Eventually his grandmother recruited Laurie and Audrey to help her put the kitchen in order. “Let’s not get underfoot,” his grandfather said to him; he spoke so casually that Paul didn’t detect any cause for concern until it was too late.
He gathered up his belongings and followed his grandfather into the living room, eyeing the chessboard by the fireplace. He thought about rearranging the pieces, but couldn’t quite remember the configuration of Kazlauskas v. Kaplan. Even if he could have, though, the queen sacrifice felt oddly personal—as if its beauty should belong to him and Julian alone.
His grandfather switched on the television at a low volume, turning the channel dial until it landed on a static-frayed hockey game. “Your mother tells me she hardly sees you anymore,” he said. He settled heavily onto the couch and motioned for Paul to do the same. “Says you’re always out with friends.”
“She’s exaggerating.” Paul sat on the edge of the cushion and tried to become raptly interested in his sketchbook. “Friend, in the singular.”
“Give it time, they tend to multiply.” His grandfather had an odd air of self-satisfaction, as if he’d thought of a joke he wasn’t in the mood to share. “What’s he like, this Julian?”
“Um—I don’t know. He’s cool.”
“What do the kids say nowadays—he’s groovy?”
“Ugh, Zayde, don’t do that.” Paul pulled a face rather than smile. “Not groovy, just cool.”
“You two get into any trouble?”
“Of course not,” Paul answered quickly, but he knew as soon as he spoke that it wasn’t the right answer. “I mean, not really.”
“A little trouble is a good thing for a young person,” his grandfather said. “All the old stick-in-the-muds are afraid of the young people making trouble and shaking things up. Might as well give them something to fuss about.”
He thought that might be the end of it. The quiet was broken only by the low hum of commentary from the television and the occasional flurry of conversation in the kitchen. When his grandfather spoke again, he still gave the impression of telling himself a private joke.
“Mind you,” he said, “you do want to be careful about girl trouble.”
“There’s no girl.” Paul knew that this was another wrong answer, but he was too desperate to shut down the conversation to care.
“There’s always a girl,” said his grandfather. “Especially once you get a couple of teenage boys together, and they have an audience they need to impress. I wasn’t born yesterday, Paulie, I know what boys get up to.”
His grandfather appeared to read his revulsion as mere embarrassment. Paul stared at the television and curled inward like a dying spider.
“A bit of girl trouble is normal. Like I said—everything in moderation. And it’s good for you especially, because it’ll teach you not to be shy when it comes time to find the kind of girl you want to marry. Just don’t let yourself get talked into any girl trouble you’ll end up regretting. Do you understand what I’m saying, here?”
The distant strains of jazz from the kitchen radio had taken on a cloying sweetness. Paul abruptly wanted to escape the safe, soft confines of this house, to let himself feel everything its walls kept at bay.
“It’s good, though,” said his grandfather. “We’re all glad you’re starting to make friends, Paul. Didn’t I always say it would get easier once you were out of high school? And it’ll only get better from here on out—when you’re a doctor and you’re married to a nice girl, you’ll look back on the hardest years and you’ll think, ‘I can’t believe how easily it all came together once it really counted.’ I believe that. I hope you can, too.”
Paul’s family had been telling him this for years. It was the only story they knew, and they told it relentlessly because they thought they were doing him a kindness. All he could do was force a smile and hope that they would all be gone before he had a chance to disappoint them.
“It’s fine if you don’t like it. Just give it a chance.”
There was a check from his parents burning a hole in Julian’s pocket—for expenses, allegedly, on top of what they spent on his room and board. There was always plenty left over after the few expenses he did have, and it didn’t seem to occur to Julian to save it. Instead it went toward small relentless gifts, and the movies and meals he insisted on paying for. Today he seemed to be spending the bulk of the money on records. Paul counted seven so far, and not one that he would have picked out himself. Julian was most enthusiastic about the one he’d selected now. It was a replacement, Julian claimed, for one his father had taken away and burned. The anecdote was so outlandishly cruel that Paul wasn’t sure he believed it. He would have called it a lie outright if not for the matter-of-fact way Julian told him, as if he didn’t consider it remarkable at all.
Awful as the story was, though, Paul nearly understood why it had happened. The singer’s photograph made him look very much like a woman, rawboned and imperious. Paul couldn’t look directly at the record sleeve without feeling a flood of embarrassment, so he avoided seeing it, as if he were shying away from eye contact with an acquaintance he didn’t want to acknowledge.
The listening booths were tucked away behind the jazz section, far from the front counter where Audrey and her friend were pretending to be busy. The booth was so narrow that there were only inches between him and Julian, no matter how small Paul tried to make himself. Julian, however, didn’t appear to mind. He let Paul hold the stack of records while he squirmed free of his peacoat; Paul tried not to notice the way the striped fabric of his T-shirt pulled and slid over his torso as he moved.
“Ninety seconds. Not even the whole song.” Julian closed the distance between them to hand him the headphones. “Either you’ll be in love by the end of the first chorus or you’ll never get it.”
The booth walls blocked the sounds of the store, but the headphones muffled even the hush; all Paul could hear was his own heartbeat and a soft hiss of static. The closeness of their bodies was overwhelming—the shadows at the hollow of Julian’s throat, the clean wintry smell of his skin. When he sidled past to put on the record, his hand brushed Paul’s chest. It was an accident of proximity, but it still sent a jolt through him. He pulled off the headphones and started to recoil, but Julian stopped him with a glance.
He almost expected Julian to hit him. Instead he lifted the headphones again and placed them firmly over Paul’s ears.
“Listen.”
Julian watched his face, patient and prompting, as if he still cared about Paul’s verdict on a song he could barely be bothered to hear. Julian’s smile was impassive and absolutely opaque.
Paul had heard parts of the song before, drifting up from Audrey’s basement bedroom or in snatches from the car radio. He’d thought it pleasant enough, if a little frivolous, but now he felt too sick from shame to keep listening.
“Didn’t like it?”
“I’m weird about music,” said Paul to his shoes. “Sorry. It doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s any good, I just . . .”