Page 72 of After His Eulogy
“I know.”
“It is going to be freezing on the lake.”
“I know.”
“Reed.”
“Griffin.”
“Why.”
“Because we haven’t left this town in four months. We’ve been in apartments and at desks and in seminar rooms and on couches and in beds and in kitchens for four months. The time we have here is… Griffin. We have six weeks. Less than six weeks. I want to spend a day of it with you somewhere that isn’t these four blocks.”
He sits with it.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. The lake. Saturday.”
“Okay.”
We go on Saturday. I rent a car. The car is a small dirty sedan with a dent in the passenger door and the heater works only on the highest setting. He drives because he says he wants to drive and because I think he is someone who, when there is a thing to do with hands, wants to do the thing with hands. I sit in the passenger seat. I watch the road. I watch him. The drive is an hour and a half. We do not talk much. He has the radio on the public station and it is doing a story about a saxophonist I do not know. I do not pay attention to the story. He does not seem to either. The radio fills the car with words neither of us is processing. We get to the lake at noon. The lake is gray andcold. It is enormous. The lake in February is a thing I had not seen. I had seen lakes in summer, in the version of my life I had had with him before, with him, in a different life, on a beach in August in cutoffs. This lake at this time of year is a different lake. The horizon is gray. The water is gray. The sand is gray under thin snow. There are no people. There is a couple in down jackets two hundred yards away with a dog. The dog is small and is running in circles and is the only moving thing on the beach.
We park. We get out. The wind comes off the water in a way that is not unpleasant exactly, but is the kind of wind that requires you to commit to being in it. We commit. We zip our coats. We start walking. We walk for a while without talking. The beach is long. It curves. We walk toward the curve. The dog and its couple recede behind us. The wind is in our faces and then in our backs and then in our faces again. He has his hands in his pockets and so do I and we are walking next to each other not touching. We are next to each other in our bodies and the bodies are doing the thing that bodies do in cold air, which is moving forward. After a while he says, “I have decided.”
I look at him. I’d known he was going to say it. I’d known he was going to say it on this walk. I just hadn’t known he’d say it in the first half hour. I’d thought he might wait until we were sitting somewhere later — until dinner, until the car on the way home. He’s decided to say it now. On the open beach, in the first half hour, with the wind in our faces.
“Okay,” I say.
“I am coming.”
“Okay.”
“I want to tell you — I have decided.”
“Okay.”
“I want to tell you I have decided in advance of telling Mendez. I will tell Mendez Monday. But I am telling you now, two days before, because I want you to know first. I want youto be the first person to know. I do not want you to know with Mendez. I want you to know with me.”
“Okay.”
“I am coming.”
I keep walking. I keep walking because I don’t know what to do with my body if I stop. He keeps walking. The wind is in our faces and his hand has come out of his pocket, reaching for mine, and I take it. We walk holding hands on a beach in February with no one watching and his hand is cold through the glove and so is mine and we’re holding hands and walking. After a while I say, “Why.”
He looks at me.
“You are asking me why.”
“Yes.”
“Reed.”
“Griffin. I want to know. How you decided. What you decided. I don’t want to take this without knowing what it cost. I want to know what you’ve decided to give up. I want it spoken. I don’t want it to just be a thing you said yes to. I want to know what the yes contains.”
He is quiet. We walk for another minute.
