“Anyway,” Eloise says, steadying herself. “That’s all I wanted to say. That, and that I love you.”
Alice doesn’t say anything; she just stares forward to the point where, past the lock, the canal vanishes behind a shallow curve.
Mark
July 7–July 8
Mark blows a wisp of steam from his cup of coffee and watches as cars queue at a traffic light on Bermondsey Street. Paul had been cajoled into running errands with Eloise, and so he’s alone, occupying a single seat at a table meant for four, at a nearly empty café two blocks from Alcott’s apartment. He’s pleased to be by himself, though; since arriving in London a week ago, he’s hardly had a single moment of privacy, and now, more than ever, he needs the headspace to hear himself think.
Had Friday night met his expectations? No. But then, what had his expectations actually been? He’d consciously tried to rid himself of any preconceived notions of the event before it happened; he knows from experience that the key to happiness is setting a low bar. But still, even with rather opaque ideas of what it would be like, it wasn’t what he had allowed himself to fantasize. Expectations aside, what amount of utility had been derived from the event? This is a question that’s more difficult to answer.
With his spoon, Mark pokes at the yogurt parfait that he ordered along with his coffee, mixing soggy bits of granola into a blob of apricot compote. Once he’s made a mess of it, he sets the spoon down without taking a bite.
Paul hadn’t enjoyed himself. He claims that he did—in fact, since Friday he’s put on quite a show of asking when they’ll have a chance to give the whole thing a second go-round—but Mark knows better. After Alcott passed out and Mark and Paul set up the sofa bed, Paul had been restless. While Mark feigned sleep, Paul tossed and turned, and eventually got out of bed and padded over to the kitchen. With one eye open, Mark watched as he opened and closed the refrigerator, drank a glass of water, and, finally, dialed a number on his phone.
“Uh, hi, Wendy, it’s Paul Wyckoff,” Mark heard him say. “I know it’s late there and you’re sleeping and you won’t get this message until tomorrow morning…” Paul spoke into his chest to muffle his voice. It wasn’t working—Mark could still make out the awkward moment when he started to cry. “Oh, Wendy. I think I’ve made an awful mistake,” he said. “A really awful mistake.”
Mark sips his coffee and watches a young man tumble from his skateboard.
There have been more calls since then. More calls to Wendy. At first Mark found this phenomenon curious; if he insisted on rehashing his anxiety, why call a germophobe in Philadelphia, as opposed to, say, Alice? The more he thought about it, though, the more he supposed it made sense. After all, who else was there to better empathize with Paul’s paralyzing logic than a woman who lost her mind every time she had to take out the trash?
As for himself, he’d had fun. There were moments when Paul’s performance was less than spectacular (Mark cringes thinking about his stilted voice tripping over the phrase your balls taste great), and when Mark felt a strange competitiveness emanating from him, but as a whole he’s pleased. It satisfied the newness that he’s been desperately craving, the desire to shatter the monotony of monogamy that he finds so wholly suffocating. He thinks again of the moment he pulled out of Paul and instructed Alcott to take his place. How thrilling that had been! The exhilarating notion that he, Mark, was controlling two men so fully and completely; determining who experienced pleasure, and when!
“How’s the yogurt, sir?” a waitress asks him.
“Inedible,” Mark says.
“I, uh—”
“I’ll take some more coffee, though.”
Would Paul be willing to be so controlled again? To submit so fully to Mark’s sexual orchestrations? Despite his bravado during the past forty-eight hours, Mark suspects not. There have been too many hollow proclamations. No, he and Paul are headed in different directions. Friday night made that fact clear and now, watching the waitress refill his mug, Mark is even more convinced of the rightness of the decision to leave Paul. He needs someone with a sexual appetite that’s as modern as his is. Someone who hasn’t thrown all his emotional stock into the concept of intimacy, only to cheapen it by equating it with monogamy.
He thinks of Alcott, and of how easily he’d given himself over to the events of Friday night. There’d been no mental hairsplitting, no infantile second-guessing; rather, mouths were kissed, pants were removed, and that was that. The morning after, there hadn’t been any awkwardness, any unnecessary small talk. Instead, they drank coffee and ate cereal and read the paper with the same ease as the previous morning; only Paul chattered incessantly. Put another way: Alcott is game in a manner that Mark finds alluring and that Paul could never hope to emulate. Granted, there are also physical dimensions to Alcott’s attractiveness that Mark feels obliged to recognize. The way sweat seemed to highlight the crevices of his musculature, for instance, or how his ass flexed as he had his way with Paul. But it was more than that, Mark reminds himself; it’s not just some bodily lust that draws him to Alcott. It’s a meeting of minds, a sense that he’s found someone who understands and shares his evolved worldview.
Christ, he thinks. Listen to yourself. A meeting of minds. Is he falling in love with Alcott? He snorts and nearly spills his coffee. Falling in love with Alcott: it’s an absurd proposition; despite the closeness he feels towards him, he hardly knows the man. And even if there is an ounce of truth in it (he will admit that he’s had a difficult time not thinking of him since Friday), it would be wrongheaded and impossible to equate what he’s certain he now shares with Alcott to what he once shared with Paul. Because what had that been? Puppy love, really. The sort of doe-eyed infatuation that causes men in their twenties to abandon important life plans. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that kind of love, Mark figures, so long as one’s view of it matures to account for the nuances and complexities of one’s needs. The problem with Paul, of course, is that his view of love has never matured. He’s still stuck in an uncertain adolescence, a perpetual state of unknowing where he’s only comfortable when his own needs are subsumed by someone else’s. Alcott, on the other hand …
Mark looks down into his coffee cup. Flecks of ground beans float along the milky surface. He thinks of a few mornings ago, when Alcott flicked soap away from his bare thigh, and he smiles again.
*
“It’s a possibility, though,” Paul says.
“I can’t keep having this conversation.”
“Admit that it’s a possibility, and I’ll stop.”
“I’m not admitting that.”