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And now I must stop procrastinating and get to the point of this letter, dear boy. If it isn’t too much trouble the beautiful Elaine (and yours truly) will be passing through the area on the 24th December, sooner rather than later, owing to a writers’ residency which was put off and put off and put off until the rest of us folded our arms and said we didn’t even mind if it was close to Christmas. Big mistake! Of course, I’m not only asking to come and stay because you’re a conveniently placed acquaintance – we haven’t seen you in a good long while, and we’d very much like to. Elaine promises to bring her famous mosaic cake, and I promise to bring that collection of Poe’s poems I keep meaning to mail you. And some very good wine. You need only bring yourself, I promise. Let me know what you think, and in the meantime I am as ever
Yours,
John Keating
-
“Who’s that from?” said Neil, shutting the living room door behind him. “Jeff? Baby, you left the door open again.”
“Sorry,” he said absentmindedly, “I forgot. No, not Jeff.”
“Thought not. The last one was only three months ago. Who, then?”
“Keating.”
He dropped the book he had been holding abruptly; it thudded to the ground, making Todd jump. “What happened?”
“Nothing!” Todd said sharply, looking at him wide-eyed. “He’s absolutely fine! What’s the matter with you?”
Neil picked up the book again, looking sheepish. “What’s the matter with you?” he said, hooking his chin over his shoulder. “Your face got all pinched reading it. I assumed the worst. What gives?”
“He wants to visit,” Todd said, handing him the letter. Neil raised an eyebrow.
“Over Christmas?”
“Mm-hm.” They lapsed into silence as Neil read and Todd shrugged off the arm looped casually around his waist, moving instead to stand nervously, shifting from foot to foot, by the coffee table. He scanned the words with a script-reader’s ease and looked back up, the eyebrow having remained perfectly in place. “See?” said Todd.
“Baby,” said Neil patiently, “I do not see. I’m blind. Why can’t he come and visit?”
Todd folded his arms. “Neil.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Fine. Look around, pretend you’re Keating and you’ve just come in. Tell me what you see.”
“Whatever pleases you,” said Neil, grinning at his warning glare, and immediately adopted a slow, measured gait around the room, hands behind his back, peering closely at every inch of space. “Hmm. Dear boy, I’ve got to commend you on this mantelpiece. It’s really – I mean, the carving is just – ”
He stopped. Todd knew exactly what he was looking at; the photo stuck to the plaster with peeling sellotape, them together by the Cliffs of Dover, grinning wide. There hadn’t been anyone around, it had been too windy, so in the photo Neil had his arm around Todd’s neck, pressing a hard kiss to his temple. Todd’s sunglasses had gone askew, and he’d been trying to fix them, mid-laugh at the force of the kiss. The next photo was worse; Neil’s birthday. The one after that; Easter in Arcadia. The one after that –
“Fuck,” said Neil.
“Succinct,” Todd agreed. “And he doesn’t know you live here, either.”
“I could – ”
“I’m not kicking you out over Christmas.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said Neil, looking entirely too pleased, Todd thought, for the situation at hand. “But what are you going to tell him? ‘Hi, Neil’s going to be here too the whole time, for reasons inconclusive but definitely uber-platonic! By the way, don’t look at all the pictures of us making out everywhere!’”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He sat down heavily on the couch, facing away from the mantelpiece. “I can tell him not to come.”
“It sounds like he’s going to be here anyway,” Neil pointed out. “And besides, you don’t want to see him? I want to see him. It’s been decades.”
“A decade. You saw him last year.”
“Ten minutes backstage? That’s barely anything. Look,” and his words trailed off slightly, and Neil sat down on the floor, squeezing his knee lightly so Todd had to look at him. “I’m going to suggest something.”
“God.”
“No, I don’t think this is His jurisdiction. Baby, why don’t you just tell him about us?”
The hand that Todd had laid over Neil’s spasmed – briefly, but he knew that Neil felt it. “You’re not serious?”
“Deadly. Listen. I don’t think he’d take it badly – hold on, let me say this one thing. Remember when he said he’d gone to see Angels in New York? The Kushner? I don’t think bigots do that.”
“You can’t know that off of a throwaway sentence,” Todd argued.
“He’s kept in touch with Charlie.”
“They’re not that close. Anyway, that’s not the point.”
“I think it is,” said Neil gently. “It’s a new millennium, baby. Can I say something a little mean? I think you’re overthinking this.”
He crossed his arms, tucking his feet underneath him on the couch, and Neil looked steadily at him, a knowingness in his eyes. “I don’t think you’re thinking about this enough, Neil. This – if he finds out – ”
“Then what,” said Neil. “He tells people? Todd, they already know. You wear your ring to work.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t shut up about you and you know I don’t shut up about you,” said Neil flatly, and in spite of himself he cracked a small smile. “Listen. He tells people? It’s not a problem. He wants to leave? Let him leave. He wants to get mad? Personally I think there’s more chance that he drops dead in our living room, but sure, if he gets mad, we just kick him out. He – ”
“He stops writing,” Todd murmured.
“What?”
He was already on his feet. “Sorry. Stupid. I mean, you’re right – ”
“Oh, baby,” said Neil, and the way he said it, the softness and the pity, made it a little more humiliating than it might otherwise have been. “I didn’t think about that.”
“No,” said Todd, inspecting his hands. There was an ink stain on the first knuckle of his forefinger, much faded, which was still there even after he had washed the breakfast dishes. He would have to cut his nails pretty soon. “I mean, it’s not really that – important – it’s not as if – I mean, I write to lots of people. Lots of people write to me. Whatever.”
“Come here?” said Neil, reeling him back in. Todd went willingly, absentmindedly fixing Neil’s collar where it had doubled over against his neck. “It’s, um, no. I get it. It is important. I guess I just…”
“You’re not that close,” said Todd, walking them back down onto the couch. “He asks about you when he writes, you know. I didn’t want to ask. I figured maybe you’re just a bad correspondent.”
He gave a self-conscious laugh. “I am. I kind of feel like we should be – closer, I mean. I mean, he’s the reason I got started doing any of this, right? I’d be in the wrong kind of theatre now if it weren’t for him.” The joke, made a little wistfully, fell flat.
Todd shrugged. “That doesn’t make him your debtor.” Even years later Neil still didn’t like to talk about it, that first era of their shared lives, the cold, the frost, the play, the gun. Keating was, on some level, just another artefact associated with that time. Todd wasn’t sure if there was any blame – willing or unwilling – involved, but Neil wasn’t exactly forthcoming on the subject either. He had tried pushing the issue a couple of times but had never succeeded, and had thought: better just let sleeping dogs lie.
“You’re right, like most of the time,” said Neil. “But it’s different for you.”
He had, initially, kept in touch with Keating mostly for his impressive network of academic connections – what teenage boy would willingly admit to wanting to be friends with his teacher? Better just to couch it in terms of employability – but, over the years, he had grown man enough to admit that they had become friends. Keating, who was really mostly John these days, was no longer the golden idol, the trendsetter, the head of the parade, but a man and a colleague, who read his papers and critiqued his work and sent him his own work to be critiqued in turn. Yet underneath all of it Todd was still the wide-eyed sixteen-year-old he had been, looking for approval before he ever looked for affection. “Sure,” he said quietly.
Neil leaned his head onto his shoulder, his hair soft against Todd’s neck. “Invite him,” he said, hand finding his and squeezing. “I won’t make you say anything.”
-
[...] so yes, if you come through on the 24th just let me know about what time we I might be expecting you. Sorry again that the house is going to be so crowded, but Neil couldn’t have predicted his apartment flooding so close to Christmas. I’m taking in all sorts of strays… I’m reminded somehow of an old story about an inn and no room. If three kings and some shepherds ask to hitch a ride with you, can you please tell them I’ve only got the one camp bed, and there are NO babies expected?
I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to seeing all four of you: that’s you, Elaine, Edgar, and the cake. I’ll next see you on the 24th.
Yours,
Todd
-
“No, well, the last I heard about him, he’d ended up in Toronto, teaching – shoes can go by the door – well, yes, that’s it exactly, I couldn’t understand why they’d hired him either, they can’t be that pressed for candidates – that’s alright, do you want me to get your coat too?” They came in in a gale of conversation. Most of Todd’s colleagues would never have believed that serene Dr. Anderson was the same as this man with the cold-flushed cheeks and the near-constant laugh, but then again he didn’t often get like this: only when the stars aligned, or tensions were running high. “He published recently, I believe,” he said gaily, hanging everyone’s coats up on the row of pegs next to the entrance.
“I told John at the time I couldn’t think of why you hadn’t gotten the position,” said Elaine, winking exaggeratedly at him. She was a tiny woman with an oversized presence and equally oversized hair, and a mouth more expressive than most people’s eyes. She nudged him with an elbow, grinning. “We were at the launch, and you can’t imagine how few people came. A few more than are at his lectures, probably.”
“Stop this defamation,” said Keating with good humour. He shook his hair out of his eyes; it was slightly longer than it had been the last time they had met, and had a good deal more grey in it also. But his face, worn about with smile-lines, was still the same as ever. “It’ll get back to him and then I’ll feel terrible; he’s not an offensive man, just bland. Todd, you must show us – Neil!”
Todd turned from where he had been shrugging off his own jacket. Neil had come out into the entryway and was waving, a little awkward, his smile a little tight around the edges. “That won’t do,” said Keating promptly, and hugged him. “How have you been? You look a good deal different under all the stage makeup, I can tell you.”
“Pleased to hear it, sir,” said Neil, softening enough to flash him a real, sideways grin. He looked very comfortable, in his old flannel with the sleeves rolled up and his hair swept back where he had been running his hands through it: there were the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and an intrinsic ease to the way he braced a hand on the wall, the other patting Keating on the back. Todd tried not to tense.
Keating laughed, that big booming laugh which he had only heard for the first time in his mid-20s, and which had then startled the hell out of him. “No hierarchy, if you please. We’re on equal footing now. Neil, this is my wife Elaine.”
“Lovely to meet you, Elaine.” He was doing his best twinkling at her, and she was, clearly, charmed immediately. “I’m Neil, Perry, another one of your husband’s students.”
“Ex!” Todd called from where he was toeing off his shoes.
“Man is a student for life, thanks very much,” Neil fired back. He was talking to the room at large, but he darted a glance at Todd, his eyes softening. Todd smiled back, letting his shoulders relax.
“You’re the cutest thing I ever saw,” Elaine declared, shaking his hand with great fervour. “I can’t imagine John managed to teach you much. By the way, I’m awfully sorry about your apartment. Was anything damaged?”
“Nothing important,” said Neil, leading them further into the living room. Todd draped his jacket over his arm and followed. “But the floor and carpets are pretty much done for. It’s a bit of a mess over there right now.”
“I can imagine,” said Elaine sympathetically. “It’s a good thing you’ve got a friend nearby, that’s what. Isn’t it, John?”
“A stroke of good luck,” said Keating. Todd tried not to read too much into the look he gave him and Neil, smiling and crossing to the kitchen instead. He propped open the door with the corner of a side table. “Beautiful apartment you’ve got here, Todd.”
“You know interior design is my strong suit,” Todd quipped. It looked bare to him; he hadn’t realised how many of the photos on the walls contained him and Neil both. Luckily there were enough trinkets and ornaments they had collected over the years that it still looked at least slightly lived in, but it was still hard not to worry: surely Keating would realise that the magazine on the coffee table was Neil’s, not his, or that the beautifully carved roll-top writing desk in the corner had been an anniversary present. “It’ll feel quite cramped before your visit is over, I promise you. I’m going to finish up on dinner. Neil, do you want to – I mean, do you two want to go settle yourselves in? The guest bedroom is second on the right.”
“I’ve got it,” said Neil, and with a brief, friendly touch on the shoulder all three were gone. Todd took a shuddering breath and retreated into the kitchen, staring unseeing at the lamb rack in the oven and the clingfilm-wrapped cake on the counter and the asparagus which was warming on the stove. It was all slightly too much; the bright bubble of happiness that had settled over his shoulders, the light fizz of good conversation, the growing, sinking nervous pit in his stomach. There were too many plates he had been given to spin. When a hand brushed the small of his back, he jumped.
“Woah,” said Neil. “Okay?”
“Sorry. Okay.” He looked around him into the living room; Neil shook his head, and he let himself lean slowly forward, their arms coming up around each other. For a moment the horrible feeling eased. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“This was a mistake. I hate treating you like a roommate.”
“You’re pretty good at it.”
“Can you just – no jokes, please?”
“Sorry. Sure,” said Neil, pulling him closer. “Nothing we can do about it now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Let’s stop apologising, huh?” He dropped a quick kiss to the top of his cheekbone, just under his eye. When he drew back his smile was genuine, but slightly strained. “I don’t like it either, but we can talk about this after they go home. I promise to get mad at you then.”
“No, you won’t,” said Todd, smiling helplessly back at him.
“No, I won’t. The asparagus?”
“It won’t burn. Don’t think I deserve you,” he added, giving the pan a quick shake.
“No more stupid thoughts,” said Neil lightly, smoothing his hair down, his fingers scratching lightly over Todd’s scalp. “Did you put their presents under the tree?”
“I think they’re still on the couch. Can you…?”
“No problem.” He hopped the step back up into the living room, and a minute or two later there were footsteps in the corridor and Todd saw Keating come in, walking with a guest’s tentative stride.
“Elaine’s calling her niece. Anything I can help with, dear boy?”
“Nope. Get thee gone,” said Todd, gesturing at the oven and smiling sideways at him. “Even I’m just playing a waiting game here.”
“If you insist,” said Keating, and Todd heard him begin a friendly, unhurried conversation with Neil, both of them milling around the tree. It was oddly homelike, with the warmth of the stove and the faint strains of talking and laughing that reached him from the living room. Almost if he closed his eyes and tried not to listen he could pretend that – that maybe – he didn’t quite want to think it. Neil said something about how the couch was better for him anyway, and that Todd wasn’t exactly big on uncomfortable furniture, you know, just look around, and the smile went a little frozen around the edges. He put the thought out of his mind: it was true he couldn’t name what he wanted to pretend, but in the end it didn't stop him from pretending.
-
“A toast,” said Keating unexpectedly, reaching for his glass. “To host anyone over Christmas is an arduous task, but doing it with two weeks’ notice…”
“Herculean?” Elaine suggested. She was putting her glasses on to write down the mosaic cake recipe for Todd, and was looking down her nose through them at him to great effect.
“That’s exactly the word I was thinking of. Thank you, my dear.”
“I’m always doing this,” she said aside to Neil; they had become fast friends over the course of the meal, so alike with their fast-paced talking and quick humour that their conversations were a little hard to enter, yourself. He quirked an eyebrow, looking amused.
“Shouldn’t he be paying you for that?”
“I’m reasonably sure it was in my vows. When you boys get married you’ll have to remember not to harangue your brides like that, huh?” Her lips pressed together with suppressed mirth, and Neil laughed. Todd laughed too, but it was slightly strained even to his own ears: a dead giveaway. He reached for his wine.
“No, no, no,” said Keating hastily. “I’ve started a toast and I mean to finish it. To you, Todd.” He drank deeply – a little too deeply, they’d have to cut him off after this – and Todd concealed his appreciative nod behind his own glass.
Beneath the table he felt a foot hook around his ankle. “To you,” said Neil quietly, looking him in the eyes.
Predictably, the post-dinner haze hit Keating hard. After the third time he had fallen quietly asleep on the couch, spectacles balanced precariously on the edge of his nose, Elaine shot them both a fond, exasperated look and nudged him awake again. “John, you’re no use.”
“Like this, dear?” said Keating sleepily.
“At all. Come on. I’m sorry about this. Goodnight, boys!”
“It’s no problem,” Todd called after her, laughing to himself as Keating, with a tired, rueful grin, followed meekly after her back to the guest bedroom. “Goodnight!”
They moved in quiet sync around the living room, tidying up. Not quite in sync: Todd kept his gaze flicking towards the open living room door, despite himself. Neil noticed – of course he did – and after they were done, said to him, “Let’s go out.”
“Where? Nowhere’s going to be open.”
“Just out, then.”
He gave in easily. The apartment, even cosy and warm and still filled with the tinge of laughter as it was, was beginning to feel too close, the constant glancing around a small but increasing toll on his nerves. It felt strange to put on their coats this late, unlocking and then relocking the door of their own apartment as quietly as if they were still kids, sneaking out at night. Outside was cold and dry. The leaves crunched gorgeously under their shoes and the lampposts cast flickering pools of light onto the frost, then were thrown back at unpredictable angles. Every so often a whip-line of wintry air lashed across their cheeks, as effective as a jet of cold water. The moon hung low, huge and pearly and unshaded by clouds; they remained for a long minute motionless, looking upwards, arms linked together, leaning on each other. “This is nice,” Neil whispered.
“Mm.”
“It’s nice seeing Keating, too.”
“John.”
“You know I can’t call him that.”
“How do you feel?” He reached up, adjusting Neil’s hat where it was listing to one side.
He smiled, leaned into the hand. “I’m okay.”
“Stressed?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“A little. Not as much as you are. You’re neurotic, baby.”
He sighed and leaned back into his side, looking around again at the spidery outlines of the trees lining the pavement, the faint warm lights in the distance of some bar not yet closed for the night. “Yeah.”
“I said I wasn’t going to push,” said Neil, walking them slowly back towards the direction of their building. “And I’m not. I’m just asking, how do you feel now? About…”
He thought about it, almost afraid to look to the side and meet Neil’s eyes. The eyes which he knew would be full of perfect understanding, without a shred of reproach in them – which made it worse. The night was cold and clear, and inside him there was a roiling of emotion, turning around and around and around. He breathed out hard and shakily, but none of it went away. “I don’t know.”
“But are you going to think about it?” Neil said, gently, but firm. “You can’t bottle this up forever. It isn’t good for you.”
“Yes. Promise.”
“Then everything’s okay.” They were almost at the building now, the steps up to the door wreathed in shadow. Neil drew him close and whispered into his mouth, “Merry Christmas, baby. Just in case I don’t get to say it.”
-
He slept – badly. Without Neil there, his grounding hand on Todd’s elbow or his fingers running gentle circles over his knuckles, it was a good deal harder to stop himself from sleeping in little fits and starts, coming slowly awake four or five times throughout the night. Each time, the other side of the bed was cold, and the moonlight slightly too strong, and Elaine’s quiet snoring slightly too audible through the wall which separated their bedrooms. At about six in the morning, he gave up and got out of bed.
The living room was still dark, and Neil was muttering and shifting in his sleep, folded up irregularly on the couch. Todd smoothed back his hair from his forehead and he stilled, but went on sleeping. Moving as quietly as he could, he crossed to the other side of the room and opened the kitchen door.
“Oh,” said Keating, mirroring his look of surprise. “Did I wake you, Todd? I’m sorry. I hope you don’t mind me using your coffee.”
“Go ahead,” said Todd after a moment. “I think I’ll have some, too.” Keating handed him the kettle in silence and he poured hot water into the coffee granules, thinking to himself how strange he would have found this at the age of seventeen. “Sleep well?”
“Oh, yes. No complaint there, dear boy. It’s only old age that keeps me awake.”
“Where’s the old man?” said Todd, making a show of looking around. “I didn’t know you’d brought along somebody else.”
Keating laughed. “A way with words! But that’s your job. Why are you awake, hm?”
“Christmas morning,” he said dryly. “Too excited. Merry Christmas, by the way.”
“It is, isn’t it,” said Keating, looking a little surprised again. He looked down and Todd noticed for the first time that he had been tapping his fingers on a book, laid out next to his coffee on the kitchen counter. He slid it over. “This is the one present I didn’t wrap. Merry Christmas.”
“The poems!”
“The very same. I meant to give them to you yesterday, but…” A brief look of embarrassment flashed across his face. “I had had a little more wine than I meant to. That makes this, what, four or five months since I promised to send it to you?”
“That’s alright,” said Todd, skimming quickly through the pages. “Thank you, John.” Keating handed him the sugar and he took a heaping spoonful, stirring it in. “It will help.”
“Are you doing anything along those lines at the minute?” He raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Potato, potahto,” he said, shrugging. “Not particularly, but a few of my students might. What it will help with is deciding what to read before bed.” Or rather, what Neil would like read to him; he insisted upon it, even with two working eyes and a taste in literature which was radically different to Todd’s own. He smiled to himself and said, “Poe’s a bit of a crowd-pleaser, isn’t he?”
“If you say so,” said Keating good-naturedly.
"It's just that Neil - " He stopped abruptly, suddenly aware of the rushing of blood in his ears. He had been meaning, he realised, to do the impossible; he had been going to tell him what he had been thinking about, as naturally as if it was no problem at all, as easily as if he had nothing to hide. He set the coffee down, thinking, his heart contracting painfully in his chest, of Neil stretching uneasily awake on the couch. It was almost torture not to speak, but if he spoke he thought he would have nothing to say. There was too much in him, like thread all tangled up, no entry point to be found. Keating said, “Dear boy, are you alright?”
“I’m – ” He didn’t know how to say it. He opened his mouth again and said blindly, “John, there’s something – I think there’s – I have to - ”
“You’re just like you were back then,” said Keating.
It brought him up short. He stopped, breathing a little too hard, his voice a little too hoarse. “Scared shitless?”
He shook his head. “Brave. Look. I think…” He took back the poems and flipped them open, scanning pages until he found the one he was looking for. “There you go. I was thinking of letting you find it by yourself, but now is as good a time as any.”
Todd took it with hands which were, surprisingly, steady. It was the hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius; Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal… And beneath it, in Keating’s beautiful, scrolling, old-fashioned hand:
Merry Christmas to Mr. Anderson and Mr. Perry. Treat each other kindly.
From your friend
John Keating
“John,” he said. His voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. The sun had risen while he wasn’t paying attention and now it speared through the windows, striking every surface with reckless, rapturous light. “John, is this – ”
“Neil mumbles in his sleep,” said John, smiling brightly at him. “That must be a new habit. You never mentioned it before. Try not to make him sleep on the couch again, will you?”