The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [116]
“Guert? Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”
“Yes,” said Affenlight gloomily.
“And?”
“And I’m sixty years old. I’ll be sixty-one next week.”
“That’s true,” said Owen. “But I’m not sure how it relates to what we’re talking about.”
“Which is?”
“Which is the fact that we have nothing resembling a normal relationship. We’ve never been to dinner. We’ve never been to a movie. We’ve never even rented a movie.”
“I don’t like movies.”
Owen smiled. “That’s because you’re an Americanist and a philistine. But I feel like a prostitute, showing up at your office every afternoon. A poorly paid one, to boot.”
“It’s not like I don’t want those things,” said Affenlight. “I do.”
“But?”
“But… it’s delicate.”
“I know it’s delicate. I know we can’t just walk around holding hands. There are restrictions. My worry is that you find these restrictions convenient. Or even necessary. What if we were in New York, or San Francisco, or even down the road in Door County? What if you came to Tokyo with me? Would you walk down the street with me then? Could you look in a store window and see us holding hands? Or would that be too gay for you? Better to stay right here, in the heart of the problem, where your restrictions will protect you.”
“You’ve been reading too much Foucault,” Affenlight said.
“That’s impossible. And anyway don’t be glib.”
The mention of Tokyo, those words in that order—What if you came with me?—scrambled Affenlight’s thoughts. It was possible, really it was. He could take a year’s sabbatical, pretend to be writing a book, wander around Japan with Owen as his fearless guide, Buddhist temples, neon kittens, tea, Mt. Fuji, the tiny island where two of his uncles died. Bill Murray in that movie he’d never seen, just like he’d never seen Groundhog Day, the one with the curvy blonde and the hotel bar, May–December in a far-off land.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Owen added. “I’m not trying to stake some ominous claim. I’m not even saying I like you. But why would I want to be with someone, for whatever length of time, with whom I can’t go anywhere? I want to live, Guert. I don’t want to hide in your office. It was fun the first week.”
He folded his slender arms, to indicate that he had finished steering the discussion and was willing to wait for Affenlight’s response. He would make a first-rate pedagogue if he chose that route; then again he would make a first-rate anything. All that remained of his injury was a makeup-like swipe of steel blue that traced the outer and under curve of his eye socket. Affenlight shifted in the rose-colored chair. He knew that this was his exam, he was supposed to be answering questions and not asking them, but he felt exhausted, buried in his chair, and he couldn’t help it. “What should I do?”
Owen uncrossed his arms, unfurled himself from his lecturer’s perch. His eyes flashed darkly. “If I were you I’d ask me out to dinner. I’d put on a nice shirt that matched my eyes and I’d pick me up in my silver Audi and teach me about opera while I drove me out through the dark countryside to some Friday-night fish fry in some little town in the middle of nowhere.”
“You don’t eat fish,” Affenlight said.
“I know. But I’d be so smitten by the invitation that I wouldn’t care. And then I’d take me to a motel and turn off the heat and crawl into bed with me and watch cable television into the wee hours, the way that consenting adults are sometimes entitled to do, even if they normally detest television. And I’d hold me all night and kiss me on the ear and recite whatever poems I knew by heart and feed me awful processed snacks from the vending machine, since