Now and Yesterday (11 page)

Impressive, sort of,
thought Will.

A writing desk, draped partially with what looked like a tapestry and topped by a life-sized plaster bust of someone agitated, with wind-tossed hair, occupied one corner of the room. Over the desk was a large oil painting of a nude, muscular man who had fallen down or been injured. A large window, festooned heavily in black silk, had been scrimmed over with some high-tech and unobtrusive-looking material.

“There's no view and not even much light,” said Enrico. “Sit—please.” There was a small black fauteuil, upholstered in yellow with gray medallions, but Enrico indicated the large settee that was the centerpiece of the room. “I think you will be comfortable there.”

The settee was framed by ornate, built-in wooden bookcases with glass doors and set off by a dramatic baldachin suspended above, in black-and-purple-striped draping that hung down on either side of the settee, to create a plush, upholstered nook. Covered in purple striped damask, the settee was topped with silk and velvet pillows and bolsters in purples, grays, and yellows. In front of the settee was a mammoth hassock covered in a black-and-white hide that looked like palomino, which was topped with two piles of overscaled art books and, on a mirrored tray, some mismatched candlesticks and something that looked like an ostrich egg.

“There we are,” said Enrico, placing the plate of cheese down on a book about Derain. “Comfy? How about some wine?”

Will nodded and Enrico, with a touch, opened a disguised door in one of the few blank spots on the wall, to reveal a mirrored bar that sparkled under concealed pin spots with glints from decanters, bottles, stemware, and glass shelving. The inside of the bar door was decorated in three little trompe l'oeil still life paintings, frames and all.

“Burgundy OK?”

“Sure,” said Will.

Will wasn't quite sure how to be in such a room: remain attentive to all the details clamoring for attention, or ignore them in favor of some cumulative enjoyment of, what, luxury? Delirium? Will decided to do what was recommended in a certain sexual situation that was said to be pleasant but which he'd always found difficult: He tried to relax and open himself to the experience.

“Chin-chin! Welcome,” said Enrico, insinuating himself onto the settee near Will, and pulling up a bolster on which to semi-recline.

“Cheers,” said Will. The only place he could find to put his wineglass after taking a sip was on top of an art book. It looked precarious, but he promised himself to be careful. The fear of staining palomino with burgundy was not far from his mind.

“It's my little zone,” said Enrico.

“How long have you been here?” said Will.

“Two years. Half of that was renovation.”

“It's beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you own? You must.”

“Yes.”

“How many bedrooms do you have?”

Enrico made an expansive gesture, to indicate the room they were in.

“This is the bedroom,” said Enrico. “There is only one.”

“No. Really?” said Will.

“Yes. This is the bed—we are on it. This comes off”—he pulled up a corner of the damask, to show that it was a large spread—“and I push away the ottoman. Easy.”

“You do?” said Will. “Every day?”

“Every day, every night.”

“Hmm.” Will noticed that hidden among the folds of baldachin drapery was a flat-screen television, mounted to the wall by a hinged arm.

“Yes,” said Enrico. “And the hall becomes my dining room. I can do sit-down for six—eight, maybe, if we are all very good friends.”

“And that's it—the whole apartment? I mean, it's gorgeous.”

“Yes, the galley kitchen, you saw where that was, and the little bathroom is over there.” Enrico pointed to another hidden door, the handle of which Will now recognized. “My printer and all that is in the bookcase.”

“And what do you call this style?” asked Will. “I just don't know very much about décor—design.”

Enrico giggled.

“Good question,” he said. “In school we called it ‘Louis Louis'—which means, mmm, French, classic, but loose. Oh, but you should have seen before the renovation, when I moved here—before I planned this. It was modern,
Moderne,
and mod, all mixed together! I had a lot of junk, but it was fun, I think!”

Enrico spoke in an animated way that Will found appealing, and he was handsome in a classic sense—with dark hair and eyes, and features formed with almost mathematical precision. His teeth were perfect. And Will knew from various cues—the smoothness of the neck, the muscularity of the hands, the tautness of the waist, all gleaned from some light snogging at the bar—that there was an amazing body underneath the neatly pressed exterior.

“Where did you go to school?” asked Will.

“Well, I was preparing for law in Argentina,” said Enrico. “But then I went to Paris, and apprenticed with one of the big decorators there—very high society. ”

“Out of the blue, you started apprenticing?”

“The decorator—we met at a party.”

“Oh, uh-huh.”

It was clear Enrico came from a good family, or money, or both.

“Then I became very serious and went to a school called Ecole Boulle—very well respected,” said Enrico. “And then I came to New York, to be with a boyfriend, but . . .”

“It didn't work out?”

“ No.”

“Sorry.”

“It's better this way.”

Suddenly, Enrico seemed like such an adult. Will had assumed he was no older than his mid-thirties.

“May I ask how old you are?”

“Yes. I am twenty-seven.”

“Ah.”

“And you, if I may ask?”

“Same.”

“Exactly?”

“Exactly.”

It wasn't such a huge lie, Will thought, as they raised their glasses in a toast to the age of twenty-seven.

“And may I ask what you do, Will?”

Enrico took Will's hand and began to stroke it gently.

“I, uh, am temping right now at this law firm,” said Will. “And I'm doing the cater-waiter thing, you know. I just arrived in New York, six months ago. But I'm transitioning into magazine editing. That's where I want to be. I just had an interview this morning, in fact.”

“Oh, very good,” said Enrico, expressing delight when Will told him the name of the company. “I know some people there.”

“Yeah, I'm hopeful,” said Will.

The interview had gone well, after a shaky start. He had gotten up early and arrived at the building half an hour before his appointment. He wore his only suit, and made it a point to polish his shoes.

“Come in, please. Sit down,” said the head of HR.

“Thank you,” said Will.

The office was small and surprisingly free of personal touches—no pictures or little objects. The desk was clear. The head of HR was apparently a legendary lady who had been in the position for decades. Unlike every other woman who worked at the company, regardless of age or station, the HR lady was distinctly unfashionable. She was dressed in a shapeless blue jacket and collarless white blouse that would have been too plain even for a '50s Hollywood parody of a librarian. Her short grayish hair was lifeless.

“What brings you in today?” the woman asked.

“I am very eager to work here,” said Will.

“I see. And why here?”

“Well, because you publish the best magazines, and I believe I can contribute in a significant way.”

One of the lady's eyes was strabismic, and at first Will was extremely self-conscious about where to look. He was uncertain as to which eye to focus on, and tried to look toward the one that was looking most directly at him, and hoping his disconcertment was not obvious.

“And I gather you know Stefan,” said the lady.

“We just met the other day . . . or, night,” said Will.

“He's one of our most valuable assets. And that's what this company has always looked for, in all economies—assets.”

“That's awesome. A company is its people.”

It was only after a few exchanges that Will's panic about looking at the lady subsided. She seemed to be kind, and Will began to feel as though they were actually having a conversation.

She can't be unaware of the issue,
thought Will,
especially if she's been here for decades and decades. Clearly, handling this appropriately would be part of an interview.

“Your clips are impressive,” said the lady, shuffling through some printouts.

“Thanks,” said Will.

“What was it like to speak with Beyoncé?”

“Beyoncé? Oh, remarkably easy. She's a very down-to-earth person, very forthcoming. We talked about a million more things than we could put in the interview.”

“Really? Were you alone in the room with her?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Where did the interview take place? In a hotel room—the Saint Francis, I think. The publicist got us started, then she left us alone.”

“Uh-huh. And how long did you have?”

“Well, they allotted twenty minutes, but we wound up speaking for two hours.”

“Ah, so Beyoncé liked you.”

“I think so.”

“Good. Did you prepare your own questions?”

“Yes, pretty much.”

“No guidance from your editor?”

“Actually, none at all. He didn't know much about music.”

“And you do?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did you record or take notes?”

“Both.”

“Who landed the interview?”

“I did, actually. I had worked with the publicist before, for some of her other clients—you know, musical acts. She pitched me, and I pitched the magazine.”

“Why you?”

“Because I'm . . . good?”

“Stars like you,” said the lady gently, in a way that combined certainty with conjecture.

“Maybe,” said Will, modestly.

“I can see why they would.”

They talked a while longer, about Santa Barbara, hip-hop, and a new movie that was said to be an Oscar contender, then the interview was over. The HR lady stood up and extended her hand.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” she said, as she and Will shook.

“A pleasure to meet you, too. Thank you very much for your time.”

What would happen next?

“We'll call you, one way or another, in a day or so. The next step would be for you to meet an editor who needs someone.”

“OK.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Of course.”

Will was jubilant as he left the building.

She wouldn't even be talking about next steps unless I had a chance.

“So you think it went well,” said Enrico, still stroking Will's hand.

“Yeah, I do,” said Will.

Enrico drew himself closer to Will and kissed his hand tenderly. Then he started caressing Will's neck and shoulder.

“That's good,” whispered Enrico, kissing Will on the ear and cheek, and then on the lips. Will relaxed into the kiss and leaned back with Enrico, and the two men stayed that way, locked in a constantly evolving kiss, for several minutes—tongue giving way to little pecks, giving way to a kind of mutual heavy breathing and looking deeply into each other's eyes, with the stroking of hair, which led back to tongue kissing. Then Will pulled himself up onto one shoulder.

“Enrico . . . you have to forgive me. This is so nice, but I can't stay,” he said.

“No?” said Enrico. “Are you sure? I thought we were . . .” In a friendly way, Enrico let his hand wander over Will's crotch, which betrayed an erection.

“I'd love to,” said Will, “but it's later than I thought, and I have to be up so early. And I am just . . . finding myself so distracted. I'm a little overwhelmed. Can you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course,” said Enrico, sitting up. “No worries. But, Will, I think you are a lovely man. I hope we can see each other again. Soon.”

“Oh, definitely,” said Will. “I would like that.”

After collecting himself and a few more kisses with Enrico, Will was outside, on a sidewalk in the West Village, near Seventh Avenue. The air was chill and felt clean, and Will thought the scent of something like grapefruit might be clinging to his clothing, though he hadn't been aware of any fragrance in the apartment.

It was like waking up from a dream. And Will was truly tired, after having risen early for the interview and worked at the law firm much longer than usual, to make up for coming in late. He really shouldn't even have gone to G at all—and trompe l'oeil was just a bit too much to deal with.

Why do I do these things?
Will thought. It seemed clear now, in retrospect, that all he'd really wanted to do after work was go home.

On his way to the subway, Will saw that he had two messages: one from Jonathan, and one from an unknown number.

“Will, Jonathan. I just wanted you to know I gave your number to a friend of mine who's looking for a bartender. A small holiday party in his home. His name is Peter. So he'll probably call you. And listen, when are we getting together again? Lemme know what your week looks like, OK?
Ciao
for now.”

The next message was from Peter, who explained what he was looking for and when.

“It'll be supereasy, I think—wine and water for fifty, max. Some hors d'oeuvres to serve and clear, but they'll already be prepared. Whole Foods is delivering. So if you can do it, and you can do it for the same rate as Jonathan's party, I've love to talk. Lemme know?”

Now which one was Peter?
thought Will. He didn't remember meeting a Peter, and all the guests had kind of looked alike.

N
ew York itself—that ludicrous creature—was one reason why Peter was now in advertising and not the field he thought he wanted in 1975, poetry. This was a thought he often had while sitting on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, as he liked to do occasionally, contemplating life and the postcard view of the lower Manhattan skyline rising over the East River.

Cities may affect a geological mode of existence, since they are solid and constructed of essentially the same materials as the caves they superseded, but they actually function more biologically than geologically. Cities are given birth by the human species—they're laid, or spun, or excreted—and then they grow and/or strengthen and/or fester through a life force of their own. Sometimes a new city will sprint along for a millennium or two, like Babylon, then find itself exhausted and need to rest. Sometimes a city won't find its stride for centuries, like London, and then, when it does, it will gallop for a while, only to trip on a stick and fall in the mud. On any given day cities seem permanent, as befits their sacred role as vessels of civilization, yet cities evolve over time like species do, adapting to new conditions of climate, commerce, and the like, in order to survive in changing ecological niches. And as cities evolve, civilization budges forward in a direction we call progress, once it proves dominant.

Sometimes the aspect of a city that best allows it to survive a great ecological shift is precisely its impermanence. Think of Troy, rebuilt again and again. Yet the story of how the permanent and the transient function together is never quite visible to a city's inhabitants, who can spend a lifetime walking its streets and contemplating its towers, laughing in its sidewalk cafés and sunning themselves on the steps of its marble-columned museums in springtime, poring over books of historical maps and beholding the urban countenance thousands of feet above the top of its tallest towers, from airplanes, and still not see enough. The full story is discernable only at the end of history, when the reasons why a city was born and died can be fathomed in perspective—which is why a city can be dead before it knows it, like ancient Rome, or more alive than it realizes, like New York today.

In the almost forty years since Peter arrived there, New York had changed profoundly. Unlike more decorous capitals, New York embraced new historical moments eagerly, even recklessly—a frenzy of maritime trade, an industrial revolution, an era of immigration, a belle époque, a jazz age, a great depression, a postwar imperium—which meant that while the rest of America was lingering at the victory bash of the 1950s, New York in the '60s was latching onto something new, once again. The city was famously poor in 1975, yet just beneath the graffiti'd crust of that moment was a forge of new wealth fueled by the work of bright young idea workers in the burgeoning sectors of media and advertising. So when America woke up to the fact that it was no longer manufacturing the fastest trains or most advanced cars, or supplying the best education or most comprehensive medical care, it found it had branding, a new-improved thought grammar that was chief among a whole suite of made-in-New York, consciousness-2.0 goods and services for a brave new world in which more people needed more things that were more essential to their well-being than train service and education.

It was branding that allowed new creeds to tendril into the gaps in American life left by the withering of old creeds devoted to Mom, apple pie, and Sunday dinner.
And people saw that it was good
. Would the stratum of remains left by this era be the one that in 10,000 years archaeologists stabilized as representing New York in its true golden age?
Who knew?
Wouldn't the stratum even just beneath, representing an age of bustling automats, lively theaters, and GIs kissing dames in the street, be judged less golden, less mythically American than the present age?
Maybe—if current trends prevailed
.

Peter often mused on questions like these, on the Promenade. There were no answers—only the pleasure of knowing that the view of the Manhattan skyline revealed something in motion. Once there were twin towers, then there weren't; now there were new towers. Peter was grateful that his aimlessness earlier in life had allowed him to make the most of the speed bumps he encountered during the '80s, which jarred him into better sync with the newest of New Yorks—even if advertising did sometimes seem nuts and the connection between now and yesterday had become obscure. He wondered if archaeologists of the future would envy those who were walking around the city now, during its current heyday, when so many mad, exciting, unprecedented things were being done and remained to be done, and created and imagined....

 

Will called back the next day.

“Peter? This is Will. The bartender from Jonathan's party?”

“Oh, hi.”

“I got your message. Sorry it took me so long to respond.”

“Oh, no problem. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“Sure. You're doing a party?”

“Yes—a holiday thing for my agency. Just some wine and hors d'oeuvres. Maybe forty, fifty people. At my place in Brooklyn Heights.”

“Great.”

“So you can do it?”

“I'd love to.”

“Sorry for the short notice.”

“No problem. I'm free the night you mentioned.”

“OK, good. Well. And you can do it for the rate you charged Jonathan?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“I'm calling it for six to nine, and let's say you come an hour early—that's five o'clock—and stay a bit afterward, tidy up—so ten, at the latest. Five hours?”

“Sounds good to me. What do you want me to wear? Black, like I did at Jonathan's?”

“Uh, yeah, if you're comfortable in that. I have a chef's apron, too, if you want.”

“OK.”

“And I told you I'm in Brooklyn Heights.”

“Right. Nice.”

“You'll see my place is pretty small. It's an open kitchen. You'll probably be able to plant yourself at the counter and cover the door, as well.”

“Sure. I used to run my family's parties all the time.”

“Good. I know it will be totally manageable. So why don't I e-mail you some directions?”

They exchanged e-mail addresses.

“Forgive me, Will,” said Peter, “but my memory of Jonathan's party is a little hazy. We didn't talk that night, did we?”

“I don't remember,” said Will. “I don't think so.”

“I mean, I probably asked for a vodka and you probably gave it to me, right?”

“Probably. Earthshaking, wasn't it?”

Peter laughed.

“Epic,” he said.

“So will it be some of the same people?” said Will. “I'm just wondering.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Peter. “Lord, no. Very nice men, that whole crowd—dear friends. But this is a little thing for my company. I have an ad agency. So it'll be my staff and some of their friends. Very mixed. But cool. A bit younger than . . . Well, mixed.”

After speaking with Will, Peter called Jonathan, to thank him for the recommendation.

“He seems like a very nice guy,” said Peter.

“Oh, good—it worked out, I'm glad,” said Jonathan. “He's a nice kid—intelligent, curious, funny in a dry way.”

“You realize I'm only asking him to pour the wine and answer the door.”

“I'm just saying.”

“And, Jonny, I hope you can come, too. Think you're gonna be up to it?”

“Well, we'll see. Can I let you know?”

“Of course.”

“I just don't know what shape I'll be in. That'll be a little after my first course of treatment. I may be flat on my back, nauseous and weak, eighty-eight pounds, with no hair.”

“And . . . not in the mood for a party, you're saying?”

“Maybe,” said Jonathan. “If I find the right shirt to wear, at Barneys.”

Peter giggled.

“That's my boy,” he said.

“Seriously,” Jonathan continued, “I don't know how to plan anymore. I don't even know how to think about the future. And I'm not trying to be poetic here. I just get up, see to my work, see to my cancer, period. I put one foot in front of another. And in one way, it's all very easy. And no bullshit. I don't give any, I don't take any. It's all for real, all for the record. I don't know what's going to happen—but the thing is, that's the way life is
anyway,
right? Nobody knows anything about the future. Yet we operate as if we do; it's so comfy that way. It's like I'm in recovery from this delusion that tomorrow is going to be just like today. Which it fucking may not be.”

“Recovery is an interesting way to look at it.”

“Seriously, Peter. One day at a time.”

 

The house where Will lived, in Astoria, was two blocks from the N line, which runs on elevated tracks out in that neighborhood. The grittiness of Thirty-first Street, a perfectly safe and serviceable boulevard of shops and small businesses directly underneath the tracks, immediately gives way to tidy residential side streets lined with oak, pear, and maple trees. The neighborhood, which had always been modestly middle-class, stands on ground once home to Indians, then owned by Peter Stuyvesant, then part of one of the farms that occupied the area for two centuries, then developed, in the early twentieth century, into single family homes for the immigrants who were arriving in Queens in successive waves. Built in 1920 for a second-generation German American who worked in the nearby Steinway factory and eventually moved with his family to Westchester, the house was bought by the father of Will's landlady, who had arrived in the U.S. with his family and thousands of other Greek immigrants just before the First World War. Shortly before the landlady's father died in 1968, he converted the house into two apartments, in one of which, on the ground floor, the landlady, now a widow, still lived.

The original contours of the house, a standard, two-story box with minuscule front and back yards, had been swallowed by cumbrous improvements, like an expanded kitchen and family room, and an exterior stairway to the now-independent second-story apartment. A wrapping of white plastic siding unified the house's entire accreted bulk, which was both joined to and kept separate from the street by an elaborate growth of red-and-white-brick fencing, steps, and porch. And the house was the single remaining, formerly one-family residential structure on the block. Jammed onto properties once occupied by similar houses on either side of the house, and on most of the rest of that block and surrounding blocks, were now undistinguishedly bland three-story apartment buildings built in the '70s, just as the neighborhood's population was plateauing.

Will and Luz frequently told friends how lucky they felt to have found the place. The house was just a five-minute walk from their N train stop, only the fifth stop in Queens, which meant it was only twenty-one minutes from Times Square. The place was a lot more convenient and a much better value than the supposedly supercool Lower East Side, they said. Astoria, in fact, was the new “secret” discovery of a large segment of young New York professionals, who couldn't afford the high rents in Manhattan and wanted to avoid the lower living standards in the affordable parts of Brooklyn. If Astoria did have some environmental issues due to traffic congestion and the nearby Con Ed plant, which contributed to rising local asthma numbers with record-level air pollution, this was still the neighborhood Will felt was more him than any other he'd seen, including others with burgeoning gay enclaves like Bushwick and Windsor Terrace.

Of course, nothing in New York—not even what he had seen of Park Avenue, that parade of limestone fortresses—was as much Will as the five-bedroom, Mediterranean-style villa in Santa Barbara where he grew up: a fifteen-acre, so-called “in-town ranch” at the edge of Los Padres National Forest, built by his parents the year after Will was born, complete with terraced pool, a producing avocado orchard, and views of the Pacific and the Santa Ynez Mountains. Will missed home and the easy lifestyle he shared with friends and family, which had continued through the time he was in school in San Francisco and afterward, when he moved to L.A. He would return often for parties and hiking and swimming, and there was never a worry of asthma or traffic congestion on San Roque Road. Will had never felt particularly privileged until he moved to New York, and was now, truthfully, not 100 percent comfortable being made constantly to think of himself that way, as he went about his life in the city among reasonable people so apparently unconcerned about lacking basic comforts and pleasures. Nor did it feel right to bond with someone like Enrico, who had clearly come from a privileged background, solely on the basis of, whatever, class expectations.

The apartment's renovation had probably been expensive and was clearly meant to be luxurious, but the result was nonetheless cheesy. The look was generic Home Depot's best: Sheetrock walls, painted linen white; laminated hardwood flooring in pecan; double-hung, vinyl windows of the energy-saver variety. New ceiling fans with the look of brass and walnut contributed a “heritage” touch, while the kitchen proposed “Mediterranean” via faux-rustic cabinet doors and a ceiling lamp in faux-wrought iron and faux-stained glass. The lamp hung directly over the kitchen table, one of the pieces of furniture that came with the place.

“Sometimes I have to wonder if I'm looking for something that really isn't here,” said Will to Luz one night, shortly after they had arrived in New York. “I mean, I'm here now and I'm going to give it a year or so, but sometimes I think I'll wind up back in California. Or, I dunno—Switzerland.”

“Switzerland?!”

“Yeah, one of those beautiful cities on Lake Geneva, or one of those amazing mountain towns. We used to go to Zermatt every year, to ski. My family rented a house there. Did you know they only have electric cars in Zermatt? They don't want pollution to spoil the view of the Matterhorn.”