impersonators. “A searing indictment of the male hegemony of modern life,” our teacher called one of Thelma’s photos. About mine, she said, “Nice matte finish.”
I accepted my limitations. “I’m no artist,” I told the teacher. “I just want to make things that look nice.”
Only Frank seemed to get it. “Danny,” he said, looking at one of my sunflower shots, stripped of its yellows and pumped up with green, “that is probably the craziest-looking flower I’ve ever seen, but I sure as hell can’t stop looking at it.” It had hung ever since over our mantel. Frank had dubbed it his “green daisy.”
But an artist? No, I wasn’t an artist, even though Frank insisted I was. He’d always been very sure of that point. I made art; ergo, I was an artist. I just laughed. Now Becky—she might have become an artist. She’d had the passion. She’d had the talent. I remembered the easel that had stood in our backyard—
“Danny.”
My thoughts shattered, like glass through which a rock had been thrown. My eyes darted away from the mountains and onto Frank’s face.
“You seemed far, far away,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” I rubbed my forehead. It was damp with sweat from the sun. “I was…thinking.”
Frank nodded. Twenty years we’d been together. He knew how often I got lost in thought. And he knew where those thoughts usually led. No matter what I began thinking about, they often seemed to come back to one thing. He smiled gently.
I was fortunate to have him. Many men would gladly have traded places with me, sitting there in studied contentment, sipping my coffee with my partner of many years, watching the sunlight dance against the mountains. Frank knew me better than anyone alive, and more than anyone, he had been there for me. For two decades, Frank had believed in me, encouraged me, supported me—even when I was at my nadir, convinced I was a failure. Frank had never bought that line, and consequently, he’d kept me from buying it completely, either. So what if I knew, deep down, that Frank’s heart had never been fully mine? What did that matter? He had never left me wanting. Many men indeed would have made the trade.
But not, I suspected, those boys across the way, the ones giggling and wrestling each other in the grass. They wouldn’t want to switch places with me. After this, they’d probably go back to their guest resort and fuck in the pool. And then maybe they’d do a line of coke or a hit of E. Tonight they’d dance their asses off at Hunters, and tomorrow they’d head back to West Hollywood, sated and satisfied and happy. No, those boys wouldn’t make the trade. The question was, would I?
I looked from them back over to Frank, and then to Randall, who had pulled off his shirt and stretched out on the grass. His face was turned up at the sun. Frank and Randall. The two people who knew me best in the entire world, who understood what my birthday made me think of every year. I looked down at Randall in the grass, the hair on his fleshy torso glistening with perspiration. I knew he shouldn’t get too much sun, that it could affect his meds. But not once in more than a decade of living with HIV had Randall developed any opportunistic infection. His T cells remained high, and his daily regimen of pills and potions had rendered the virus undetectable in his body.
Still, I asked, “Do you have sunblock on?”
“It’s just for a few minutes,” Randall said to me, eyes closed.
We stayed that way for a while more, three silent men occasionally distracted by the laughter drifting across the grass from the boys under the tree. I slurped up the last of my iced cappuccino, making a noise, the way a kid would do.
“Don’t you think we ought to get moving?” I whispered, leaning in toward Frank. “I don’t want it to get too hot in Joshua Tree to go hiking.”
Frank’s eyelids flickered. “Danny, you know, it might be too hot at that. Maybe we should plan to do it another day.”
“If we leave now,” I argued, “it won’t be too hot. It’s not as hot up in the high desert as it is down here.”
“Yes, but you know, I’m kind of tired today.” Frank’s eyes were making an appeal to me. “I’m afraid I’d be a drag on you….”
“Frank,” I said, the annoyance tightening my throat. “You said last night we would go hiking for my birthday. Just you and me. Maybe we’d even finally see a bighorn sheep. Those were your words.”
“I’m sorry, baby. If you really want to go, we’ll go.”
I turned away from him. “No. Forget it if you’re too tired.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“I’d go with you, Danny,” Randall said, sitting up and pulling his shirt back on, “but I should be heading back to L.A.”
I said nothing. I didn’t want to go hiking with Randall. I wanted to go with Frank. I stared at Randall and wondered if—as so often happened—he was reading my mind. If he, too, was remembering what he’d said to me two decades ago, standing in the bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. Frank had just asked me to move in with him.
“I just want you to think long and hard about this, Danny,” Randall had said then. “When you’re thirty, he’ll be forty-four. When you’re forty, he’ll be fifty-four. When you’re fifty…”
It hadn’t mattered at thirty. But now, at forty-one…
It was at that very moment that I looked up, and coming through the courtyard toward us was Jake Jones. His blond hair seemed to glow in the sun, and the flip-flops he wore, barely visible under his long, loose jeans, slapped the pavement in a regular beat as he walked. He seemed in that moment the personification of youth. The lightness to his step. The indifference of his shoulders. He noticed us.
Or rather, he noticed me.
“Hey, Ishmael,” he said, approaching. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or if he really thought that was my name. “Why’d you disappear so fast last night?”
He came to a stop barely a foot from where I was sitting. My eyes were level with his crotch. A black belt with silver studs was half visible from under his semi-tucked white T-shirt, and green checkered boxer shorts bunched up over the waist of his jeans. From the corner of my eye, I could see both Frank and Randall watching our encounter, Frank with curiosity, Randall with envy. Jake had walked right past the two of them and straight up to me. I lifted my eyes to meet the youngster’s and smiled.
“Because,” I said, “my boyfriend, Frank, was waiting for me at home.” I gestured with my head toward Frank.
Jake’s eyes turned to look. “Hi,” he said, unflappable. “I’m Jake.”
“Good to meet you, Jake,” Frank said.
He spoke the way fathers do when meeting their sons’ friends. The two of them shook hands.
From behind us came a small voice. “Hi, Jake,” Randall offered.
The boy finally turned, lifting an eyebrow in my poor, forgotten friend’s direction. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Did you and Thad and Jimmy go out to dinner last night after I left the bar?”
“We…um…we ate something back at their house,” Randall replied.
I smiled despite myself. They ate something, all right. Frank caught my smile, and our eyes met. He chuckled. It broke the tension between us.
“Well,” Jake was saying, returning his attention to me, “it was good seeing you again, Ishmael.” And then in front of my boyfriend, he took my phone off the table, where I had placed it, and entered his number. “Just in case you ever have a party and want to invite me,” he said, handing the phone back to me. “Good meeting you,” he said to Frank. To Randall, he said nothing more, just disappeared inside the café.
“What’s up with the Ishmael?” Frank asked.
“A silly joke,”