And in a move so out of character, so weirdly un-Walker-like and spontaneous and defiant and hopeful, Walker tipped back the shot, swallowed, put the empty glass on the bar, grabbed the back of Jack’s sweaty head, and kissed him full on the lips.
Jack kissed Walker back, then pulled away and grinned, and said, “How about we start the weekend by undoing that belt?” They’d been together ever since.
STANDING AT HIS AND WALKER’S BEDROOM WINDOW in Greenwich Village (technically the far, far west village; their building was as far west as you could go without living on a houseboat in the Hudson), Jack watched a Carnival cruise ship glide up the center of the river, heading to collect its passengers at Pier 88. He’d probably see the boat later that evening, being tugged in reverse until it reached the open harbor and could swing south. A cruise sounded good to Jack right now, anything to get him out of New York and to take his mind off Leo and his massive Leo-related migraine.
The afternoon was so cold that the bike paths along the river were deserted. The Christopher Street pier, across the way, was no longer the decrepit, free-for-all cruising spot it had been when he and Walker moved in, more than twenty years ago, a place you could go for an easy afternoon frolic or to sunbathe nude when the weather was fine. Giuliani had cleaned up the piers and transformed the entire waterfront into sanitized paths and miniparks for walkers and bikers and strollers. (“Fooliani,” Walker would say; he’d hated Giuliani’s particular brand of dictatorship almost as much as he’d hated Koch’s insistence on remaining closeted.)
Even scrubbed, the pier remained a gathering place for gay youth. No matter how biting the cold, there were always a few hardy souls out, huddled, trying to shield their cigarette lighters from the wind. Jack wondered why they weren’t at school, if they were there because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. He envied the teens on the waterfront, hopping up and down to stay warm, drinking beer from a paper bag—no cares, no worries. What did you have to worry about at seventeen when you were young and untethered and in New York City? How bad could it be, really? Did kids even worry about being gay, worry about having to tell their families? He wished that was all he had to agonize about. He’d give anything for that to be the thing he needed to confess.
Jack took out his phone and opened Stalkerville. Melody had shown him the day they had lunch and although he’d made fun of it, he also hadn’t objected when she downloaded it to his phone and “connected” him to Walker.
“It’s addictive,” she said, “you’ll see.”
The whole thing perplexed Walker. “I always tell you where I am. I’m always at work or with you, anyway. Why do you need to check on your phone?”
“I don’t,” Jack said. “It’s just interesting to know I can. Creepy but interesting.”
And it was creepy, but Jack had to admit that Melody was right, it was also addictive—opening the screen and seeing the icon of Walker’s face appear and then the roaming blue dot—at the drugstore, at the grocery, at his office. Right now, he was at the gym, probably sitting in the sauna instead of exercising, thinking about what to make for dinner. Something about being able to see Walker move around during the day, seeing how connected their lives were, how small Walker’s world was, how much of it revolved around him—them—made the financial mess he was in feel even worse.
Jack didn’t think about this too often anymore, but he knew he was probably alive because of Walker. When he met Walker, all those years ago, in the midst of his freewheeling days in Chelsea, on Fire Island, in the bathhouses and the clubs, Walker had been the one to insist on condoms, to demand fidelity. Jack had taken umbrage at first; hardly any of the couples they knew were exclusive. They were young and out and living in the greatest city in the world! But Walker recognized what Jack refused to face then: men getting sick, being denied treatment, dying. Walker worked with the doctors at St. Vincent’s; he believed what they told him about prevention, and he scared the shit out of Jack.
“If you want to spend every morning checking your exquisitely beautiful body for sores that won’t heal or worry about every little cough, that’s your choice,” Walker had said in the early weeks, “but it’s not mine.”