It was so early that the candles still flickered in the lamppost lanterns, and the light was drawn in shades of gray. He walked along the cobblestones, his boot heels echoing, to the river, where he watched the waters slap against the wooden pier. It would be a damp day, damp and chill, and he wrapped his arms around himself and gazed out toward the opposite shore. He and Andrew had sometimes strolled along the river and talked, though those events now seemed very long ago, incidents from decades past.
What would he do? Here, on one side of the river, was the Edward he knew, and there, on the other, the Edward his grandfather thought he knew, and between them was an impassable body of water, not wide but deep and apparently unbreachable. If he left with Edward, he would forever lose his grandfather. If he stayed, he would lose Edward. Did he believe Edward? He did; he did not. He kept remembering how upset Edward had been the night before—upset but, he reminded himself, not flustered; there were no inconsistencies, or very few, in his reassurances, and those that existed did not seem worrisomely consequential—and how that alone proved his truthfulness. He thought of the tenderness with which Edward spoke to him, touched him, held him. Surely he was not imagining it? Surely that could not be a pantomime? The passion they felt for each other, the fever of their encounters—that could not be a charade, could it? Here was New York, and everything he knew. There, with Edward, was someplace else, someplace he had never before been but, he could recognize, he had been searching for his entire life. He had thought he might have found it with Andrew, but it had been a mirage. He would never have found it with Charles. Was this not the point of life, the reason his ancestors had established this country at all? So he might be allowed to feel the way he did, so that he might entitle himself to happiness?
He had no answers for himself, and he turned and walked back toward the boardinghouse, where Edward was waiting for him. The next several days passed in the same manner: David would wake first and walk to the river, and then he would return and continue his interrogation, which Edward bore patiently, even indulgently. Yes, the girl in the illustration was Belle; no, the man in the daguerreotype was not Aubrey, but an old beau, from the conservatory, and if it bothered David, he would—See? He was doing it now!—burn the image, for the man meant nothing to him, not any longer; yes, the note was from his mother. Always he was full of explanations, which David drank and drank until, by evening, he was disoriented and exhausted again, whereupon Edward would undress him and lead him to the bed, and then the cycle would begin again.
He could not settle. “My dearest David, if you have any further doubts, then we should perhaps not marry,” Edward said one afternoon. “I shall still want to be with you, but your fortune will be safe.”
“So you don’t want to marry me?”
“I do! Of course I do! But if this is the way I might convince you that I have no intentions, no desire, to possess your money—”
“But our marriage would not be recognized in California at any rate, so it would not be much of a sacrifice for you, would it?”
“It would be more of a sacrifice, had I any intentions to steal your money, for if I did, I should marry you now and take everything you own and then leave you. But that is not my intention, which is why I am suggesting it!”
In the coming months and years, he would reflect upon this period and wonder if he was misremembering: Had there not been a moment, an hour, a day, in which he decided, declaratively and definitively, that he loved Edward, and that his love for him would overcome all of the uncertainties that still lingered in his mind, despite all of Edward’s reassurances? But no—there was no single episode, no revelation that he might date and commemorate on paper. It was simply that, with every day he failed to return to Washington Square, with every letter—at first just from his grandfather, but then from Eliza and John and Eden and Frances and even Norris—that he ignored, either throwing them into the fire or securing them, unopened, into the bundle of Edward’s letters he’d brought with him, with every item of clothing and book and notepad he asked to be sent him from his grandfather’s house, with every day he decided not to send a note to Christopher D., asking him to meet and talk, with every week he did not inquire whether Edward had in fact sent a letter to Belle asking her to corroborate his account, and with every week that passed without a reply from her, he was declaring his intention to begin another life, a new life, a life anew.
In this way, close to a month had elapsed, and although Edward had never demanded a conclusive commitment from David that he would accompany him to California after all, David did not protest when Edward bought two tickets on the Transcontinental Express, did not object when his own belongings disappeared into one of the trunks, secreted between Edward’s own. Edward was abustle with activity—packing, planning, full of chatter—and as he grew more industrious, David grew less. Every morning, he reminded himself that he could still stop what seemed now fated to happen, that it was still within his power, however humiliating it would be, for now and for ever; but by evening, he would have been carried along a little more on the slipstream of Edward’s excitement, so that with each day he had drifted farther from land. And yet he was also not desirous of resisting, and why should he? How lovely, how seductive, it was to be wanted as much as Edward wanted him, to be cherished and kissed and whispered to and thought so dear, to never once be asked for or about his fortune, to be undressed with such avidity and regarded with such unembarrassed lust. Had he ever experienced these things? For he had not, and yet he knew: This was happiness, this was life.
Still, in colder moments—those just before dawn—David could see too that the month had not been without its difficulties. He knew so little, he had never before completed a chore, and there had been times when his ignorance had made things tense between them; he did not know how to boil an egg or darn a sock or hammer a nail. The boardinghouse had no indoor lavatories but only an outdoor washroom, and the first, freezing time David had visited it, he had, unaware, used all the water that was to have been shared among the house’s residents, and Edward had been terse with him. “What do you know?” he had snapped after David had confessed he’d never before built a fire, and “We shan’t be able to survive on your knitting and drawings and embroidery, you know,” at which David had stormed out and walked the streets, tears stinging his eyes, and when he finally returned to the room—it being cold and he having nowhere else to go—Edward had been there （a fire crackling） to greet him with tenderness and apologies, to guide him to the bed, where he promised to make him warm again. After, he had asked Edward if they might move elsewhere, somewhere more commodious and modern, for which he would gladly pay, but Edward had only kissed him between the eyes and told him that they must be frugal and, at any rate, that David had to learn these skills, for he would need them in California, where, after all, they would be living on a farm. And so he tried to improve. But his success was limited.
And then, suddenly, it was five days, four days, three days, two days before they were to depart—their leave-taking accelerated so that they would now reach California only days after Belle’s own arrival—and the tiny room had gone from being full of things to abruptly empty of them, everything they owned packed into three large steamer trunks, the last of which David had sent for from Washington Square. The night before their penultimate day in the city, Edward had suggested that it might be useful to have any monies David might have available secured before they left: The next day, he would leave early to purchase some final supplies he thought they might need, and, it was left unspoken, David would go visit his grandfather.