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Sea of Love

Summary:

“Why Hawaii?”

“You waited until we were in the air to ask?”

*

Matthias and Maxime in the spring of 2022.

Notes:

Is this it? Is this the final installment of the MYLAH/HISL series?

I’d be more than happy if you considered this and An Unraveling String to be potential rather than definite futures for the characters we left behind in HISL. (I don’t want it to end either! 🥺)

On Instagram, Dmitri Cavander captioned “Orange Towels Through Window” with “a long struggle, ending here.” Thank you all so much for your kind words over the course of this series.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Dmitri Cavander, Orange Towels Through Window

Dmitri Cavander (b. 1969) - Orange Towels Through Window. 2021. Oil on canvas

“Are you there? It's summer. Are you smeared with the juice of cherries? / The light this morning is touching everything…”

—Robert Hass, “July Notebook: The Birds” in The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems

“I go down to the edge of the sea. / How everything shines in the morning light!”

—Mary Oliver, “Breakage”

 

MAXIME

In December, the group chat is full to bursting with advice for Matt, Brass and Frank duetting: here’s how you talk to peasants like us. Here’s what you shouldn’t say in the presence of Max’s coworkers. Don’t ask after their clients and don’t talk about yours. Don’t ask after their mothers, you mama’s boy, ask after their girlfriends.

And boyfriends, Matt says, half-joking, half-offended.

Frank says, hey Maximus wanna bring me instead?

No one gives Max advice about how to behave at the 2021 holiday party at Gauthier Roy, Matt observes, scowling. I talk about you at work, do you talk about me? He smiles at Matt to smooth it over. The party ends up being virtual anyway, partners displaying their wives, children, and mahogany bookcases in their holiday best; Matt parks himself in the cleanest whitest corner of the birdcage with a glass of wine, chats and smiles for sixty minutes on the dot, then shuts his laptop and stops grinning like a light going out. Christ, Matt says, I hate these things.

His party gets canceled. There’s talk for a while of Philippe hosting at his apartment in Verdun, but Philippe’s wife kills the fun. It’s not omicron she’s worried about, Phil says, or breaking any rules, but the thought of fifteen of you lunkheads descending on us, eating us out of house and home, smashing the plates and clogging the toilet and scaring the kids. Next year, Phil says. Next year for sure.

Next year: January. He kisses Matt at midnight on January 1 and doesn’t see him for the rest of the month. Matt’s new client, some developer from B.C., has him working West Coast hours. Then Australia hours, he complains to Rivette, shitting other-side-of-the-world hours. If it weren’t for the dent Matt’s head left in the pillow every morning he’d think he was living alone.

The two of you, Rivette replies, are so entwined you are basically one organism. I think you should enjoy this time to yourself. It’s not healthy to be so entangled.

Is that your professional opinion?

It’s my opinion, Rivette says primly, as your good friend.

On the last day of February he sprains his ankle, slipping on a patch of black ice by the warehouse. Like a fucking idiot who’s never seen winter, he says, can you believe it, when Matt comes home to find him in bed with a sack of frozen peas. Phil drove me back from emerg. Watch out for my crutches, don’t take yourself out too. How did you get up the stairs? Matt asks. I crawled, he says.

“Christ,” Matt says, looking devastated. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Would you have picked up?” he says. He wants his question to be sweet and open: pure curiosity. It comes out like a bag of rusty nails.

“Max.”

“Sorry.”

Matt sits beside him. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, did you take anything?”

He looks at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong?”

“My ankle fucking hurts, that’s what’s wrong.”

The bed shifts; Matt leaves and comes back with ibuprofen and ice water. Presses the pills into his open upturned palm, glossy little green capsules of gel, jewel-pretty. He ignores the glass and swallows them dry.

“What else is wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Max,” Matt says, dark-voiced.

“I can’t work like this, obviously,” he says.

“Christ,” Matt says, “did they fire you? They can’t do that.”

“What are you going to do, sue them?” Criss de marde, he thinks, everything’s coming out wrong. He stares upward, at the ceiling and its cracks, and bites his mouth shut.

Matt strokes his hair. “You’ll find something. There are shortages everywhere. First the truckers, now…”

“They didn’t fire me, fucking Christ,” he says. “One week unpaid.”

“You’re not going back after a week,” Matt says. “How are you going back? On crutches? No.”

“Then they’re going to find someone else.”

“Then they should do that.” Matt sounds incredulous. “One week for a sprained ankle, you’ve got to be kidding me. They’re lucky no one’s complained to CanOSH.”

As if CanOSH is paying attention to anything other than making sure we have our faces covered and our arms pricked on schedule. “We can’t all be bougie-ass lawyers,” he says, and Matt inhales, short and sharp. He pulls his forearms over his eyes. “Christ, I’m sorry. I don’t mean it. Thank you for the Advil. You don’t have to sit here. Did you eat at the office? You must be hungry. Go eat.”

Matt doesn’t move.

“I just.” He mumbles into his arm. “I just can’t seem to catch a fucking break.”

“In this case,” Matt says quietly, “be glad you didn’t catch a break.”

“Christ.”

“You know. Like a fracture.”

“I get it.”

“Of your bones.”

“Monsieur Specificity,” he says, smiling a little. “Are you going to tell me which bones?” He feels the wobble in his lower lip. “I like this job. I want to keep it.”

“I know,” Matt says, petting him. “I know, baby.”

“Well, what does it matter,” he says. “Worrying about a stupid job when there’s nuclear winter on the horizon.”

On Thursday Russia had invaded Ukraine. He had watched Andriy and the Eastern European contingent leave the warehouse with faces like thunder and had spent the afternoon with the remaining part-timers, joyfully discovering ways to curse Putin out in seven languages. Then, on Friday, in Rosemont, he had watched in horror as Francine poured the wine and started crying into her salad.

Oh, forgive me, she’d said. I’m so sorry. One moment. It’s just the news. It’s just too awful for words.

Matt had leapt up and taken the salad bowl and embraced her.

I knew it would come to this, Francine had said, muffled against Matt’s shoulder. Think of the coups we’ve seen in the last two years. Myanmar for one. The fall of Hong Kong.

Since when, Matt had said gently, have you been a geopolitical expert?

You don’t need to be a genius to see the writing on the wall, Francine had continued, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve—making that long open-mouthed face women made when they didn’t want to smudge their mascara, although it was already too late—you don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to look at the upheaval we’ve experienced and know that it would end in violence. I’d always known, I’d always feared…

He had gone to grab a box of tissues and returned to find Matt and Francine murmuring by the china cabinet. What happened to your bravado, eh, Maman, Matt was asking. Just last week you were laughing at the thought of new variants, calling us all wet hens.

I don’t care, Francine had said. The quiet pneumonic death, I don’t care, if it must come then let it come. But the slaughter…but the children…

It’s a choice to bring a child into the world, she had said suddenly, looking at Matt, cupping his cheek. I don’t regret it. But I feel guilty when I think of, when I realize, all the things you’ll have to face while I’m peacefully underground.

He had passed the tissues to Matt in silence, had watched Matt pull out too many, a white billow. Had thought, was it a choice? The way Manon told it, in her more tender moments, it had been as a natural as breathing. But therein lies the difference, he had thought. The wanted child and the mistake. The wanted child was giving his weeping mother a kiss on the forehead. Slowly Francine stopped weeping, though after dinner her eyes had been wet and shining under the streetlight as she said goodbye.

The markets that concerned Matt’s clients had tumbled into chaos. While trimming his beard on Saturday morning, Matt had tried to explain anti-money-laundering laws and asset-tracing and the whole of the Canadian real estate industry, then spent the weekend at the office. He, Maxime, had gone to work too, to rack up some overtime. What else was there to do?

At the warehouse, rumors had been flying. Putin was marching on Poland. Putin had his finger on the nukes. Just let me at him, Marc-André had said, and they had howled with laughter: what are you going to do, Marc, shake your fist until he gives up? This is Putin, the shirtless dictator who rides bears. He’s ex-KGB, he’ll peel off your fingernails and eat them for breakfast. He’s a crazy old man, Marc-André had said, a crazy old man like any other, he needs to be put in a home.

He had stayed late to cover for Andriy, who hadn’t returned and wasn’t answering his phone. He worked until ten and staggered home to a dark apartment. Matt had said, I’m sorry, I’ll try to be home by midnight.

I’ll be asleep by then, he had said.

Okay. Sleep tight.

He had watched Jusqu’au déclin on Netflix with one eye and texted Frank with the other and dozed and left for Place d’Armes while the sky was still black and Matt was a humped green shape under the duvet. At noon a newbie had shuffled into the office to quit in broken French, staring at the floor, at his worn work boots.

I think he’s Russian, one admin had said in the depressed hush after his departure, do you think he was too ashamed to stay? Do you think he’s going to enlist? Do you think that’s what happened to Andriy, did he enlist, Foreign Legion-style?

This isn’t the Spanish Civil War, Rebecca, the second admin had said, full of contempt; her name was Alexandra and she was studying history at Concordia. She was blonde and slender with a thin beaky nose and a fondness for Peter Pan collars: she had startled him on his first day with her resemblance to Sarah, and he had offended her by shying away from her handshake.

I’m just here to get these orders stamped, he had said, when they turned to him to mediate. At four o’clock, dazed and distracted, he had taken a corner too fast and fallen down.

“I’m worried about your mother,” he says now. Matt’s leaning over him, kissing the undersides of his forearms, trying to get him to move them, but he keeps his eyes stubbornly barred. “I’m worried about her and I miss you.”

 

 

 

He dreams about Manon that night. The first dream in months. She’s in a field of blood, drowning, but not unhappily. What would Rivette make of that, he thinks, gazing through the window at the bone-shard of moon while his ankle throbs. The space beside him is empty and he wonders what time it is, if Matt had to go back to the office. Then he closes his eyes. I’ll reach her this time, he thinks. I’ll go back to the field and catch her: by the hand, by the hair, anything.

He wakes up again to a dove-gray bank of clouds and feeble morning light and hobbles into the living room to find a makeshift nest on the couch and Matt drafting a document at the coffee table.

“Oh,” he says, while his heart gives a little flutter in his chest like a sparrow. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Matt says. “Sorry, one sec.”

He waits, swiveling on his crutches, while Matt mutters to himself. At closing…kind regards…Matthias. And…send.

“How about some breakfast?” Matt asks, looking up with his eyes bright and keen. “I’ll get it. Why don’t you sit down? Put your foot up?”

“I’m good,” he says, amused. “Can’t let the rest of me atrophy.”

He hears Brass: Oooh, aTrOpHy. Maître Ruiz’s been rubbing off on you. Not like that. I mean, maybe like that.

Not like that, Brass, he thinks. But those were the days, weren’t they? Once upon a time, you were sprinting home to ride me. Once upon a time, a time not so long ago, a look was enough, a touch; we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Our hands, our mouths. What happened to the people we used to be? Then Matt smiles at him and he swallows: a look is still enough.

“I made an appointment for you with Dr. Mascarenhas,” Matt says. “At three.”

“You got an appointment?” It’s like the Hunger Games these days, trying to get in to see a family doctor. Matt just tilts his head like the girl from fucking Legally Blonde: what, like it’s hard?

“I’ll take you,” Matt says. “I took the day.” He casts a sheepish glance at his laptop. “Sort of.”

“And is your mother on her way with bandages and antiseptic and a shitting fruit basket?”

Matt grins. “I didn’t call her,” he says. “I’m a grown man. I can look after you myself.”

“All the way from the couch.”

“Didn’t want to jostle you by mistake.”

“Come jostle me on purpose,” he says, and Matt stares at him for a dull dark split-second before he jumps to his feet.

 

 

 

I’m working from home the rest of the week, Matt says. Next week, too, if I can swing it. I think I can.

Just like old times, he says. Those two weeks in 2020, their quarantine, live in his memory like sunlight: sometimes sharp, sometimes hazy, always warming him to the core. Old times that were once first times, he thinks, and now I’ve lost count of the times. Your fingers are in me to the knuckle, squishing, and I didn’t even have to ask. All I had to do was move my good leg.

Matt smiles. I miss you too, Matt says, kissing him. So much. Every day. This sanctions dust will settle. As for the other project…

“Don’t talk about work anymore,” he breathes. “For fuck’s sake.”             

“Sorry,” Matt says, laughing. “What should I talk about? How tight you are?”

“Are you going to fuck me or what, esti?”

“How’s your ankle? Is it comfortable? Is it—ah, fuck—”

He gives Matt’s dick another pump. So hot, so hard, and all for me, he thinks, all mine. “Put it in me like this,” he says.

“But,” Matt says.

I know, he thinks. You’re the one who likes it bare. The drag and the dirty post-coital trickle. But if I have to wait another minute while you fish around in that drawer I’m going to die.

“Hurry up,” he says.

“So demanding.”

Matt pulls his fingers out. He stutters. “You l-love it.”

“I do,” Matt says. “You know I love it when you ask me for things. You know I love doing things for you.”

“Stop,” he says. A squeak: his throat’s all tight.

“I won’t stop.” Matt looks him in the eye as he lines up. “I love you,” Matt says, and plunges in.

 

 

 

It’s starting to snow. Gasping, convulsing, he turns his head on the pillow and throws a panicked stare through the cold glass at the storm. Turns back, cheek catching on tacky pooling saliva: gapes at his swollen ankle on the duvet, his swollen cock in his hand, at the olive shift of Matt’s shoulders, the hot glow of sweat on Matt’s forehead. At Matt, gritting his teeth, panting: concentrating. And inside him, unseen, the blunt insistent press of Matt’s cock, battering away, slipping and sliding in the gush of lube and precum, Matt inside him, inside—

“Gonna cum,” he says.

“What?” Matt grunts.

“Gonna,” he says. “Gonna—I’m—fuck—”

Fuck, Matt says, fuck, Max, are you, Max

He hears his own voice crying out, possessed, don’t stop, fuck me, don’t stop, don’t, and then it’s snowing in their bedroom, in their steamy snow-globed world of tangled limbs and sweat-drenched hair. It’s snowing, it’s a white-out. Matt groans. Collapses against him, into him.

Matt, he says. Matt, yes, Matt.

 

 

 

& MATTHIAS

It’s starting to rain. Nothing spectacular, nothing torrential: just a fine drizzle that comes and goes. The movement in the sky is endless: rain starts on the ridge and gets blown toward the sea; rinse, repeat. It was sunny this morning when we left Waikiki. He watches Max’s hair curling, the crowning of Max’s head by droplets like dew. Max is bent over, phone extended, photographing a chicken.

“Didn’t you just take a picture of that one?”

“This is a different rooster,” Max says.

“They all look the shitting same.”

“Racist.”

“They do,” he insists. The clone rooster is pecking determinedly at some invisible speck in front of a plastic A-frame sign that reads Free Love. Max smiles, points, shoots.

The town of Haleiwa is quiet this rainy Monday morning: more chickens than people, though cars keep rumbling by. Under the awning of a soap store that used to be a bank, Max had stooped to pet a black cat. He had paused on a bridge to point out a fish in the water below. One serpentine glimmer in the muddy green water, then nothing: a ripple. I should have taken you to the zoo, he had thought. What are you laughing about? Max had said.

Max wipes his screen against his shorts and stands. He catches the tail end of a wince. “How’s your ankle?”

Another smile. “Fine,” Max says. “For the thousandth time.”

“Because I can get the car.”

“Matt.”

“Really,” he says. “I’ll leave you here with Clucky.”

“Clucky,” Max repeats.

“That’s his name. I just named him.”

“You’ve got to work on your names,” Max says.

And what would you call him, he says. I don’t know, Max says, Maurice? I don’t see how that’s any better than Clucky, he says, and bickering, chuckling, they make their way back to the community center where their yellow rental Jeep is sitting under a coconut tree. Oh, a yellow Jeep Wrangler, Max had said at the Hertz counter, you’re really branching out and taking risks. Don’t you have another color? he had asked the Hertz employee, pained.

Christ, Max says now, it looks like a block of cheese.

Are you hungry? he says.

Christ, Max says.

 

 

 

They climb in. They glide away. Max lets his elbow hang outside the window, then leans out.

“Careful,” he says.

“Or what?” Max says.

“There was a kid in Longueuil who broke his nose leaning out a window. Smashed into a stop sign.” He slows down to let another Jeep pull out of a driveway. “I like your nose how it is.”

“You worry about the craziest things,” Max says. “We’re barely moving.” But he slips back inside, dripping.

On the right, the jungle rolls by: mossy houses, mossy murals. The famous road signs that read Kamehameha. (OVER 9000!!! Brass had said, in response to a texted picture. Christ, Brass, have some respect, Rivette had said, sending a Wikipedia link. He was a king. Brass: oh i do so humbly beg your pardon, over 9000 your MAJESTY.) On the left, between houses, they can see the Pacific, the perfect blue turned to slate.

“Shitting Christ,” Max says, “look at those waves.”

He looks. There are surfers in the water, bobbing around like toys. Kamehameha is a two-lane highway, but right now it’s a parking lot: everyone is trying to go to the beach. He imagines the cars backed up along the North Shore like Lego.

He slows again, to a crawl, and says, “You know Sarah got a dog?”

He stares ahead. Taps the wheel. Feels Max’s eyes on him.

“Oh, yeah?” Max says, slowly. “I didn’t know you were still talking. Or did you hear from someone else?”

“I ran into her,” he says. “In March. On Saint Laurent. With the dog.”

The Jeep in front is white and familiar. He gazes unseeing at the mirrored rear windshield and imagines another version of himself sitting in traffic. Ramrod straight, buttoned to the throat, and in the corner of his eye, thin white shoulders, a diamond ring, a halo of golden hair…

Sarah’s dog had been like Malajube: a shelter mutt of obscure origin, oddly shaped, with a tail too long for its body, small pointed ears, and heterochromia. It had strained against its collar, trying to jump on him, wagging its entire rear end. Sarah had apologized. He had noted the tension in her hand, her white knuckles, the gouging fingernails. He had noticed that her ring finger was bare, then hated himself for noticing.

“What?” he says.

“I said, what was it called? And don’t say Doggy.”

“It would be ‘Woofy’ or ‘Barky,’” he says. “In keeping with the ‘Clucky’ naming scheme.”

Max snorts. “Thank fuck we don’t have kids.”

The Jeep lurches. He eases off the brake. “Sorry.”

Max’s face is turned to the window. The tips of his ears are red. “I just mean…because…you’d give them weird names.”

“They usually come pre-installed with names,” he says. “Assuming we’d adopt.”

Pre-installed,” Max says. “Are you a robot?”

“Bleep blorp,” he says, just to see the curve of Max’s cheek as he grins. “How many kids are we talking?”

“I don’t know,” Max says, “two? The standard number.”

There’s surrogacy too, he thinks; we can afford it, we can buy a miracle.

Or two. Two: the standard number. Two: one from me and one from you. Christ. Fucking Christ, just imagine, Max. Imagine, Francine. Around Christmastime he had found his mother crocheting booties for a neighbor’s newborn grandchild. She had jumped, exclaimed, and stuffed them under a cushion like a teenager caught with a bong.

He thinks, Maman would die of joy. He says, “Now who’s the robot?”

On the sidewalk on Saint Laurent, under a lingering winter cloud, he had tried to make small talk. Sarah had guided the conversation. How is your mother? How is work? She had changed jobs. She was working from home now, it was the safest thing to do, her sister was doing it too. The dog’s name was Annika. She had been named after a character in a BBC TV show; the show had once been a radio series

Sarah had been beautifully, graciously warm and patient, and a violent memory of the first time they’d had sex had sprouted between his eyes—like a nail, like a spike, his blundering, her warm and patient hands—and he had looked at Annika pulling her leash taut and blurted, I’m with Max, with him as in together.

A pause, a swallow, a tight little smile. Oh, Sarah had said, still gracious, so he came back, did he, from Australia?

For love of me, he thinks. He finds Max’s hand and squeezes it.

Three days ago he had driven them to Pierre Elliott Trudeau like this, holding Max’s hand at every red light. Thinking, this is what I should have done. Three years ago, this is how it should have gone.

Max squeezes back. “So is she, uh, is she, um, seeing anyone?”

“I didn’t ask.” The jam starts to move. He lets go of Max and puts his foot onto the gas. “Fucking finally.”

 

 

 

“Why Hawaii?” The plane had been roaring; he had blinked; Max had pulled down his mask so Matt could see his lips and repeated himself.

He had smiled. “You waited until we were in the air to ask?”

Max had smiled back. Shrugged. Outside, the snowy peaks of the American Rockies had been sinking into the strange tawny fissures of a bone-dry desert. They were being fired toward San Francisco, toward the bay and the deep blue sea.

It was the day after you sprained your ankle, he said. That morning.

“I remember.” Max’s smile had widened. “It was snowing.”

“An ocean of snow,” he said. “And I thought of the real ocean. And I wanted to take you. That’s all.”

“There’s Havre-Aubert,” Max had said. “There’s Maine. There’s Florida.”

“To the Pacific.”

“There’s Vancouver. California.” Admit it, Max said, you just wanted to go to Hawaii. And what, he had said, is wrong with that? After two years stuck in continental North America, what’s wrong with wanting to get the hell out while we can?

As long as we don’t get stuck there, Max had said. I’ve had enough of being stuck on islands.

He had floated the same concern to the gang a week before departure. its a trap!! Brass had messaged them. Frank had sent an accompanying gif of Admiral Ackbar.

Shariff had said, well, even if you do have to quarantine, at least you’ll be in shitting Hawaii.

Yes, far superior to the Rivette Bubble, he had said. He had brought his work computer just in case. Abruptly, he had remembered Rivette in 2020, griping at Max: Fucking bastard who gets to be locked down in paradise.

Excuse you! Rivette in 2022 had said.

He had told Max, they’re not going to lock down again. Not at the rate things are going. The shortages, the inflation. The economy is people, it's the shuttered mom and pop shops that didn't make it past the first round, it's Frank who bounces from gig to gig, it's your mother's neighbor Carolane who couldn’t work and watch her kids at the same time when their schools had outbreaks and sent them home with fevers, who lost her job and her apartment and had to leave the city, it's your warehouse and its workers, your pals, all of us brittle human links in a fragile chain; two years ago we watched the water receding and stood there gawking like idiots, and now the tsunami is here to sweep us away. Then he had blushed over his pontificating and concluded, hastily, and if they do lock down, if the world ends, what does it matter, at least this time we’ll be together. What? What is it?

Nothing, Max had said, with one of his soft inward smiles. He had tugged his mask up and turned into a blank, though the smile lingered, crinkling, at the corners of his eyes. Finish your memo.

 

 

 

He had thought Max might fight him about the plane tickets. About the expense, the time away. But when he’d said, I want to take a vacation when this shitting project is over, Max had nodded. I want you to come with me, he had said, in case it wasn’t clear, and Max had laughed and called him Mr. Specificity. I’ll let Phil know, Max had said. Max’s supervisor at the warehouse had been texting him, asking after him, begging him to return. It was an ego boost, he had thought, and a much-needed one: he had caught Max bird-hopping around the apartment, grinning at Phil’s messages as though they had come from a lover.

He had asked his mother if she wanted to come too. Without checking with Max, though he had known Max wouldn’t mind, but Francine had said, oh no, I’m needed here, there’s the charity auction, the food bank, the twin girls arriving from Kherson. But you go, my love, my loves: go and have the time of your lives.

Because—Francine had left it unsaid—because the bad times are coming.

They had left on the first of April. The initial fervor, the lionizing, the canonizing, of the Ukrainian president, the eruption of the blue-and-yellow flag across his social media and the metro walls, that flowering of support, it had all faded back into the unrelenting gray of Canadian spring. He had watched experts in public health pivot to offer opinions on political science, then pivot back. He had read articles about Chernobyl, about massacre. The horror had mounted and mounted. Then, suddenly, the thread had snapped; the news had moved on. Shariff sent him a poem Daniela had read to him, a poem by Ilya Kaminsky: And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough…

What else can we do? he had asked Shariff.

Shit dude I don’t know, Shariff had said. I have students from Ukraine. I told them to forget about finals. Makes you feel fucking useless, doesn’t it? Like, as a man? As a human being?

The people Kaminsky had written about, the people who had protested but not enough, had lived in the city of money, the great country of money. He had said to Shariff, that’s America, not us. At the very least, that’s Toronto. That’s you.

Shariff had said, enough with the loopholes. Isn’t doing something always better than doing nothing?

They had stayed a night at Shariff and Daniela’s condo in Little Portugal in Toronto, reminiscing, shaking their heads over the things that had changed and laughing about the things that hadn’t, then caught a connecting flight from Toronto Pearson. Oh, I don’t need to see those, the gate attendant in the international terminal had said when he had tried to flash their negative PCR tests. Save them for the Americans. You’re lucky, you know. Last week there was a whole procedure. An approval process, an app, QR codes, wristbands. They dropped everything, the Hawaiians, on a single day. Just like that.

And you have to wonder, the gate attendant said—she was a friendly older woman, a bottle blonde with a red scarf around her throat—you have to wonder if any of it did any good at all.

 

 

 

At the resort it was like the pandemic had never happened. He had found himself staring at the reflective gold ceiling of the elevator, sneaking timid, disbelieving glances at the girls in bikinis who had piled on in front of them, at their damp faces which seemed as lasciviously bare as their bodies. Max had whispered, what’s wrong? He had said, I don’t know. The echoing noise of splashing and laughter, the kaleidoscope of color, the heat, the humidity, the hum of humanity: it was suddenly too much. He had realized he was dizzy. He had realized he was holding his breath. He had exhaled and felt Max’s hand in the small of his back, gentle, subtle, crammed between his body and the shining elevator wall.

 

 

 

Max had kept his hand on his back all the way to their room, then withdrawn it with a tender tap. Exhausted, he had passed out lying diagonally across the bed and woken up to see that Max had gone out; had come back with snacks and convenience store musubi and an old newspaper that read, in capital letters like a V-Day headline, MANDATES SET TO EXPIRE.

Their hotel room was on the twelfth floor and had a balcony overlooking a swimming pool and, about a kilometer away, clumps of coconut and palm trees and the open ocean. Max had opened the sliding door, was standing outside, a black shadow amid raucous booming: a cover band was playing below, screeching through Uptown Funk, of all things.

He had crept up beside Max and looked down at the people dancing; had thought of the people in China who were still in lockdown, locked up in towers like this one and howling into the night like dogs.

“It’s crazy,” he had said to Max. “This is crazy, right? Where are we?”

“Oahu,” Max had said, turning to him with a grin. “Slept so hard you fell into another dimension.”

He had kissed the grin, then Max’s ear, then his throat; and then he had gone to his knees.

The band had finished before Max had. In the ringing silence he had heard Max make a desperate grab for the railing and try and fail to gulp back a moan. The railing had trembled and his name had jumped from Max’s mouth, had flown into the darkness and joined the rush and sweep of the sea.

 

 

 

From Haleiwa to Kahuku. From cats and chickens and lizards to beaches and coconuts and sea turtles and souvenirs. He buys Francine an apron embroidered with pineapples. Max wades and he swims and they find a café and drink macadamia-flavored coffee. At five o’clock they wind into the mountains to a lookout point where the air is cold and clammy and the mist brushes their eyes like wool.

They spend too long gazing out over the greenery and the shore. On the drive south Max counts the cows roaming placidly over muddy hillsides, and he speeds until he finds a space along Ala Moana Boulevard, swearing at himself as he tries to sandwich the Jeep—their stupid shitting block of cheese—in a gap between a motorcycle and a Fiat.

Max is taking his sweet time, gathering himself, his tote, his phone. He races around the Jeep and opens the door and tugs at him.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re going to miss the fucking sunset.”

Max says, mild, “There’ll be another.”

The evening is orange, settling on Max’s shoulders, his hair, his eyes. And it’ll be beautiful, Max continues. They’ve all been beautiful.

How can you be so sure, he thinks, how can you, staring in the face of this maelstrom of death and calamity, how can you know for certain?

Then he thinks: hope is a discipline. Hope takes practice, and I see Max practicing every day. Every visit he makes to Hochelaga, to that empty house, that empty street. Every time he takes my hand. He opens himself to the future. So Daniela, so Francine, we'll live happily during the war. So, Shariff, this is what I'll do.

Tomorrow the sun will rise, he thinks, and we'll see it from our balcony, that pale pearly glow from the far shore, that morning light that makes everything seem so pure and simple; I could ask then, but I want to ask now, I want to know.

“Matt?” Max is starting to smile. “The sunset?”

“Max,” he says. “Will you…”

He fumbles. Grabs Max’s hand and grips it, massages the knuckles: one knuckle, one finger. I don’t have a speech, he thinks. I don’t have a plan. I didn’t plan this. And what if…I was just snapping at him, snapping at his ankles, what if…

“Will you—that is—”

“Fuck,” Max says. “Fuck, Matt. Are you—Matt—”

“Shut up,” he says. “Sorry. Shut up though. Will you? Max?”

Max just looks at him, wide-eyed, speechless. You can talk now, he tells Max. Please talk now. Please, say something. Or don’t, and we can forget I asked.

But you didn’t ask, Max says. You didn’t finish asking, I don’t know what you were going to say.

Max, he says, helpless, groaning.

And then he asks. And then Max answers.

 

 

 

“[W]e were together—all else has / long been forgotten…”

Walt Whitman

 

Notes:

Why Hawaii? For one, FLWhite and I were just there (and here I feel compelled to add that any resemblance to persons living or dead or experiences had or not had are purely coincidental), but for another, in terms of intense, isolationist Covid-19 response policies, Hawaii ranks alongside New Zealand and Australia, and I thought it would be a neat way to "wrap up" this lockdown-focused series.

  • Playlist, as usual. Some of these were on our wedding mix. Because I’m a sap.
  • See also Volcano by The Presidents of the United States of America: under the island, middle of a mountain / there is a big bad boomin' system...now the island is shiftin', the plates are liftin' / the core is creamy, docile and dreamy... / it's gonna blow / Volcano!
  • Ilya Kaminsky, "We Lived Happily During the War"—"I took a chair outside and watched the sun."
  • Walt Whitman, "Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City"

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