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The Hotel Bar
The thing is, they’re both 53 years old. They both have adult children. They’ve had the same steady jobs for the greater part of their lives, and they have wives who have shaped them into the men they are.
They’re almost done. Life is sweeping past, and they’re in the home stretch—work, work, retirement, rest.
“Are you alright tonight?” Sol touches Robert’s arm. The wool of his suit is heavy for the winter—New York City is nothing like San Diego in February.
“Just tired,” Robert responds, a little gruffly. “We’d never cut it out here. Everyone looks like they’re trying to impress each other.” He glances around the bar, obviously ill at ease. He’s a California man at heart, no matter where he goes.
Sol smiles kindly. “Well, you were impressive today. You might need an extra carry-on to take all those business cards home.”
Robert laughs, eyes downcast. His drink is half-finished, melting on a coaster—a whiskey sour. Sol drinks them too, but he’s not as big a fan as Robert is. Robert glances up, a small smile on his face. “Another round?”
Sol shrugs. “Sure, why not?” He can tell Robert is tired, can tell he’d rather be at home in his study or playing checkers with Mallory, and to be truthful, Sol would much rather be curled up on the couch with Frankie watching HGTV than trying to drown out the NYC traffic outside the bar.
But there’s something else there, something Sol can’t figure out, even after all the time they’ve spend together—in their lives, during their stay in the city. So they order another round. Robert pays, and then pays for the round after that, and the one after that.
Ground Floor
There are two elevators, both paneled in a rich, deep red, and Sol really hopes the one on the left opens first because he doubts he’ll make it to the one on the right without stumbling over his own feet.
“I drank too much,” Sol says conversationally, rocking back on his heels. He’s not drunk; he hasn’t been really drunk since 1981. But he’s hazy and comfortable, the fuzz in his mind settling to a sweet hum.
“Makes two of us,” Robert says, jamming his thumb on the ‘Up’ button once more. The bar is emptying out; only a few stragglers remain, their suit coats and high heels removed. “Can this thing be any slower?” He flicks out his arm, checking his watch.
“We’ve got nowhere to be,” Sol says, leaning against the wall. The left-side doors slide open and they enter in tandem. Sol curls his hand around the safety rail against the back of the car.
The doors close, and Sol looks over at Robert.
2nd Floor
“What are you looking at?” Sol thinks his vision is blurring at first, but the elevator ride is smooth as the slowly ascend, the world steady around them. He hasn't had that much to drink.
Robert doesn’t say anything—not at first. His hands are clenched at his sides. He has big hands—short fingers, but big palms. His chest pumps with each breath.
“Robert?” Sol feels something like a shimmer of ice down his back, like a bead of cold sweat. It pools at the base of his spine. It startles him when he realizes it’s the feeling he gets when Frankie smiles at him or brushes her hair in the morning, only with her, it comes slow and sweet like molasses, like something he dips his toes into.
Now, that feeling is a lightning bolt, buzzing him all the way down to his bones.
“I can’t,” Robert says, voice gravelly. “I can’t not. Not anymore.”
“Can’t what?” Sol’s voice comes out as a whisper. He feels small next to Robert all of a sudden, small under his hooded gaze. He feels like he’s naked.
3rd Floor
Robert takes a jerking step forward. He only needs one; the elevator is small. He reaches up to cup the back of Sol’s neck. His grip is firm; it makes the hair on Sol’s arms stand up.
“Oh,” is all Sol says, eyes wide, and meets Robert halfway.
6th Floor
Sol’s suit coat has fallen on the floor. It’s a nice coat, one of his nicer ones, really, though Frankie always said it made him look like a bureaucrat. When Robert’s hands tighten on his hips, Sol takes a step back, the fabric crumpling beneath his shoes.
Sol can count the number of people he’s kissed on one hand. He hasn’t kissed anyone but Frankie since their second date. He never wanted to. But this kiss isn’t comparable to anything, it can’t even be set side-by-side with the kisses he’s had before. He feels like finally, finally, he’s completely in sync with another human being. He’s not weird Sol, sensitive Sol, quirky Sol who wears organic shoes and has sons with goofy names. Nobody expects anything. Nobody can be let down.
He’s just Sol, and Robert is just Robert, and it suddenly makes so. Much. Sense.
8th Floor
“I don’t understand this,” Sol says, and as he pulls away, his lips graze Robert’s. It makes him shiver, the pure eroticism of that simple brush of delicate skin.
Robert groans deep in his throat. He reaches up to press his thumb against Sol’s bottom lip. “I don’t, either,” he says, voice hoarse with emotion and something that might be lust. “I just know that I…I wanted, and I couldn’t not.”
Sol feels something tear loose in his chest—a gasp, maybe, or a cry, and then he’s the one kissing Robert, hard, wet, lewd, a kiss he’d be embarrassed about if anyone saw it.
But they’re in an elevator. The doors are closed. The car is moving swiftly—up, up, up. Only one button is lit. He fists his hand in Robert’s lapel, shoving him up against the doors, bracing his elbow next to Robert’s head.
Robert’s hands are firm on his back, cupping his shoulder blades like Sol is something rare and beautiful.
15th Floor
Robert has always had nice hair. Thick, light. Easy to style and maintain. Now, it is mussed out of order, disheveled in a way Sol has only seen after a brutal case, or after Robert comes out of the ocean with the girls at the beach.
But Sol did this to him. This is Sol’s work, Sol’s destruction.
Robert stops kissing him for a moment, and Sol sighs from the loss, but Robert’s mouth soon attaches to the soft skin beneath the hinge of Sol's jaw.
“Robert,” Sol says, voice low, and when Robert groans, arms tightening around Sol’s waist to tug him into an embrace, Sol knows he’s absolutely fucked.
20th Floor
I’ve never thought about men, Sol wants to say. I’ve never been with a man, kissed a man. He wants to say, this is the alcohol. This is the latest case, us working side by side for so long. This is New York City.
There are a lot of things Sol knows he could say, but they would all be lies, so he just deepens the kiss, wishing he could curl into Robert. He wants to be held.
What about our wives? What about our children?
This is when he starts to cry, but Robert just brushes away his tears with his thumbs and kisses, kisses, kisses him.
26th Floor Hallway
Sol walks on shaking legs back to his room—Room 2608, on the opposite side of the elevator from Robert’s room. He can’t feel his fingers and toes; they feel like television static, like he’s been electrocuted. His heart thumps in his throat. He’s hard—has been since Robert looked at him on the first floor, eyes turning to steel once the doors closed.
He fumbles with his key, can hear Robert doing the same from down the hall. He won’t look up. He can’t. He can’t bear any more of Robert’s heavy gaze settling at all the most vulnerable places on his body—the nape of his neck, the small of his back.
He feels old. They’re not young men. They can’t blame youth for what they’re doing, for what they’re going to do. Young men fall into bed with the wrong people, they tell lies, they hide things—or, maybe, other young men do that. Robert and Sol never dreamed of it.
They were happy. Happy men don’t need to lie.