And so what if this was Heaven? Would he know it if it were? Perhaps not. But he knew it was not whence he had come: That was someone else’s Heaven, but it was not his. His was somewhere else, but it would not appear in front of him; rather, it would be his to find. Indeed, was that not what he had been taught, been made to hope for, his entire life? Now it was time to seek. Now it was time to be brave. Now he must go alone. So he would stand here for another moment, the bag leaden in his hand, and then he would take a breath, and then he would make his first step: his first step to a new life; his first step—to paradise.
book ii
LIPO-WAO-
NAHELE
PART I
The letter arrived at the office on the day of the party. He rarely got mail, and when he did, it wasn’t actually for him—just subscription offers for magazines and law journals that were addressed to “Paralegal” and dropped in a bundle on one of their desks by the mailroom clerk—so it wasn’t until he was drinking his afternoon cup of coffee that he bothered to scrape the rubber band off the stack of envelopes and flick through them, only to suddenly see his name. When he saw the return address, he experienced a loss of breath, one so profound that for a moment all sound disappeared except for that of a hot, dry wind.
He took the envelope and stuffed it into his pants pocket and hurried to the archive room, which was the most private place on the floor, where he held it against his chest for a moment before opening it, tearing the letter itself in his haste. But then, midway through removing the sheet of paper inside, he instead replaced it in its envelope, folded it in half, and jammed it into his shirt pocket. And then he had to sit on a stack of old law books, puffing air onto his clasped hands, which was something he did when he was anxious, until he was ready to leave.
By the time he returned to his desk, it was a quarter of four. He had already requested permission to leave at four today, but he went to ask his manager if he might go a few minutes earlier. Of course, she said—it was a slow day; she’d see him on Monday. He thanked her, and shoved the letter into his bag.
“Have a good weekend,” she said as he left.
You too, he said.
He had to pass Charles’s office on the way to the elevator, but he didn’t look in to say goodbye to him, because they had agreed that it was safest if they pretended not to be any more familiar with each other than a senior partner would be with a junior paralegal. When they had first begun seeing each other, he would find himself walking by Charles’s office a dozen times a day, hoping to catch a glimpse of him doing something mundane, the more mundane the better: smoothing back his hair as he read a brief; dictating a memo into his recorder; flipping through the pages of a law book; talking on the phone while looking out the window to the Hudson River, his back to the door. Charles never acknowledged him, but David was certain he was aware of his passings.
That had been the source of one of their early disagreements: Charles’s lack of acknowledgment. “Well, what can I do, David?” Charles had asked him, not defensively, as they lay in bed one night. “It’s not like I can stop by the paralegals’ area whenever I want. Or even call you: Laura can see on her phone who I’m calling, and she’d eventually put two and two together.”
He didn’t say anything, just pressed his face into the pillow, and Charles sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you,” he said, gently. “It’s just complicated. You know how it is.”
Finally, they had worked out a code: Whenever he passed Charles’s office, and Charles wasn’t busy, he would clear his throat and twirl a pencil between his fingers; that would be his signal that he’d seen David. It was silly—David wouldn’t dare tell his friends that this was how he and Charles interacted in the office; they already didn’t trust Charles—but it was also satisfying. “Larsson, Wesley owns me by day, but you own me by night,” Charles always said, and that was satisfying, too.
But they still get more billable hours from you than I do, he’d said to Charles, once.
“Not true,” said Charles. “You get weekends, and holidays, and nights as well.” He reached over then and grabbed his calculator—Charles was the only person he had ever slept with, or dated, who kept a calculator on his bedside table, much less consulted it regularly during their arguments and discussions—and began punching the buttons. “Twenty-four hours in a day, seven days a week,” he said. “Larsson, Wesley gets—what? Twelve hours over five days, plus, okay, another seven combined on the weekend. That’s sixty-seven total. One hundred sixty-eight hours in a week, take away sixty-seven—that means that for a hundred and one hours every week, minimum, I am at your complete and utter disposal. And that doesn’t count the hours at Larsson that I spend thinking about you, or thinking about you and trying not to think about you.”
How many are those? he asked. They were both smiling by then.
“Loads,” said Charles. “Countless. Tens of thousands of dollars in billable hours. More than any other client I have.”
Now he walked by Charles’s office, and Charles cleared his throat and spun a pencil between his fingers, and David smiled: He’d been seen. Now he could go.
* * *
At home, everything was under control. That’s what Adams told him when he came in: “Everything is under control, Mister David.” As always, he seemed faintly puzzled—by the fact of David, by his presence in the house, by having to serve David, and now by David’s belief that he could contribute anything to a dinner party, the kind Adams had been arranging for years, more years than David had been alive.
When he moved into the house a year ago, he had asked Adams again and again to call him David, not Mister David, but Adams never would, or at least never did. Adams would never be used to him, and he would never be used to Adams. After one of the first nights he had spent with Charles, they had been in bed making out, near sex, when he heard someone speak Charles’s name gravely, and he had yelped and jolted and looked up to see Adams standing in the doorway of Charles’s room.
“I can bring breakfast now, Mister Charles, unless you’d rather wait.”
“I’ll wait, Adams, thank you.”
After Adams left, Charles had pulled him close again, but David pushed away, and Charles laughed. “What was that sound you made?” he teased, and gave a few short, high barks. “Like a porpoise,” he said. “Adorable.”
Does he always do that? he asked.
“Adams? Yes. He knows I like my routine.”
It’s a little creepy, Charles.
“Oh, Adams is harmless,” Charles said. “He’s just a little old-fashioned. And he’s an excellent butler.”
Over the months, he had tried to talk to Charles about Adams, but he was never successful, in part because he could never quite articulate his objections. Adams never treated him with anything but a somber, distant respect, and yet David knew somehow that Adams disapproved of him. When he told his best friend and former roommate, Eden, about Adams, she had rolled her eyes. “A butler?” she had said. “Give me a break, David. Anyway, he probably hates all of Chuck’s tricks.” （That was what Eden called Charles: Chuck. Now all their friends called him Chuck as well.）