Mark continues: “In any event, Paul thinks that his mother always treated Eloise a little differently. Showering her with attention, presents, and all that, because she was—how did you describe this to me, Paul? Oh, right—she was the last tie to a past that his mother was desperately trying to hold on to. Sorry if I paraphrased that, but really, you get the gist. Am I missing anything?” He pops a piece of ice into his mouth. “Oh, right, right, there’s also the issue of Alice, Paul’s older sister—or full sister, I should say, as they both claim Bill, Paul’s father, as their creator. She’s got issues with Eloise, too, though I suspect they’re different than Paul’s, and—from what I know of her, which is actually quite a lot—I doubt she’d ever come out and admit them.” He crunches down on the cube. “Does that cover it?”
Preston stands and begins to applaud; Crosby says something trite like fucking family.
Paul swallows hard and looks down, in case he starts to blush. Mark started doing this—cutting him off, telling his stories, stealing his punch lines—ever since he got the job at Penn and they moved to Philadelphia. Or—no, Paul thinks, recalibrating. That’s not entirely true. For the first six months they lived here, things were as wonderful (at least relatively) as they had been in New York. Still unsure of his own future, Mark seemed to appreciate Paul’s neuroses, his constant fretting—he even went so far as to tell Paul, multiple times a week, how he thought it was healthy that they could voice all their insecurities to each other without fear of judgment, or some irrevocable shift in the power dynamics of their relationship. Mark was initially having trouble finding his footing at the university, and Paul’s presence and general disposition when he came home from work helped to create this scrappy we’re in it together vibe that kept him sane.
But then there was a shift. A paper Mark wrote got published in The American Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and ended up winning some award, the name of which Paul can’t remember. It was big, though—it must have been—because within a year whispers started circulating around the department that Mark might be considered for early tenure. The rumors were premature, of course—he’d hardly been there three semesters—but the very specter of the possibility did something to Mark, changed him. At home, Paul felt the tenuous balance between them slipping: Mark started to correct him more than he ever had before; his voice took on a patronizing uptick.
More and more, Paul has become obsessed with the idea that he embarrasses Mark.
Still staring down, he hears Mark say, “Sorry, babe.”
Mark leans over and kisses his cheek. “You’ve just got a tendency to drag that story out a bit, so I figured I’d help with the CliffsNotes.”
*
An hour later, and the crowd’s picked up a bit. It’s nothing like a Friday or a Saturday night, but at least there are enough people milling around that Paul no longer has to worry about Preston speaking too loudly; other voices are drowning him out. He sucks down the dregs of his third whiskey and winces as it stings his throat. He’s still smarting from Mark’s performance, not so much because of the way he characterized his relationship with Eloise—that was all spot on—but rather because of how wantonly he glossed over the issue of his father’s death. Mark knows how devastating that was for Paul, not only the death itself, but how his mother had reacted to it; how, once Bill was finally buried, she took every effort to erase any sign that he’d ever existed; how, when Paul accused her of rewriting history, she’d said those things, those terrible things, that characterized her marriage to Bill—and thus, by extension, Paul and Alice’s existence—as some lowbrow mistake. How she’d given him no choice but to ignore her, even here, even now, as she calls him repeatedly from a fake Indiana number on a random Tuesday night.
Thank God for bourbon, though, he thinks; his irritation and hurt toward Mark’s callousness are becoming foggier, to the point where he’s quickly forgetting their nexus. He smiles to himself, drunkenly, stupidly. Mark also probably had a little bit of a point, he thinks: Paul occasionally has a tendency to draw stories out. Not without reason, he’d argue. But he would admit the tendency is there.
He feels Mark’s hand grip his thigh. “What’re you grinning over?”
“Just thinking about the whiskey you’re about to get me.”
Mark squeezes his knee. Paul spills the two ice cubes that are left in his glass. They both laugh.
“Is that so? By my count it’s your turn to buy a round.”
Paul lets his chin hang down to his chest, and he frowns.
“Oh, all right, but only because you’re cute when you’re upset,” Mark says. “Actually, let’s wait a sec. I want to enjoy the show.”
Paul glances over at the bar, where Mark is looking, and sees Crosby and Preston talking to a brunet twenty-something in a leather jacket. He’s empirically cute—his face is symmetrical and he’s got nice hair—and well dressed in that way where he can probably make cheap clothes look expensive, and they’ve got him sandwiched between the two of them, laughing.
“Oh, come on,” Paul says. “We know how this plays out. Just get me my whiskey.”
Mark leans forward. “Hold on, this is where it gets good. Preston’s going to go to the bathroom, and Crosby’s going to go in for the kill.”
“You make it sound like a fucking nature documentary.”
Still, he watches, though he hardly needs to; Preston and Crosby have their act down to a fine science, and Paul’s seen it in action enough times to know what comes next. As Mark predicted: Preston excuses himself and slinks away from the bar, letting his hand lightly brush the kid’s shoulder as he heads to the bathroom. Once he’s gone, Crosby edges an inch closer, repositioning himself so he’s facing the kid head-on. He runs a hand through his own hair, which is just long enough, and just floppy enough, to make running a hand through it acceptable, and then he lets that same hand fall to the kid’s waist, where it rests casually on his hip. The kid looks startled at first—he flinches—but Crosby keeps right on going, as if his hand has been there for the past hour, as if he’s got some basic right to be touching him. He flexes his biceps intermittently, like he’s got some weird twitch—still, weird or not, when he does this, Paul finds him suddenly more attractive, in the same way he’s turned on by undergrads on spring break in Daytona Beach who’ve got bad tattoos, or the gay-for-pay porn actors on the amateur sites he pays to watch when Mark’s away (and not away). Crosby pulls the kid’s head closer so he can whisper something. The kid laughs and turns to see if anyone else heard what he just heard, and Paul, at least for a moment, quietly seethes over the fact that Crosby has never whispered in his ear, and he likely never will, so Paul will have to go on guessing as to what it is that he actually says.
Mark taps Paul’s knee. “Here comes Preston. Lock and load.”
He’s already got his jacket on, and he stands for a moment by the bathrooms, eyeing Crosby with an air of paternal pride—a father beaming at a son who just shot a three-pointer to win a high school basketball game. The bar’s air-conditioning whirls to life, and Paul feels a goose-bump chill raise the hairs on his arms.
Preston swoons toward them.
He says, “Well, I think it’s about time the missus and I call it a night. Early classes tomorrow and all.”
“Oh yeah? How early?” Mark winks.
“Dreadfully early, I’m afraid.” Preston smiles wryly. “Breakfast-time early. Pre-breakfast-time early, even. You know how these young ’uns can get.”
“Eager beavers, they are.”