Walker shook his head, giving Hal a good-natured smile. “You’re still young. You can take it. But like I said, it catches up. Eventually, you have to find something to keep you grounded. Something to send you home before last call some of the time, or stay in instead of going out every once in a while. An anchor.”
Hal looked and saw the gold wedding band on the other man’s hand. So this wasn’t a pitch for AA; it was a pitch for marriage. He wondered if the man had a sister he was trying to unload, or maybe a sister-in-law.
“Wha’ ’appans…” Hal shut his mouth, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and started again. “What happens if you don’t wanna?”
The man picked up his bottle and began picking at the corner of the label with his thumbnail. In the distance, Hal could hear the men of Emlen singing the alma mater, “This Happy Land.”
“There were fifty-four men in my class,” Walker said. “This is our twentieth, and we’re already down five.” He lifted a finger for each cause of death he named. “Liver cancer. Car accident. AIDS.”
Hal opened his mouth. He had a few things to say about that last one, but before he could get them out, Walker added, “And two suicides. One guy used a gun. The other one drank himself to death. Booze and cocaine. Took longer, but it got him to the same place.” The man had a half-smile on his face. Hal couldn’t see his eyes. “I wish there’d been someone to talk to me—to all of us—the way I’m talking to you. To tell us that’s what women are for. They ground us. They keep us in line.” He clapped Hal on the shoulder and said, “Find yourself a good woman. Go get yourself grounded.” And then, whistling the tune of “This Happy Land,” he walked off into the night.
1995
“Do you ever think about it?” asked Danny Rosen.
“Think about what?” asked Hal. It was Saturday night or, technically, Sunday morning, and Hal’s class had been assigned the school’s boathouse for the celebration of their tenth reunion. Hal and five or six others had taken cigars out to the dock, which wobbled slightly as Danny approached and came to sit beside him. Danny had put on a few pounds since his coxswain days, and he’d grown a beard, probably to compensate for his disappearing jawline. He no longer looked elfin. Now he looked like a hobbit. One of the old ones. Bilbo Baggins, or someone like that.
In the distance, Hal could hear Brad Burlingham, telling some joke. Voices carried, out here, over the water, and he could hear “… and she says, ‘That’s what the stick is for!’？” followed by Brad’s loud, braying laugh. Brad sounded drunk. Brad always sounded drunk these days. Whenever Hal saw him, at reunions or at one of their summer weekends, he was always at least half in the bag, and he never made a move without a hip flask. It was getting to the point that Hal was starting to wonder if Brad had a problem. Hal himself had stopped drinking except for Friday and Saturday nights, and, even then, he tried to limit himself, stopping before he got to a point that would leave him impaired on Monday mornings.
He turned back to Danny Rosen. “Think about what?” he asked again.
“That summer,” said Danny. Hal looked at him, puzzled. “The party,” Danny prompted, and lowered his voice. “The girl. The one you…” His voice trailed off.
Hal still had no idea what Danny was talking about, but he could see that Dan the Man looked wretched. There were circles under his eyes, and Hal had noticed earlier that his fingernails were bitten to bloody nubs.
“There was a girl. A townie. A babysitter or an au pair or something. The last night, we had a party on the beach.”
“Oh, yeah!” The memory was cutting through the fog of Hal’s drunkenness. “She was s’posed to be for you!” Shit. What had her name been? Dana? Delores? “But then you couldn’t, so I did!”
“Hal, I’m gay.”
Hal blinked a few times. He peered at Danny, waiting for the punch line, as more laughter came drifting over the water. “Huh?”
“I’m gay,” Danny repeated. “I’m—I’m in a relationship. With a man. I’m in love.”
“Oh.” Hal blinked a few more times and rubbed his eyes. If Danny had dropped this bomb back when they’d been roommates at Emlen, Hal would have had a different response. At eighteen, there was no way he’d have been comfortable with some ass bandit sleeping six feet away, but now? “Good for you,” he said, a little dubiously. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.” Hal looked around. Cy Coffey and Eric Feinberg were sitting on the far edge of the dock, and, back on the land, four or five more guys were playing quarters.