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Sure, Will would come reignite the hot water heater.
“But you have to let me show you how to do it,” he insisted, “so you can do it yourself next time.”
Bitty’d agreed, not that he thought he would absorb much. This was the third time the pilot had gone out since Thanksgiving—and it was barely the new year. It wasn’t so much the cold showers that bothered him; though he didn’t love it, he could brace for it, used to dashing in and out between 4:30 a.m. salchows with Katya and first-period geometry. It was more the incessant hand-washing in the already-frigid kitchen. There were twelve pies on Bitty’s docket. Annie’s reopened on the fourth.
Also, he might want a hot shower tonight, after all – the forecast was for snow in early evening, and Bitty was expected to be half-naked in the middle of it.
Will was hunched over with his back bowed and his ass up; it was deeply unsexy to Bitty, which wasn’t to say he wouldn’t have taken advantage of it, were he less tired. It just wasn’t Will’s godawful slouch he’d been thinking about on the flight back up from Georgia. And anyway, it seemed to Bitty more of a cat-cow than a come-on. He was jabbing one of those long man-of-the-woods matchsticks into the sphincter of the tank. Bitty had never thought about who needed those; people with flagstone hearths, he’d figured. Very sexy ski lodge leg warmeresque. He wondered when Shitty would be back from the Berkshires. Shitty could learn how to do this. Shitty should, frankly—it was his name on the lease.
“So I really have to get on my knees?”
Hair mussed and knuckles sooty, Will looked up, scowling. “And you aren’t looking for a reason?”
“Yes, ha ha, aren’t you clever?” Bitty kicked him in the ribs; it was a nudge, really. “You stayed here over break. Who’d you get on yours for?”
Against the concrete, Will’s hand clenched. Oh no, Bitty thought, oh no, I am about to hear something.
Instead, Will pulled the long match from the tank. “It’s lit.”
“How do I know?”
Will didn’t bother to brush the grime from his corduroys; the pattern was dull at the knees and upper thighs, Bitty noticed. How many burners was he lighting?
“Get down and check. You’ll see the flame.”
“Maybe I can do it another time.”
“Why not look now? I can answer your questions, or whatever.”
“Oh, that’s sweet, but I probably don’t have any questions.”
“Are you sure? Because I’ve been over here to do this four times.”
“Only three.”
“Three this school year,” Will amended.
It had, over the crest of the exchange, materialized for Bitty that perhaps Will had a point. It must be frustrating, somehow, mustn’t it, to repeatedly perform the same favor, over and over, for friends who lived in a house you didn’t. Not that Will should be bothered, the other half of Bitty’s brain asserted; he lived in a university apartment three blocks nearer to campus, which even on a cold day was only a minutes-long saunter, and besides, his life was wholly more convenient anyhow: much of life’s daily maintenance was cared for by the school, or the management company they hired, or whoever, Bitty didn’t know; and being three blocks closer to campus meant Will was already much closer to the library, the gaudy shell of a lecture hall that visiting artists graced on Wednesday nights—not that Bitty went to those—and, crucially, the cruisy bathroom in the athletic center across from the creepy ice rink.
And of the house’s actual residents, he was truly friends with, who, Chris? The real issue was he wanted to move in. But where? Bitty found himself wondering. Here—into the basement?
Will was still standing in front of him, still holding the extinguished match. He crossed his arms.
“You know,” he said, “I have enough guys not listening to me. I promised myself I wasn’t going to get stuck in any new quasi-abusive patterns this year.”
Ah, here it was. “Quasi-abusive?”
“Yes.” He glanced heavenward, so needlessly dramatic. “Debatably.”
Bitty knew this was his permission to head back upstairs. He was supposed to be at the bridge off South Quad in an hour, or perhaps ninetyish minutes, to meet this “Jacopo” which was already on its own terms a completely unbelievable name, and the fact that Bitty was expected to flounce around the bridge nearly naked for a “screen test” just pushed plausibility further toward the poles.
Mercifully, Will followed, plodding up the stairs in his third-hand Blundstones; surely it was deliberate that each step moaned as he mounted it, fitting enough, because Will was now deep into it.
“Uh huh,” Bitty agreed, to whatever.
“Well, if he’s going to text me on New Year’s, I’m going to start thinking about it.”
“About what?”
“Why he texted.”
“Oh, yeah, why do you think?”
“I don’t know—I’ve been thinking about it.”
Too much thinking, Bitty thought, that was their problem. Or Will’s problem, anyway; in Bitty’s experience the more bothered you were, less so the other party.
At the kitchen table, Adam has buried himself in his laptop.
“When’d y’all get in?”
“Just now.”
Will trailed in from behind. Adam blinked at him, saying nothing.
“We fixed the hot water,” Bitty said, buried underneath Will’s claim: “I fixed your boiler.”
“Oh, it was out again?” He put his cheek in his hand. “And who are you?”
“I’m William Poindexter.”
“Great,” said Adam, turning back to his screen.
“We’ve met,” said Will. “I fixed it last semester, too.”
Realizing Adam would say nothing, Bitty raised his voice a little. “And we’re so grateful for it, too.” Having just come in that morning, Bitty hadn’t been into the fridge yet—but surely something in there could serve as payment. Who’d been here over the past week? God, what a mess: the anchovy paste was now tail-end up, which was the wrong way to store it, and the pitcher of sweet tea had been emptied and not cleaned. Bitty shoved aside one Sam Adams sour in its huckleberry-colored can, then another, then a coconut LaCroix, then another sour. All the way in the way of the shelf he found, yes, a Bonne Maman jar, still sealed, of mulled wine. The bits in it—star anise, cloves, cinnamon stick—swished up and floated back down as he handed the jar off to Will.
“Well,” he said. “Thanks for helping.” Bitty nodded his head toward the door to the kitchen, making it quite plain that they were intended to each step out of it.
Then he left Will by the door—near enough to the peg where his awful parka was hanging—and put a foot on the step and a hand to his hip and continued, “Honey, excuse me, I have to go upstairs and get ready, I got a thing.” A little slap on the fanny, to remind Will of the night they’d spent together in the spring, when it hadn’t been quite warm enough to comfortably sleep with the windows wide, but the clammy warmth of ruddy skin had forced Bitty to pry his open, for all it had only been fifty-some degrees that night.
Thinking that was the end of it, Bitty was satisfied to feel the door slam as he slid the opaque tights up his calves, shimmying into the ass of them, and admiring his balletic figure as it filled out the tutu’s bodice. Marabou rimmed the neckline, as if it were one of the dress-up scarfs Aunt Judy would deck herself out in when she was an angel stage-left in the panto at Redeemer Baptist—which Bitty had missed this year, for all he had fond memories of it, oh well. He turned to leave—ah, the wand. It was still on the dresser. He snatched it—okay. His coat was by the backdoor in the kitchen.
And, regrettably, so was Will—who was talking now to not just Adam but to Chris and Caitlin; they must have flown back together and been dropped off here. Poor thing, she had the patience of a saint, so ladylike of her, listening deeply as Will began to sigh his angst into the mulled wine Bitty has just given him, not 10 minutes prior, ostensibly to enjoy back at his own apartment, with its flat university-issue mattresses, and inadequately stocked kitchen.
“Sometimes guys don’t know what they want,” she was saying. “Chris almost made us miss our flight, he took so long deciding if he wanted a shake.”
“They don’t let you take it on the plane.” Chris had helped himself to one of those awful-looking sours. For all Bitty knew, they were his. “It’s a liquid.”
“But if a guy texts you first thing after the new year on New Year’s it’s gotta mean something,” Will insisted. “Right?”
“Well, something,” Caitlin agreed. She had a breathless way of speaking, all of her words carried on the propulsion necessary to spit them out that high, and she was handsome in a pointed way—that was, literally, her chin and nose were sharp and her body was wiry. Bitty mapped these superficial qualities onto what he knew of her, the most flattering of which was that she’d won a men’s volleyball tournament or something. Also she’d spent a year in the Peace Corp.
“Something good?” It bothered Bitty, for some reason, that he was recapping the mulled wine in between sips, as if it were a Nalgene; as if it didn’t need to breathe.
“Yeah, I mean, if he was thinking about you on New Year’s Eve I guess it means something good. I dunno—Adam, what do you think?”
He looked up from his computer. “I don’t know. I don’t have these problems.”
“Must be nice.” Will began to unscrew the jar again, and then slanted his posture toward Bitty. “What are you wearing?”
“I said I was going to do a screen test.”
“No, you didn’t. For what, the Ice Capades?”
“No, honey, I wish. That might utilize my talents. For a student film.”
“Oh,” said Caitlin, clasping her hands together.
Chris asked, “Whose film?”
Should Bitty even tell them who? “Some undergrad.” He shrugged. “Jack knows him. He’s making an experimental film.”
“Jack is?” Will asked.
“No, the kid, the filmmaker. Jack is doing the lighting. I need to go meet him at the South Quad bridge.”
“Why?” Adam asked. “Is that where he tricks now?”
“ ‘Tricks,’ Adam, very nineties of you.”
“Well, what do you call it? You know what, I don’t care. I was trying to work.”
“Picking up?” Chris asked.
“You might as well say ‘cruising,’ “ Bitty added. “Anyway, no.”
“Are you being paid?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” said Bitty, “in cocaine.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, he’s a coke dealer.” Explaining as if it were nothing, and self-evident with no further context.
“The guy you’re playing?” Blushing, Chris took a glance at Caitlin, who was fussing with the polish on her nails, chipping little flakes of it, coral pearlescent, onto her skirt, from which it would plainly be shaken onto Bitty’s kitchen floor. “I mean, if you’re playing a girl?”
Bitty continued with the pretense that the topic was boring, although he was also delighted that there was some interest, however minor, in his latest venture into stardom. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters very much. I’m playing a coke fairy, like, the personification of cocaine, I guess. Which means I’m not sure it’s important or even necessary that I be one gender or another. It’s nice to be able to flit back and forth, I guess, Cait, right?”
She didn’t look up. “Right.” It was rude, considering Bitty was trying to include—to defer to her, even.
“Anyway, the filmmaker is himself a coke dealer, and the piece is about a coke fairy, I guess to show the experience of being on coke, and Jack introduced me because he’d heard about this project, I guess because he’s doing the lighting, and suggested I’d be good for the role. I think it’s very flattering.”
“Well,” said Adam, “figures Jack knows him.”
Everyone gave little gestures or made soft noises to indicate they agreed.
“He’s Jack’s dealer,” Bitty clarified, content to have more information on the topic than anyone.
Will said, “Right,” staring down at the lid of his wine jar. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Are you, um.” Caitlin paused to search. “Looking forward to it?”
Moving to grab his puffy coat from its home on the hook behind her, Bitty make a soft mmm noise, as if he were thinking about it really carefully. “Not to being outside half-clad, at least.”
“How much coke are you being paid with?” Chris asked.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bitty was careful to guide the zipper past the feathers without catching any of the errant ones. In his time standing in the kitchen they’d become disordered, but he could smooth them back down once the lights were on him. Of course, he planned to spend as little time exposed as he could manage. “I’ve never done it so I’m not sure what’s a good amount to ask for.”
“Then how do you know you like it?”
“Money,” said Will. “See if you can get paid in money.”
“Well, if I don’t like it I can sell it for money.”
“What’s the resale value on cocaine?” Will asked.
Finally, Adam shut his computer. “I’m not sure there is one, because it functions the same no matter how many people have had it in their possession? Not that I’d know.”
“So I don’t know when I’ll get in! You might all be on your own for dinner.”
“We brought back jollof rice.”
“That’s not a meal,” said Bitty.
“It is with fish sticks.”
“What the hell is jollof rice?” Will asked.
Chris said, “We can order out.”
Bitty said, “See you later.”
A beat passed, then two. Will began to unscrew the wine again. Adam leaned back in his chair and stretched.
Finally, Chris said, “Have fun!”
Bitty stepped onto the creaking twilit porch, where the Christmas lights had just come on by timer. Intrepid, he stepped off the Haus porch and into the mush.
“Where’s, uh.”
“Jacopo. Texted me. Getting the rig from someone.”
“I thought the Hub was reduced hours until the semester starts?”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe it’s someone’s.”
On the ground, Jack had stacked or balanced his equipment against the hip-height masonry that edged the bridge from the edge of town to southernmost campus. He’d put his arm around his camera bag, which was squatting on his backpack, which was itself propped up on a lighting case; it was like Jack was huddling with a lover against the cold, except in lieu of a body there was ten-thousand dollars of camera equipment—his only real love, Bitty sometimes thought. Shame he took pictures mostly of nothing crammed into industrial grating surrounded by nothing, in the middle of nowhere. I oughta ask him what he shot over break, Bitty thought.
Instead, “Which sophomore has room for a rig in his dorm room?”
“Don’t know.” Jack sighed. “First day back,” he said, as if implying something about it.
“I got in late last night. Took like a 10 p.m. flight. Woke up this morning—our hot water was out.”
“Oh, if I’d known, I would have—or, you could have. Euh. Well, probably nothing, since I wasn’t here.”
“Yeah. You jetlagged?”
He shook his head. “Hasn’t hit me yet.”
“You weren’t gone that long.”
“Long enough.”
“How’s your parents?”
Yeah, that was it.
“They’re fine. Magnifique.” Extra dry. “Really well.”
Against his better judgement, mostly because he was in white Lurex, Bitty kicked some salt aside, scattering it inches down the bridge, and lowered himself to the ground beside Jack.
“Didja miss me?”
It took Jack a moment. “Yeah.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“No, nothing bad happened.”
“But did anything good happen?”
“Got this coat.” Bitty had noticed. The outside was an oily green, and in the sharp lamplight of the converted wrought-iron braziers that lined the bridge, the color ran to clay brown. The fabric was wooly, perhaps gabardine, like a trench or a suitcoat—but the thing had the shape of a parka, and Jack had closed the opalescent buttons over the zipper to hold the wind back. “It’s shearling,” he added, when Bitty offered no assessment.
“That’s a nice coat.”
“Thanks.”
“I like that it’s a little industrial, you know, but with some softness? Like there’s some organic in it, in the color—it’s kinda dark out here but that’s how it looks. That for Christmas?”
“No. I dunno.”
“It looks warm.”
“Yeah.” A moment later: “It could be warmer.”
“Nice of them to give it to you.”
Jack was deliberately quiet for long enough to make his point.
As they waited for Jacopo, Bitty stewed over whether Jack would ask him what he’d gotten for Christmas. As the seconds ticked by he began to wonder if he ought to volunteer the information, and by the end of the two-minute period over which he’d become bored of counting, Bitty began to hate Jack for not even asking.
“I got two-hundred bucks,” he finally said, “on an Amazon gift card.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know.” As soon as Bitty said it, he began considering all the things he had in his shopping cart already: the cookbook of that woman from the pastry magazine, whose videos made her seem surly and prickly in a way that Bitty liked, because it meant they weren’t competing for the same audience; a stainless-steel Rosle chinois that cost nearly fifty bucks; Lyle’s golden syrup, which was frustratingly only available in a case of thirty-six cans—he wanted to make a pie based on a treacle tart, but his investigations of how to do this with Karo had not been thus far successful; the Neocutis cleanser promoted in one get-ready video by a second-tier drag queen, which Bitty had only recently admitted to himself would never go on sale at Dermstore. There was more, but just the few items that came immediately to mind would total two-hundred dollars, or more. He began to wonder if that pastry chef was really as fat as she looked in her videos, or if it was the unflattering oatmeal-colored and -textured crossbody Park Slope apron. Much to consider.
When Jacopo did appear he was on a Well Ride, one of the motorized bicycles the town had put in over the summer. They were sponsored by the chamber of commerce and painted an insufferable orange and yellow, as if in defiance of the school itself. Only students rode them. There were two docking bays on campus, one next to the athletic buildings and one by Founder’s on the quad side of the river, which meant he’d borrowed a bike at what was also the nearest docking station—unless, Bitty supposed, he’d come from town. But, no, wasn’t Jacopo getting a rig? He very nearly ran them over, and after skidding to a halt at the foot of the bridge—there were signs installed over winter break, Bitty noticed, sternly warning Well Riders to dismount—Jacopo left the thing on its side with its front wheel twisted into itself, its yellow chrome basket pointed skyward.
As they got to their feet—Jack first, who then yanked Bitty by an elbow he wouldn’t budge so his hands could remain in his pockets—Jacopo pulled out a plastic pouch of tobacco and rolling papers, pulling together a cigarette.
“What’s the costume like?” he said, not bothering to look up from where his reddened fingers were smashing flaked leaf matter against the paper. Some blew away, and Jacopo didn’t heed it.
“I think it looks okay,” said Bitty, “but I ain’t taking my jacket off until you’re ready for me.”
“You ain’t?”
He refused to take this bait. “No. Did you go back to Harper’s Ferry?”
“Dobbs Ferry. New York.” He bit the cigarette.
“Oh, that’s Dutchess County.”
He exhaled. “Westchester.”
“All the same to me, ain’t it?” It earned a short laugh from Jack.
“I was thinking, by the trees behind Graham and Fullerton.” These were history department buildings that Bitty had never been in. Jacopo gestured across the bridge, as if he were unclear on where these buildings even were. “It looks kinda like the woods there.”
“There are actual woods west of campus,” Jack said. They were also a little cruisy, Bitty knew. “Around the Pond.”
“I like the streetlamp vibe, though. It’s sickening.”
“I thought you wanted white?”
“Yeah, like, as a contrast. White light encased in yellow light.”
“Well,” said Jack. He was thinking about it.
“Here.” Jacopo slid an arm into one of Bitty’s, guiding him over. He felt emboldened. “So this lighting test, I’m sure you haven’t settled on your character, but I want seduction—the camera wants you, and hates you. You have control over the viewer, but you’re almost too controlling. The camera can’t catch you.”
Glancing behind, Bitty saw Jack, well—not struggling, per se, but he’d carried his equipment here, and now he was carrying it over the bridge. They locked eyes, Jack’s betraying nothing. Bitty tried to make his say: ugh, this asshole, he just whisked me right away like I’m someone more important.
But the longer Bitty stood under the trees in the yellow light behind the row of history department Federals, he began to think of himself not as cold and bored, but rather, the star of Jacopo’s film—and, well, he was, wasn’t he? Under the rig Jacopo had leaned against a tree—so, why the bike?—from which Jack had hung some kind of can, Bitty’s knuckles lost their January redness and his fingernails glowed. His skin was powdery when he took his jacket off, light bleaching his fine hairs until he seemed more waxed than his girl cousins, and more carefully. Then Jack would inch the can slightly, hold up a screen, and say, “Okay, Bittle.” Knowing he was done, Bitty would bundle up again. He tried to see himself performing as if he were in the audience. “He really is the perfect cocaine fairy,” they’d be telling each other. He figured the audience for this would be dorm-room auteurs marveling at how life had been breathed into this cult classic by its spritely star. Someone, and Bitty wasn’t entirely clear on whom, would eventually write a thesis about it, comparing his raw performance to raw coke. Purer, somehow, and better. Than what? He’d think about it before he had to come and actually do the performance.
The only disappointment was that the film was going to be shot on the director’s iPhone.
“It’s more real that way,” he explained, and Bitty believed him even though he could sense Jacopo was a fool, because he knew by “real” Jacopo meant raw, and that fit in with Bitty’s ideas about how his performance would be received, and so it all made sense in some vague way. Inside, Bitty knew the concept would fall apart under scrutiny, but by the time he became conscious of just how awful this one project was going to be—around the time the lights cut out, and instead of a golden-white flow they were standing in pee-yellow from the 1970s brutalist streetlamps bolted to the backs of the Federals—Jacopo was paying Jack for his hour of labor. It was in the form of a paper bag folded down to a tight, two-inch triangle. Jack put it in one of the pockets on his new coat.
“I’ll let you know how the test comes out,” Jacopo said, as if not really to either of them, but also somehow to both.
Jacopo left the rig there, rolling another cigarette as he walked into campus.
“What an idiot,” Jack said, from the muddy lawn where he was packing in a crouch. “And he didn’t even pay you, Bittle.”
“It’s a flat fee when the shooting’s done.” Before Jack got up, Bitty had grabbed one of his bags.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to, honey, you carried it all the way over here.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“You can buy me dinner when we get to your place.”
Jack said nothing, and Bitty took it as assent.
As they neared the foot of the bridge at the other side of the river, Bitty noticed the bike was gone.
He suddenly felt very foolish. “I guess I coulda gotten payment up front.”
“That usually is the better plan,” Jack agreed. It seemed to Bitty that he possessed a keen, and yet largely untried, nose for business. As Bitty was considering this, Jack added, “That’s why there’s agents.”
“Oh, yeah, my agent.”
“Well, if you get good enough at acting.”
“Oh, not hardly,” Bitty said, although he was now thinking that perhaps he could.
“Or your YouTube, or whatever—those people have agents.”
“Artists have agents.” As soon as it was out of his mouth, Bitty felt stupid.
“Yeah. You don’t want to do work and then get stiffed. Your skills shouldn’t be free.”
“What about for your friends?”
“Especially not them.”
“I’m not sure I agree.”
“Maybe sometimes,” Jack said, softening a little. It was a short walk to his building under normal conditions, but Jack tended to amble, even when not carrying things. “It’s not just the money. Part of a practice is taking what you do seriously. If you cheapen yourself and you cheapen your work, why would someone else want to engage with it? Maybe I’m not making sense—it’s like six hours later for me.”
“Then it’s good I’m helping carry,” said Bitty, and they were both quiet on the remainder of the walk. The mood was subdued, with only occasional thudding from a closed window along the streets that ran from school-owned special-interest housing into the professorial Victorians and, finally, into the mostly shuttered breakscape of downtown. From the room above the candy shop, a bleached-blonde was smoking out the window, a wordless eighties song playing in what sounded like not the room she was sitting in, facing the street, but another part of the apartment. Ghostly humming. In the window, the gingerbread Lake Quad still lit by wadded string lights in the windows of cookie Koetter, shining on the spilled-sugarwork Pond and pooled in the well, its masonry cinnamon imperials and royal icing.
Entering Jack’s apartment, Bitty nearly tripped over his Rimowa in the doorway. From behind, where he’d been holding the door open, Jack said, “Euh, sorry,” in the breathless way he spoke when he’d been around his parents, or maybe just other French-speakers—like he didn’t have to force the English out so hard, maybe, although Bitty had never been entirely sure what Jack meant when he said he was “bilingual,” like, did he know one more than the other? If he did it would be the French, right? Bitty also wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed until now. Maybe it was that Jack only rarely said sorry.
From his pocket, Jack retrieved the paper triangle and flung it on the counter. He then stripped off the coat, and tossed that on the floor, in the general direction of the living room. No lights were on, but it wasn’t dark, exactly; the building’s exterior lighting spilled in through the windows, which were open because Jack hadn’t been home to close them. On the way to do so, Bitty snapped on the kitchen lights, and peeled the coat from the floor.
“Saint Laurent.” He folded the coat over so the label wasn’t staring at him. He’d hang it up after he closed the shades.
“Saint Laurent. It’s French, Bittle.”
“Please, I know,” Bitty said, though he’d never actually heard anyone pronounce the brand before, and only knew the first name was “Eve” (like the matriarch) because of Yves Klein, the subject of a final presentation he’d endured by Palmita from Resaca in the death throes of art history 102. “You don’t have to pronounce everything so fancy-like.”
“It’s French. That’s my middle name.”
“Oh! Right! Is that a coincidence?”
“My mother thinks she’s cute.”
“Do you?”
Poking at the package, Jack pressed his lips together. “Do I have a scale?”
“Yeah. Here.” Bitty had left it in the bottom drawer in the island; he had no illusion that Jack had used it.
“Are you going to take it?”
“Not tonight. I just want to make sure he didn’t short it. How do you turn this on?”
Bitty did it.
Jack began to unwrap the paper. “Did you want dinner?”
“Yeah, I could eat.” Realizing he’d be here for a while, and feeling the heat begin to cycle, Bitty took off his own coat; went to go hang it up; fished his phone from his pocket.
Staying another night, Shitty had texted. An update from the New York Times about the inauguration; Bitty did not read the New York Times so whenever his phone treated him to one of their updates he had to wonder who in his vicinity had said “New York Times” in the past day. A recipe from Martha Stewart Living about angel biscuits, which made him regret not bringing White Lily flour back up with him. He always meant to do that, and he always forget. Maybe his mother would send some.
“Right amount?”
Jack was already sweeping powder back into its wrapping. “Yeah.”
“What’d you do if it wasn’t?”
“Get a new guy,” Jack said. “Or just not do coke for a while.”
“You wouldn’t do his lighting?”
“No.”
“Not even to light me?” Bitty put his elbow on the kitchen counter, chin on fist, looking up at Jack.
“Not even you, Bittle.”
Disappointed, Bitty swept through to see what was available for delivery; another night he would have cooked, but he’d just gotten in last night, and then that drama with the boiler this morning, and his screen test—when would he have gone to the store to get something?
“Just get Jerry’s. Use my log-in.” Jack meant his credit card, which was lodged in Bitty’s Grubhub account and had been since before Thanksgiving.
“Okay.” Further disappointing; if Jack was going to pay—with his nice new coat and his parents who lived in France and his correct amount of cocaine—Bitty would have suggested spider roll and spicy scallop from Samroll.
But it turned out Jack didn’t really want to anyway. He was going to try to get a date later—inconvenient, et cetera.
“Well, you should still get something.” As if it was Bitty’s money, somehow, his generosity. “Don’t you want to eat after?”
“I can eat your leftovers,” Jack said.
“What if I want my leftovers?”
It seemed like it hadn’t really occurred to him. “Fine. Get me a chicken burrito.”
“For after sex?”
“Yeah, for after.”
Bitty himself ordered a Monterey wrap, which for some reason no one had ever pinpointed came with Swiss cheese and not Monterey. None of the wait staff would explain why, and Bitty had asked nearly all of them. “Who cares?” Lardo had asked once, as they were at the Jerry’s bar watching Georgia lose to South Carolina in overtime. “If you like it, does it matter?” Bitty had admitted that, no, it didn’t seemingly matter very much. He liked the wrap for the bacon and avocado with ranch, not so much the cheese. Since Jack was paying, Bitty upgraded from plain fries to loaded tots. He wasn’t sure what they were loaded with.
Curried sour cream, more bacon bits, more shredded Swiss, wing sauce, a flurry of scallion, and sesame seeds was what they were loaded with. Baffling, but it was nearly eight, and Bitty hadn’t eaten since—good lord, all day, really. He didn’t even think they were bad, honestly. Jack hadn’t even come to sniff at the mess, and Bitty had already inhaled most of it.
“Are you sure you don’t want any of this burrito? Cause if not I’m gonna put it in the fridge.”
“That’s fine.”
Bitty decided he’d had enough of the tots, and slapped one half of the wrap down on a plate. With a can of seltzer and a napkin roll in the other hand, he made his way over to the couch, just praying Jack did not get started on his whole theory of bottoming as a science and an art.
He didn’t say anything—absorbed in flipping through profiles.
“Did you shoot anything in Paris?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want any of this?”
Jack shook his head.
“See anyone good?”
Finally, he looked away from his phone, at Bitty. “It’s all the same guys, Bittle. You know who’s good.”
Bitty was going to say that he didn’t need to browse a catalogue to find a hook-up (Jack insisted on calling them “dates,” which seemed very old-fashioned), but then he thought better of it. He wiped ranch from his lips with the unfurled napkin. Why did they have to send them wrapped around plastic forks? Why couldn’t they just pack no-flatware napkins, save everyone the trouble? Like what were you even supposed to do with this—recycle it? Lardo said she’d put it in some sculpture—but how many spray-painted towers of knives could she make? Unless they were a huge hit, Bitty figured, and then she could hire a studioful of assistants to crank them out for her. She’d have to buy them from a supplier; eventually even his roommates got sick of eating at Jerry’s. But then you’d lose the meaning of the whole thing, because getting them from Jerry’s was the point—what was it if not an artwork about Jerry’s? Maybe that was too specific. God, Bitty could make this. Too bad he wasn’t a sculptor. Maybe—maybe being paid in coke was the whole point, like, maybe that was the artwork? Maybe Jacopo was a genius.
Bitty said, “I don’t know that I share your taste.”
“Thoughts?” Jack held up his phone.
This point was usually where Bitty said something like, look, we could just have sex, save you the trouble. And many times they did, and Bitty looked forward to more of those times. But something about doing it full of Monterey wrap, still in a feathered white tutu, only got him sort-of hard in his tights. He hadn’t worn underwear, was the thing, and just—well, it was a long day. And yet not too long for Jack, apparently?
The torso on Jack’s screen had a nipple piercing and a collarbone tattoo that said I’m living. “That’s Dalston, he’s getting an MA in performance studies, he’s disgusting.”
“It’s trashy,” Jack agreed, which was incredibly glass house-y of him, or maybe he’d meant it more in the sense of needing to be the trashiest person in the room at any given time.
“Bottom,” Bitty said, and Jack nodded, swiping left. He put his plate down, balled up his napkin. Tossed it onto the plate. “Most people aren’t back from break—did Shitty text you? He’s staying in Lenox another night, I guess. So one presumes the typically, mmmm, less-than-robust selection is slighter than usual. Plus half the pictures on there are awful.”
Finally, Jack put his phone down. “Yes. In college I would charge people for advice on how to take a dick pic.”
“Oh, really,” said Bitty, flush with interest in this new detail. That was the appeal of Jack, to some extent: the depth of information, seemingly inexhaustible. “Did you make a lot of money?”
He shrugged. “Some.”
“Did you advertise or something? I like the idea of you with a Tumblr for it.” Jack had maintained a kind of half-assed photo thing at Concordia, Bitty knew; maybe this had been some kind of side blog?
“No, it just spread by word of mouth. Some guy would tell some girl would tell some guy.”
“That doesn’t sound very efficient.”
“I never said the service was much-used,” said Jack. This felt wrong, somehow, to Bitty; “much used” described Jack in so many various ways.
“Aren’t you jetlagged? Don’t you want to just go to bed?”
As usual when he didn’t like a question, Jack said nothing.
“Did you turn any tricks when you were gone? Any, like, nice French boys? Adam called them tricks, I think that’s hilarious.”
Jack pulled his legs up on the couch, underneath him, and seemed to relax a bit—at least, some tension went out of his body. “It’s kind of a dangerous term, eh? Sort of seventies.” He was wearing a black sweatshirt and black distressed jeans, and Bitty took a moment to admire the harmony in contrast they would have presented at something like, say, a party: sharing one section of an L-shaped couch, Bitty’s joints never not at full-articulation, and Jack hardly bothering to straighten up.
Jack looked away as he continued: “French boys aren’t nice.”
“So you did meet some?”
“My father’s new assistant. A few dates. They pretend my accent’s bad and they can’t understand me because it’s Canadian French.”
“That colonial thing,” Bitty said.
“I guess.” A shrug. “People seem to understand my parents perfectly fine.”
“What’s the difference? You’re all French.”
“That’s like saying what’s the difference between you and me? We both speak English.”
“I thought you spoke French!”
“I sound more Quebecker when I speak French. It’s thirty-five-hundred miles, Bittle. It’s not the same.”
“Well, I’ve never been to Paris,” Bitty concluded. “So I suppose I just wouldn’t know.”
“You could come stay. It’s nice, I guess?”
“You guess? It’s Paris, Jack.”
“It’s visiting my parents, Bittle.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Jack said. “The place was decorated. They had a big dinner party Christmas Eve, it’s an annual thing. It’s a big deal, with like thirteen desserts.”
“Are you serious? What were they?”
Jack could vaguely describe about four; he couldn’t name any. “I should have taken pictures. It’s a very pretty party. In theory I’d love to try all thirteen, but it’s really a lot of food. I just feel like they’re watching me. My mom, mostly. She got some artist to make a creche and it looked really good. I did take pictures of that. During the daytime. I can show you next time I have my camera. Lots of weird details to shoot. Thatched roof. Animal hooves.” Jack’s camera was surely no further than the front door; in all likelihood it was in Jack’s carryon.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what you’d take pictures of.”
“Ha. Well, I don’t know, it was interesting. We went to a Christmas market. The whole city’s lit up. It’s pretty. You’d like it.”
Bitty wanted to think he would like it, but Christmas to him was embedded very specifically in Madison, Georgia, and so it may not have been impossible to imagine Paris at the new year, yet it was inconceivable that he’d ever experience it. He already had such guilt over missing just the panto, and that was only on account of his flying in too late. The party could not go on without him: who would pipe borders on the cut-outs? What was Christmas without a cinnamon stick in his coffee? The day after, decorations went on sale at the Target, and if his mother didn’t rouse him before 10 to get out ahead of the other bargain-hunters, well, it just wasn’t the holidays. Much of it was still crammed under the ratty T-shirts in his suitcase. Was there an automated reindeer on the floor of his bedroom, waiting to be assembled in the hallway? Yes, and it would look great there year-round. Was there room in the big Rubbermaid under the basement stairs for gold-foil cupcake liners? Doubtlessly, and if there wasn’t, Bitty didn’t know why you’d bother storing anything at all.
“I’m not going to Paris for the holidays,” he finally said.
“Why not?” That was Jack’s philosophy for everything, though, wasn’t it? And look where it got him.
“The same reason you didn’t go to Vegas, probably.”
“That’s different.”
“How’s it different?”
“It’s boring,” Jack said. “And it’s the middle of the season, and it’s—it wouldn’t have been what I wanted.”
“And Christmas with your parents is?”
“Relative to what I want and expect from them.”
“Yeah, Jack, okay.”
“At least at my parents’ there’s enough going on that I don’t notice they’re ignoring me. And vice-versa.”
“Sounds lonely up there, on the thirty-fourth floor.”
“I don’t belong there, and he doesn’t want me.”
This struck Bitty immediately as quite stupid. He hadn’t forgotten the Narcan; or rather, he remembered now that he’d forgotten it in his peacoat pocket, because that was what he’d worn to meet Jack at Sweetgreen for lunch before leaving town. Okay, so, that was unfortunate, but Jack seemed sober enough, and the worst-case scenario was that Bitty would have to run upstairs get the Narcan Parse had told him was in the bathroom. The point was, “Jack, hardly, that’s ridiculous. Seems like he cares about you very much.” Even as Bitty said it, “care” felt like a weak representative of Parse’s actual feelings, but he was about to end up embroiled in a module called “Ecologies of Care” and the PDF he was supposed to read for the first session was downloaded to his phone, and it was just sitting there, waiting to be read, whenever he’d opened the downloads folder to look at some brunch place’s menu. So maybe that word, he just couldn’t shake it, and if he did it probably wouldn’t be over the next two weeks, waiting for the class to start. Also, he didn’t really know how Parse actually felt—and all Bitty knew about how he felt was that he hated that now he was sitting there, staring at Jack’s, wow, nicely pushed-back cuticles, that was surprising, and thinking about someone he neither knew very well nor had especially positive feelings about, anyway.
Jack seemed to have some notion about it. “Yes. But there’s hockey games, Bittle. They’re always in and out of town.”
“So you don’t want to get in the way?”
“It just doesn’t work when there’s hockey.”
Bitty couldn’t be sure where he’d gotten the idea, but as he opened his big mouth and said, “Well, you could always come home with me next Christmas,” he had the distinct feeling that his mother would have that tight, toothy look when she said it was so wonderful that Bitty was bringing a dilettante he wasn’t even dating, just sleeping with sometimes, into her home.
Sleeping with a lot of the time, if he was being honest. He felt it necessary to mentally correct, as though he was already telling her this.
“Is that an invitation?”
“I guess so, at least a tentative one, considering it’s a dang year from now.”
“Why not.” Jack said it like they had a plan, or it might have been agreeability bred by tiredness.
“You’re still going out?”
“I messaged some dates,” Jack said, tapping the dark screen of his phone with what Bitty now saw was, yes, a nicely shaped nail.
“Very ambitious of you, sweetheart.”
“Not all of them. Whoever writes back.”
“What if no one writes back?” Bitty got up, not bothering to let Jack think of a quip. “I mean, you must’ve been up for a while now?”
“I slept on the plane.”
“Oh, I can never sleep on planes. Who’d you fly?”
“Delta.”
“Oh, Delta! You know me, I’m Delta all the way.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t book it. Do you want the amenity kit?”
“The who?”
Disappointingly, it contained nothing worth coveting.
Down the walkway from the double doors and across the parking lot, Bitty’s boots left clean prints. Trudging, he thought of how, as a boy, the sporadic winter storm that dissipated on contact left him housebound. He thought of his mother, exasperated, on the cordless phone as she peeled back the drapes: “There’s snow in the driveway, Judy!” And it was all drama that weekend, because his mother was supposed to bring her twelve-inch skillet when they went over for dinner (Aunt Judy only had a ten-inch) and how else was a person supposed to make cornbread? In a glass pan, Bitty thought to himself, an eight-by-eight if you had it. His was aluminum. He had only some memories of ’93, and the barely older people he met as it began to snow with more regularity, kinda, once a season or such, spoke of snowmen and sledding—one perfect moment of winter. Now, enough snow stuck to Bitty’s knitted mittens that it didn’t even melt in.
His first year in college, it came down catastrophically, and some of his professors slept overnight on the Perimeter after school got out too late. For two weeks the connector was unusually empty; they subsisted on whatever was there in the residence hall, and then after a day or so turned to Mellow Mushroom pizza. Bitty liked the white pies and the ones with chicken.
From his window, he’d watched the occasional Suburban mosey down Piedmont, all gracious-like, unsure of whether it oughta be out on the street when things were like that. Now, in Samwell, there was ice melt scattered across the downtown sidewalks. He trod right over it. “Your boots,” his mother’d chided him, when he came in for Christmas with white stains around the soles. Last year he’d found it a too-stubborn-to-scrub nuisance, but now he knew something she didn’t know.
There were voices in the living room, and the foyer was dark. In the kitchen, the sink was brimming, Bitty could see, even with the only light spilling in from the entry. He snapped the lights to find the brown bottles in the disposal side and takeout containers in the other, not rinsed out. Bitty liked to reuse those, and he certainly went through them, giving things he’d baked away and whatnot; nice of them, he figured, to save those for him, although he also thought they coulda rinsed them out a little, if not washed them, spare him the trouble. He put the tap on, pushed it all the way to the wall; by the time he was back to fill the electric kettle, steam was pluming. The empty jam jar, he now saw, was there too.
There were more dishes, was more Styrofoam, to shove aside to fit the leftover wrap in the fridge. Something plastic, kinda pink, clearly noodles—big fat ones, like the udon his father would get at the sushi place in Athens because his mother liked their California roll and it was on the walk back from the stadium to the “better” parking lot Coach knew about, somehow, on a less-busy street. But it wasn’t udon, Bitty figured, pouring hot water over his teabag. Udon was brothy amber.
“What’d you boys get for dinner?”
Of course, Will was still there. Of course, why wouldn’t he be? What was he going to do, go home? He had his mouth open when Bitty stepped into the living room, but he closed it quickly, putting his beer between his legs. He was on the big Morticia Addams wicker chair Lardo found in the kindling pile at that bonfire in October.
Chris’ hand was on Caitlin’s knee cap; at Bitty’s question he slid it, just barely, up her thigh. She licked her lips and said, “Malay Maritime.”
“Oh god,” said Bitty, rolling his eyes in Will’s general direction. “is that some lobster thing?”
“No,” said Chris. “It’s the new hawker-type place.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“Southeast Asian? Like, street food,” he added, for Bitty’s benefit.
“Oh, um. I saw something like udon in the fridge—”
“It’s laksa.” Cait was swamped in some sports sweatshirt; it must have been Chris’. Was she staying over? Were they all? “It’s coconut milk broth. It reminds me of Java. It’s good, you should try it.”
“Oh, honey, that’s sweet of you, but I had a Jerry’s wrap for dinner.” Bitty thought about whether to tell them which one, and then thought he’d better not—then he’d have to tell them he got those tots, and then how the screen test went, but he really didn’t want to get into it.
Of course, Chris asked, “How was the shoot?”
“It was a screen test. It was fine, I guess, thanks for asking.”
They asked him a few questions, but Bitty knew they were the banalities of polite disinterest. For a moment, replying to Chris’ inquiry about why Bitty had agreed to play the cocaine fairy (“Chris, darling—for the cocaine”), he wondered if he shouldn’t do something to make the topic seem more invigorating. But the will to a more animated delivery simply wasn’t with him tonight. Maybe it was the film itself, which Bitty had to admit was not very interesting, or its director, who displayed no passion for it either. Jack’s earlier advice, about valuing one’s contribution, did not align with Bitty’s present mindset: rambling in the presence of his roommate, his roommate’s friend who made getting your pilot relit a real chore, and Chris’, well, whatever she was. Girlfriend, Bitty figured. Caitlin Farmer.
When the questions had seemingly dried up, and when Bitty realized he was so tired he would have to go upstairs, or sit down next to Cait on the fetid green couch, he put his hand on his hip and said, “I am absolutely beat. Y’all gonna be down here all night?”
“We’re still talking,” Chris said.
“It’s not even that late,” Will said.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Bitty said.
“I’m processing.”
“Whatcha processing?” Bitty was not even sure he was curious. And yet before Will could initiate an answer, Bitty instinctively voiced the realization, “Oh, lordy, not this again.” He regretted asking, and blurting it out.
“Yeah,” Will said. “Still that.”
Cait said, “Well,” with emphasis. “These things take a lot of time to process. It’s so confusing.”
“What is?” It seemed entirely clear to Bitty. “What’s to process?”
“Well,” said Chris, who was awfully well-meaning about these things. “Trauma.”
“Why does he keep texting me?”
Bitty wanted to believe that Will knew the answer. And yet he had the look of true confusion, his features all knotted up, caught between doubting his own instincts and knowing his doubt was well-placed. It was a look Bitty had seen on his own face before, whenever he bothered to let himself really like someone.
Will licked his lips. His thumb was covering the mouth of his beer bottle. God, Bitty thought, why would you put your thumb there? Isn’t that where you put your mouth?
“Bless your heart, Will. Some boys’ whole personality is just acting kinda spacey, or being kinda deep and whatever, and they thrive on the attention they get for it. I’m not saying it’s not anything, but how long do you really need to process it? He keeps texting you cause you text him back and give him attention for it. That’s it, sweetheart, it’s not a big mystery and whatnot.” Without waiting, Bitty added, “Look at the time! I’m gonna take a nice shower. Thanks for fixing that, again, I really mean it.”
After saying goodnight, and heading up to shed his costume, Bitty heard them consoling: that no, of course Derek wouldn’t do that, he was so unpretentious, obviously he cared about Will a lot.
And maybe he did, Bitty figured, but he wished they wouldn’t get poor Will’s misplaced hopes up. Life was so short, and there were so many boys in it, and some of them just weren’t worth your time like that.
Screw it, he thought to himself, midway through pulling the curtain across the tub, I deserve what I really want. He slammed the diverter.