While they walked and Bill spoke, Toby had a feeling he should have been taking notes. There was so much to absorb that he felt overwhelmed. Up until that night, his life had revolved around work, family, and his apartment. All he wanted to do was meet a nice guy like Richie and have a life. He had no idea it was all this complicated. One thing that really frightened him was when Bill made a point of telling Toby to always make sure he cruised a homosexual and not a straight guy. Bill said just one wrong look could be dangerous. Cruising a straight guy could land him in the hospital with a smashed up face and broken bones. Bill frowned and said he knew one guy who’d been killed after he’d cruised the wrong guy on the Upper West side, in Riverside Park.
As Toby became more comfortable with Bill, Toby asked general questions about meeting men and Bill was more than happy to answer them. When the taxi dropped Toby off at his building, it was after three in the morning and Toby had no idea where the time had gone. He shook Bill’s hand and said, “I had fun tonight. My head is spinning and it’s going to take a few days to process everything you’ve shown and told me, but I had the best time I’ve had since I moved to the city. I can’t thank you enough and I’m glad Rosemary introduced us.”
Bill tilted his head and smiled. He gave Toby his phone number and said, “Call me at the museum on Monday and we’ll get together for lunch. And I promise you, it’s really my actual number.” He looked him up and down and thought for a moment. “There’s going to be a job opening at the museum and I think you’d be perfect for it.”
Toby’s eyes opened wider. “I love to be considered for it. I’m not too fond of what I’m doing right now. It’s not at all what I thought it would be.” He thought about his boss and their arrangement and his stomach pulled.
“We’ll talk about it over lunch,” Bill said.
On Sunday morning, Brad Lindsay phoned at nine and woke Toby out of a deep sleep. “Hey, buddy,” he said, in his usual cheerful voice, “I was wondering if I could come over this afternoon for a couple of hours. It wasn’t planned.”
Toby rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. Though Brad didn’t usually bring his young men to the apartment on weekends, there were exceptions. Toby figured Brad’s wife must have had an event that afternoon and Brad had nothing to do. “Ah well, I guess it’s okay. What time?” At this point, it didn’t matter. He figured he’d let Brad have a few more weeks of fun. He was going to put an end to this arrangement.
“I was thinking around eleven,” Brad said.
“But that’s stillmorning. You said afternoon.”
“It’s almost afternoon,” Brad said. “We’ll only be there until one. I promise.”
Toby knew he didn’t have any choice at that point. He couldn’t risk saying no this close to the holidays. He could lose his job and he needed the money. “I guess it’s okay. I’ll be out of here by ten thirty.”
When he left the apartment, he kicked a trash can in the street, imagining it was his boss’s face. He took a long walk downtown, wondering how he was going to kill two hours on a Sunday morning. Though it was bright and sunny out, there was a cutting breeze that smacked him in the face with each step he took. He passed shops that were decorated for Christmas. In one window, not far form his apartment, he stopped and stared at the most beautiful little artificial Christmas tree he’d ever seen. It was fully decorated, with multicolored lights. And at the very top, there was an angel with the sweetest smile and long brown hair. He came close to walking into the shop and buying it. It was perfect for his living room window. This was his first year alone in his own apartment and he hadn’t thought about holiday decorations at all. He’d been too consumed with work and with his boss’s extracurricular activities. When he remembered his arrangement with Brad and what was going on in his apartment at that moment, he sighed and continued walking down the street with his shoulders slumped forward.
When he returned to the apartment at two in the afternoon, he found everything just as he’d left it. But there wasn’t a flower arrangement on the coffee table and he knew the man Brad had been with that afternoon wasn’t Richie. Since the night he’d spent with Richie, they’d run into each other at work in passing almost every day. He noticed Richie left flowers on his desk and his office smelled fantastic. But they’d never actually spoken. He wondered if the poor guy still believed Brad Lindsay was going to divorce his wife. This bothered Toby so much at times he had trouble pushing it to the back of his mind.
After a three hour nap on Sunday afternoon, Toby woke up with a huge erection and decided to go out that night. Why should Brad Lindsay have all the fun at everyone else’s expense? Toby didn’t think it was fair that he sat alone in his apartment like a monk waiting for something to happen. He wasn’t married; he was single and free to do whatever he wanted to do. Toby knew he would never meet a man if he didn’t get out and take the initiative. So he put on his tightest dark pants, a black turtle neck sweater, and a slick pair of black pointy shoes with Cuban heels. He’d purchased the shoes on a whim. He’d seen a singing star wearing them on TV and he thought they were sexy. Then he remembered a few of the places Bill Weiss had taken him the night before and he headed downtown to see what he’d been missing.
Though he thought about cruising one of the parks Bill had shown him, he decided he wasn’t ready for that yet. Cruising any of the dark places Bill had talked about caused his hands to shake inside his pockets. He kept thinking about catching a venereal disease and the dismal trip he’d have to take to the doctor’s office. When he thought about running into the wrong guys and getting his ass kicked, he felt a wave of nausea. So he went to the small bar in the West Village where he knew for sure he’d be with other men like himself. Bill had mentioned this particular bar had a back room, where all kinds of interesting things happened, and he was curious about what it was like there.
When he arrived at the bar, he saw a young man with unusually long blond hair turn a corner and walk down a short flight of steps. The young man was about Toby’s age, with an obvious overbite he wasn’t trying to hide. He had his hands in his pockets and he was smiling in a carefree way that suggested he wasn’t too bright and might stumble over his own big feet at any moment. He seemed so comfortable Toby followed him down the stairs to a thick metal door that reminded Toby of the back entrance to a warehouse. Toby lifted his head and tried to be just as carefree and casual; he wanted to look just as dumb. The young man pushed the door open and Toby followed him into a dark, smoky room with a few tables and chairs and a narrow wooden bar along the right wall. It smelled like stale tobacco and damp towels and men.