Julian stopped the record and returned it carefully to its sleeve. “It’s all right. We don’t have to be twins.” He said it carelessly, but that only worsened the sting.
They emerged into the low thrum of The Dark Side of the Moon playing on the PA system. Audrey and her friend Joanne looked up as they approached, but Joanne quickly decided they weren’t her problem and went back to sorting the singles rack. She was tall and glamorous, with a tasseled macramé vest and an immaculate Afro. Like most of Audrey’s friends, Paul could tell she’d been a kind of cool in high school that he was constitutionally unable to comprehend, much less emulate.
“Sure you don’t want to take home the whole shelf?” said Audrey. It was a sharper remark than she pretended, but Julian feigned cheerful oblivion.
“I want to get his, too.” Julian caught Paul’s elbow when he tried to retreat. “Don’t be dumb, it’s your birthday next month anyway. This one still hasn’t forgiven Dylan for going electric, has he, Audrey?”
“He likes what he likes,” said Audrey coolly, though she’d been teasing Paul about his music tastes for the better part of a decade. “It’s good that he’s got guns to stick to, instead of turning his record collection into a performance of the kind of person he wants to be.”
“Well, I find it very charming,” said Julian, scrupulously amiable but brooking no argument. “I hope that was clear.”
Paul reluctantly allowed Julian to pull his lone record out of his hands. He could feel his sister watching him, but he refused to meet her eyes.
“Do you have any idea what Ma’s doing for dinner?” Audrey asked him over Julian’s shoulder.
“She isn’t.” Not wanting to look at either of them, Paul stared at the bracelets on Audrey’s wrist. “It’s fine, there are TV dinners.”
“Ugh, hell with that, I’ll make us some spaghetti or something.” She exaggerated her annoyance to conceal her worry. “Want we should do the candles this week, at least? I’ll be in a little late, but no one wants to eat when the sun goes down at fucking two in the afternoon anyway.”
“We’re not going to be home, I don’t think.” It was only after speaking that Paul noticed the jarring, conspicuous we; Audrey’s lips twitched when he said it, as if she were fighting the urge to echo it in disbelief. “Sorry—next week, for sure. I’ll help cook and everything.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Audrey slid Julian’s change across the counter, but Paul could tell she was still watching him. “All right, enjoy, stay warm out there . . . See you at home, Pablo.”
It would have been better to pretend the jibe barely registered. Instead he froze and pressed his elbows into his sides to keep from covering his face. Audrey could only have heard the nickname by listening in on a private conversation, and her scrutiny felt all the more invasive because she treated it like a joke.
Julian paused, forearm propped on the exit door. He glanced back at Paul, eyebrows raised as if in polite impatience.
“Don’t,” Paul said quietly.
“What, isn’t that your name now?” said Audrey with skeptical amusement, but her smile faded when he didn’t laugh.
“Not to you, it isn’t,” he said, and he hurried to join Julian at the door before she could protest.
As they made their way along the icy sidewalk, Julian pushed down the back of Paul’s scarf and rested one gloved hand on the nape of his neck. The touch moved hot through Paul’s body, but Julian’s eyes were serene, even cold. Julian held Paul’s gaze for a long moment. Then he smiled, straightened his spine, and pushed Paul to keep walking.
“They’re nice people,” Julian said carelessly, and it took Paul a moment to parse that he was changing the subject. “Your family, I mean—they like you. But they don’t understand you, do they?”
It was the first time he’d ever known Julian to miscalculate. It was a strange mistake for him, trying to chip away at something that wasn’t there. It was ugly enough to know that Audrey thought he needed protecting; no matter how many vulnerabilities Paul had let Julian collect, he couldn’t let them lead Julian to believe the same thing.
“I don’t know if I want them to understand me,” Paul answered, and he felt a little less powerless when he saw the falter in Julian’s smile.
6.
Julian could never sit still while he was talking to his parents. He drummed his fingertips on the wall of the pay phone kiosk, biting the inside of his cheek as he listened. Paul leaned against the wall opposite him, watching the small, tense movements of the muscles in Julian’s jaw and neck.
“Yeah, they’re not very good.” Julian spoke to his father in a flat, clipped tone. “I don’t know why you’re torturing yourself getting invested.”
Mr. Fromme was following the college’s mediocre lacrosse team in what struck Paul as a poignantly pathetic attempt to cultivate a common interest with his son. Julian had even less interest in this subject than his father did, but without it they would have had hardly anything to discuss at all.
“Did he really?” Julian looked toward Paul, rolled his eyes, and pulled his necktie sideways in a pantomime of a noose. “Well, how nice for him—so how does that one rate next to, I don’t know, the one at Harvard? . . . I’m not, Dad, I’m very happy for him, I know both of you have worked hard for this . . .”
Julian always wanted Paul nearby for his weekly call home. At first Paul hadn’t understood why. Julian never mentioned Paul to his parents, even though he offered regular updates on the childhood friends whose letters arrived postmarked from New England college towns and tony boarding schools. He would sometimes go the entire call without meeting Paul’s eyes once; when he spoke to his mother he usually did so in French, which Paul knew was partly intended to prevent him from listening in.
But there was inevitably a moment that Julian would retreat to monosyllables and long silences, and the lie of his self-assurance would collapse around him. Paul knew he was being trusted with something no one else would ever see. That Julian never discussed it afterward was immaterial. The mere existence of Julian’s vulnerability was an immense and terrible secret, and keeping it was as much a burden as a privilege. It sent a long ugly fracture through everything Paul knew about him, and he struggled sometimes to remember that Julian had enough resolve to hold himself together in spite of it.
Something his father said made Julian’s face fall. He shut his eyes and drew a deep, slow breath. It frightened Paul how readily he yielded to the pain, almost as if he were so used to it that it bored him. By the time he exhaled, the grief had disappeared again; Paul couldn’t tell if it had passed through him or if he’d just absorbed it so completely that Paul couldn’t see it anymore.
Julian didn’t meet Paul’s eyes, but he closed the distance between them and rested their foreheads together.
“Ha ha. I suppose so.” His skin was warm, but the overhead lights cast long shadows under his eyelashes that made him look sickly and cold. “I’ll try. Thanks, Dad.”
Calling home always put Julian in a volatile mood. After he hung up, he broke away from Paul unceremoniously and sidled out of the booth, rolling his shoulders as if he were shrugging off a too-tight jacket.