The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [138]
He rested Gérard’s head in his lap and tried to comfort his friend. Though Gérard seemed too stunned to talk—Lucien was not sure he even recognized him—the pace of his breathing became less frantic, and his moans subsided. As he held him, the rough texture of Gérard’s shirt reminded Lucien of the first time they were together at the St.-Germain, and he thanked Gérard for having been so kind to his younger self. He also thanked him for teaching him that the city was a different kind of theater, and finally for these past few weeks, when Gérard had helped Lucien negotiate a loneliness that he suspected could be appreciated only by those whose parents and lovers were already dead.
Gérard lifted his head and looked up with shining eyes. His lips barely moved as he fought to speak just a few words. “Did we win?”
With his free hand, Lucien wiped clear his own eyes and then leaned down. “Oui, mon chère, we won,” he confirmed, almost but not quite singing the words as he would a lullaby, and knew that like so many lies, this one resonated in the truth.
38
The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
NEW YORK CITY, 2002. It was the beginning of May, and Martin’s new plants—a mix of dwarf conifers, Japanese maples, and alpine succulents—had arrived that morning in several large boxes from a nursery in Oregon. He’d spent the day, brilliant and warm enough to make the chill of April seem far off, on his deck replanting a collection of concrete troughs—also left behind by Leo—which he had already refurbished with new topsoil, sand, and peat. As he worked—unpacking each plant before carefully placing it in a designated spot and padding it into its new home—he had enjoyed an almost narcotic intoxication he had not experienced since pottery class in high school, or before that when he used to paint goalie masks. In many respects, it had been a perfect day, exactly what he had hoped to achieve when he left his job, and as he settled into a living room chair, from which he could admire his new botanical charges, the wet leaves of which glistened as the sun arced down toward the Palisades, he found it difficult not to contrast the tone of such thoughts with the wounded, bellicose state of the city—and even, or especially, the country at large—since 9/11, and for a second he wished that everyone could afford to take at least a few months off, to cultivate a plot of earth, to be reminded of the certainty that whatever happened, beautiful things could still grow out of almost nothing but air and dirt and water. It was a ridiculously naïve idea, of course—to think that society’s problems could be solved through gardening—but he smiled as he remembered discussing it online a few days earlier with a fellow alpine enthusiast and seeker of a long-term relationship. They had been chatting at regular intervals since “meeting” a week earlier; the only negatives were that this guy lived in Brooklyn—effectively one hundred thousand miles away from Washington Heights, as they had joked—and that he was about to leave the country for three months. But they had agreed to get coffee when he returned, which represented the first concrete step in Martin’s “self-improvement program,” as he regularly referred to it—with only a trace of irony—in discussions with his sister.
HE SIPPED HIS whiskey, which transformed the encroaching stiffness in his fingers into something almost electric. He flipped over the My Bloody Valentine LP he had on the turntable and thought about Maria Sheehan—he had introduced her to the band—and made a mental note to send