The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [139]
Going to Jay’s wedding had not been easy for Martin, not because he didn’t wish his friend happiness but because it drew into such sharp relief his own—and at that time, more recent—failures. This disconsolation had made Maria seem like a mysterious and regal countess from some forgotten country who could take him away from his troubles; and in a way, that was exactly what she had done, allowing him for those few minutes to believe that what he felt was more than a reactionary desire to love a woman, knowing that doing so would make his life so much easier. It was more than just a fantasy on his part; he had genuinely fallen in love with her, if love was sharing that which cannot be shared, to the extent that the respective deaths of their parents had created some implausible bond of truth and experience. Or at least this was what Martin had told himself at the time, when he was confronted with the strange but miraculous revelation that he wanted her, not as a friend but in the most visceral, physical way possible, as if in the grip of a chemical addiction. He didn’t care that he was “in the closet” or having more sex with men than he wanted to admit even to himself, or that this sudden desire did not seem so far removed from the ridiculous notion he had long held about meeting the perfect woman who once and for all would “cure” him of his homosexual tendencies. If it meant a chance to resolve their shared grief, then to make love with Maria had at that second seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
WHEN IT WAS over, if some part of his vision remained—i.e., he could not escape the feeling of having experienced something magical and ineffable with her that went beyond having sex in a utility room at a hotel, even a luxury one like the Pierre—he knew it was not something that could ever be described as love, or at least not the romantic kind. So when she stared up at him unblinking and motionless, he pushed himself off her, still wanting to be near but not to touch. He caught his breath and became aware of the sounds of the hotel: the mechanical click of the air-conditioning, the distant clanging of pans from the kitchen below, the thud of music from the ballroom. Maria sat up and looked at him as she removed her underwear from her foot. “Well—that’s what I call fucking,” she said.
Martin laughed at the brazen quality of her statement and helped her to regain her balance. They returned to the hallway and parted ways to go to their respective bathrooms, where as Martin looked in the mirror, he admitted that not even Maria Sheehan would ever be “the one” for him, and although he had come to terms with this certainty in the past—or so he believed—he felt inspired, or altered, enough not to want to hide it from Maria or anyone else. He owed this to himself as much as he owed it to her, and the second it was acknowledged, it felt like a fait accompli, so that he looked back at who he had been a minute earlier and wondered why it had taken so long.
He met her back out in the hallway. “I have to tell you something.”
“What now?” Maria stepped around him to a mirror, where she reattached to her ear a dangling hoop of an earring.
“Uh, well—I’m gay,” Martin said, and laughed at the ease with which it slipped out, newly amazed that two words could ever have caused him so much grief.
Maria gave him an odd look in the mirror. “Really? And here