Best Friends by Martha Moody Page B

professor—excuse me, your poof essor—let me try this one on you. I personally believe that a homo can’t in an essential way understand the world. Because the world is heterosexual. Yin and yang. Black and white. Not—” he paused, his face screwed up, a fleck of carrot at the corner of his mouth—“not gray. ”
    All cats are gray in the dark, I thought. I didn’t say it. “It takes some intelligence to argue,” Mr. Rose had said the night before at dinner. “Any idiot can disagree.” I didn’t want to to sound like an idiot.
    Patricia arrived with drinks and a tray of food. “Señora Rose made these specially,” she murmured, pointing to the stuffed crescents.
    â€œI should be nicer to fruits,” Sid said, stretching out his arms and cracking his knuckles, “I really should. It’s just I deal with so damn many of them in my business.”
    â€œIn magazines?” I said, surprised.
    â€œOh, God, they’re all over magazines,” Mr. Rose said. “You wouldn’t believe.”
    I frowned and ate a pastry. I loved magazines, I read them all the time, but I had no idea homosexuals were big in magazines. I wondered if I’d be able to pick out which articles they’d written.
    â€œWhat do you think of this Timbo guy my daughter’s in love with?” Mr. Rose asked suddenly. “He quality at all?”
    â€œHe’s quality,” I said, so quickly I surprised myself, and when I looked at Sally, she was beaming.
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    â€œWAIT A MINUTE, wait a minute,” Mr. Rose said. “Both of you, lean in.” He staggered a couple steps closer to us, the camera over his face, knees and hips flexed, toes out. Sally and I were seated at a table on the patio, the espalier behind us. Instead of “cheese,” Mr. Rose exclaimed, “Big future!” We grinned. The flashbulb sizzled. Sally and I were frozen in the moment.
    â€œGreat,” Mr. Rose said. “That’s a keeper.”
    That evening Sally and I stayed seated at the patio table, our only light what seeped out through the windows, and talked about life and got plowed. We had a bottle of vodka, an ice bucket, and a pitcher of fresh orange juice, and when the orange juice and the ice were gone, we drank the vodka straight. We talked about Sally’s major (English; she was thinking about law school), my major (English too, but what was I going to do with it?), the guys I’d known, my brothers, Sally’s brother, how our parents met. The air was warm, there was a wonderful planty smell, and the shadow of Timbo barely touched me—he was at home in Kentucky, only a name, not a presence. It was Sally and me, me and Sally. Revelations bumped and brushed in the night air. About two A.M. we wandered across the patio to look at the city below, and I remember wanting to push myself over the low wall and fall, fall—not that I was suicidal, not that I would hurt myself, simply as a form of immersion in the night and in the place. The night was perfect, and I had such faith: enough faith to believe, even fleetingly, that the air would enfold me.
    The next day I flew home to Ohio.
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    â€œTHE MAIL’S SLOW. We didn’t get your postcard.”
    â€œI didn’t send one.”
    â€œSurely you noticed the smog.”
    â€œSmog?”
    â€œIs he a millionaire? From the looks of that house, he surely is.”
    â€œI didn’t think to ask him, Mother.”
    â€œHow much help do they have?”
    â€œEnough to keep the grass mowed.”
    â€œAre their servants legal? Do they have their green cards?”
    â€œGreen cards? I don’t know what color their cards are. Their uniforms are light green, does that count?”
    â€œYou know what they say! Behind every great fortune, there’s a great crime.”
    â€œMother, please? I’m trying to read the paper.”
    I could