The Round People - a Novel - 6. VII. Two o'clock

VII. Two o'clock

Mark, returning from his lunch break, pushed the door open a little too hard. Once inside, he leaned on it to close it quickly and end the onrush of February air behind it. Dean, like a hundred times earlier in the evening, was coming down the stairs with a tray in hand. Mark told him he could go to lunch. Dean responded with a nod that quickly grazed off of him and onto the table behind. Jonathan had stood up for a stretch, leaving only Pat, the newly-returned Emmy, and Ichiko chatting in the booth; everybody else was gone.

The American watched Dean approach.

Dean passed by smiling, asking, "How are you?"

Jonathan answered quickly, before the hearer had time to escape, "I'm fine. Are you going now?"

"Yeah. 7-Eleven." Dean was forced to stop moving by the weight of his feigned disinterest. He stood there, half-grinning.

"Taking your motorcycle?"

"Yes…" Dean dropped the pretense, nearly whispering: "…you ready to go?"

Jon nodded in a way he thought hid his enthusiasm.

"OK, I'll go get my jacket. Wait here," Dean instructed, using that powerful grace only youth commands. Then he left him.

Jonathan turned back to his table, reaching for his suede coat. He announced generally, "I'm going to 7-Eleven for awhile, I'll be back soon." Pat and Ichiko watched apathetically as he put on the cashmere scarf Nobuko had given him; solid blue on one side and green on the other. He loved the feel of it on his tired neck and cheeks. Emmy tried to match the blameless stares of the other young women at her table, but she couldn't come across to Jon as 'unemotional' at his parting. This sentiment Jonathan wrapped around him with his scarf and bundled closed up with the suede on top; he'd have to take it with him, but not pretend to be happy about the burden Emmy placed on him.

Dean came up behind him clothed in his black leather, and knocked Jonathan roughly on the shoulder. Jon spun around and the two smiled at one another like ten-year-olds with a secret. Emmy, seeing this, was shocked to perceive a twinge of jealously within her, an envy born for that kind of natural, unstated show of affection. It was the kind she suddenly felt Jonathan had never offered her.

Jon ushered the Japanese young man towards the door, to the cold night air beyond it, and didn’t dare glance at the table he had just left behind.

˚˚˚˚˚

Seth was in the back bar section. He butterflied his elbows and forearms for support on the bar. On the other side, Andrew had propped a foot on the brass under-rail, and the two stood talking. Mark came up behind Seth. He was taking out the last arm from his coat sleeve when he caught Nobuko's name. He slowed and nondescriptly melted in with their company and conversation.

"…Swear to God she did," Andrew was saying, "…'cause we were the only people at the table – just Jonathan, Nobuko and me – then he took her hand and started…" he glanced around for caution's sake, "…rubbing it all over his cock."

"Whuut? He whipped it out?!" Seth exclaimed.

"No, I mean, she started rubbing his goodies, through his pants, with her hand!"

Seth exclaimed slowly, and with a twinkle: "Daaammnn!"

"But wait man, listen to the best part – because afterwards she had the biggest ol'grin you ever seen all over her face. She must have liked what she felt; I guess she liked it a whole hell-of-a-lot!"

Mark's interloping tone was much too serious as he asked, "Didn't they see you lookin' at 'em?"

"Of course, I guess they just didn’t care who saw." Andrew intensified his manner, almost standing as he sang out, "I thought they weren't going to stop with a quick cop and feel. I thought they were going to do it right then and there. I mean, I don’t want to see that kind of stuff happening, but if they're gonna foreplay right next to a guy, he can't help it if he sees."

Mark continued on his way to stow his gear, but his intense eyes lost gravity, and his thoughts drifted aimlessly over things he had to buy at the supermarket the next day. 'Why did she do that shit? – lettuce, tomatoes. Maybe it's some kind of joke – salad dressing – no, Andrew wasn't joking. He saw what he saw. Tofu and radish, fruit for the week, cereal – he saw it. God, the bitch, no wonder she wanted to keep 'us' a secret from everyone in the bar.'

Mark began to fume. His shopping list was forgotten in his spontaneous viciousness. 'I hope he's just using the slager to get off, then at least I won’t be the only fool in the bar. I knew it! I knew it; she liked that guy all along. Screw her "Mark, you're a good guy," then I'll do what I should have done – toss her out on her tarty arse! She can't play me for the wally anymore. ' From here, from the vantage of emotional fierceness, he could try to hide his true feelings from himself.

As he came out of the kitchen to the back bar again, his whole face was contorted into a tight ball. 'I was a fool to fall for her; to fall in love again, and they, they're the ones always telling men we don’t know how they suffer. I'd like to teach just one of them that they cause more pain in us than they could ever understand!'

˚˚˚˚˚

Jonathan stood on the curb and watched the Japanese young man back his motorcycle out from beneath the building's niche, which also housed the trashcans. Propped on the street, Dean offered him a jocular smile and a wave of his gloved hand as he lifted a leg and got on. Jon stepped up, and Dean let down the passenger foot pedals. Jon got on, bracing himself on the boy's shoulders to straddle the seat. The motorcycle wasn't a roomy Harley, but an efficiently sized Japanese bike, so the American's lower front was pressed snuggly against Dean's lower back. The engine came to life, and a pleasant vibration rippled through the bodies where they were joined to machine, and to each other. Dean half turned, "Ready?"

Jonathan tapped Dean's shoulders to show he was set. Dean's foot rolled them to a start, and within a couple of feet, balance and the motor took over. He felt Dean's wallet chain slip, and for once, brush against Jonathan's knee as it so lovingly did all day long against the Japanese young man's body.

The streets were dry and crisp, like the cold air they moved through. Streetlights made the way forward clear with a series of sallow light pools, and Jon, by awkwardly propping his hands on the back of the bike seat, transferred his unsettledness to the machine and to Dean. At the first red light, the boy tilted his head down, as if looking at his boots, and told Jon, "Hold on to me, not the seat – It's safer that way."

Jonathan, for his part, was afraid to lay a finger on the boy, lest his touch transmit through Dean's leather covering the current of his heart like an invisible bolt.

The light changed. The bike took off with Dean's leg lifting gracefully off the pavement. He intentionally revved the throttle, forcing Jon to grab on. He blinked to feel Jonathan's hands latch onto his shoulders, and though seen by none but the bending heads of the passing streetlights overhead, Dean smiled to himself in happiness.

˚˚˚˚˚

Tired, but hanging on, that may be the best way to describe The Round People at two in the morning. The music still poured out steady dance rhythms, and still drew customers to go out and live the music in movement, but there was a settled pallor in those committed to staying the night. They drank more moderately now, just enough to maintain that precious buzz acquired earlier.

Behind the D.J., the boys who 'know' him haven't given up hope of yet spinning their own groove on the crowd, but slowly, along with the booze, they lose patience and worry about wearing the dream out. Standing on the steps they would do anything the D.J. asked them to do, anything except the unthinkable – leave their spot on the stairs. They would love him if he asked, they would do whatever he wanted of them, but they would not, at least not at this hour, after this much anticipation, leave him.

For the rest, the courage to glance at their watch, or better still, at another person's watch, tells them what the living clock within them already knows – that it's a cold hour of the morning to be alone. Then they have to decide which place is the lonelier, the empty house or room, or a bar of strangers whom you see no signs of admitting you into their tight warm circles. They gather their things and fight the dark to escape a more isolating place than the one they'll eventually find sleep and nothingness in. If only they knew that the 'regulars' – the ones who looked so jolly to be around a group of chums – were themselves calculating the hours to the first train, and they too at some time begin to long for a warm bed and freedom.

˚˚˚˚˚

The interior fluorescent lights of the 7-Eleven burned with an almost clinical brightness. White walls and floors helped reinforce the notion that if color and smell could merge, the atmosphere of this 24/7 retreat of lonely-hearts, glowed sadly disinfected.

The little electronic-voiced door monitor chimed. The counter clerk's paper hat dipped with the rest of his head, bowing and saying: "Irasshai Mase." Dean and Jon with interlinked arms and grins, pushed in with preternaturally high spirits. Their color-saturated clothes and radiant looks seemed to bring the air of the bucolic with them – of earth and grass and poly-toned sunshine – into the space-age sparseness of the shop.

Dean went to the back corner where the bento and onigiri – or, rice 'sandwiches' – were loosely packed in an open front refrigerated case. Jonathan, distracted by the front window, drifted to scan the magazine titles. In the aisle, a teenage boy stood with rapt concentration as he read an entire manga. Glancing halfway between him and the glossy food mags, Jon thought about himself. He was never a joiner, because he figured out young in life the best vantage is often an outside one. He could say something to this boy who was now firmly distracted by the suede-wearing American disturbing his routine, but would he?

For Jonathan, to be an observer, detached and alone, offered its own pleasure. He relished the gift of being able to absorb people and situations around him. He did not judge, nor would he ever feel comfortable, as so many did, to impose his view of another onto that person as a masquerade of 'advice.'

Jon pushed behind the manga-boy with a "Sumimasen." He caught the boy bowing to him in the mirror of the front window, and saw his eyes trail after him.

Jonathan smiled to see Dean alone a few paces in front of him. Dean stood with hands in his jean pockets and bent at the waist to inspect the meager supply of ready meals. Jon sidled up to him, 'accidentally' bumping shoulders. The half-pained, half-overjoyed grin that Dean turned on him made him momentarily blink, but then he asked, "What's good?"

Dean picked up a chicken cutlet packaged over rice. "You?" he asked.

Jonathan swallowed, realizing that eating offered no enticement to his knotted stomach. He grabbed a couple of onigiri.

At the counter, their food and two cans of sweetened coffee were rung up.

Dean lifted his right shoulder and pulled out his wallet to pay for both of them. As it came around front in his hand, Jonathan pushed back on it saying that paying was the least he could do, but that brief merger of Jon's fingers within the warm touch of the boy's grasp – where the leather of Dean's wallet was still warm from his continual intimate contact with it, and where the linked coldness of the chain still carried the cold night along its length – made Jonathan catch his breath. It was so little, but something satisfying and deep.

"Atta tame masho ka?" the clerk asked.

"Hai." Dean's languid voice trailed off in the particular kind of Japanese manliness – soft and sure – that made Jon smile.

"Nani?" Dean asked Jonathan 'What?' through his own grin.

Jon could only shrug that an exchange so mundane – 'Should I heat it up?' from the clerk, and a 'Yes' from Dean – made the American somehow glad to be alive to witness it; here and now with Dean, and his remarkable voice, quiet and confident, it was all more than enough.

˚˚˚˚˚

Pat nudged Ichiko, "You did a good job with that Round People talk. Keep it up, I think you impressed him."

"What's up?" Emmy leaned forward, inviting herself into their low-toned intimacy.

For a fraction of a second Ichiko pleaded soundlessly for Pat not to reveal that she liked Andrew, but Pat did anyway.

"Seems our little It-chan is quite taken by our little An-chan." She smiled the pleasure that comes from sharing another's secrecy. But instead of pleasure, Ichiko felt unexpectedly exposed. What could she say now?

"Go for it, Emmy told her in a half-hearted Japanese.

"You have to try harder," advised Counselor Patricia, "I think he's getting restless. He might be wanting to go home, and if you don't have a good footing with him by the end of tonight, then I think you don't have much of a chance later on."

"Go for it," Emmy repeated, obviously distracted in her own world of woe. Ichiko had a violent wave of hatred for the other young woman. She despised her crass uncaring of other's feelings, and marked her down as a very un-Japanese girl. If Gaijin somehow trod on the delicate carpet of Japanese society with iron cleats, it was to be allowed because they didn't know any better. But a Japanese person, who didn't know how to behave, was not truly Japanese. Emmy was so smug, never saying, but always showing the conceit that to have grown up in a foreign country gave her made-up superiority to Japan, and especially to the less 'fortunate' Japanese than she. Everybody thought they knew better than Ichiko, but at least Pat was nice about it, not like her mother.

Ichiko shifted in her seat. She felt uncomfortable, anxious about herself and the advice Pat had given her. How could she 'try harder,' how could she 'go for it?' This uneasy sensation she understood well, it was the one she grappled with to some degree every moment of her waking life. She slipped her eyes shut, hoping the girls wouldn't see her strain to nerve herself. In that quiet, inward moment, a nasty time revealed itself across the inner surface of her sight. Once, her mother had tricked her. She told her there was going to be a special family dinner that the daughter had to attend. Ichiko traveled for the two and a half hours to her family home, wondering what could be so special. That night they went to an expensive local restaurant, and when they got inside, he mother flung a mortifying surprise at her. This dinner, she announced, was so Ichiko could meet her future husband. The introductions were done at the table while behind the young lady's polite shyness, an inferno of rage scoured her clean of any respect she had ever had for her mother. She had lied and done this horrible act of treachery without even the decency of telling her before they stood on the table's threshold. Ichiko was humiliated, surrounded, trapped in a dire situation she was supposed to enjoy. Her fury was built on the impotent notion that all of them were working for her, all of them only thinking what was 'best' for her. It was paralyzing. "How did you like him?" her mother asked afterwards, but Ichiko was almost contorted by the inner anger that made her mother the villain for so much wrong in her life. "I don't want to be arranged." was all her parent heard her say.

'They know better than I do,' Ichiko scoffed at the memory of that day 'but none of them know me. None of them know how I feel.' And suddenly, like the sun clearing a cloudy sky, she saw exactly what her attraction to Andrew was. He was like her. She saw that he could understand her. To and from that sympathy she wanted to both crawl and run away. Too much, too close to another, and she would die just as surely as drown in the gulf that separates ordinary people. Andrew, she knew, had suffered like her, and from that they could carve a place to keep their darkest, deepest fears, while they found in each other the ways to grow to what they both needed to be. Humans not lost in themselves are no longer capable of losing their way in the world, and through Andrew she saw the way to a new Ichiko.

Suddenly Andrew was there. Ichiko's eyes opened as if hearing an alarm. Her heart instantly raced because his mouth, his words were saying he was going home. He was tired; he was going. She panicked.

Andrew passed parting glances around the table. He was startled to see the totally desolate look he encountered in Ichiko. He saw in it a self-awareness that ended in utterly cold and bottomless despair. Was this look for him? Was that sorrow for or because of him? He instantly tensed up as a defense against what might lash out to pull him in as a sacrifice, but paused to reflect why. He didn't dislike her, she wasn't in any way a bad person, but also he thought he had found traits to admire. So what could he do with such potential laying-on of guilt except try and avoid it.

Ichiko's whole frame tensed. She felt a pounding in the middle of her that kept rhythm with the blood she felt in her temples and in the mind splitting between them. She told herself she wanted to sleep with Andrew, though this wasn't the whole truth; she knew the real fight was to become the stronger, go-getter image she tortured herself with. And now the abyss of the weak, worthless Ichiko yawned wide and permanent, as if with Andrew she stood before her last chance. If she couldn't do what she wanted now, she'd never be able to live even a fraction of her hopes for herself. The pit of her old self threatened to swallow her forever. She felt herself slipping, down, down, away from the others and the light, into the dark friendless hell of a pointless, cruel, self-discipline. Pointless because now, here, where she needed it to give her strength, she could only sit in the booth and beg with her eyes for Andrew to help.

He saw in her a loneliness he knew only too well, as the whole of his adult life had been but the painful attempt to eradicate it from his soul. In his case, his isolation revolved around and sustained a friendless life, with no one trusting his too honest displays of affection. He wanted people to like him, but he didn't like himself, and desperation often ruined what he sparked in others. He found a sympathy for her, he found he wasn't so different from her, and how could he reject someone who wanted, who really wanted, to befriend him. On the day his father died, the young man looked for and found no love for the man, because he had none to offer himself.

Andrew held her stare, held it long enough to be moved by it. He would help her be what she wanted to be, if she could only show him the freedom to love himself.

He smiled a little grin of encouragement, his sideburns forming a fair-haired question to Ichiko.

"Would you like to get some coffee?"

And then Ichiko, as if watching herself in a dream, or on TV, saw her form rise, said coffee sounded nice, and then collected her coat, her hat, and slipped on her gloves with their little faces.

Andrew held the door open. As Ichiko passed by him into the night air, he reassessed the gloves shielding her fingers. Maybe they were cuter that he had first thought, maybe she was too.

Ichiko led the way not knowing what would happen on the other side of the door, but she led – led like only a new woman could.

˚˚˚˚˚

Standing in front of the 711, Jon asked, "Where are we going to eat this?"

Dead said, "I know a place."

They pulled up and dismounted before the stately plaza of Seikei University. Dean had taken Jon here one time before with some of Dean's buddies, but now the college bustle was gone, only the trees and brick buildings kept them company around the wooden bench on which they sat, in the center of it all.

As he chewed, Dean's anticipation grew. Jonathan was going to be honest with him, and Dean was likely to startle, and then make Jon very happy. His head bobbed a little on his neck as he wished the moment was already passed. His thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Nobuko last night. He felt he had grown substantially in just the few hours since then. Nobuko and Dean shared a covert intimacy concerning Jonathan; from her point of view they could share in making Jon more comfortable; from Dean's vantage, there was the shining glimmer that awaited the two young men's truthfulness with each other. Dean frowned; an unbidden flash of being rejected scared him. This, just as Jonathan must feel the same, put a stymied hold on one leading off the game. So here on this park bench, side-by-side, they stayed in quiet orbit around one another, both afraid a causal touch would mean a devastating crash. Both felt the pang of loneliness most acutely when closest to the other who could possibly end that feeling of isolation altogether.

Dean took in a deep breath. He snapped his empty tray and lid together and shoved them into the bag. He scanned Jon, who was looking onto the unopened food in his hands. Watching any longer, and Dean felt he might cry for him, so he stood. He stretched with arms over his head and heard his back crack in a few feel-good places. Dean tossed his arms from side to side and walked behind the bench to Jonathan's other side. Here a Japanese maple tree arched over their heads, and Dean thought he would use it to try and get Jon to relax. "Do you know what it is?"

Jonathan looked; shook his head.

"We call it momiji. Have you heard that before?"

"Momiji…" Jon said, "…yeah. It's pretty."

"It's pretty in three seasons: spring, green and fresh…" Dean came around to sit on his heels before Jonathan. He reached out to support himself on Jon's knees, "…in summer, a strong green, and in fall; fiery orange and red. It's my favorite tree. It's like an external clock for the way we change throughout the year within ourselves – the ways nobody sees, sometimes not even us."

Jon stood. He walked to the trunk, knowing now that Dean was too kind for words – and that he had a favorite tree.

Soon the other young man came over and leaned a shoulder on the tree trunk. His eyes stayed locked on the American.

"You ever see Rebel Without a Cause?" Dean spoke so softly, Jon had to strain in close to hear.

"Many times."

Dean's eyes scanned every pained feature of the young man before him. "Me too. Plato – Sal Mineo's character – always breaks my heart every time I see it." Dean audibly swallowed, "We all know who's in love in that movie – and poor Natalie Wood, she seems just an extra."

On Jon's side of this sentiment, he was paralyzed by the thought of humiliating himself and losing a friend in the process. Jon tried not to look too serious as he asked Dean, "Do you ever feel like a spectator in your own life, and not a participant?"

Dean too feared being cast off, just like Jon. But Dean was brave. He blinked, shook his head, then stood and put his arm around Jon's shoulder, making it all the worse for Jonathan.

Dean said, "I like you, Jon. What I said in the bar is true. Every night you are in The Round People, it's a good night for me, because it makes my hours fly by without a care."

Jon gulped down a hard and acrid thing in his throat. If only Dean knew what he was doing to him; what his sweet chicken cutlet breath did to Jon's aggrieved heart – he didn't want to lose him, not now, not ever. He saw in some clarity that Nobuko's advice about Emmy was right, but he didn't know why he'd be thinking about her at this moment. But, he will be honest with her at least, even though the one he must be truthful with is too close for Jon to brook the tide of being rejected.

˚˚˚˚˚

The feeling at the table wasn't good. Soon after Andrew and Ichiko had departed, Nobuko said she was 'going for a walk' to see if any other friends were tucked away in unvisited corners of the club.

Pat considered getting up too. There was only Emmy at the table now, and an oddly hostile vibe seemed to come off the beautiful young woman. 'Maybe,' Pat thought, 'it's just a projection.' A woman who is strong enough to abstractly rationalize a fellow female's judging her per rank and category – like some boys talking about 'chicks' as being 5's or 8's – should be smart enough to say it does not matter, but, others' opinions are often taken by the judged on a purely emotional level.

Pat reached for her cigarettes, and used the motion as excuse to buy some time while she considered the matter. She didn't want to dislike Emmy just because she was a girl, but sometimes, that's all a woman can do.

On her side of the empty table, Emmy felt trapped. She dare not turn and glance around the bar, for she suspected that even a casual glance in the D.J.'s direction would result in yet another dance. Instead, her attention lay fixed and cold on Pat's movements. A cigarette got knocked out of the dwindling pack, then pinched and hoisted up to the lipstick-coated mouth of the older woman.

A flame appeared and illuminated Pat's eyes for a moment. Emmy did not connect with them; she did not feel much of anything for Pat. A second later, the brightness shut off completely, and smoke was blown sideways out of Patricia's mouth.

'Smoking is so disgusting,' Emmy thought. 'Only old folks still get hooked on nicotine, but yet they feel it's cool; how sad it that?'

Emmy's scrutiny lingered on Pat. The Canadian's hair color looked unnatural to her, as did the sculpted features of her face. Something was blurry about Pat, even though all her facial attributes were drawn on with bold lines and garish pigment.

The Japanese young woman pursed her lips unconsciously. She hoped she wasn't going to be 'that bad' when she got to Pat's station in life.

"So…" Pat drew out the sound, wondering if the next word would present itself, "…I'm – told you go to Columbia."

"I do. Did you go there?"

"Nope. Can't say I like New York very much either."

Pat lost all credibility in Emmy's eyes. "But New York," she heard haughty defensiveness creep into her tone, "as they say, is the center of the world."

Pat scoffed: "Funny, that's spoken like a true New Yorker!"

"I grew up most of my life there – "

"Hey. I didn't mean to insinuate – well – OK. Sorry. I'll drop it." Pat tapped ashes with an authoritative rap of her fingertip, as if that signaled the end of her contrition.

"Look," Emmy leaned in closer and dropped her tone, "we don't know each other very well, and maybe the night is getting a little long in the tooth for us to suddenly play at being best friends. Don’t you think?"

Pat was shocked. The taken-back aspect of her ire was a flashing and momentary question. Did this young woman – the kind of girl that Pat's zealous mother would use to ping Patricia for her daughter's lack of natural beauty – use the phrase 'long in the tooth' to affront her? Was she showing off a learned proficiency in English in the pettish and cruelest form possible? Other than that, in the back of Pat's mind was a niggling acquiescence that the girl's statement about not straining to be pretend-friends was one hundred percent correct.

Pat swallowed down her self-fears and doubts for the moment. A calculating smile opened up her visage for Emmy to get a good look at.

"I agree. Why pretend I find anything to like in you? – Or – that you can appreciate the advice and wisdom of women older, and more sagacious, than you."

'Let's see,' Pat wickedly thought, 'the little girl chew on sagacious!'

Emmy leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "What advice?" she sneered dismissively.

Pat pinched her cigarette into the slit of the ashtray. She inhaled, but kept her grin intact.

"Besides being told that you attend Columbia, I have also received intelligence that you fancy a certain American boy named Jon."

Despite her youthful attempt to mirror a coolness as reflectent as Pat's, Emmy shuddered like a glass had been broken nearby.

"I…" she swallowed, "…don’t know – "

"No use denying it. Remember, we were speaking about advice, and about how getting any from me would be anathema to your 'in-control' persona."

Emmy was cold, but still shaken. "I don’t know what you except me to say."

"Oh honey," bleated Pat, "say nothing, please. That's always best. Don’t you think?"

"You mean," Emmy was suddenly sad, "say nothing to him..?"

In a flash, Pat's petchulant temper was gone. Before her sat a sly young woman who had completely dropped her mask to reveal a scared young girl. How could she continue to punish a supplicant? 'How,' she wondered, 'could a God in heaven do the same with any of us?'

"Look," Pat stammered, "from where I sit, I see two options. One, you fess up to Jonathan, and he rejects you; or two, you play it calm and steady with him, and you just might find your own feelings evolving into love."

As Emmy pondered in a confused muddle just who 'him' could be, she followed Pat's gesturing finger with its line-of-sight of questioning wonder.

Her head and body turned to track that imaginary projection straight into the D.J. booth, and into the bittersweet smile that lit up Benedict's face as he caught her stare.

˚˚˚˚˚

Mounting up for the ride back, Dean told Jon to hold on. As they started, Jonathan reached out and gripped the top of Dean's shoulders, while in his head he saw himself reaching fully around the young man's chest, and dared to fantasize that Dean reached up to hold back onto him. At the first light, Jon let go. He hadn't told Dean, and in him a certain unnamed encouragement told him he was a fool – something said to fight, to be a hero for what he loves, and it will naturally reach back for him. Seeing the flashing red and yellow of the opposing traffic light, he knew Dean would pull away in a second. As green light bathed them, Jon put his hands at the side of Dean's waist, then from the backward draw of the wheels moving forward, he slipped his arms around the boy's body and gently held it. Jon's eyes closed from the heady pressure of the smell of sunshine radiating through the dark night and the leather jacket before him. He felt his hands lock together and ride the belt buckle of Dean's jacket along its edge. As the bike slowly rolled through the empty streets, Jonathan leaned his body forward as if they were going a million miles an hour; his head and upper chest rested on Dean's strong shoulders and back. Maybe he would find the courage to be a hero to himself, and tell this boy what he needed to say after all.

Dean, the rumble of the motorcycle engine revving more than his sacral chakra, felt that loosening rise internally to his highest spiritual levels. He felt settled in the warming notion that handily fought the cold air blowing in his face. It told him he could allow himself to be truthful in the way he felt about the one holding onto him. And there was quiet jubilance in his heart knowing Jonathan already felt that way for Dean – Jonathan's touch left no doubt in his mind. Now he held a secret as great as Jon's; now he knew more than the both of them combined.

The Japanese boy, daring a one-handed turn, rested his hand on top of Jonathan's, and patted that which rode so near over the top of his manhood, right below his Levi's zipper. Dean smiled full, knowing none could see it but his mind's eye and the street lights bending their heads in a respectful bow as they passed; he was right where he wanted to be.

˚˚˚˚˚

Seth behind the bar swiped the top with a damp cloth. His eyes were

on Nobuko as she approached. He saw pressed in her hand was a fresh pack of cigarettes, so he thought she planned on staying awhile. He hunkered down for a conversation.

"Where have you been hiding yourself? I haven't seen you all night!"

"Haven't sat at the bar like usual."

"So, how's it goin'? I hear you're 'feeling' genki tonight! Got any good prospects 'under hand?' I heard you had at least one."

"What?" She tapped the filtered end of a butt on the moist bar. "I didn't get what you mean." But she saw the jovial way the other had said it, not realizing how much the joke was on her.

"Never mind. It's nothing 'Big,' I guess." He chuckled.

"I mind," she insisted, lighting up, "tell me what you said before."

"Well, it's just Andrew explained to us that you were 'entertaining' yourself better than usual tonight."

Nobuko blew dispassionate smoke; it screened a face with glints of wise round spectacles that looked blankly at Seth. "I feel pretty good."

Seth blurted, laughing: "That's what I heard!"

"What are you talking about!" she demanded to know.

"OK, OK – " he forced himself to composure. "Andrew told us – you and Jon…" he tried to draw her out, but got only a questioning look to his question, "…you know, how to put it?,…" he tapped a pensive finger on his grinning cheek, "…were playing 'How much is that salami in the Levi's.'"

Nobuko showed no signs of understanding. Seth was forced to drop the euphemisms – mostly. "Andrew told us you were rubbing Jon's 'joy stick' through his pants."

She choked on a breath of smoke. "What?!" she coughed out, regaining herself quickly. "No Way. I wouldn't do that. Jonathan has a brush in his pocket that Emmy thought – " she discreetly glanced around, " – that Emmy thought was his hard-on."

"How does Emmy, that sweet innocent girl, play into your twisted, out-in-public perversions?" He laughed.

"Listen," Nobuko explained losing patience, "she sat herself on his lap, and felt his comb, that she thought was his election. Jonathan was showing me what it really was." She leered into Seth's skeptical stare, "It was a hair brush!"

"Really." He wanted her to spill her guts.

"Really!!" she exclaimed;"Honto da wa!" even repeating it in Japanese. Nobuko changed her defensive mode to one of question, "You said 'We.' Who's 'we?'"

"Just me, and Mark."

"Mark? He knows this too? Only you two guys?"

"That I know of. Andrew might have told someone else, I don't know, but who's gonna believe you were groping around in a guy's box, looking for a comb?"

"Everyone who knows I always tell the truth." And that was that. Seth believed her too.

"And Oh," she added, "could you do me a favor, and don’t tell Mark about the brush. I want to do it myself, and who knows, maybe I can have some fun with it too. OK?"

"Yeah, whatever you want, but are you and Jon romantic, or what?"

"Here's the straight answer: if Emmy asks, say yes. But really, no. I keep telling everybody that we're not. Jonathan is like my brother; like you Seth." She smiled wickedly, "And I don’t play 'How much is that salami' with my brothers. You should already know that." Her eyes glinted wisely from behind her brass frames.

˚˚˚˚˚

The front door opened, in came Dean with Jonathan following behind. Dean quickly went to the back bar. He smiled at Nobuko and pulled off his gloves. It looked like the woman wanted to ask Dean a pressing question, but his droopy eyes and slight headshake stopped her in her tracks. Jon followed and sauntered up to Nobuko at the bar. He needed a shot for his sobering mind.

When Seth saw the two boys together, he good-naturedly bantered, "And where have you two been? Out for a quick smooch. Again?"

Jon made a sour face at him. "Seth, doesn't it hurt to be that funny, all of the time?"

The big guy from Milwaukee stumbled in feigned heart attack: "Oh! He got me with that one!"

Nobuko's hand squeezed Jon's lower arm. She asked, "Did you tell Dean?"

Jonathan slowly shook his head. "It's hard."

But that self-absorbed reticence changed by degrees to shine on the woman like inspiration. "However, I know what I have to tell Emmy to get her to leave me alone. I know what will turn her off. Going out into the fresh air has cleared my head, and I know what'll get her to leave me alone."

"The truth?" Nobuko scowled, but Jon left the question hanging like a sheet drying in the breeze. "Jonathan, I am sorry that you feel lonely. But, for me, I've lived long enough to know that loneliness is just a form of self-hate. It's fear that we're not good enough unless support is always around, but love without self-love is like masturbation – fine while it lasts, but long term, it means nothing."

She changed tactics, trying to engage his intellect. "You've heard of Hesiod, the writer of the Greek myths? He believed that at the moment of the creation of dead matter – of soulless rocks and water and elements – a soul was born into all of them. It passes into us undiluted and pure – after the rocks and seas and the skies and clouds – Love came to give them all meaning – a spirit, and a reason to continue to exist. Increase love, Jon, don't destroy it. Or it will only come back to hurt you."

She smacked his forearm, trying to get him to snap to. "If you'll take my advice, here it is: I directly urge you, my brother, to be honest to both Dean and Emmy. Emmy for her own sake, and Dean for yours."

Moved, but non-committal, Jonathan gripped her hand on his arm, bending down to kiss her forehead in lingering sincerity. He dug for and slipped a bill into Nobuko's hand, and told her to order a beer for him, then she watched him go over to their table and take Emmy's hand, by which he led her upstairs.

When the beer was ready, Nobuko collected her cigarettes and lighter and started going back to the table. Halfway there, Mark met her. She saw him approaching with the ubiquitous tray of empties, and he saw the way she glared at him.

Nobuko prepared to enjoy this. She laughed at the grave, set expression on the Australian's face. Mark wanted to pass her without saying a word, but when he was almost free of her, Nobuko trapped him. He was compelled to regard the smirking face, and in his face, she lost her concentration; lost it in the hard, hateful look he rained down on her. She felt the flinty rigidity of the arm she gripped through the softness of his billowy sweater, and she held on to it, fearing it, because the muscles were contracted not in strength or resistance, but in helpless anxiety.

Standing there, her touch in contact with his magnetic physique barely clothed by his sweater, Nobuko's senses reeled. She had a flashback to that first night of their lovemaking. Though she hadn't told him then or ever, she felt something different with the Australian – she'd been avoiding dealing with it, that's why she had insomnia. His lovemaking had been something special to her, healing, cathartic, and she was stymied to tell him lest he toss her over and leave her, feeling now much too old, to seek out this level of meaning again. She couldn’t sleep, because her world internally had changed, but on the outside, she pretended it had not. Now all she wanted to do was take his hand and lead Mark out of here. Whether on her bed or his futon, in Melbourne or Tokyo, she simply wanted to sleep next to him, safe and whole. But, it wasn't time yet.

She gripped onto Mark's arm, begging him with silent sincerity not to close himself off to her. Though passing, the life-experience fell from her like snow, soft and quiet; beautiful, but heavy enough in its slow accumulation to crush houses.

"Don't become a jealous lover. It's doesn't suit your sweet nature." As she said this, all attempts at humor were lost, and instead a rather pained, sincere timbre appeared in her voice. She left him standing there.

Mark didn't know how to control what was going through him. What was Nobuko trying to do to him? How did she think he'd react? What he wanted to do was just run up to her retreating figure, grab her arm and demand to know what she was doing in Jonathan's trousers. If he had had a sense of humor about this, he perhaps could have seen how silly and truly violent his thoughts were, but he wanted her to suffer a humiliation to equal the one she had dumped on him. Why did she want to keep their going out a big secret – now he knew, she was just laughing at him behind his back, her and Jonathan too.

Mark was not a patient person. He put up with the indignities of the world though conditioning, and the brains to see compromise as the path to getting what he wanted. But here and now he wanted nothing so much as to run after her and extract a denial, or worse, an admittal of her betrayal. All he could do though, was follow with sad eyes, wondering why emotion, even for a controlled man, is crippling; why love enfeebles and eventually kills what reason we think we have built up as a shelter for ourselves.

He stood still, the weight of the tray increasing with every passing helpless thought, and he didn't know what he was going to do.

˚˚˚˚˚

The balcony was quiet. All the other customers had grown weary of its William Blake-esque atmosphere, and had either joined the remaining crowd downstairs, or drifted home. There was stillness here at this time, a peacefulness that added to the already devout nature of the space.

The figures stood their reclusive sentinel like prophets of vast foretellings confined to a stifled peace by no means to be communicated. They looked down on Emmy and Jon like apostles of an unknown creed; looking and being the useless hermits of an already cloistered space.

Jonathan sat down with a spread-leg plop. He pulled the resisting Emmy down on his lap. She put her hand on his chest to push herself forward so she could gauge his intents by his face. She was confused, and frankly more than a little uncomfortable. She wanted to know what Jonathan intended to do. She squirmed a bit on his lap, trying to ease herself off, but he grabbed her waist and put her firmly back on.

"So, do you like sitting on guys' laps?" He didn't let her answer. "I bet you think some guys just Love it when you do. Don't you?"

"Are you OK Jon?" she asked, one hand bracing her against him. She didn't resist; she thought that would only make him more unpredictable. "Besides – " her tone lightened, as he expected it would, " – you like it when I sit on your lap, don't you?" She wiggled down deep, feeling confirmation.

"Oh!" he said spiritedly, "You think I like it when you sit on my lap. Well, that we all know, but what I'm just itching to hear is whether or not you get excited on my lap." He thrust his pelvis towards her a couple of times. "Whether or not something down there gets you going to tears, if you know what I mean."

She looked blankly at him.

He winked.

Emmy said, "Well, I can feel it – if that's what you're asking."

"Oh baby, I thought you'd never say it. Would you like me to take it out?" Again he didn't give her time to respond. He pushed her to her feet.

"Here," he offered, "let me do it for you."

"Jonathan, have you gone crazy?"

He paused, asking with sham confusion, "You don’t want me to take it out?"

Emmy swallowed hard, glancing over her shoulder. "Here?"

"We're alone, don’t worry. I told Dean not to let anybody come up." Jonathan pleaded with a whiny: "We're alone, baby."

His breath was so close to Emmy in the confined space, she could sense the earnestness of what he wanted to do in his 'baby.' She moved to the railing to peek down. When she looked again at Jon, he had leaned his back rakishly against the black velour seat, further spreading his legs for her view, and had locked his fingers behind his head.

"Well?" he asked slow and soft.

She re-peeked over the railing; a momentary flash of the top of Benedict's head and ponytail spun her away. She bit her lip, slowly bringing her gaze around to Jonathan's expectant stare. In it she saw that spark of naturalness she had longed for, and the one Jon so easily gave to Nobuko and to Dean. If this was what he wanted, she would do it. She would be what he wanted her to be, even if only to her detriment; she would do it for him.

"Why not," she said unemotionally.

Jon laughed at her. "You want me to take it out?"

To the callow glint in his voice, she responded with ever more tenderness, "Stop talking. Yes, do it."

"OK, get ready." Jon pretended to be fumbling with his zipper with one hand, while covertly the other was digging in a pocket. "Here it is!" he announced, and held up a yellow plastic frame, five-inches long, and shaped like a handleless double tuning fork. Between the frame was a black rubber pad and a multitude of colorless plastic bristles. He exerted pressure on the black part and brush teeth came open on the other side like a porcupine. He joyfully ran it though the right side of his hair, then the left, before holding it up before her nose.

"What's that?" Emmy asked impatiently.

"That's what got you excited, honey. What does it do for you now?" Beneath the hand holding the brush, his face was hard and broken by a cruel smirk of pleasure.

For a moment Emmy stood perfectly still, frozen in the humiliation of understanding. An audible gulp escaped her throat, her eyes were wide, but suddenly she began to laugh, and she couldn't stop, it became her remedy.

Emmy fell down on the seat next to Jonathan, all arms and hands reaching to steady herself on his legs and chest. He felt and hated the moist feel of her scorn at his trick on her. She latched onto the brush still in his hand, and using her thumb and index finger as a circular grip, began to glide over it again and again. She laughed shamelessly in his face.

"Oh, yeah Baby this got me hot, and Oh, to touch it, I think I'm…, I think I'm…," she made passionate noises right into his ear, "I think I'm – Oh, Oh, Oh…"

"Knock it off!" Jon snatched the brush from under her stroke. He used the tone of voice tired parents wield on children who have irritated the whole day, but never do seem to learn when to stop.

"Jon," she said, not wanting him to be in a bad mood, "don’t be this way." She nearly pleaded, a sensitive note plying itself between her wretchedness and her breathless longing for Jonathan's love. At that moment, as like the moment before, she would have done anything he asked of her.

She gently brushed his cheek with the top of her fingers, exhaling no more than a desperate sigh as she explained, "You know I like you, you know that. So why do we have to play this schoolgirl game of 'when, when, when,' because I know you like me too, you're just trying to hide it for some reason." Her lips became moist, baiting upon his cheek: "Let's go. There's no reason not to."

Emmy inspected the profile of the young man she loved. She looked for any signs of encouragement, or for a melting of the sterner expression he had put on when she started laughing at him. But now his features grew soft, almost sad, and Emmy took great comfort in that.

In Jonathan's head he had left the bar far behind. He was lost in the sorrow of how people make mistakes and then find themselves not clever enough to realize and utilize the helping hand others hold out to them. He was scared of Emmy. He knew she would do anything; he knew she loved him. He feared her because even though he wanted to see her disgraced and humbled, she hadn’t sobered up to the fact that he did not care for her.

Suddenly he was connected to the earlier moment when he stood with Dean in the universality quadrangle. He had thought of Emmy in the same moment he contemplated his own misery, and now he saw why. To his growing horror, Jon could connect to this vapid girl, and it goaded his sense of uniqueness to hate her more. It was an ugly thought, but because they were alike, he'd have to admit it. By Emmy loving Jonathan, she loved that which could never love her back; this was the same maddening impulse that Jon suffered in his heart for the straight Dean.

As Nobuko had said earlier, a jumper and his rescuer get tangled – how could Jonathan hurt her without hurting himself? He stood on the rooftop as if he were the protagonist of his friend's parable – for his sake, he should let Emmy down easily, but in his gut, a tight and vengeful urge took control to just be done with it. Now he realized he had to completely destroy emotional access to him.

"Emmy," he said, "I'm Gay."

Her face gradually grew round; she became a perfect question mark, wanting to ask 'what,' but it stuck in her throat. And by the second attempt to ask, she knew there was no mistake in what she'd heard.

Emmy blinked.

Jonathan nodded.

The next moment he viciously snapped at her: "I'm Gay, OK? So can you leave me alone now?!" Her eyes were no longer soft, something was drained from her, and that look of loss made Jonathan stand up and leave her. He left her alone on the balcony, each step falling on the tread more assuredly than the previous, leaving her but the hard, worthless solace of the wordless prophets surrounding her misery.

The beautiful Japanese young lady, with the face that would cause an old master to suffer through life again, sank back into the booth seat in desolation. Her mind wandered aimless over the rich walls that now seemed absurdly so. Slowly, without her being able to mark the passage, her surprise slipped into self-pity: of how people she liked never seemed to like her, even though she tried to please them, to be like them. She thought men were ruthless in getting things their way no matter what, or who, happens to stand in the way. Suddenly her mood reverted to anger for protection. She conjured violent, repugnant images of men holding hands in the park, of them kissing one another. She sneered, her face twisted in strain, but what she imagined was abstract – two faceless men doing faceless deeds. She tried to focus, to bring herself back to the immediate and present situation. First, she calmly pictured Jonathan. Once she had a concrete image of him, she realized she needed another to experiment on. She brought up Andrew, but he was too faint a personality for her. Then she remembered that smile that had passed between Jon and Dean. She pictured them together, but when she managed to get them joined in her head, standing face to face, arms around their waists, they only laughed at her. They turned their boyish faces from one another and leveled a scornful look at her, and laughed. Instantly she knew it was a lie, that Jonathan had lied to her just to get her off his back.

A wave of anger washed over her, sending currents from her abdomen that collected in a hard ball at the center of her chest. It was a fury so hot and intense that it was as palpable as the gall coating the back of her throat.

She bit under her breath: "That son of a bitch." Slowly, deliberately, her fist formed a tightness to match her wrath, and with it she brought it down three times on the table. Each time was harder than the previous blow, and each one caused the dirty glasses gathered there to rattle in intensifying fear.