He hadn’t ask to be helped. He didn’t know Dom was here—he didn’t know, he really hadn’t known until tonight, until he came to him and jumped down his throat. Smelling like his winter cologne. Wrapped up in a sweater, stubbled and short-haired, wearing his ring.
Didn’t that count for anything? Didn’t it matter that it had all happened tonight, that he’d been here fifty-two days and that on the fifty-third, all the wallpaper stripped down? And he’d tried to say hello, he’d tried, except he’d been drawn and quartered for finding solace in someone else—didn’t that matter? Dominick should have to carry his scars on his arms. He ought to be made to keep them with him like Keith’s constant anxieties, like the way sometimes touching Mikhail felt like cheating death, because there had been a lake and Keith had cried. Instead, it was you chose. It was your fault and you did and you chose.
No, he’d asked to be helped. Came here half a wreck and begging—yes, okay, yes, Mikhail had been right, he’d won from the start—begging like a dog for anything he could get. This other man with bare feet and tawny hair on his legs, on his arms, his apartment cold, the thick taste of his mouth, he was table scraps, Communion in Keith’s cupped hands—he’d held out his cupped hands and Mikhail had rapped his knuckles with a ruler. Didn’t that count for anything?
He was standing by Mikhail’s front door with all of his clothes back on. Rewind. Start the scene again. He didn’t feel better. Mikhail was supposed to help Keith, to make him feel better, damn it,so why didn’t he feel better? He always did, after. He’d thought—he’d thought that went both ways. The ice broke open and they got warm; was the sex a way to help each other deal, or was it just to help themselves?
He’d thought they both felt better, after. Falling asleep.
And then the word prostitute, and Keith was like a job.
There were apologies, somewhere. He could feel them pricking at his ears like the flies in the Hudson—and, like the flies, he swatted them away. First Dominick, then Mikhail, but he didn’t have to feel bad. He could will himself to stop feeling bad. Any minute now, he’d be able to breathe again. Keith’s jaw stretched to keep the tingling in his nose—no crying, no crying, no saying you’re sorry. “No more than you,” he said, finally. His voice was stuck in the back of his throat. He cleared it and looked at his hands. “I think—I think we’re done, here.”
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