Page 75 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Nobody put me in any position,” Nathaniel says. “I could have walked away. I wasn’t drafted, I wasn’t under orders.”
“I know. I guess what I mean is that you signed up for what you thought were good reasons, and—”
“Patrick, it will break my heart if I have to listen to you compromising yourself to make me into someone good enough for you to respect.”
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care if you’regood.”
“You practically stopped talking to your brother because he didn’t fight the draft!”
“I was furious with him because I didn’t want him toleave. I couldn’t stand the idea of him dying for no reason and just going along with it.”
Nathaniel could kick himself, because Jerome practically told him as much. What had he said? Patrick’s always ready for people to leave him on the side of the road like an old mattress. And here Nathaniel is, offering to leave. No—it’s worse than that. Nathaniel has backed them both into a corner where the only solution is for Nathaniel to leave. He hurts Patrick if he goes, and he hurts Patrick if he stays.
Patrick rubs a hand across his beard. “I don’t care if you’re good,” he repeats. “I care that you’re you.”
Nathaniel doesn’t know what he could possibly say to that, so he gets Walt’s leash and walks him around the block. When he gets back, he heads directly into the shower, hoping that by the time he’s done Patrick will be in bed with the door shut, and they can avoid the issue of where Nathaniel is or isn’t sleeping.
But when he comes out Patrick is waiting for him, leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom, like he needs to intercept Nathaniel before he makes a break for it. He isn’t wearing a shirt, which is just unfair.
“Come on,” Patrick says. “Time for bed.” He points toward his bedroom, so Nathaniel can’t even pretend to misunderstand. Nathaniel climbs into the bed, and Walt follows so they have to go through the usual routine of reminding him that he’s a dog and doesn’t sleep on the bed. It’s basically the same as every night for over a month. Two seconds after Patrick pulls the chain to put out his bedside lamp, they’re kissing, Patrick’s hand on Nathaniel’s jaw, his body heavy and warm.
“You are good,” Patrick says. “I should have said that before. You’re good to me. You’re good to the Valdez kids, to Susan and Eleanor—”
“Being good to the people I love isn’t the same. It just isn’t.” In the dark quiet closeness of the bed, it sounds like a plea.
Patrick kisses him again, harder this time. Nathaniel slides a hand along the muscles of Patrick’s back, then tugs him closer.
“Yeah?” Patrick asks.
Nathaniel wonders how many people have ever been fucked to prove a point about wartime ethics, or whatever is going through Patrick’s mind. Nathaniel knows that isn’t precisely the point Patrick is making.
Later, when he’s sure Patrick is sleeping soundly, he slips out of the apartment. He spins the combination of the lock.
He’s been thinking of what he told Patrick, that what the agency would be most worried about is Nathaniel giving this information to the Soviets or the press. Well, he has no intention of giving anything to the Soviets. But theNew York Times,on the other hand. That might accomplish something. Seeing those files with his own eyes had ruptured the last shreds of trust Nathaniel had in this organization—maybe in the entire government. It might do the same thing for other people. Things could change, not just with how the agency operates. People might demand a government they can trust.
Or it might just explode Nathaniel’s life, get him charged with treason or something equally ruinous, and bring everybody he loves into scrutiny they don’t want.
He imagines telling that to Patrick and Susan, imagines telling them he can’t do the right thing because he needs to protect them. Susan would hand deliver the envelope to theTimesherself. Patrick would be more worried about Nathaniel’s safety, but love has made Patrick an unreliable moral compass.
He has the number of aTimesreporter and not a single excuse not to use it. When Viv put up that flier looking for a room to rent, Beverly left Nathaniel with her phone number to pass on to Viv. And he did pass it on to her, but not before entering it onto a card and sliding it into Patrick’s new Rolodex.
He can’t change the last twenty years, but he can make sure the next thing he does is something he can live with.
In the morning, he offers to walk Walt and pick up the paper. At the pay phone on the corner, he pulls the Rolodex card from his pocket and makes a call.
V
A Word Unsaid
Patrick
23
“What do you mean, you didn’t hear about it?” Susan asks. She arrived home with twice as much luggage as she left with. Eleanor now has a wardrobe that’ll be the envy of all the other six-month-olds. “It’s all over the news. You should have heard what my father had to say. I’m kicking myself for not being there.”
“We didn’t watch much television,” Patrick says. “Or read the paper.” Patrick spent most of the week taking Nathaniel to bed every chance he got, like maybe if he just fucked him well enough, all their troubles would disappear.
Susan looks between them. Patrick’s dealing with the mail he didn’t open for the past few days, and Nathaniel’s holding Eleanor, who reached for him as soon as she saw him and now won’t let him go. “Anyway, the Democratic Convention? To choose a presidential candidate? You’ve heard of this, yes?”
