Alex said, “He said, ‘Your kind doesn’t belong in a place like this.’”
“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “What’d we do?”
Alex kept his voice low. “We’re the only two guys together here. Saturday night. We were laughing, clinking glasses. How the hell do I know?”
“He’s gone,” I said. “You’re right. Let’s not let anything spoil this.”
“We’re ready for the check, anyway,” said Alex.
We tried to get past it. I was in shock. We talked about why Alex loved doing Shakespeare, and what was wrong with me that I didn’t really appreciate the plays.
“Ignorance is what’s wrong with me,” I said.
Alex said, “You just don’t give it a chance. You’d love it if you got into it, Lang. I know you would.”
“Nothing seems to grab me that way,” I said. “I keep thinking I’d like to be a writer, but I hardly read at all.”
“You love films.”
“I love movies,” I said. “Why do you say ‘films’?”
“Why not?” He shrugged.
“It sounds a little affected,” I said.
He said, “That guy got to you, didn’t he?”
“Are you kidding?” I said, but he was right. He knew he was too.
“Don’t let things like that stick with you, Lang,” he said. “It’s always going to happen somewhere, at some point, usually when you least expect.it.”
“Okay.”
He was only three years older than I was, but sometimes I felt as though he was a decade older. I knew he was more sophisticated, better educated. He’d gone to prep school; he’d traveled a lot more than I had…. And he had his own apartment, never mind that it was a rat hole. He wasn’t still trying to figure out what to do with his life.
I wondered if the loudmouth had said something to the waiter and the maitre d’. I noticed we weren’t thanked or smiled at as we left the restaurant.
“Did you feel a chill back there?” I asked Alex as we headed toward the parking lot next door.
“It was a little cool, for sure,” he said.
It was the last Saturday night we’d have together. Alex would be working the following week.
The stars were out. The air had that balmy early-spring feeling. We were going to go back to Alex’s place and watch an old Marlon Brando picture: On the Waterfront.
It would be the last time Alex had his mother’s neat little Volkswagen convertible, too. She’d decided owning a car in the city was too much trouble.
As we walked toward the Volks, I said, “Hey, it’s warm enough to put the top down.”
“You think so?” Alex said.
I remember the grin on his face as he looked down at me. I remember him giving me a wink.
Then suddenly we saw the loudmouth pull up in a black Chrysler. He had the window rolled down, and he called out, “Faggots!”
Alex laughed and called back, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!”
It was something people chanted in gay marches.
That was all it took to make the fellow brake, get out, and ask Alex if he wanted to repeat it.
“Keep going,” I said to Alex, and we did.
He was following us, and Alex said, “There are two of us, so get ready, Lang, he might—”
And then he did.
Whatever he had in his hand—a tire iron, or one of those iron bars that lock car steering wheels—came down on Alex’s head hard.
Alex stumbled, and then the guy swung the thing a second time, so Alex fell.
It happened so fast that by the time I knelt down beside Alex, the fellow had run back to his car. The door slammed. The Chrysler took off just as another couple came into the lot to get their car.
“I saw the whole thing,” a woman said. “I’ll go back and call the police.”
Her date said, “We’ll get some help! He’s bleeding.”
The police wanted to know what it was all about.
“He didn’t like the looks of us,” Alex said.
I thought they’d say, “What do you mean, the looks of you?” but they seemed to know what he meant without asking.
The manager of Adieu, Adieu claimed that customer had never been in his restaurant before, had paid in cash, had no reservation. He said he didn’t know him or the woman with him.
“In a pig’s eye!” Alex muttered as we drove down First Avenue. We were headed for the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
He’d barely managed to get himself behind the wheel of the Volks. He was bleeding and bruised.
“I wasn’t much help,” I said.
“At least you had the sense to keep your mouth shut. I was the one who waved the red flag at the bull.”
“But I wish he’d swung at me. I don’t have to be onstage in a week.”
Alex said, “Enter Fortinbras…limping.”
FIVE
“LANG? IT’S BRITTANY.”
“Where are you?”
“In Sag Harbor. Nick and I are visiting Allie Perez. We’re going on a picnic over in East Hampton at Main Beach—Allie, me, and Nick. Want to come along?”
“I’d like to see Nick.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“I just don’t want to start up again, Brittany.”
“Who does? That’s past history.”
Back before I met Alex, we’d dated for a while. She used to joke and say we were “lover,” because only one of us was ever involved.
I said, “What’ll I bring?”
“Just yourself. Allie made enough ribs and potato salad for an army. We’ll pick you up at noon. Just give me directions.”
I told her the number on Ocean Road and said I’d be out front.
Nick was a buddy, way before I ever went out with his sister. We grew up in the same neighborhood, and though he was ahead of me in school, we hung out together. I’d given him my phone number when he told me Allie’s folks had a summer place in the Hamptons, but I’d never expected he’d call.
Nick and Allie had one of these on again/off again relationships that was mostly off. Allie liked to date other guys, and Nick was so crazy about her, he’d explode when she went out with someone else. Then they
