You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [5]
He shakes his head and keeps walking up the street, one of whose features is a truly remarkable plentitude of shapely women, and I am reminded of the pleasures of being single, glances and smiles being enjoyed without guilt and for that matter why not consummation? Maybe it’s unseemly for a seventy-three-year-old to talk about erections but oh, do I get ’em! I’m thinking along these lines when we pass the lobby of a luxury hotel convention center kind of place and of course I’m also thinking trade shows and how far ahead you have to book those things, so I turn in and after a small protest Graham follows; I tell him I need to use the bathroom.
“I’d like to talk to the special events manager,” I say to the girl behind the desk.
“I’m afraid he’s only here during the day, sir,” she replies with a blistering customer service smile, as though she were telling me exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Well, isn’t that just wonderful,” I say and she seems to agree that yes it is wonderful, wonderful that the special events manager of the Continental Royale keeps such regular hours, as though it were the confirmation of some beneficent natural order.
“I guess I’ll just have to take a suite anyway and see him in the morning. My son and I will have a little room service dinner in privacy, where the sharks don’t circle!”
Mild concern clouds the girl’s face as she taps at her keyboard.
“The Hoover Suite is available on nineteen. That’s six hundred and eighty dollars a night. Will that be all right?”
“Perfect.”
When I’ve secured the keys I cross to where Graham’s sitting on the couch.
“Dinner is served,” I say with a bow.
“What are you talking about?”
“I got us a suite,” I say, rattling the keys.
Graham rolls his eyes and clenches his fists.
“Dad!” There’s something desperate in his voice.
“What!”
“Stop! Just stop! You’re out of control. Why do you think Linda and Ernie don’t want to see you, Dad, why do you think that is? Is it so surprising to you? They can’t handle this! Mom couldn’t handle this! Can’t you see that? It’s selfish of you not to see a doctor!” he shouts, pounding his fists on his thighs. “It’s selfish of you not to take the drugs! Selfish!”
The lobby’s glare has drained his face of color and about his unblinking eyes I can see the outlines of what will one day be the marks of age and then all of a sudden the corpse of my son lies prostrate in front of me, the years since we last saw each other tunneling out before me like some infinite distance, and I hear the whisper of a killing loneliness travel along its passage as though the sum total of every minute of his pain in every spare hour of every year was drawn in a single breath and held in this expiring moment. Tears well in my eyes. I am overcome.
Graham stands up from the couch, shaken by the force of his own words.
I rattle the keys. “We’re going to enjoy ourselves.”
“You have to give those back to the desk.”
By the shoulders I grab him, my greatest invention. “We can do so much better,” I say. I take him by the wrist and lead him to the elevator hearing his mother’s voice behind us reminding me to keep him out of the rain. “I will,” I mutter, “I will.”
Robert Wagner is on the elevator with Natalie Wood but they’ve aged badly and one doesn’t take to them anymore. She chews gum and appears uncomfortable in tight clothing. His turtlenecks have become worn. But I figure they know things, they’ve been here a long time. So I say to him, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t know where I might call for a girl or two, would you? Actually what we need is a girl and a young man, my son here’s gay.”
“Dad!” Graham shouts. “I’m sorry,” he says to the couple, now backed against the wall as though I were a gangster in one of their lousy B movies. “He’s just had a lot to drink.”
“The hell I have. You got a problem with my son being gay?” The elevator door opens and they scurry onto the carpet like bugs.
For a man who watched