Myrtle told Horace the plan. They would take the 7:14 train to the city, to a bar called The Pit Stop.
“It’s a gay bar,” she said. “But this one has a back room. Do you understand me?”
Myrtle’s birth name was Suzanne, but in elementary school the kids had given her the more matronly name because of her dense, matronly body and boxy clothes from Goodwill. Taking the name as her own was an act of defiance, not her first and not her last.
“I don’t want to go,” Horace said. He lay on the floor with his feet against one wall and his head touching the opposite. They only had one chair in their apartment, and the cat was in it. Myrtle took a spoonful of yogurt and flicked it at Horace’s chest.
“You ass!” he said, wiping. “You goddamn dog.”
“That shirt was dirty. You can’t go to the Pit Stop in a shirt like that. And you have to shower. With shampoo.”
“Now this smells.” In lifting the shirt to his nose, Horace revealed a wide, white and hairless stomach. “That is just the worst smell there is.”
Their friendship began in first grade, and was now its own world with its own rules and customs. When Myrtle began humming a song, Horace was absolutely forbidden from joining in. When Horace kissed his hand and placed it on Myrtle’s cheek, it meant that he couldn’t stand to hear another word out of her mouth. In the case of a terrorist attack or hurricane, their meeting point was the Dunkin Donuts on Paterson Plank Road, and the backup was the library annex on Paul Amico.
“Anyone can go to the Pit Stop’s back room,” Myrtle said. “They’re okay with people watching. That’s like part of it.”
Horace covered his ears, shook his head.
“This is what you need,” she said. “This will cure you.”
“Cure me of what?” he asked without removing his hands.
“Pornography.”
“Oh hush,” he said. “It’s you who wants to go to back rooms.”
“That’s right,” Myrtle said. They were both nineteen years old, and neither of them had dated or even kissed a man. Neither of them had seen another man’s penis in real life. “That’s goddamned right I do.”
***
When Myrtle had a plan, she saw it through. Once, in junior year, she picked Horace up in her milk-colored Civic and drove to Moller Street, where Mr. Monsanto, their Spanish teacher, lived in one of the new glass-walled condominiums built along I-95. In class, Mr. Monsanto had mentioned that he “never wore a stitch” when at home, and Myrtle wanted to see for herself. They parked the car and climbed the steep hill leading to the onramp. From their seat on the guardrail, they could look right into the teacher’s apartment.
Soon enough they spotted him, wrapped promisingly in a white terrycloth robe, carrying a magazine. His dinner was a bag of baby carrots and dip, which he ate standing at the kitchen counter. After half an hour of this, he went to the sofa and turned on the television, still wrapped in the robe.
Horace begged to leave. It was February, after all, and the passing cars whipped their hair violently.
“He needs to digest,” Myrtle said. “Let him digest for a second, Jesus.”
Her goal, then as now, was not erotic, or not entirely. What she wanted was the fact of the man’s naked body. She wanted to see him the next day, walking down the carpeted hallways of their school, and know a secret that the other students did not know—those same students who had called her a “flesh dumptruck” in sixth grade and “Planet Myrtle” in eighth. What she wanted was a kind of power. But Mr. Monsanto eventually clicked off the television and went to his bedroom, leaving the two of them—deafened by the roar of the turnpike—to question why a man would lie about such a thing.
***
In the shower, Horace took his spluttering, splashing time. He did his impressions and sang his bits of song.
“Eek!” Myrtle heard him say in his little boy voice. “There’s soap in my eyes!”
She poured herself a shot of whiskey, drank it, then poured another. Horace emerged twiddling a Q-tip in his ear.
“Is Braille the same in every country?” he asked. “Is it like whatchamacall, Esperanto? Can blind people communicate with each other across all nations?”
Myrtle poured him a shot, from which he took a dainty sip.
“And if so, shouldn’t all the diplomats be blind?” His eyes went wide at the notion. “Can you imagine? Everyone touching each other’s faces at the UN? Bumping into chairs?”
She poured herself a third shot, which, because it was observed, was technically her first.
“You didn’t pee,” she said. “You should pee before we get on the train.”
He returned to the bathroom without closing the door.
“With what money will we go to the Pit Stop?” he called out.
“We’ll do our drinking on the train.”
Horace considered this, then replied in an aristocratic British accent: “Our names are Horace Dunn and Myrtle Greenbaum, and we do our drinking on the train.”
***
In January, Myrtle had opened Horace’s laptop to research mind control techniques and found his uncleared search history. His punishment, when he came home that evening, was severe. She’d cued up the movie, Hard Geek Cocks for Dumb Frat Jocks, and hooked it up to the projector, so that it filled their wall. She made Horace sit next to her on the bed and watch the full fifty-six minutes. What stood out, at least to Myrtle, was how completely unreal it was. Geeks and jocks alike were played by wiry men in their mid-forties, murmuring rote commands.
“Take it.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Take it.”
Myrtle shook her head in amazement. “This is the opposite of sex. They’ve turned nudity into its own kind of clothing. Can’t you see that?”
Horace had covered his ears and shut his eyes. All Myrtle could do was turn up the volume until the apartment resonated with the squeak of sneakers on the locker room floor, the dry smacks like hands clapping.
***
Outside the apartment, Myrtle pulled a Newport from her purse and lit it. “Let’s get a fifth at Splendid.”
Horace said nothing to this.
“We’re going.” Myrtle took a deep, crackling inhalation. “Look at my face, Horace. Don’t test me on this.”
They hadn’t gone far before someone across the street shouted Horace’s name. He did a little spin and waved. This was happening more often. Since he started working as a barista at the Meadowlands, he was becoming a local celebrity. Myrtle bristled to see it, suspicious as she was of any attention paid to them.
Outside the liquor store, she asked Horace what he wanted.
“Rum, please. Banana or vanilla.”
“Jesus god,” she said, and held out her hand for money. “You’re paying. That’s penance. That’s penance for this heartache without end.”
***
The sun was setting when they boarded the train so that the passengers were all bathed in a significant, golden hue. Myrtle picked the man sitting by the window in a three-seater, and slid in next to him. Horace took the aisle seat, letting out small, apologetic noises as he settled.
“What’s your name?” Myrtle asked the man. He was paunchy, somewhere north of 40, and gripping between his knees an oblong instrument case.
“Darby.”
“What’s your occupation, Darby?”
He did not answer. Myrtle took a swig of rum and handed it to Horace.
“We’re in finance,” she said.
“I doubt that very much.” Darby was playing minesweeper on his phone, and playing it well. Long moments elapsed before each touch of the screen.
“Oh, Darby,” Myrtle said, gazing out the window at the passing back yards, each with its own leaf-covered trampoline. “Do we have an evening ahead of us. We’re going to the Pit Stop. Ever heard of it?”
“I have not.”
“It’s a gay bar. It’s got a back room. Do you know what that means?”
Darby considered this for a while, then tucked his phone into his shirt pocket.
“You got on at Secaucus?” he asked. “I grew up in Secaucus. Minnie Place. Fifth Street for a little. Tell me something, do they still call it Suck-My-Caucus?”
“They do, Darby. Is that a trumpet?”
They were tightly packed, thigh to thigh, so that when Darby chuckled, Myrtle felt it as a tremble within her own body.
“It’s a trombone, dumbo. My quartet is playing the Why Not Café, late set. You should come after your pit.”
“It’s called the Pit Stop,” Myrtle said. “We’re going to go to the back room, and see what we can see.”
“I’d like to come,” Horace said. “But Myrtle doesn’t care for jazz. She lacks the patience.”
Horace offered the little bottle to Darby, who ignored it.
“That I could have guessed.”
Myrtle glared at Horace. “Give me the rum back. You’re hogging it.”
“I got a story for you,” Darby said. “An old Suck-My-Caucus story. You’re gonna like it. In the eighties there was this girl, alright? Got kidnapped. Big thing at the time. She was from Paramus, but she’s got a cousin in Secaucus, in the same math class as me. This is sixth grade, we’re in the lowest math class, and this girl, this cousin, was the lowest of the low. So, when Paramus girl gets kidnapped, Channel 4 comes to interview our girl, the cousin.”
Outside, processing plants and steel refineries gave way to the flat swampland that precedes the tunnel to Manhattan.
“Cameraman comes, news lady comes. Cousin’s all dressed, hair done up, standing there in the playground. She’s got on this bright purple eyeshadow girls wore at the time. And there we are too, standing behind her, a whole group of kids. The kids of Secaucus, New Jersey.”
Reeds the color of toast passed by in a blur. Water glinted silver in the moonlight. Above it all, the great elevated sweep of 495 cast its curving band of black shadow.
“Comes time. News lady says, ‘Three, two, one.’ Light above the camera comes on, very bright. She says, ‘Good evening, Jeff. I’m standing here with so-and-so, the cousin. She’s here with some of her schoolmates and she has something to share.’ She holds the mic out to the girl, and the girl freezes. That bright light is on, and she can’t say a word. All of us behind her are frozen stiff. Here we are in our own big moment, you know. Moment like that is important to a child. It’s TV. Way we saw it, TV was the real world, and Secaucus was something else. Something different, you know what I mean?”
“I do,” Myrtle said. She was surprised at how interested she was in the man’s story. “So, what happened?”
“So, the news lady prompts her again. ‘What do you have to say about the girl, the kidnapped girl?’ And finally, the cousin speaks, but all she can say is, ‘Prayers, prayers, prayers.’ Just like that. Three times. My mom was watching, said it was the single stupidest thing she ever saw on TV. Here’s the kids of Secaucus, New Jersey, you know what I mean? All looking terrified. ‘Prayers, prayers, prayers.’ I mean, Christ almighty.”
At that moment, the tunnel swallowed them with a thump on their inner ears. Darby took a deep breath.
“Christ almighty,” he said again. Whatever the intent of the story, it had gone sour on him. The tunnel was a constant, portentous roar.
“Here we go,” he muttered. He gestured for the bottle, killed it off with a wince, then passed it back to Myrtle.
When they pulled into Penn Station, he stood quickly, then sidled out ahead of Myrtle and Horace.
“I’ll put your names down at the Why Not,” he said as he went. “Or not your names, but I’ll describe you.”
Horace watched him go, and when Myrtle stood, would not let her pass. He looked up at her balefully.
“I don’t want to go to the Pit Stop.” His expression was one she had known and loathed her whole life long: lips set, brow scrunched. “Don’t make me go.”
It would not be the first time they had ridden to the city and back. But Myrtle took Horace’s earlobe between her fingers, not pinching him, but not gently either.
“Get up,” she said.
***
Three years earlier, when they were sixteen, Horace had tried to hang himself. When Myrtle saw him in the hospital bed, his face looked like it had been dipped in ash. He was pretending to be asleep, but his cheeks were damp from weeping. His mother had called Myrtle from the back of the ambulance, and now sat in a felt-covered chair, holding her son’s clothes in a grocery bag.
“He’s stabilized,” she said, like it was a ridiculous, high-falutin’ word. Horace’s mother was a religious woman. She taped a postcard of Christo Redentor to the hood of her oven and asked it for little favors while she cooked.
Their only privacy in the emergency room was a curtain. When the doctor said, “Knock, knock,” Horace pulled the hospital sheet over his head.
“His white blood cell count is still elevated,” the doctor said. He had wonderful, sandy skin and dark curls of a perpetual dampness. “But it isn’t worrying me. I put in for a topical ointment for the bruising. We’ll watch him for the night.” He assessed the two women and decided to address Myrtle. “Now, listen. I gave him two pamphlets. People always say okay, pamphlet, so what. But there are important things in there. Strategies you wouldn’t think of on your own. I don’t want to find them in the trash when he’s discharged.”
Later that night, after Horace was moved to a private room and his mother had gone home to sleep, he gave a loud, quavering sigh and took Myrtle’s hand.
“Did you see that doctor?” Myrtle asked. “Now that was a man. That was a man in all the fullness of the word.”
Horace’s eyes were wide and bloodshot. Such large, defenseless things, when stripped of their humor and vim. He nodded meekly.
That was the beginning of their living together. They would spend a few days in his bedroom, where Myrtle made a bed on the floor, then a few days at hers. She let Horace settle into this routine, but when she felt he was well enough, gave him his punishment.
They were watching TV from the great cocoon of Horace’s bed, with its sheets of conch shell pink, its satin pillows with Disney decals steamed on by his grandmother, its thick comforter from which they had been plucking cotton pills for a decade. Myrtle clicked through the channels ruthlessly, skipping all the good stuff, skipping The Real Housewives of Atlanta, skipping Charmed, before stopping at last on NatGeo.
The documentary concerned a fumarole at the bottom of the sea, a super-heated geyser pumping out liquid as black as oil. Crabs spent their lives climbing as close as they could to the erupting spout. The voiceover did not explain this daredevilry, but there they were in every shot, clambering over one another, edging forward and backing off, their limbs and carapaces the color of the long dead.
“Please,” Horace said, his voice still a bit hoarse. “Oh please, Myrtle, change the channel. “I can’t watch this. I can’t.”
“No,” Myrtle said fiercely. “You don’t get to change the channel, not anymore. You have to learn to face things, do you understand me? No more scaredy-cat horseshit. No more running away. Never, never again.”
Horace nodded, then slipped his large hand into hers. Together, they watched the milky green underwater footage. They watched the crabs swarm heedlessly, their minds cauterized, cooking slowly their whole lives long.
***
At Penn Station, they ate two hot dogs apiece then set off into the night towards the West Side Highway. Whenever they came to the city, Myrtle refused to navigate with her phone like some tourist. The price for this was that they always had to go first to the Jersey-side coast, then figure it out from there.
“She wore bluuuuuuuuue vel-vet,” Horace sang as they crossed the Meatpacking District. It was the right song for such a place, where the street lamps made an orange jewel of each cobblestone. The streets were filled with bars and designer outlets, and Myrtle had the ugly, irresistible thought that they were two manatees floating among the rainbow fish. From the Highline above them, French and German filled the air like birdsong. “Bluer than velvet was the night.”
At the water’s edge, they found a bench next to a dog walker, who allowed a Pekingese to hop up on Horace’s lap.
“His name’s King Joao.”
Horace picked the dog up, and pointed him towards New Jersey, nuzzling the creature’s head. “That’s where I live,” he explained. “That’s my kingdom.”
The dog walker tsked. “He don’t see nothing. King Joao blind as a rock. I tell them let me take him by himself, so he stop bumping the other dogs, getting tangled up. But they don’t wanna pay.”
Myrtle braced herself. It was precisely the kind of story that would set Horace off.
“Oh, King Joao!” he cried, and stood up. He fished the dog’s leash from the jumble, and carried him to the railing. “He can smell the river, can’t he? Even if he can’t see it, he can feel it, don’t you think? In his fur?”
People first encountering Horace—all those new fans at Starbucks, for example—thought he was joking when he launched into scenes like this. They assumed the real person must be concealed safely inside such performances, enjoying himself. But that was not always the case.
“Horace, put the goddamned dog down,” Myrtle called out to him. “We’ve got places to be.”
When she turned to the dog-walker, she saw the beginning of the same smile—indulgent, warm-hearted, mildly pitying—that followed Horace wherever he went. Far worse than scorn, that kind of smile.
“Hey,” she said. “You got any weed you would give us for free?”
***
The Pit Stop was not tucked away on some West Village side street, as Myrtle had imagined. It was further north and flush on a wide avenue, adjacent to a Salvation Army. Instead of windows, the Pit Stop had glass displays: mannequins in nonsexual poses—likely purchased from the Salvation Army itself—dressed in leather harnesses and tasseled ball gags. Horace stopped a few yards from the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Myrtle was already fishing for her ID. “Don’t start,” she said. Then, when he stayed put: “Sorry for what?”
“For I don’t know. For what you found on my computer. I promise on my soul, I don’t want to see anything like that ever again.” A childishness was bubbling up in him, Myrtle thought. Tears were not far off.
“Bullshit,” she said. “The second I turn my back, you’ll cover yourself in blankets and watch that garbage, that puppet show, sitting in the dark like a newt. Like a fetus.”
“You think I’ll do it again.” Horace’s mouth firmed up, his voice low. Myrtle understood he was no longer referring to pornography. “But I won’t. I swear to you. I’m happy.”
“That’s my worry,” Myrtle gripped his hand tightly. “That you could ever settle for happy, when there is so much more. It’s like Darby said, on the train. We’re from a fake town, in a fake state. We went to a fake school with cardboard people. But the real thing is here. It’s through that door. And we deserve it, don’t we?”
Whatever he made of this speech, Horace nodded faintly, deferring as much to her tone as to the words themselves.
“We deserve it more than anyone in the world,” Myrtle continued. “What do I always say? People like you and me—”
“We have to take what we want,” Horace repeated her mantra, “because nobody will give it to us.”
***
The interior of the Pit Stop was darker than the other gay bars Myrtle and Horace had been to back home. It smelled more sharply of cologne and Lemon Pledge. But aside from this, it was disappointingly normal: no racks or whips, only a disco ball and a faintly huffing smoke machine, two whirling lights, one mirrored wall, concrete floors. The music was Britney Spears. The featured drink—so Myrtle saw when they reached the bar—was a Slippery Nipple.
“Good god,” she said, nodding towards the corner. “They have a pinball machine.”
Horace was silent, round-eyed.
“Get us a drink,” Myrtle said. She counted maybe ten men in the room, fifteen at most. But it was only 10:30.
“I have twenty dollars left,” Horace said.
“And you’re saving it for what? For retirement?”
“I want a hot dog on the way home. And if I get one, you’ll want one.”
“Christ alive, Horace, order me a goddamn Slippery Nipple.”
They were here to observe, so Myrtle observed. The other gay bars had been in Passaic and East Brunswick, and in both places the men had all looked like chorus teachers and projectionists. The beefcakes, so Myrtle had assumed, must get hoovered up by the city. They must be condensed in places like the Pit Stop. But now she looked at guys no more handsome or defined than the average soccer player at Secaucus High. Sure, there was one vampiric man in the back, wearing a leather vest that revealed a gaunt and hairless torso, sharp nipples, expressive ribs. But he was bobbing along to Britney Spears.
“Where’s the back room, do you think?”
Horace said nothing. When he’d ordered the Slippery Nipple, the bartender gave him a free shot of vodka, which he now sipped. Such things often happened to Horace.
Myrtle saw a hallway that led to the bathrooms. She saw the outline of a windowless black door set in the wall opposite. She tracked both like a hawk.
And like a hawk, Myrtle had the gift of patience. While the songs cycled through a predictable mix of nineties and noughties hits, she kept her head on a swivel. At one point, two dancers broke off towards a shadowed wall and began kissing—promising, open-mouthed kisses that progressed to chin-chewing and stomach-stroking. But after they broke apart and consulted wordlessly, they headed towards the exit.
“Do you think birds prefer leavened or unleavened bread?” Horace asked.
Myrtle ignored him. She’d considered that the door to the back room might be inside the men’s bathroom, but whenever someone went in, he came out minutes later.
“Matzoh is crunchy, which I bet they like. Plus, I would imagine it gets less schmutz on it.”
Then, the inevitable occurred. Cher’s “Believe” came on, and Horace let out an almighty squeak. It was his favorite song. He set down his glass and started to dance.
Horace’s dancing had not changed since kindergarten. It was a discombobulated sort of wiggle, a gyrating of each part of his body so that he resembled a loose column of stones in an earthquake. Then the arms got into it, rising until they were nearly vertical, the fingers wriggling.
“Get out there, champ!” the bartender said.
Horace could never resist such encouragement. In sixth grade he was given the nickname “Donkey Boy,” and would have dressed for Halloween as a donkey, had Myrtle not stepped in. Now he sailed out, the whole herky-jerky assemblage of him, wavering and dipping. Soon, Myrtle knew, the singing would start, as indeed it did, his ethereal contralto cutting across the thumping bass.
“Cause I’ve had time to think it through
And maybe I’m too good for you, oh!”
The way he carried on, it was as if he expected the crowd to join in, to start singing in harmony and learning to dance in this new Horace way. But this would never happen, and did not happen now. There was something too raw in Horace’s conduct, too intense. Couples drifted apart, making room for him. They whooped and clapped generously. Officially, Myrtle approved of Horace’s dancing. She had even joined him at school dances, doing her own kicks and karate chops in support, her sharp little nods. But the truth was that it made her anxious, watching him. Would he slip and fall over? Would he flick sweat on someone, get yelled at or shoved? Her jaw was clenched, her fists ready.
Then she saw it: the back room. It had been partially obscured by a column, and was not a door at all, but a slitted plastic sheet, not unlike the bay curtains at a car wash. One couple went hand in hand through the curtain, then another. Horace noticed none of this. His eyes were shut tight, his hands nearly touching the ceiling.
“I can feel something inside me say,
I really don’t think you’re strong enough, no.”
He stopped when Myrtle grabbed his arm.
“It’s there!” she said, pointing at the curtain.
Together they beheld it, the plastic strips, and beyond: a faint pulsing light.
“Okay,” Horace said. His face was inflamed from dancing, slightly damp. “You’re right. We deserve the real thing.”
But then Myrtle saw something: a man had emerged from the curtain, alone. He wore a canary-yellow cardigan and slacks, and offered a self-effacing smile to no one at all.
In truth, Myrtle had not spent much time considering what she would see in the back room—for her, the resoluteness was always the point—but if pressed, she would have to admit that she had not really imagined men at all, but something more like angels, their bodies shimmering and vaguely beautiful, and wholly preoccupied with the intricacies of their own pleasure. But now, seeing the yellow cardigan, the pinball machine, the intense plainness of the Pit Stop, she realized for the first time that the men in the back room would see her too. She felt a sudden heat of exposure, and with it, a nightmare image: a little girl, thin and buck-toothed, her eyelids painted a garish purple. “Prayers,” the girl stammered. “Prayers. Prayers.”
She grasped Horace’s hand.
“No,” she said quietly. “Forget it. Let’s just go.”
She felt her friend’s hand relax. His head tipped back.
“Oh, thank god!”
***
It was a little past midnight when they got to the Why Not Café on Macdougal Street. Darby was standing outside with his cell phone, smoking a cigarette.
“Here they are. The jazz fans.”
“Did we miss it?” Horace asked.
“Yeah, you missed it. Missed the early show, missed the late show.”
All the musician’s nervousness was gone, his caginess and coiled energy. In the wake of his performance—and perhaps a drink or two—he was as loose as spilled syrup.
“You want a nightcap?” he asked them. “My friend Randy’s got an apartment nearby. I stay there when I play in the city. I don’t know what all kind of drinks he’s got, but knowing Randy, he’s got something.”
***
It was the first time Myrtle and Horace had been inside a Manhattan apartment. They had grown up on televised images of New York interiors—granite countertops, windows filled with the twinkle of distant skyscrapers, parquet floors covered in threadbare Turkish rugs, bookshelves stacked with worn copies of Michel Foucault and W.E.B. Dubois. Randy’s apartment, on the other hand, had a tower of unopened boxes of Ab Wheels in the corner; in another, plastic bags filled with hundreds of other plastic bags. In the center of the room stood a papier-mâché cupid with a dirt-streaked raincoat thrown over its head. Myrtle swept a pile of Styrofoam peanuts off the sofa, sat down and took it all in. No showrunner would ever recreate this space. It was a wholly unobserved corner of the Earth. Myrtle’s jaw unclenched; her fear of exposure began to ease, then drain from her body. She took the mug of vodka and lemon juice from Darby and drank deeply.
“Randy uses it more for storage,” Darby explained as he cleared off a wicker chair. “Most of his businesses are down in Florida.”
She listened to Darby’s recounting of the night’s performance, and laughed when he did his impression of the stern young man who sat at the front table.
“Like he was taking notes. Like it was his final exam.”
She did not even complain when the musician played Shalamar’s “A Night To Remember” on his phone. Horace had never heard it before, but by the second chorus was already singing along. When Darby joined in, Myrtle rolled her eyes indulgently, and drummed the beat on her thighs. At some point, Darby found two boxes of Pepperoni Hot Pockets at the back of the freezer.
After they had eaten, he looked at Horace, then at Myrtle. “So I gotta ask. The Pit Stop. The back room. What’d you see?”
“We saw what we saw,” Myrtle said stiffly.
“No, Myrtle.” Horace shook his head. “I’m going to tell him.”
“The fuck you will.”
“Darby brought us here. He gave us vodka lemons. He made us Hot Pockets. ”
Myrtle said nothing.
“We didn’t go to the back room,” Horace said. “We got right up to it, and Myrtle stopped us.”
Then he turned to look at her.
“She stopped us because she loves me. She wanted to go in, but she knew I didn’t. And she loves me more than she loves whatever was in that room, no matter how good it would have been.”
Horace rarely used the word “love.” Myrtle never did. Friendships like theirs—relationships of such duration and dependence—require that many things stay underground. The word “love” was too risky and vague. But now it moved Myrtle to hear it.
“That’s not why,” she said. “I stopped because…” Her cheeks flushed with effort.
“Because why?” Darby asked, very gently.
Myrtle sighed, then said, “Because when I saw it for real, I saw we had no business there. Two pieces of Secaucus trash like us? We would have made them puke. I mean fuck it.” She scowled down at her mug. “It was a stupid idea. It’s just another room where we don’t belong.”
Darby considered this for some time, then he asked: “It’s not so easy for you two, is it?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Myrtle growled.
Darby nodded. “I’ve got an idea. How about I play something for you?”
He stood to fetch the oblong case, but instead of returning to his seat, continued down the hall to the back bedroom and closed the door behind him. He was in there for a while, long enough for Myrtle and Horace to frown at one another, long enough for Myrtle to get up and fix them two more drinks.
***
Myrtle saw Horace’s eyes go wide. She turned to see that the trombone player was naked. He was older than she’d thought. He might have been near sixty, the way his chest sagged, the way the gray hairs gathered around his nipples. The man’s thighs were thick, his calves thin. His stomach fell straight down, covering much of his genitals, but not all. Of this—Myrtle and Horace’s first real penis—there was little to remark upon: dark hair speckled with white, and an ancient snail, dead asleep.
Myrtle cycled through all the typical responses to such a sight: that Darby was a crazy man, a sicko murderer, a sex freak; that she should call the police, or shout, or run. But her distress faded as he walked to the wicker chair, his eyes downcast. He sat, and crossed one leg over the other while he fit the trombone together. He closed his eyes, tested the slide once, twice, then brought the mouthpiece to his lips.
His body, Myrtle thought as the man began to play, was like an assemblage of leather purses: two pink tit purses, a tummy purse, and two thigh purses spilling over the edges of the chair. There was nothing comic about his body, or repulsive, or sad, she thought. It was simply the truth.
There was truth as well in the long-held notes of Darby’s song. Whether it was good or bad, Myrtle could not say. What she heard was the man’s experience. He had played these notes many times. He had lived inside each one, making of it his own little home. His expression was relaxed, his eyebrows lifting slyly as he shifted from one note to another, flicking the slide to its position.
Darby’s naked body was trying to tell Myrtle a secret; a new kind of secret she could not express or understand, but only feel. It had to do with sex, she thought, and with desire and intimacy and shame and pride. It was a secret she had been seeking with such bulldog determination for so many years. Now she realized that it had been housed inside her, somewhere dark and wet, and radiating like a mild heat.
These are our bodies—said Darby’s trombone, slow and careful—they are like this and nothing else.
The reality of sex—whenever it happened—would not be an escape, or vengeance, or the ultimate bloody victory. Myrtle shuddered. It would not be power, but power’s opposite. A yielding of one’s fleshiest bits, the most tender and appalling, the least photogenic.
Frightened, she glanced at Horace. He was swooning with the music, letting his head roll back and forth, his eyes shut tight, his feet tapping along.
Oh, what an idiot he was, she thought. Giving himself up so easily. He was nothing more than a boat floating down the Niagara River, heading for the falls.
But then a second thought followed this, and it was a new one: Horace’s eyes were not closed due to cowardice or avoidance. It was pleasure. He wasn’t afraid of Darby’s body, whatever secrets it might reveal. The fear was all her own, she had simply shifted it onto her friend.
Myrtle gulped the last of her drink, winced. Fuck it, she thought. Wherever Horace’s godforsaken boat was headed, she was already in it. She’d clambered on many years ago. She forced her own eyes shut, fighting against the panic. She tipped her head back against the sofa, commanding herself to shut up, just shut up for one measly second and follow Horace’s lead. She listened to the strange, meandering trombone, and did her best to feel it.
***
Chris Arp is a graduate of NYU’s Creative Writing Program. His stories have been published most recently in Memorious, The Brooklyn Rail and The Masters’ Review. He is currently working on a novel about the pleasures and perils of global fame. You can find more of his work at chrisarp.com.
Lauren Kaelin is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Brooklyn with her wife and son.