of Nescafé, then hands it to Nick. “Still, pour yourself a cup. You don’t want that stuff.”
Nick glances wistfully at what appears to be a brand-new coffee maker, evidently bought to replace the one that killed itself in protest of bad beans. He feels like taking Bailey’s coffee—somehow he feels certain that this is Bailey’s own coffee maker, brought from home—will be a bridge too far.
“Jesus, kid.” Bailey pours a cup and thrusts it into Nick’s hand.
Two years ago, Nick was at the Everard Baths in Chelsea, doing what everybody does there, which is to say having semi-anonymous sex with other men. The place is an institution. It’s been there as long as anyone can remember, having bounced back from God knows how many raids. Rumor is the cops actually own the place. Nick was just leaving when he caught sight of Bailey on the sidewalk outside, talking with another man. Neither of them was stupid enough to acknowledge the other by name, but they had met one another’s eye and there was no denying that it had happened.
Nick hasn’t gone back to the baths since. He’s spent years trying to avoid Bailey, rarely going to the fifth floor, steering clear of him in the cafeteria. Not because there’s anything wrong with the man, mind you. He’s one of theChronicle’s book critics, and he seems perfectly nice, Nick supposes.
It’s just that there aren’t a lot of people who know about Nick, and he’s gotten used to people looking at him and only seeing what he wants them to see. Mark Bailey knows the truth and it makes Nick feel exposed, here at theChronicle, where it’s more important than ever for Nick to keep his secrets.
“Cream’s in the refrigerator,” Bailey says, and Nick realizes he’s been standing there too long. Before Nick can decide whether to take the cream or make a break for the elevator bank, Bailey speaks again. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’m not going to tell anyone. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t think you would,” Nick says, which isn’t entirely true. It’s not that he thinks Bailey would spread malicious gossip. It’s just—Bailey had been with someone.Withsomeone. He had been on the arm of another man, something comfortable and settled about the way they were standing. They had been together. And would it be so strange for Bailey, later on, to whisper to his—his lover, his boyfriend—that the young man with dark hair had been Nick Russo from the newsroom? Nick thinks it would be stranger not to, which means there’s one other person who knows about Nick.
“I’m not going to hit on you, either,” says Bailey, rolling his eyes.
“Shh!” Nick automatically looks over his shoulder, out the kitchen door.
“The floor’s empty except for Archie Ross, and he’s half deaf.”
It’s true, and besides, Bailey is speaking quietly. None of that does anything to make Nick’s heart settle down. He’s self-aware enough to understand that he’s being unreasonably paranoid—it’s the same skin-crawling sensation he gets when speaking freely even inside his own apartment or an empty subway car. It’s been years: Bailey clearly means him no harm and has managed to be discreet enough that Nick’s queerness isn’t the talk of theChronicle.
But Bailey’s presence sets Nick’s teeth on edge and somehow it’s worse because Bailey is trying to be decent. A week after that awful meeting at the baths, he cornered Nick in the cafeteria and gave him a business card for a lawyer with another phone number inked in at the bottom. “Memorize both of these numbers if you ever have trouble,” Bailey had said. Nick had been annoyed at the presumption but also grateful, because, yes, the phone number of a queer-friendly lawyer was a good thing to have, goddammit.
“I’ve been reading that series you’re writing,” Bailey says now. “It’s funny. You’re wasted on the news.”
“Funny?” Nick repeats, outraged. “Wasted?”
“Those were compliments.”
“Like hell they were.”
“You’re a good prose stylist.”
“I’m awhat?” Nick knows what those words mean separately and even together but not when applied to himself.
“Compliment, kid. You’re good at what you do.”
“But not at reporting news?”
“Didn’t say that. Just meant that you’d be better at writing something else. Did you read that book I sent you?”
“No,” Nick says with feeling.
Bailey takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Nick, who shakes his head. “You should read it. I think you’d like it.”
“That’s what you always say.”
A couple times a year, Nick finds a tale of gay misery and woe on his desk, because apparently Bailey has taken it upon himself to be Nick’s personal sad gay librarian.
“You have shitty taste in books. Would it kill you to read something that isn’t totally dismal?”
