Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

The afternoon was so cold that the bike paths along the river were deserted. The Christopher Street pier, across the way, was no longer the decrepit, free-for-all cruising spot it had been when he and Walker moved in, more than twenty years ago, a place you could go for an easy afternoon frolic or to sunbathe nude when the weather was fine. Giuliani had cleaned up the piers and transformed the entire waterfront into sanitized paths and miniparks for walkers and bikers and strollers. (“ Fooliani, ” Walker would say; he’d hated Giuliani’s particular brand of dictatorship almost as much as he’d hated Koch’s insistence on remaining closeted.)

Even scrubbed, the pier remained a gathering place for gay youth. No matter how biting the cold, there were always a few hardy souls out, huddled, trying to shield their cigarette lighters from the wind. Jack wondered why they weren’t at school, if they were there because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. He envied the teens on the waterfront, hopping up and down to stay warm, drinking beer from a paper bag — no cares, no worries. What did you have to worry about at seventeen when you were young and untethered and in New York City? How bad could it be, really? Did kids even worry about being gay, worry about having to tell their families? He wished that was all he had to agonize about. He’d give anything for that to be the thing he needed to confess.

Jack took out his phone and opened Stalkerville. Melody had shown him the day they had lunch and although he’d made fun of it, he also hadn’t objected when she downloaded it to his phone and “connected” him to Walker.

“It’s addictive,” she said, “you’ll see.”

The whole thing perplexed Walker. “I always tell you where I am. I’m always at work or with you, anyway. Why do you need to check on your phone?”

“I don’t,” Jack said. “It’s just interesting to know I can. Creepy but interesting.”

And it was creepy, but Jack had to admit that Melody was right, it was also addictive — opening the screen and seeing the icon of Walker’s face appear and then the roaming blue dot — at the drugstore, at the grocery, at his office. Right now, he was at the gym, probably sitting in the sauna instead of exercising, thinking about what to make for dinner. Something about being able to see Walker move around during the day, seeing how connected their lives were, how small Walker’s world was, how much of it revolved around him— them —made the financial mess he was in feel even worse.

Jack didn’t think about this too often anymore, but he knew he was probably alive because of Walker. When he met Walker, all those years ago, in the midst of his freewheeling days in Chelsea, on Fire Island, in the bathhouses and the clubs, Walker had been the one to insist on condoms, to demand fidelity. Jack had taken umbrage at first; hardly any of the couples they knew were exclusive. They were young and out and living in the greatest city in the world! But Walker recognized what Jack refused to face then: men getting sick, being denied treatment, dying. Walker worked with the doctors at St. Vincent’s; he believed what they told him about prevention, and he scared the shit out of Jack.

“If you want to spend every morning checking your exquisitely beautiful body for sores that won’t heal or worry about every little cough, that’s your choice,” Walker had said in the early weeks, “but it’s not mine.”

Walker was scrupulous — condoms and fidelity were nonnegotiable. “If you want to mess around, that’s fine,” Walker said, “just not while I’m in the picture.” Jack tried to resist Walker at first but found himself drawn to the man in ways he didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. Something about Walker — his goodness, his compassion (and, okay, the size of his dick, Walker was huge) —was more compelling than sleeping around. It was one of the nicest things Jack could say about himself: that he had recognized the value of Walker. Before they moved in together, they’d both gotten tested and Jack didn’t think he’d ever been as scared as the day they went to get their results. They had collapsed into each other’s arms, weeping and laughing with relief, when they were negative.

Walker had saved his life. He was sure of that. And if that certainty created a certain inequity in their relationship, a certain kind of paternalistic vibe that, Jack could admit, was sometimes not particularly sexy, not very hot, if sometimes Jack resented Walker’s saintliness, his goodness and light and responsibility and needed to act out a little, spend money he didn’t have, very occasionally and very discreetly have a late night with someone who didn’t need to floss and brush and shave and apply moisturizer before dropping his pants, well, what of it? There was still a part of Jack that wondered what it would have been like if he hadn’t heeded Walker’s advice, had thrown caution to the wind and spent a little more time sleeping around before he settled down. Maybe he would be dead, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d be just fine — alive and better for the breadth of his experience. If Walker hadn’t kissed him that very first night, maybe he wouldn’t even be in this mess.

AT HIS SHOP,Jack opened the rolling gate and unlocked the door. He’d spent all week going through his inventory, trying to see if he had anything tucked away he’d forgotten about that he could sell to raise some cash, knowing the whole time he didn’t. He knew his inventory down to every cast-off crystal doorknob. Whenever he found something of worth — which he did frequently, he had an eye — he knew exactly whom to call to place it. It was rare for something of true worth to linger at Jack’s shop. His lucrative dealings were all private transactions with his longtime customers — designers, architects, and the esteemed ladies of the Upper East Side. The economic downturn had brought most of that business to a halt, too. Things were starting to pick up, but there wasn’t time for him to accumulate anywhere near the money he needed.

If Jack didn’t have a photo of the damaged Rodin sculpture on his phone, he would have thought he’d imagined the whole thing. Back at home after the aborted visit to Leo, it had only taken a few minutes on the computer to realize why it looked familiar, that it was one of the recovered pieces of art from the World Trade Center site that he’d read about years and years ago. The story was a tiny blip in the midst of all the coverage about the cleanup — how a damaged cast of Rodin’s The Kiss had been recovered and then mysteriously disappeared. Jack had paid attention at the time because of his very good customer who collected Rodin.

Jack didn’t know what to do with the information he had. He could do nothing, of course. He didn’t care about the security guard in Stephanie’s house or the statue, really. He could call someone at the 9/11 Memorial Museum that was under way and tip them off, anonymously or as himself; maybe there was a reward, maybe he’d get some press and it would be good for his business. Or, and this option was the one he was trying — and failing — to resist, he could approach Tommy O’Toole and offer to broker a sale for a sum of money, Jack was certain, so significant that Tommy wouldn’t be able to refuse. And Jack’s sizable commission would solve his immediate financial problems, release him from whatever Leo might or might not do.

He went to his little back office and printed out the photos of the sculpture from his phone. Jack had asked around and his friend Robert knew someone, some guy named Bruce who worked in the shadier places of art and antique sales. “I used him once,” Robert said. “He’ll know what to do. Tell him you’re my friend.” It didn’t hurt to ask, Jack thought. It never hurt to gather information and know all the possibilities. Before putting on his coat, he took out his phone and the card stowed away in his pocket and dialed the number. “Hey,” he said to some guy named Bruce. “I’m Robert’s friend. I’m on my way.”