By Nightfall

Is it Mizzy? Is it possible that even Rebecca would like, in her deepest heart, to be blamelessly rid of Peter, to be abandoned in a way so shocking, so, as they say, inappropriate, that no one could possibly fault her, for anything?

“Commune with your art,” he says. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

He says a brief, feigned-friendly goodbye and thanks to Tyler and Branch, who’ve done what they came to do and are now about to return the Krim to the gallery. He goes down the path to Mizzy.

Peter says, “And so, you find yourself in a garden again.”

“This one’s not so demanding,” Mizzy answers.

“Don’t tell Carole that.”

“It seems like she’s going to buy that thing.”

“That thing? Do you dislike it that much?”

“I’ll bet I dislike it exactly as much as you do.”

“I don’t dislike it at all.”

“I don’t either.”

Something passes between them. Peter understands that Mizzy understands that they are both doing the best they can, and are both failing—Mizzy has failed to be moved by the sacred stones and Peter has failed to find the artist who can annihilate and redeem. They’ve both come close, they’ve tried—God knows they’ve tried—but here they are, two men standing in a rich lady’s garden, a little unsure about how exactly they got here and entirely unsure about what to do next, except return to what they were doing before, which feels, at the moment, intolerable.

He could probably talk to Mizzy, at whatever length, about his doubts, couldn’t he? Mizzy is the one who’d willingly have that conversation.

Peter says, “The art question is tricky.”

“Is it?”

“Well. Let’s just say you don’t get a Raphael every day. Think about, oh, those Cellini saltcellars. They matter way beyond their capacity to hold salt.”

“But Cellini did the Ganymede, too.”

Okay, Mizzy, you know a little too much for old Uncle Peter’s spiel, don’t you?

“Let’s walk down to the beach,” Peter says, because someone’s got to suggest something.

They start together down the long slope of grass that leads to the sound, which is all sails and sun spangles, with its two green islands afloat on the bronzed blue shimmer. Carole’s house looks out over a smallish harborlike configuration, which has deposited, at the bottom of her big lawn, a modest U-shaped beach of putty-colored sand strewn with stones and kelp strands.

As they walk toward the beach, Peter says to Mizzy, “I don’t sell any art I dislike. It’s just that. Well. Genius, I mean genius genius, is rare.”

“I know that.”

“Maybe it’s not really what you want to do.”

“What?”

“Something in the arts.”

“I do. I really and truly do.”

They reach the sand. Mizzy slips off his shoes (ratty old Adidas, no socks), Peter leaves his (Prada loafers) on. They walk slowly toward the water.

“Can I tell you something?” Mizzy says.

“Sure.”

“I’m ashamed.”

“Why?”

Mizzy laughs. “Why do you think?”

There’s something hard, suddenly, something hustlerish about his voice. It could be the voice of a rent boy, prematurely cynical.

They get to the edge of the water, where the tide is moving in modest, all but silent pleats that advance and retract and advance again. Mizzy rolls up the legs of his jeans, wades out to just above his ankles. Peter speaks to him in a slightly raised voice, from several feet behind.

“I don’t suppose shame is ever helpful.”

“I don’t want to do nothing. But I seem not to have some faculty other people have. Something that tells them to do this or that. To go to medical school or join the Peace Corps or teach English as a second language. Everything seems perfectly plausible to me. And I can’t quite see myself doing any of it.”

Has he started getting weepy, or is the sun just in his eyes?

What, exactly, should Peter tell him?

“You’ll find something” is his lame-ass best. “Even if it doesn’t turn out to be selling art. Or curating it. Or whatever.”

Clearly, Mizzy can’t even pretend to be consoled by that. He turns away, looks out over the sound.

“You know what I am?” he says.

“What?”

“I’m an ordinary person.”

“Come on.”

“I know. Who isn’t an ordinary person? How horribly presumptuous to want to be anything else. But I have to tell you. I’ve been treated as something special for so long and I’ve tried my hardest to be something special but I’m not, I’m not exceptional, I’m smart enough, but I’m not brilliant and I’m not spiritual or even all that focused. I think I can stand that, but I’m not sure if the people around me can.”

And Peter knows—Mizzy is going to die. Peter knows this at some deep level of his being. It’s like the conviction he has about Bette Rice. It’s as if he can smell mortality, though its odor is far more detectable on an aging woman with breast cancer than on a young man in good health. Did Peter know that Matthew was going to die? Yes, probably, though he was too young to acknowledge it, even to himself. Wasn’t that the true message that day, decades ago, when Matthew and Joanna waded out into Lake Michigan and looked to Peter like beauty incarnate? Why that moment? Because they were doomed lovers, because they were standing at the edge of something, Joanna on her way to a gated community and Matthew to a hospital bed in St. Vincent’s. How had the desperate, horny twelve-year-old Peter sussed out the fact that he was getting his first true vision of mortality, and that it was the most moving and fabulous thing he’d ever seen? Hasn’t he been looking for another such moment ever since?

Mizzy will die of an overdose. He’s essentially said as much, not only to Peter but to the water and sky. He’s available to the forces of mortality. He can’t—he won’t—find anything that can attach him sufficiently to life.

Peter has waited on shores and stood beside sharks with people in mortal conditions. This time he takes off his shoes and socks, rolls up his slacks, wades out to stand beside Mizzy. Mizzy is in fact weeping, softly, looking toward the horizon.

Peter stands quietly beside Mizzy. Mizzy turns to him, offers a wet-eyed smile.

And then, it seems, they are kissing.

IN DREAMS

The kiss didn’t last long. It was passionate, passionate enough, but not exactly, not entirely, sexual. Can two men kissing have been comradely? That’s how it felt, to Peter. There was no tongue, no groping. They merely kissed, not briefly, but still. Mizzy’s breath was clear and a little sweet, and Peter was not so lost in it as to abandon the worry that he had raspy, middle-aged-guy breath.

They parted lips at the same moment—neither of them was the one to break it off first—and smiled at each other, simply smiled.