I caught up to him in the sculpture gallery, standing unruffled in front of an ancient statue of a young, curly-haired god some fisherman had netted in the 1920s in the Aegean Sea. One of the statue’s hands was raised like a footsore New Yorker flagging a cab; the other touched his chest lightly in a not-to-brag-but-checkout-this-body kind of way. I found myself wondering if the fingers on the raised hand had broken when they snagged that fisherman’s net. Maybe losing those fingers had been the price of finding his way out of the ocean again.
Frank took off his cavalry hat and dabbed his brow with one of his buckskin gloves. “Xander looks like this guy, ‘In the Manner of Apollo, Greek, 300 to 100 B.C.’ Except Xander isn’t missing any of his fingers. His hair is blond, like yours. He isn’t made out of stone. He’s wearing more clothes.”
Which wasn’t saying much, since the statue wasn’t wearing any clothes at all. Although if I were built like that, I probably wouldn’t want to, either. In real life, and by that I mean life outside of Los Angeles, you might come across one or two people in a lifetime with a physique like that topped with such an exquisite face and hair that begged you to run your fingers through it, assuming you still had fingers. In L.A., of course, guys like that worked as busboys in family restaurants and manned the checkout counter at health food stores. I have to admit, though, looking at that statue made me want to meet this Xander all over again.
“Let’s go,” Frank said.
“Wait. I’m still looking.”
What intrigued me was that the statue’s chiseled face and upraised arm were pitted and dark compared to the unblemished marble of everything else. What happened to you? I wondered as I leaned closer to read his display card. What happened was this: After In-the-Manner-of-Apollo sank to the ocean floor, the tides gradually covered his nakedness in a blanket of sand so that only his face and arm were exposed to the friction of currents and nibbling undersea creatures. The price of his salvation, it seemed, was centuries of that face and hand being worn down by the elements.
I got this crazy rush of longing then for my life back in Manhattan. I missed the unpredictable cocktail of people everywhere you looked. Missed flushing pink and looking away quickly when one of those insanely gorgeous guys I’d sit across from on the subway sometimes caught me staring. I even longed for the earnest, geeky boys who worked at the computer store and stuttered when I said hello and sometimes brought me lunch, a cold slice they’d saved from their pizza the night before. I wanted to see Mr. Vargas, who always had something nice to say or a silly joke for me and had stepped into the hole my father kicked open when he left. In that glass box on the hilltop with Mimi and Frank, I’d gotten lonesome for the everyday friction of ordinary life.
Without thinking, I let go of the vise grip I had on Frank’s wrist and reached out to touch the broken stumps of In-the-Manner-of-Apollo’s fingers. I probably would have gotten busted for it if Frank hadn’t chosen that moment to crash to the floor at my feet.
I knelt over him. “Frank?” I said, my hand hovering over his shoulder. His eyes were closed, but not that squeezed-shut closed of a kid who’s faking. His face was smooth and stony. If his cheeks hadn’t been so pink, he would have looked dead.
“Is he all right?” the guard asked, looking at my crumpled pile of boy. “Do you need an ambulance? Does he have epilepsy? My cousin Rick had epilepsy. When we were kids he would fall over like that, boom, right in the middle of a kickball game.” The guard was old enough to be my father and had a sincere face that was as worn and pitted as In-the-Manner-of-Apollo, but not nearly as pretty.
“I’ve never understood the allure of kickball, although polo has always appealed to me. Will Rogers had a string of polo ponies and a playing field on his Malibu estate, where games are played to this day,” Frank said. He rolled onto his back and opened one eye to look at me. “I was leaning.”
I sat back on my heels. “What do you mean, ‘I was leaning’?”
“I was imagining the statue tipping over the side of a boat in a storm. Because otherwise how did he end up at the bottom of the Aegean Sea? He’s made of marble. He can’t swim much better than I can.”
I grabbed Frank by the scruff of his cavalry uniform and hauled him to his feet. “Don’t do that, Frank. It worries people. What’s wrong with you?”
“The jury’s still out on that one,” Frank said.
I hid my exasperation by dusting him off and retrieving his hat, touching both him and it without bothering to ask permission. I think Frank decided to roll with it because even he could tell I was irate. I thanked everything holy that we were in Los Angeles rather than New York, which meant the gallery was empty aside from the three of us.