Close to Hugh (47 page)

Hugh spreads his hands wide, not knowing. “Maybe it’s good. They were legendary for fighting in the old days. Wasn’t a party until one of them stormed out shouting. They fought for—how old are you, eighteen?—for twelve straight years. Till they had you.”

When her dad comes back from the basement he’s got Jason with him. Two heads rising up the stairwell—Jason’s hair in a cockscomb, is that what you say? (Aieee, the word cock!)

“Buckets emptied, none were full,” her dad reports. “You need work done down there—I wonder if it might be the city’s problem, though, Hugh?”

Hugh leaps at that and they get into sewers and bylaws and weeping tile and the river, because around here it’s always the river. While they blah blah blah, L looks at Jason for his master class verdict.

He shakes his head. “Something with Orion and Burton—I took off.”

The timer bings, the rice has finished steaming, and against his protests, Hugh hands her dad an ice pack and makes him go lie down for a while.

“Too many cooks,” Hugh says, coming back, dusting his hands. He asks Jason, “Here to work? Okay, you can start on the crêpes.”

Ruth doesn’t like sushi—how possible?—so they’re doing crêpes too. Hugh has drawn a picture: a tower of lacy crêpes, filling oozing between twelve layers, like wedding cake.

“Scallops, salmon, crab. She won’t eat shrimp since that documentary. When you’re chopped, I’ll teach you to make a roux.”

He gives Jason an apron and a station, and Jason rolls up his sleeves and gets to work, melting butter and whisking batter. (L can’t help thinking of the white apples of his butt, the springing tension of everything, his fingers, hers,
quiver
, everything.)

L wonders if Hugh was always like this, free and happy while cooking, and if so why did he stop and run a gallery instead? When he’s framing he’s pretty anal, like he’s always afraid of screwing up. Here he’s good at making an occasion without getting fussed. When her mom has a party she panics and all the joy dies. L likes the casual way Hugh cooks, his effortless order, even the music he plays—not anything you might expect, just weird stuff he likes. Banjo music.
Now at Last
, that’s Blossom Dearie. In another life L would like to be Blossom Dearie. Wearing Mimi’s pink gloves, which she has in her coat pocket. She’s carrying them everywhere now because she can’t forget that Mimi is dying.

A bang at the bottom of the stairs—the outside door.

Everyone swivels to see whose head rises next. Satin gold: Orion, lightning-flashing up the flight of stairs. His face is blown apart, eyes wild, not even—

“I’m out,” he says to Jason, not even seeing the others. “He kicked me out, I’m gone. It’s not—it’s
so not fair
—he knows I’m the—” He stops, he can’t complete that.

The best, yes.

Jason says, “You are the best, man. What the fuck?”

“He kicked me out.
Cheap facility
, he—” Orion’s voice stops working. His great black eyes lock shut and he turns away so they won’t see.

Jason pulls the crêpe pan off the stove and turns the burner off, deliberate smooth action, and goes to put his arms around Orion.

Hugh takes his apron off. He gives L the sheaf of recipes.

“Carry on as best you can,” he says, heading down the stairs, already gone. “I’ve got to see a man about a dog.”

7. FUCK HUGH

Up the concrete staircase at Newell’s place. When these buildings went up, people gasped. Million-plus for a condo?!—this isn’t Toronto. But it sort of is, now. Newell’s slice of glass and rock, plus the stairs, plus the hedges and the terrace: this one must have been three times that price, Hugh thinks, or four. But he is entirely naïve; he has no real idea what Newell paid, or has, or earns or costs. His head hurts from running. Maybe shouldn’t have made love at lunch—but then his head always hurts. He’s going to have to confess that to Conrad soon. Maybe he’ll beat Mimi to the punch and die on everybody, on Newell and Della and Ruth. On Ivy.

Climbing the endless stairs, Hugh casts his fractured mind backward, trying to think what he knows about this mess, what he could swear to. He witnessed that first approach, in Pink’s parlour, whatever it was Burton said to Orion. Orion said it was a line from
Streetcar
. Then he saw—what?—the other night at the Ace: Orion taking off the jade piece, giving it back to Newell. No idea what that meant, or why Burton wept. Hugh’s head was in bad shape by then. Ivy took him home and put his sorry ass to bed. Last night at the party, he knew it was Newell who was the problem. And now—

Orion breaking down, kicked out of class. There could be some reason or excuse for that, some acting thing he wouldn’t know or understand.

Talk carefully. The point is to fix things for Orion, not to achieve eternal justice.

The doorbell at the terrace door peals like angels coming in chorus, Aa-
ahhhh!
A shadow, a self, emerges from the shadowed glass.

Burton. “Hugh!” he exclaims, with mock delight. “A sight for a sore eye.”

“Is Newell here?”

“Not at the moment—I believe he went for a run, to restore the tissues. May I, poor I, be of use?” Burton plays puzzled, one tended eyebrow arching.

“You kicked Orion out of the master class,” Hugh says. No more preamble.

Burton purses his purple mouth. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t discuss a student with you, Hugh. Confidentiality, the FOIP, you know. Curiosity will just have to kill you.”

You won’t punch Burton this time, but the sweetness of the memory is sustaining. “I came to tell you,” Hugh says, “you need to retract this.”

The mouth smiles, the pig-eyes fold. “I’m renowned for the gentleness of my disposition. But I warn you, Hugh, you may go too far.”

Hugh shakes his head. That hurts. He puts a hand on the glass. “Burton—I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t pull this highhanded director stuff. These are kids, they don’t need the drama. Orion is their friend, their star. I don’t believe you can justify kicking him out. They’ll all quit, if you do this. It will make trouble for Newell, as well as for you. It’s just not—it isn’t kind, and it’s stupid.”

He has never been so straightforward with Burton. It’s kind of a relief, except for the splitting headache it’s giving him. Only the memory of Orion’s eyes makes it possible to keep standing there, the deep visible wound to his whole tentative, youthful being.

Lazy, content, refusing to fight, Burton stretches out his right hand to the door handle. Hugh puts his own arm out to stop him—not that he could. “Like the bling?” Burton asks, pretending to think Hugh wants to see his lump of green scarab. “From Newell. An antiengagement ring, a consolation prize, I guess you would call it.”

“If you don’t fix this,” Hugh says, his head pounding rhythmically like it will actually break open, “I will make it my business to see that you’re investigated for abuse.”

The smile again, elongated, if anything.

“Oh no, dear Hugh.
I
never touched the child. Never had the chance. It’s Newell’s career,
his
life you’d be jeopardizing. I’m sure Pink is putty in your hands, or at least in Ruth’s, behind whose apron you all hide so coyly. But here is
my
response,” Burton says. “Fuck Hugh.”

He allows the great glass door to swing, to glide, to shut.

8. AND THE HORSE HUGH RODE IN ON

Okay, that didn’t work.

Hugh steps, staggers, down the concrete stairs again. Dark hedge hides the street from view until he almost reaches the ground—and there’s Newell, sprinting the last stretch, sleek and gleaming in running gear.

“Did you know?” Hugh asks. Demands.

Winded, Newell leans against the concrete, waves his arm: Carry on.

“About Orion?”

Newell looks at Hugh then, hands on his knees. Finally, his breath back he says, “Know what?”

Hugh waits. Newell waits too, not speaking. Okay, fine. “About Burton kicking him out of the class. For good.”

That makes Newell stand. “No,” he says, looking up the stairs. “That I did not know.”

“Well, Burton says—”

“You talked to him?”

Hugh is getting angry. “Yes, I talked to him. He’s gone too far—Orion’s not some sixth-rate kid. Terry will go to bat for him, so will Terry—even Pink. Burton has to—”

Newell waves an arm again, “Shut up, shut up. I know.
Fuck
me.”

“That’s what Burton said.”

“What?”

“What he said to me. Fuck Hugh.”

Newell laughs. But he is angry too.

So’s Hugh. His head hurts, he can’t see very well, he’s tired of feeling confused. “I want you to stop this now,” he says. Stop what? Burton, his head, the world. Della in pain, Mimi. It’s not getting through to Newell, who stands looking up the street to the river path, thinking. Or not thinking, just drifting, like he’s done his whole floating life. “You have to do something,” Hugh tells him. “For a change. You have to engage, here.”

Newell pulls his eyes back from the trees, looks at Hugh. Not angry now. Sad, or something. “You’ve never known what it’s like being me,” he says.

“I know you better than anybody,” Hugh says. “You just don’t see Burton, you don’t know how bad he is.”

Newell laughs again. “That, I do know.”

“Then ditch him.”

“It wouldn’t be … right.”

Hiding behind Ruth’s apron, Burton said. Like Newell hides behind Burton.

“He’s not your friend, not your mentor. Not your father.”

Newell’s eyes go blank, flat. His version of anger. “Can you ditch Mimi? Or Ruth? Can you stop doing all the things that make you yourself?”

“He didn’t make you.”

“What do you think is going on, here, Hugh? I’d like to know.”

“I think—Burton is jealous of Orion. He’s too good, too young, too handsome.” Hugh can’t say,
and Burton couldn’t seduce him
. (But Newell could—Hugh can’t think about that.) “He’s afraid of losing you.”

“He’s not. We have a long-standing—we’re—”

“What, polyamorous? Yeah, he told me. What a load of horseshit that is.”

Newell shakes his head.

“Using a fancy label to behave like jerks.”

“No,” Newell says, as if he’s honestly trying to tell Hugh something. “It’s the truth. It’s—grief, maybe. I don’t believe in love, for me. Except in all-love, maybe. Loving everyone.”

“Horseshit.”

He shakes his head, holding Hugh’s eyes, trying. “Reality, for me.” They fall into a moment of silence and hurt. On both sides, both of them feeling it: you misjudge me, you have never understood me.

Newell straightens up first. Maybe he’s more used to not being understood. Hugh feels even worse than he did coming out of Burton’s vile shadow.

“Well, shit,” Newell says. “The class is screwed now, I suppose, and I’ve been enjoying it, in a mild way. This sucks. You should have kept out of it—now he’ll be difficult.”

“Can you fix it for Orion?”

He breathes in, head lifting to the sky. “Probably.”

Okay. Orion’s blazing eyes. It needs to be fixed, no matter what it costs Newell.

Hugh turns to go, turns back. “And you’re coming for dinner? It’s Della and Ken’s anniversary tonight, remember?”

Newell glances up the stairs again. “Shit, yes.”

“Bring Burton, if you want.” Hugh thinks he’s never said anything as difficult, or as kind, to his friend, his little brother.

Newell is never unresponsive, never holds a grudge. He gives Hugh a loving smile. “You went a little overboard with the dinner, and you need someone to show off to? I’ll bring him.”

“Maybe a little. It’s all trompe l’oeil.” Hugh turns away, turns back again. One more thing: “Della’s in trouble. Ken has a black eye.” Newell laughs at that, and Hugh laughs too. “No, you should see it, a big black line, looks like she hit him with a hockey stick. It’s swelled up like a plum. I put him to bed with an ice pack.”

“I refuse to believe she hit him,” Newell says.

“You’ve never known what it’s like being her,” Hugh says.

Newell punches his arm, good one. “Or Ken, thank God.”

Hugh laughs again. “Yeah, but Jesus, his eye—it’s worse than Burton’s was.”

They fall silent. Time is passing, dusk is coming down. Hugh says, “Okay, look, he didn’t sue me over the eye; Orion won’t sue him over this. But you have to fix it. It’s not okay that he got kicked out. You know he’s the best thing in the class.”

“He’s the best thing in— He’s very good, he will be, very.”

Hugh doesn’t want to say what’s in his mind: that any suggestion of—Anything between student and teacher, even a temporary visiting artist, would bring media wolves down on Newell’s head. And that notoriety would be bad, really bad, for Orion.

“It’s a new world, but it’s not very new,” Newell says, following Hugh’s mind. “I don’t want to watch Pink play Marquess of Queensberry.”

“You know I have no idea what’s actually going on, right?”

“How’s the headache?” Newell says, touching him lightly on the forehead.

“Don’t ask.” Hugh does turn then, to go off down the street. Then switches direction: the certificates to deliver to the Ace, he grabbed them as he went out the door. And after the Ace, there’s time—he’ll run up to see Mimi.

Run slowly.

9. I DO IT FOR HUGH

Ivy arrives, carrying flowers and a bottle of pretty good wine.

L and Jason stare down the stairwell as she climbs. L looks happy to see her, if fraught: “I don’t know—flowers—vase? Hugh’s gone.”

They’re lilies, which the internet said was right for a thirtieth anniversary. A little funerary. Quarter after five. The kitchen is a shambles.

Jason takes the bunch and says, “I’ll stick them in the bathroom sink till Hugh gets back.” He looks unscarred, even after that long, bad day. No stakes for him; he doesn’t want to act. She hopes he doesn’t. He was fine, etc., but the clothes he designs are
perfect
. He gives Ivy a half-grin and says, “Hugh has to be back in a few minutes, or we’re hooped.”

First, the important thing. Ivy asks, fearing the answer, “Have you seen Orion?”