It struck Edward in the middle of his follow-up prostate exam—Dr. Beller’s gloved fingers searching his rectum like one might search for the perfect word, certain of its existence—that he hadn’t had sex in nine years. The Parker House. Boston. 2011. A fluke. He marked it like a historic event. A national tragedy. Which, looking back, it basically was. The man, Jesse, was in his forties and Edward had met him at the hotel bar, after an exhausting day of pharmacology workshops. They got to talking about the Arab Spring and, after their third round of White Russians, sealed the deal in Jesse’s room. It was lengthy and artless and afterward, when Edward went to the bathroom to clean up, his heart belabored, he vomited beige milk into the marble tub.
And before that, who knows how long—there’d only been a few men since Leon left him in the early aughts. Edward had since retired, his seventy-third year behind him, and everything in his life had become one big world of soft. His food more malleable, his clothes more comfortable, his memory more selective. He felt pressure on his prostate. That little nugget of gold that had more than once brought him to the edges of the earth was now, after several beams of radiation, on the brink of vestigial, and he longed for the days when just a glimpse of another man’s nape could send him to space.
“Everything feels normal,” Dr. Beller said. Edward looked at his wide eyes and young cheeks. The room was bright and windowless, with a framed print of an anal canal diagram hanging crooked on the wall. “Let’s take a look at you in ten months. No earlier, okay? Go live your life, Mr. Hall.”
“Oh, please,” Edward said. “It’s Edward. Mr. Hall is my father.” The irony was, in fact, that his father would have said the same thing. A rehearsed line he used on any woman he encountered, waitresses, bank tellers, teachers. Edward thought it was flirty, though, and wondered if his father was onto something. “You can’t be a day over thirty,” Edward said, familiar with the journey of a physician, the years it subtracts from your life, physically and emotionally, your body essentially a machine. He felt his face heat.
“I assure you I’ve seen my fair share of rectums, Mr. Hall.”
“It’s Edward. And yes, okay, sorry about that. When you’re old, everyone is young.”
“Bring this up to the nurse,” Dr. Beller said and handed Edward a sheet of paper covered in scribbles. Edward squinted to read but only saw what looked like the word “pepperoni.” He looked up to Dr. Beller for a decryption, but the doc was long gone, spinning on to his next patient, his organs still pink and primed for destruction.
◆
On his walk home up Market Street, Edward took a detour through Dolores Park, where in his twenties, with his then boyfriend Turner, he’d eaten cocaine cookies, which it turned out was not even a thing. The two ended up talking swiftly and honestly to each other for a solid two hours, listing the pros and cons of buying one-way tickets to Provence (pro: no inhibitions, con: no money) before late-night khao soi at Thai Spicy BBQ and an even later game of pool at HiJacks. This, like everything else he recalled of his springtide, was when Edward grabbed the bull by the horns, seized the day, lived in the moment, all that shit, whatever it means.
Aren’t we always living in every moment? Edward thought. This moment of him cutting through the park. This one of him stopping for a Tom’s Turkish coffee. Of him sitting on the curb in front of the local AA building. Watching a young couple across the street maneuver an armoire up four flights.
◆
Edward excused his way through a horde of hipsters protesting a new spin studio on the corner of Seventeenth and Castro. The crowd was small and quiet and pumped their fists weakly as though they had just secretly attended a class with Stryker or Todd that afternoon. The San Francisco he grew through—of schism, of mutiny, the jingle-jangle—stopped compelling him once he started making money.
“Are you at all interested in heaven?” a young man asked him, swallowing that final word and handing Edward a flyer. He had on ripped white jeans and a white tee shirt. A moustache splayed across his face like a brushstroke. To Edward, he looked focused and present, as though he wanted to be there, at that corner, reaching out to him.
Boy, he thought, the Evangelical recruiters around here are getting quite bold. It was those two words, at all, that bothered him the most, as though this disciple took one look at him and knew that, in his antiquity, he’d done nothing but deny church doctrine. There was a point in his life, maybe his late teens, when he’d entertained the idea of salvation, of redemption. Of burning bushes and brazen serpents. And he loved bread and even more so, wine. But he never made it through the door. Though he took the flyer, as a reflex. When one hand extends, the other does the same.
“Heaven is overrated,” he said and stuffed the paper into his coat pocket.
This moment of Edward climbing the F train. This one of him nodding to his doorman. Of him turning the key to his condo. Shutting the door behind him.
◆
In the years following the divorce, Edward moved from their post and beam in Mill Valley to a condo in the city, rescued a mutt named Rocket from a shelter in Sacramento, and made a new life for himself.
“Edward and Rocket,” he’d say out loud so he could hear his name coupled up. Plus, he had his work to get lost in. And Hannah just a few hours away in grad school at UC Davis. He was more than comfortable. But the nighttime began to unnerve him. Small sounds made him jump. The whining of the wind or the faint wail of a car alarm way below. Rocket’s puppy nails tapping on the hardwood floors. And the way things wouldn’t move unless he moved them. At one point, Edward left an unused wine glass on the dining room table and watched it every day for a month. His psychiatrist, Dr. Giannopoulos, referred to it as autophobia, suggested meditation practices, and prescribed him a generous dose of Klonopin.
That evening, he grilled some chicken apple sausages and Vidalia onions on his veranda. The skyline looked no more or less beautiful than it did the previous night. The Bay Bridge had a new light display he didn’t much care for, even though Leon, a district judge, was one of its many benefactors, or perhaps, because of that fact. It was described so eloquently in the independent arts paper as “a phlegmatic flourish of Lite-Brite applesauce and Big Dick Energy.”
Edward sipped at a 2000 Nebbiolo and watched an ant carry a wasp from the living room into a vent in the kitchen. Rocket didn’t so much as move at the sight. If he was a puppy, he would have been romping like it was the end of days, but at twelve, he snored with his eyes open. It was only when Edward was dressing to take him out that he saw the missed calls and messages. It was Hannah, she was calling a fourth time.
“I was just about to take the dog out,” he said, balancing the phone between his cheekbone and shoulder, tying up his boots.
“Where are you?” she asked, irked.
“Where am I? I told you I’m with Rocket and we’re—”
“Dad, you were supposed to pick up Luna from dance forty-five minutes ago. What the fuck? She had to hitch a ride with Mr. Castellucci. I was shocked when she told me she wasn’t molested.”
“Hannah, shit. I’m so sorry. I forgot it was Thursday. But she’s okay right?”
“She’s fine. He tried to take her for ice cream but she’s lactose intolerant, so she said she didn’t want to, which is crazy because—fuck Dad, this is the third time.”
“I just lost track of the hour,” he said, petting Rocket’s head to calm him down. It was a technique Dr. Giannopoulos taught him, using pets to quell nerves.
“You didn’t lose track, Dad. Just say it. ‘I forgot.’ And for the record, The Coda is not a nursing home. Like not even close. Have you heard of The Villages outside Orlando? Remember we listened to that podcast? It’s like that. They don’t even have cars. They drive golf carts to the supermarket! Like hello. Imagine zipping around town in one of those things. I read the rate of STDs is out of control. People are really living, Dad, not dying. I sent you the brochure. Rocket would love it. Did you get the email?”
“I hate golf, Hannah.”
Edward hung up with the intentional and dainty touch of the red button on his iPhone. He remembered when he could slam the phone down onto a ringer—the impromptu-ness of it all. The startling sound it would make. The dissensions that provoked it. When he and Leon were seeking to adopt Hannah, a series of interviews needed to be completed. On the afternoon of the first one, Leon was an hour late. Edward stalled as much as he could, guiding the social worker through their garden, explaining the life cycle of heirloom vegetables, and the conditions of good soil for planting.
“Raked, well-rotted. Plenty of organic matter,” he told her. He scooped a handful from beneath the tomatoes and let it fall back to the earth. “See, good soil, like this here, crumbles easily.” When Leon finally called him back, Edward ran into the kitchen to answer. He watched the social worker watching him, so he kept his cool, when he wanted to throw a tantrum. But Edward was no child. He was not helpless. He put on his pants one—albeit arthritic—leg at a time, just like everyone else.
◆
The fog swept its way across the city, bringing with it a wind that numbed Edward’s tender joints. It was the reason why he enjoyed the same walk at the same time each evening. It was like a reprieve, a forgiveness. He approached a small patch of grass near the end of his block—Rocket’s favorite spot to conduct business. Because of Rocket’s age and lack of control, Edward needed to “express” Rocket’s bowels every day. With a gardening glove on, he pinched his fingers together as though he was picking up a potato bug and firmly tugged at the anal opening in an outward motion until Rocket “presented.” When he went to grab a poop bag from his coat pocket, he pulled out the flyer from that afternoon and unfolded it. Valhalla All-Gay Cruise Line. It read in a teal neon glow. There was a shirtless hunk of unknown race wearing aviator glasses and a sailor cap. He was being fed grapes by one arm with no body attached and a pink martini by another. Below this ordeal, in thin, surprisingly beautiful finer print it read:
Your Heaven Awaits.
Later that night, Edward took Dr. Giannopoulos’s advice on body scanning as a form of meditation. The idea was to note each part of your body, from head to toe, and feel it. Really feel it. Bring awareness to any aches and pains and then finally, release. An enormous sigh. But when he reached his back, it began to itch. It reminded Edward of the time the whole floor of his office had contracted scabies from one of their college patients who had gotten it over a debaucherous spring break weekend in South Padre Island. The antidote: application of permethrin cream 5% to all areas of the skin. When it came time for Edward to do his back, Leon refused to help, finding it macabre. Edward was forced to unevenly apply the cream. They were divorced not long after.
◆
Pier Thirty Five was lined with men of all ilks. This reassured Edward as his minorly-sculpted body had been stored for good upon retirement, put in a cardboard box, taken to the post office, and lit on fire. For years he kept himself in shape, yoga downtown with the techies, apple slices for snacks, Equinox, he even ran the Chinatown YMCA 10K. But he felt like there was no reward. No one noticed him any more or less, and his confidence plateaued. He felt like he deserved a reward for all his hard work. Then the sweet tooth came. Came in like a tempest. After years of rejecting the chocolate croissants at Hannah’s weekly dinners, the opera cakes, the madeleines, he was ready to experience a new type of joy. When Luna asked which tooth caused such cravings, he pointed to an incisor.
“Wow,” she said and slapped playfully at his cheek. “We’re going to call you Papa sweetie pie now.”
“So, you have nicknames for me now, huh, munchkin?” He tickled at her belly.
“Mama calls you Papa Poopy Pants,” she said in a laughy fit.
“That was one time, Hannah!” he said and tossed a tea cookie at her head. Hannah covered her smile with a dish towel.
“Three times,” she said.
Edward bought one of the last tickets available on The Immortal. It happened to be one of the priciest in the DreamClass tier, spa-inspired, panoramic views, a butler on call. The ship would sail from the Bay to Los Angeles where it would corral a few hundred more before setting sail down the Baja Coast for Cabo San Lucas.
He just had a few days to make arrangements for a weekend away. He found his passport, refilled all his prescriptions, flagged all his credit cards, and googled “older man sexy swim short fashion.” Even though his post-divorce sweet tooth had un-sculpted the body he’d once worked so hard to keep in shape, he bought the first pair suggested, Andrew Christian marigold and square cut briefs, overnight shipping.
When they arrived, he stripped down and tugged at his love handles. The trunks fit nicely around the waste and perfectly snug at the crotch, but he thought he looked clearly pathetic, a pear spoiling in the sun. He stuffed them at the very bottom of his suitcase, hoping they would disappear in the darkness.
“It’ll be good for you to get some peace and quiet,” Hannah said, drying the last of the dishes, the morning of the cruise when he stopped by to drop off Rocket. Edward neglected to tell her what type of cruise it was, let her mind drift to shuffleboard and water aerobics. He knew she would be supportive no matter what, but he wanted this, this one thing, for himself.
“Yes,” Edward said. “Peace and quiet.”
◆
The Immortal was a mammoth of a ship, it dwarfed everything in its shadow. From the pier it looked supernatural, like a sleeping building. Edward recalled the double-decker plane he took from San Francisco to Madrid. So much metal to build such a beast, so many alloys. He felt invincible on it, like together they could power through the strongest of storms. It was his first time on a cruise ship, though. And come to think of it, he could only count a handful of times he’d even been on a boat. The most memorable being when Leon had rented a catamaran on Labor Day in 1995. The day was full of hard ciders and Pinochle, and they just swam and swam until dusk when their friend, Albert, an elementary school art teacher, had gotten so drunk, he smashed a beer bottle and began stomping barefoot on the glass. All the men on the boat laughed at the sight, until Albert cut a wound so deep into the bottoms of his feet, even Edward threw up his medical hands. The coastguard was called, and Albert was rushed to SF General for stitches while the rest of the boat finished the day with hot dogs near the sea lions. The following morning Edward showed Albert how to properly clean and dress his wounds—light soap, lukewarm water, keep everything moist with Vaseline, and covered. Leon was fined by the rental company for the incident, and made Albert pay half.
It took him some time to find his room but was helped by a cute staff member with anchor earrings. Things were just as advertised. Certainly spa-inspired. Crisp white towels folded into birds on the edge of the bed, a complimentary bottle of Veuve, modern clawfoot tub, his and his robes. He nodded his head upon arrival. Okay, okay, he thought. I could get used to this.
A virtual assistant named Kiki took the form of a small purple disk on the dresser.
“Hey Kiki, open the curtains.”
“Opening starboard curtains,” she said in such a sensual voice it was laughable.
The view was regal. He couldn’t discern the ocean from the sky. He didn’t even realize the ship was well on its way to LA. It actually felt a bit like home. But Edward put that thought out of his head. He didn’t want to be a creature of comfort.
“Hey Kiki, turn on the television.”
“Getting station channel five to Valhalla Cruise Line promo.”
A list of the goings-on for the day: Cabaret in the dining room, chicken fight at the main pool, shuffleboard on Deck B. He swallowed a Lipitor and two Xanax with a gulp of champagne and happily sat through a slideshow of chiseled young men standing on a dock, then in a hot tub, then on a stage dressed in drag. By the last image, a masked jockstrap gala à la Eyes Wide Shut, he began to feel heavy, then heavier, the bliss of the pills at work.
◆
The next morning The Immortal made a speedy stop in Long Beach. Hundreds of poppy-cheeked men boarded like a mothership collecting its victims. Edward sipped at some maté and watched from his balcony. The air smelled of salt and vanilla. He was reminded of how warm Southern California was in comparison to Northern. How when you’re not from here, you think the whole state is a mellow dream, that the brutal winds of the Bay don’t exist. Many years ago, he had spent seven months in Santa Monica when Leon’s sister, Kaandra, battled endometrial cancer. Leon, at the time, was presiding over a DUI trial involving the son of a wealthy political donor, and it kept him in San Francisco. Of the two, Edward then became the obvious choice to be with Kaandra. They had always been close, shared a similar sense of dark humor. Were able to laugh at life’s absurdities that felt human to Edward.
After Kaandra’s death, his own abnormal gang of cells befell his prostate, slowly but conspicuously, a fortunate combination of adverbs when it came to cancer. Given Edward’s age and profession, he was able to nip it in the bud. Meanwhile, Leon, while supportive, felt distant to Edward throughout his radiation, as though questioning his loyalty to a potentially soon-to-be-dead person. But he lived, he survived, he came out on the other side with insight. In Santa Monica, Kaandra liked Edward around for his off-the-record medical opinion. Was this the correct Lortab dosage? What did the doctor mean when he said “estrogenic pesticides?” And also, because he’d sneak her a Double-Double with fries from In ‘N Out, foods high in PCBs she really wasn’t supposed to eat. Some doctor, Edward thought as he yelled his order into the speaker at the drive thru.
Toward the end of her life, Edward felt as though he knew nothing about the body, could not name one bone or muscle, had no professional insight. About a year before, Kaandra had agreed to carry Edward and Leon’s baby. It was on Christmas day they all came to the accord. Over baked maple ham, cranberries and brie, honeyed Brussel sprouts, and too many peppermint mimosas, a real occasion. But by February, before signing any sort of official paperwork, Kaandra began having insufferable pain, and her weight was down a frightening thirty pounds. The conversation was bottled up and sent to sea, never to be found again.
This made Edward think of the first day he held Hannah. How her eyes rolled up to look at him. How when they told him about love they told him this. Hannah and her small lungs, all that new oxygen. How even though she was adopted, Edward could see his own crooked nose in hers. And later that week, on one of their first official outings as a family, Hannah strapped to Edward’s chest by twisty canvas, they ran into one of Leon’s old law school buddies at the Jewish bakery. As Edward tilted a sleeping Hannah towards the cases of lemon sponges and chocolate orange tortes, he overheard Leon explain that they were “forced to adopt” and that he wouldn’t wish the process on anyone, gay or straight. Edward felt betrayed, not for himself, but for Hannah. What did it matter how she found herself in that particular bakery strapped to that particular man? As long as she was there, and she was theirs. Edward remembered walking immediately outside, away from Leon and his strange energy, and into the goodness of the sun.
“Hey Kiki, call Hannah.”
“I’m sorry. I cannot make your phone call at this time,” she said.
When The Immortal shoved off, it made a sound like the boom of a bassoon. Commune, commune, commune.
◆
That evening Edward shuffled down to the main deck, tote bag full of Men’s Health and People, for a pre-dinner Manhattan. His outfit of choice was periwinkle canvas shorts and a breezy white button-down. He had never cared much for fashion. Someone once told him that when post-fifty years old, to abide by two simple rules when it comes to clothes: expensive and plain. And so, he did just that. But suddenly, men around him were wearing Lycra singlets and velvet thongs, and it felt like all eyes were on him, waiting for him to show up in slacks hiked up to his nipples.
In the center of the ship there was a gigantic inground pool and surrounding it, at all four corners, were hot tubs, simmering with bodies, and Edward needed a cocktail. At the bar he was offered a bump by a man who was dressed suspiciously like Snow White: golden skirt, red bow tied into a black bob, puffed sleeves, and a blue leather harness in place of the traditional Renaissance bodice. He thought of every joint he turned down, of every mushroom he never ate, the yesses he never gave. And he agreed. Nervously, he’d show the universe something, anything. The princess slid a small plastic container, the shape of a pencil sharpener, beneath Edward’s left nostril.
“What’s in it?” Edward asked.
“They use it to tranquilize livestock.”
“Thank goodness,” Edward said, inhaling. “I thought you were going to say it’s bad for me.” He knew what it was. Ketamine. In the hospital, it was a class three schedule drug used for anesthesia and depression.
The world slowed down. There was a sour hum inside his head, like a broken vacuum combing the nubs of his spine. The people chatting beside him felt miles away, as though screaming to each other from opposite sides of a chasm. It made the back of his throat dry and taste of horseradish. He was never one to satisfy his id, but the belief that all worry would lift from his body if he stripped down to his Andrew Christians was one in which he had cosmic conviction. So, there he was, shorts and button-down tossed to the wind, in all his elder glory.
Edward’s ensuing downward spiral of poor decision making found him next in a circle of men doing foreskin shots. But a shot was all Edward heard in the tangle. And a shot was what he thought he needed.
Here is what happened in that moment: A chestnut-skinned dancer, with a birthmark bleached across the left side of his face, stood precariously on a stool with a bottle of Patrón. Edward knelt down before him like a knight surrendering his sword (and subsequent dignity), and watched the dancer pinch his foreskin into a small thimble-shaped vessel into which he poured tequila. There was a chant: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Edward could only assume that word was for him. The Daddy of the group. The Silver Fox. The breadwinner. The man who raised Hannah. Virtually alone. A single parent. With little know-how. He thought of Luna—of her banana curls and how his limbs ached too much to spin her in the park—a second before the dancer released the alcohol from his foreskin down Edward’s throat. In this moment, he thought, I am living.
This moment of Edward on his knees. This one of him feeling eminent and recognized. Of looking to the big sky. Seeing only sun.
◆
Edward just barely escaped, although he was almost pressured into the anal luge. It was in the bathroom Edward met Marietta. She was middle-aged, taller than most women, almost as tall as Edward. She wore the standard Immortal uniform, white slacks, white vest, infinity pin. Dancing bear tattoos painted on both her arms. So many of them in all colors. Her hair was tied in one long braid down to her waist. She was distributing mints and candies and spritzes of cologne.
“Be safe out there, boys,” she said, tossing out their used cups of mouthwash.
“I’m a doctor,” Edward said, approaching Marietta, buzzed out of his fucking mind.
“Your parents must be proud,” Marietta said and patted his cheek. “Does the doctor need a peppermint?”
“I think the doctor needs a doctor,” he said. As an actual doctor, he used a chart of smiley faces to help patients indicate their pain threshold. He looked toward the wall for a chart or for any assistance, but the only smiley faces on The Immortal were pressed into pills. What he did do was imagine himself on a different planet, floating off the Rover onto the red rocks of Mars. He was alone in this scenario, the landscape barren. His back slid down the tiled wall.
“Oh, honey,” Marietta said. She kicked down a toilet seat in the handicap stall and sat him on it.
“I’m going to call you Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” Marietta said. She slapped at his face for real this time. “Take some deep breaths with me.”
Edward heaved like he had just come up from years of living beneath the sea. He swallowed at the air in giant gulps. Marietta kept peppercorns in an Altoids tin near the other Altoids for this exact situation. She handed some to Edward.
“Chew on these,” she said. Dance music faded in and out with the revolving of the main bathroom door.
“My dog,” Edward said, piling the peppercorns into his mouth. “He has a hard time going to the bathroom. And my daughter, she thinks I don’t listen. She wants me to play golf.”
“Sounds like a monster,” Marietta said.
“A lobster?” Edward asked. His eyes began to roll up into their sockets. Marietta pounded her fist onto the back of bathroom door bringing Edward back to life.
“Now listen to me,” she demanded. “When I was a little girl, I was an only child, and my parents had all these glamorous parties at our house. My parents were in the movie industry. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. They’d bring all their friends over—directors, producers, screenwriters—and they’d drink and laugh and smoke. And my mother only drank champagne. That’s it. Refused all other drinks. So, my father, the people-pleaser he was, only bought champagne. And the best kind at that. So, I figured, that must be how you make friends. You drink champagne. I must have been eleven when I started. I’d steal a sip, then a glass, and then after a while just started hoarding bottles in my room. I’d drink it as soon as I woke up for school. I’d ask other girls to sleep over, and we’d drink it in my room until our eyes rolled into the backs of our heads. Word caught and, on the weekends, girls were asking me if they could come over. It was really working! Until one day, I was sent home, hammered out of my mind. And you know what happened?”
“What?” Edward asked, focused only on this moment.
“Nothing! My mother was too drunk to answer the door, so they left me on the porch. I was off the hook.”
“So, what did you do next?”
“What else was there to do? I poured myself a glass of champagne!”
Edward laughed and then felt bad. “Is that true?”
“Not all of it,” she said. “Can you make it to your room?”
“I think so,” he said.
“Might want to tuck him back in,” she said and gestured to one of Edward’s testicles hanging out of his briefs. But he was already on the move, waddling by the anal luge on his way to the stairs where he stopped for a moment to consider one more drink.
◆
The Immortal docked at Cabo San Lucas early Saturday when the only people awake were those who hadn’t yet gone to sleep. Edward lay there listening to the lovely whirs of Spanish in the distance, a language he regretted never learning in all its forms, although this was his fourth time in Mexico, and there was a chunk of years with Leon where the two swore by Málaga and Alicante and would describe the drive between to their friends as “vital.”
“Hey Kiki, make me a pan tostado con cajeta,” Edward said, in his best, sleepy accent.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know that song.”
He climbed out of bed and pissed everywhere but into the toilet. He felt like garbage, New York City summer garbage, the bag on the bottom of all the other bags, and swallowed some Tylenol with Plavix, dressed with no intention, and slipped down the stairs to breakfast in lime green sunglasses he bought at Fisherman’s Wharf.
The buffet spread was truly magnificent. At the muffin station he watched two men at their table, both jocks, kissing as though in competition, their tongues coiled like a double helix. One wrapped his hands around the other’s neck, really going in for the chokehold while the other rubbed generously at the choker’s thigh, inches away from it all being an X-rated display. Twenty years ago, Edward would have had an erection. He would have scrambled to hide it with a tray or pushed it down against the edge of the buffet table. But in that instance, only a twinkle in his hips.
“Dr. Quinn,” a voice yelled. It was Marietta. She carried a copper platter of freshly baked muffins, replacing the old ones and grabbing one herself. “You’re alive,” she said and stole a bite.
“I’m so sorry about last night. I went hard,” he said, blushing. “But thank you. You really talked me down off that ledge. I’m not sure I even remember half of what you said but it worked.”
“You confessed your love to me,” she said with a wink.
“Oh, is that right?”
“Yup,” she said, talking with her mouth full of cakey berries. “You’re taking me on a cruise for our honeymoon.”
Edward laughed. He felt comfortable with Marietta. Maybe it was because they shared one intense moment, like hostages or survivors of a plane crash. Or maybe it was because she was always carrying something sweet.
“If there’s any way I can repay you, please,” he said.
“Well actually,” she said. “I’ve been tasked by our almighty pastry chef to head into town to search for almond flour. Can you believe it? People actually want their cupcakes to taste like chalk.”
“I truly cannot.”
“I’m headed out in about an hour. Join me?”
Edward thought of everything he’d be missing out on: the Libido Lunch-In, Faber“gay” egg painting, and a Bruce Vilanch look-a-like contest.
“I can’t think of anything more I’d rather do,” he said.
“Great. It’s a date. Oh, and just so you know,” she said, walking back toward the kitchen, the breakfast crowd loudly dispersing. “Almond flour isn’t code for ketamine.”
◆
Marietta looked quite striking once off The Immortal, as though she warped back five decades, her energy full of gloss and whimsy, wearing a jumper, striped in whites and pinks, something Hannah might dress Luna in for the same kind of outing. Her hair was pinned up in a bun and he saw her neck for the first time. His instinct was to compliment her, but he gleaned she wasn’t much for compliments and chickened out.
“You look,” he said, “like you’re ready to find some almond flour.”
“And you look tired as fuck,” she said rubbing her cheeks with sunscreen.
The downtown center of Cabo was lined with baby palms and Corona ads. Stuccoed storefronts of cerulean and mauve, lorries pushing car parts, coconut water, paper towels. Edward swore he saw at least five farmacias and wondered if he should stock up on anxiety and blood pressure meds but didn’t want to let that pitstop spoil the tone of the walk. He was second guessing himself again and again and didn’t understand why.
The flour was easier to find than Edward had imagined. In and out. It appeared as though Marietta knew exactly where she was going. They stopped for two quick tortas at a truck with a line. Marietta told him more stories of her life growing up in Southern California, but in vignettes, like she couldn’t keep her focus. She attended Casa Lomo College in Van Nuys, then dropped out because the classes were too early. She moved downtown and worked as a blackjack dealer at a licensed card club in Hollywood but quit because the commute was too long.
“Then I got married and he tried to poison my Sencha with bleach and then I got a divorce.”
“Jesus,” he said and turned his attention to the man in the truck. “Nos gustaría pedir dos tortas cubanas, por favor.”
“How about you?”
“My husband, well ex-husband, refused to put scabies cream on my back when I really needed him.”
“And that’s what did it?”
“He just wasn’t kind,” Edward said and surprised even himself. A truth he hadn’t said out loud, perhaps ever, but knew it to be actual. “I take that back. He was kind, on the surface, but it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t something that came easy to him. And when we adopted, that became even more clear. Maybe it was his career?”
“Wait, what did he do?”
“He was a judge. Maybe you had to be a bit colder to be successful, I don’t really know. He had trouble relating, specifically to our daughter. I thought he’d end up on Oprah in one of those ‘I Don’t Love My Child’ episodes.”
Marietta laughed, unapologetically. And when she did, so did Edward. And when he did, he felt the ground move, a tremble slid upward into his shins and thighs. The hanging sign that read abierto on the food truck swung quietly but noticeably. Edward figured whatever pill du jour was pumping through his system really knew what it was doing. But when Marietta’s eyes widened, he knew she felt it too.
“Terremoto,” the man in the truck said and handed Edward two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. “Pequeño.” He smiled.
“A little earthquake,” Edward said to Marietta, quickly re-focusing back to her. “I can’t believe you were a victim of attempted poisoning.”
“No, it was a good thing.” Marietta took a bite of her sandwich. “I moved to Long Beach after. I felt like I’ve spent my whole life trying to get to the ocean, this infinity. With each milestone, I got closer and closer to the water. Then finally, I’m here. Like where we are standing right now. I live on the ocean now. I bake and hand out candy to beautiful gay men. What more could I ask for?” she said and gazed out toward The Immortal, its smokestack funnels like the pipes of a church organ, hanging there like a home.
“Boy that was really something.”
“It really was,” Edward said, looking back down at his feet.
◆
Later that evening, Edward skipped the buffet. He couldn’t handle it anymore. He was over the idea of getting anything he wanted, the mass-produced, the easy access. It all started to taste the same, like salt and propane. He craved elegant and niche. He wanted three complexly-glazed scallops or one exquisitely-grilled filet. In the end, he had an enormous dinner alone at the only restaurant, Beulah, of spaghetti with manila clams, Grizzly Bay squid, Early Girl tomatoes, garlic, parsley. He savored each bite.
It was the last official night of the cruise. The remainder of the time they’d be at sea, headed back to Los Angeles, then back to his FiDi high-rise, to Nebbiolo on his veranda, to Hannah, to Luna and her giggles, Rocket and their walks. Edward looked forward to it. Any time he and Leon would arrive home from their getaways to Spain or Tokyo or wherever in the world they journeyed to that year, Leon would get in the habit of saying he needed a vacation from his vacation. It irritated Edward. The whiney privilege of it all. But he understood now, the feeling. The fatigue that comes with fatigue. He especially understood it after Beulah.
On the way back to his suite, he passed a utility closet near the ice machine and saw four or five older men kissing inside, some close to naked, others with torn shirts like they’d just been mauled by a clowder of cats. They were all tangled up with brooms and mop buckets and each other. No one noticed Edward enough to invite him to join or even recognize his existence, and he felt okay with that.
In his room, he curled into the svelte armchair and perused an Andrew Christian flash sale on his phone. He was adding two more pairs of briefs to the cart when he heard a knock.
“Hey Kiki, answer the door,” he said with a huff.
“I’m sorry I don’t know that one,” she said. He reluctantly rose, feeling heavy and old. It was Marietta, she held up a chocolate cupcake.
“Gluten free,” she said. Edward laughed. He was wearing one of the robes and tightened up the belt.
“Come in, come in. Have a drink,” he said.
“Oh no, that’s alright, I just wanted to drop this off. A little memento of our afternoon. They had me on the fryers tonight. Donuts! Tori made this cupcake. Great girl. Bad teeth, though. I’m a mess. I should get in the shower.”
“You’ve got to use mine! It’s the most beautiful clawfoot tub. It’s very, what’s the word, architecturey, and the water pressure is incredible.”
“That’s weird. You’re weird,” she said, suspiciously, and smiled. She pushed him aside and landed right in the bathroom. “But fine, okay. Gimme that rich people golden shower!” Edward’s eyes widened. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. They both burst out. Edward handed her a mug of Veuve.
“There’s soap and shampoo in the cupboard. It’s Aesop. Do you know that brand? Sixty-five-dollar body wash! Apricots or some bullshit. If you need me, I’ll be indulging in this delectable treat.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Edward lay on the bed and peeled at the dessert. He couldn’t fit another thing in his mouth but felt he needed to give his thoughtful, specific critique. He heard the water running long and aggressively, not the thin and tinny run of a shower, but the low drone of a bath, that fullness, of thick water filling a space. After some time, Marietta emerged from the bathroom in the other cushy white robe.
“So?” she asked and toweled at her neck.
“It’s perfectly sweet,” Edward said.
Marietta took the pillow from beside Edward and placed it at the edge of the bed. She climbed in and rested her head, feet dangling in Edward’s face.
“Long day,” she said and closed her eyes. She took Edward’s foot in her hand and rubbed at the sole with her thumb—unhurried, deep circles. Edward took one of Marietta’s and did the same.
“Hey Kiki, turn off the lights,” Edward said, finally.
“Turning off DreamClass lights,” she said, sultry as ever. The room went dark, save for one small reading lamp beside the bed. It stayed on, all through the night, and they slept.