Survivor's Guilt and Other Stories Page 8

  Very curious indeed.

  I’d known Jake Lamauthe for years but wouldn’t call him a friend. I’d never cared enough for him to want to get to know him better or to build a friendship. We often were at the same parties, as we knew most of the same people. We were always distantly friendly, the way people who barely know each other are at social gatherings, full of false bonhomie and cheer that didn’t go very deeply. He seemed to be in his late forties and had established himself into polite New Orleans society through his exceptionally successful floral shop on Magazine Street. He’d cultivated the rich hostesses of the Garden District and Uptown, first to help his business grow—and then somehow managed to make the transition from hired help to invited guest. That took some doing in a city like New Orleans, where the lines of class were drawn before birth and rarely crossed. He was certainly never going to be asked to join Rex or Comus, of course, but he’d managed to charm his way into becoming a mainstay at parties and dinners hosted by the city’s bluest bloods.

  There was just something about Jake I didn’t like, from the very first time we’d met, and nothing had ever warranted changing my opinion. He was an attractive enough man, if you liked that type. He’d always struck me as the kind of man who would have facelifts and color his hair—but then, he’d let it go gray and he looked better for it. But there was just something repellant about him. I could never put my finger on what exactly it was about him I’d always found distasteful—but I’d never cared enough about it to figure it out. We were socially polite to each other, and I used his services on those rare occasions I felt the need to host a gathering of some sort in my home. To give credit where it is due, he was a master when it came to floral décor. I myself was absolutely hopeless with flowers.

  The dinner conversation continued to swirl around my head as a cater waiter cleared away plates and brought in dessert dishes of orange sorbet. His name was Luke, I think—he’d worked a dinner party at my house the previous month. I had chatted him up in that dreadful, nerve-wracking hour before my guests arrived, when I am always terrified no one will actually show up. Luke was a master’s student in literature at Tulane—he had actually heard of me and was familiar with my work. I smiled at him as I deflected a rather invasive question about my next book from Dolores Devlin, who was seated on my right—Dolores was always tactless when she drank gin, which was a regular occurrence, unfortunately. I turned away from Dolores and looked directly across the table. Sebastian was watching me without expression and we looked directly into each other’s eyes again. This time he didn’t look away but met my gaze fearlessly, as though daring me to speak to him. The pinkness of his cheeks in the candlelight made him look slightly feverish. Our eyes remained locked as Dolores chattered mindlessly away, not even aware that she’d lost my attention. I wondered which one of us would look away first, but then Lorita tossed out another one of her peculiar conversational gambits my way, and courtesy forced me to turn and address my answer to her.

  After the dessert plates had been cleared and Lorita began ushering her guests into the drawing room for brandy, I excused myself and slipped out the French doors onto the terrace for a quick smoke. As I lighted my cigarette, I heard the streetcar clang past on St. Charles Avenue. It was nice and peaceful out there. I sat down in a chair in the darkness and stared up at the stars, wondering how much longer I had to wait before escaping this abysmal party without appearing rude. I heard the French doors open behind me. I turned my head and watched young Sebastian come down the two steps.

  He walked on the balls of his feet, which gave him an odd rolling gait that coupled with his immaculate posture gave him the appearance of being uncomfortable in his own body. His arms didn’t swing as he walked, and his shoulders remained solidly in place. “Hello, Sebastian,” I said, and blew a plume of smoke up to the sky.

  He smiled at me, and even in the darkness I could not help but marvel at how truly extraordinary his beauty was. The smile—so rarely in evidence throughout the interminable dinner party—exposed remarkably white and even teeth, and dimples that deepened in the rose-shaded cheeks. “You’re a writer.” It wasn’t a question. He sat down on the other side of the table from me and pulled out his own pack of cigarettes—Marlboro Reds. He tapped one on the edge of the table before lighting it.

  I nodded. “Did Jake really hit you with his car, or was he trying to be clever?” I asked, stubbing my cigarette out against the sole of my shoe.

  The smile disappeared, the expressionless mask slipping back into place. “Yes.” He took another puff from his cigarette and didn’t look at me. “Although he makes it sound like he ran me over. I was in my car. He pulled out in front of me.”

  “That’s quite a story.” I lit another cigarette. From inside the house I could hear a jazz recording I didn’t care for—Lorita’s musical taste was nearly as bad as her parties—so I was in no hurry to go inside and rejoin the other guests. I blew out smoke. “You don’t like the story.”

  “It’s how we met.” He shook his head. “I just don’t like the way he tells it to people. Sometimes, though, I wonder—” He cut his words off when we heard the sound of the doors opening again.

  “There you are, darling.” Jake put his hands down on Sebastian’s shoulders proprietarily, and he stiffened almost imperceptively in response. “You mustn’t pester David, Sebastian—writers like their solitude, don’t they, David?” Jake’s eyes glittered, and he swayed a little bit.

  I could smell the whiskey on his breath and knew he was drunk.

  “I’m sorry if I intruded,” Sebastian replied, looking down submissively.

  “Let’s go inside, shall we, dear?” Jake gave me a malevolently triumphant smile of ownership as he guided Sebastian back up the brick steps and inside the house. But just before they went through the doors, Sebastian looked back at me over his shoulder.

  It was a look of quiet desperation if I’d ever seen one. I lighted another cigarette, and by the time I’d finished it and rejoined the party, Jake and Sebastian had already made their apologies and left.

  “I think Jake was a little drunk,” Lorita slurred to me in what she thought was a whisper but could clearly be heard by everyone in the drawing room.

  That look haunted me over the next few days. I would be working on my book—I was in the corrections and revisions phase, which is always tedious—and when I’d stop to think for a moment, I’d see that look on his face again. I wasn’t sure what it meant—and I replayed our interaction several times trying to figure it all out.

  There was something about young Sebastian that had somehow lodged itself like a splinter into my psyche.

  It was possible I’d misread the look and it had been something else entirely. Or nothing at all, for that matter. But the more I thought about it, the more I was certain he was appealing to me for help, which didn’t really make much sense. Why me, and help from what? I cursed myself for not bothering to get to know Jake better in the past, or for at least not paying better attention. Several times I picked up the phone to call Lorita—she collected gossip the way some women collected shoes—but always stopped myself before I could dial. Lorita would naturally want to know why I was asking about Jake and Sebastian, and I didn’t have an answer that would satisfy her curiosity. Once I’d hung up, she would start to wonder about why I was asking, what I was up to, as she poured herself yet another whiskey, and would eventually come up with her own explanation for why I was asking. By the next glass of whiskey she’d be convinced it was all true. And after refilling her glass a third time, she would be telling anyone who would take her call about my obsession with Jake Lamauthe’s new lover.

  And that was not something I cared to have spreading through the Garden District like bubonic plague.

  Besides, even I myself didn’t understand my curiosity about Sebastian.

  It really came down to that haunting look he’d given me on the terrace.

  I’d been alone two years—nearly two—since Robert had left. Cer
tainly, Sebastian was a beautiful young man, but there were plenty of beautiful young men in New Orleans. If I wanted to see beautiful young men, all I had to do was drive down St. Charles Avenue in the late afternoon. The neutral ground between the streetcar tracks would be filled with beautiful shirtless young men jogging, their muscular torsos gleaming with sweat in the late afternoon sun. No, my fascination with Sebastian was a curiosity about the strange look on his face when Jake told the story of how they’d met, the way he’d stiffened ever so slightly when Jake touched him on the terrace, and that final, odd look he’d given me when they’d gone back inside.

  I was thinking about that look as I climbed the stairs to my gym three days later, and wondering if I had crossed that thin line from curiosity to obsession, when I ran into Sebastian coming out. His hair was wet with sweat, his soaked white tank top clinging to his muscled chest like another layer of skin. I could see his hard little nipples and every cut muscle in his stomach. He was wearing aviator sunglasses so I couldn’t see his eyes as he brushed past me and mumbled a barely audible “excuse me.” He either didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to talk, so I just continued up the stairs.

  I made it up another three stairs when he called my name. I stopped and turned to look back at him.

  He’d pushed the sunglasses up on top of his head and he was smiling, his dimples deepened in the rosy cheeks and the even white teeth gleaming in the late morning sun. Again I marveled at the difference in his face when he smiled. He started back up the steps toward me. “It’s me, Sebastian.” He held out his right hand. “I’m sorry, I was in a hurry and then I realized it was you.”

  I took his moist hand and shook it. “Nice to see you again, Sebastian.” I smiled. “I didn’t know you worked out here.”

  “I just started recently.” The smile didn’t falter in the least. “I didn’t know you worked out here, either. How often do you come in?”

  “I try to get here at least three times a week.” It was a lie—I hadn’t been that regular since Robert left.

  “Is this the time you usually come in?” he asked, frowning as he looked at his watch. I nodded, and he went on, “Well, maybe we could work out together? I have to run right now, but say Wednesday? At eleven?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great.” He turned and went down the stairs at a gallop, and I watched him go out the door before continuing on my way up to the second floor.

  That was how Sebastian and I started working out together. In the two days before we met, I kept telling myself that he was just a nice kid who seemed like he needed a friend, that it would benefit me to have someone I met regularly at the gym so I could get rid of the spare tire stubbornly starting to form around my waist, and so on. That Wednesday morning, I couldn’t focus on the pages I needed to revise, and kept pacing, looking at the clock and the slow creep of the hands around until it was finally time for me to get to the gym.

  He was waiting for me, sitting at the counter reading the newspaper. He was wearing another white tank top like the one he’d worn the other day, with long baggy red basketball shorts that reached just past his knees. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said with a big grin.

  “Why would you think that?” I replied, curious.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know—I really don’t get out of the house much, and I don’t really have any friends.” He beamed at me again. “I hope we can be friends,” he added shyly, not able to look me in the eyes.

  I was touched, and felt sorry for him. It couldn’t be easy being involved with Jake Lamauthe, I figured as we went through our workout. I’d never liked him, and he’d gone through any number of “boyfriends” since I’d first met him. They were always younger, always rather pretty if a little vapid, and they never stuck around for very long.

  I found myself looking forward to meeting Sebastian at the gym—I didn’t get out of the house myself very often, other than errands and the gym. And while he was reticent at first, he eventually became more talkative. Not so much about Jake, of course, but more about himself. He was from Nebraska originally (Of course, I thought when he told me, the corn-fed good looks and the apple cheeks.) but had left for New Orleans when he turned eighteen to make his way in the world. His parents were very conservative, as was everyone else in the small town where he grew up, and he knew then he was different, not like the other boys he played football with or who were on the wrestling team. College wasn’t an option, and after graduation everyone expected him to go to work in the pork processing plant.

  “The whole town smelled of stale blood,” he said, making a face, “and I just wanted to get away. And New Orleans seemed like a magic place, you know? So I came here.”

  “And you met Jake, and now you live in a big house in the Garden District.” I smiled, removing the forty-five-pound weight plates off the bar we’d just finished using. His face darkened, but I pretended not to notice.

  I also pretended not to notice other things—like the frequency of the ugly bruises or black eyes he would always try to explain away as nothing. “I tripped” or “I’m so clumsy” or “I’m always bumping into things” was the catechism I came to expect from him whenever he showed up trying to cover up another one. Jake was bigger than he was, of course—Sebastian was lean with no extra body fat on him anywhere. He couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and fifty pounds dripping wet, while Jake was a big man, easily topping the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds. I know Jake came to the gym in the evenings after he shut down the store, and he worked with one of the trainers—I used to see him when I’d come in to do the elliptical machine in the early evenings when I was stuck on whatever book I was writing—the mindless concentration of a cardio machine often helped me work through whatever problem I was having with my writing. I’d never heard that Jake was violent—but there was something about him I’d never cared for. Perhaps I’d always sensed there was violence just below the surface of his smiling and of-so-friendly façade.

  Many nights I would lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I should say something about them or offer to help him get out of Jake’s house. It was unusual. If Sebastian were a woman there would be no question about it; I would say something, I would do whatever it took to get her away from her abuser. I would talk to her, sit her down and explain how the violence never stops, it never goes away no matter how much your man says it will or how sorry he is. It only stops in death.

  But he was a man involved with another man, and I didn’t know if the bruising and the black eyes might be a part of some kind of kinky role play they both enjoyed. I didn’t know if my intervention would be welcomed or seen as an incredible intrusion and invasion of privacy. And I liked Sebastian. The workouts were the highlight of my week. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would wake up and be excited because I was going to see him at the gym. I didn’t want to do or say anything that would jeopardize that.

  If he needed my help, I figured he would ask for it.

  He was an adult, right?

  The book was finally finished, and I printed out two copies and burned a CD the way my publisher always wanted. I drove down to the Fedex office on Tchoupitoulas, and when the package was on its way to New York I went into the PJ’s next door to treat myself to an iced mocha as a reward for turning the book in only two months past deadline.

  As I stood in the line, the guy working the register seemed vaguely familiar, and as I moved steadily closer to the counter as each person in front of me placed their order, I tried to remember where I knew him from. New Orleans is a small town, and this kind of thing happens all the time—you see someone in a different context than you’re used to seeing them in and it drives you crazy until you remember. This guy, for example, may have used to work in a restaurant I frequent, or worked out at my gym for a while at the same time I did, or maybe was just one of my readers and had come to a signing. He could just be a fan who had become my friend on Facebook, and I was used to seeing his face on my ne
wsfeed.

  When I reached the counter he smiled at me. “David! I haven’t seen you in a while! How are you?”

  “Good,” I replied, trying to hide that I had no idea who he was. “And you?”

  He smiled, and winked at me. He leaned over the counter a bit and said, “I live in a roach-infested studio apartment and work here for next to nothing, but I am so much happier than I was!”

  And in that instant, I knew immediately who he was—he was Sebastian’s predecessor in Jake’s life. “I’m glad,” I replied, genuinely pleased for him but with all kinds of questions racing through my head.

  “I’m going to UNO for the next semester,” he went on, oblivious to my fumbling for something to say. “Getting the hell away from Jake was the smartest thing I ever did.”

  “It was that bad?” I heard myself saying.

  “You have no idea.” He rolled his eyes. “What can I get for you?”

  “Large iced mocha,” I replied, and handed him a five dollar bill.

  I’d planned on drinking it in the car on my way home, but instead I picked up a Gambit Weekly and sat down at a table. I pretended to read it while I watched him. Here’s your chance to find out about Jake and what goes on in that house, a voice whispered inside my head, and clearly he has no qualms about keeping Jake’s secrets.

  I watched as people came and went, drinking the mocha as slowly as I could, even as the ice melted and watered down the flavor. Each time I drummed up the nerve to go talk to him, someone would walk up to the counter to order, or the girl he was working with would start talking to him, or his cell phone would ring.

  I finished the mocha and tossed it into the garbage. Figuring it wasn’t meant to be, I started for the door to the parking lot when I heard him call my name. I turned and he came out from around the counter. In his hand was one of the store’s business cards, and he pressed it into my hand. “Call me sometime,” he said with a big smile. “It would be nice to catch up.”