A Taxonomy of Barnacles, page 20
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re really related.”
Blaine smiled mischievously. “Or you could just ask Bell. She’s so desperate to get married, she’d say yes to anyone.”
“Blaine, you are despicable,” said Billy.
“No, just honest,” said Blaine.
“When we were younger, you were just a mischievous kid. Now, you’re a bad person.”
“Strong words from a man who’s trying to poach another man’s girlfriend.”
“They’re having problems,” said Billy. “Besides, I knew her first.”
Blaine arched his eyebrows.
“Maybe you’re right,” Billy said, trying not to cringe. “If Bridget’s waiting for the perfect pitch, I’ll just keep ’em coming.”
“Trust me,” said Blaine. He assumed his most pious altar boy smile. “If she loves you, it won’t matter how or where you ask as long as it’s from the heart.”
“Yeah,” Billy sighed. “You’re probably right.” He turned and started toward the bench, but he stopped suddenly, turned back to Blaine, and pounded the net with his fist. “That’s it,” he cried.
“What’s it?” asked Blaine.
“You’re absolutely right. If Bridget really loves me, it doesn’t matter how I ask.”
With new frustration, Blaine waited for Billy to elaborate.
“I’ll do what I did ten years ago. No script. No nonsense.”
“Billy, that’s an awful idea,” Blaine said a bit too quickly. “Ten years ago, you offered a baseball cap instead of a diamond ring.”
“It’s still the most valuable thing I have.” Billy smiled and straightened his back.
“You can’t afford a second strike,” said Blaine. “I really don’t recommend it.”
“It’s the perfect proposal,” Billy went on. “Spontaneous and symbolic.” At this, Billy lunged across the court, erupting into the most punctilious of victory dances.
As he watched, Blaine did his best impersonation of concern. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d definitely sleep on it.”
“No,” said Billy. “It’s been ten years. I’ve waited long enough. In fact,” he pounded the net again, “I’m going to do it tonight.”
Blaine smiled weakly at his brother, considering his next move.
“Blaine, I’m sorry I was short before. You’ve been a huge help.”
Blaine managed a muscular smile. “It was my pleasure,” he said.
Elated, Billy tossed his racket into the air, caught it gracefully behind his back, then transformed it into a dancing partner, twirling about and smiling as though it had just said something particularly witty.
Blaine stood silently at the net, watching Billy’s indulgent display, his horror an equal and opposite expression of Billy’s excitement. Of course, he had no one to blame but himself for Billy’s latest inspiration. He thought he had some time to spare, but now it was necessary to take radical steps or else watch Billy share the spoils with Bridget when she won her father’s contest. And though he felt it unlikely that Bridget would accept Billy’s proposal tonight, he spent the rest of the afternoon contemplating a preemptive attack. Nothing would irk him more than to see his brother fall into this fate, winning the loveliest Barnacle girl as well as the Barnacle fortune. In fact, he was so irritated by the thought that he lost the game and set, bringing down his winning average slightly closer to 50 percent.
12
Musical Talent
Latrell stood at Columbus Circle just before noon on Saturday, glancing north then south with overwhelming ambivalence. As he stood, he debated the next phase of his search. Uptown and downtown seemed so unlike as to be two distinct cities, two squabbling siblings gradually drifting apart. For no better reason than a red traffic light, he decided to turn right, then headed north past the statue of Columbus, the patron saint of all explorers. Anxious to keep a safe distance from Benita’s telescope, he hugged the perimeter of the park. As he walked, he hazarded the hope that the afternoon would mark a change in his luck. The first few days of his expedition had been less fruitful than he’d hoped.
Latrell had wasted the morning on yet another bogus lead, sitting through services at Central Synagogue. He had kept on his yarmulke for the duration of the three-hour service, resisting the urge to itch and rip the silk hat from his head. After suffering through this endless borage of chanting, Latrell had hoped God would reward his patience. Instead, the organist stared at him with a blank and vaguely angry look, shooing him off when he approached, apparently offended by the interruption to his prayers. On this one issue, Latrell agreed with Barry; Bella had wasted her money on his religious education. Three years of spotty attendance at Temple Emannuel’s Wednesday afternoon Hebrew school had only alienated him from the Jewish faith.
Undeniably, Latrell had begun his search with two disadvantages; very little information and a very bad map. The scant knowledge he had of his father was unreliable at best, perhaps because it had come from Bella, a wholly unreliable source. According to Bella, Latrell’s father was a pianist of such staggering charisma and talent that he could cause an entire audience to weep by playing a single note. As the story went, Latrell’s birth mother had died in a freak accident; Bella wasn’t sure exactly what sort but suspected it had been something glamorous like a plane crash or a boating mishap. At this point, Latrell’s father had faced a Gordian choice, forced to choose between his divine gift and his only son. Unfortunately for Latrell, art trumped obligation. Promising to return at his earliest chance, the pianist bid Latrell good-bye to heed the call of Orpheus.
While it was hard to understand how a man could abandon his only child, it was forgivable, Bella argued, due to this musician’s unique talent. And, she concluded, all for the best, since it had ultimately allowed her to meet Latrell. Unfortunately, this was the extent of Bella’s information on Latrell’s father. The man had left no contact numbers at the shelter and she’d never known his name. Still, whenever Latrell pressed Bella for details, she assured him that hope was not lost. She was certain his father was somewhere in New York, making people cry in some great concert hall or church, or, possibly, though this was very unlikely, in some very popular bar.
Lacking memories of his father, Latrell used music in memory’s place. He saw his father in the face of every musician he met. He had made a project of it since he was eleven years old, spending hours camped out beyond the gates of outdoor concerts in the park, making countless attempts to sneak into crowded, smoky venues, spending hundreds of dollars in tickets in New York’s great concert halls. He had waited outside the stage door at Carnegie Hall after every weekend summer concert; had followed and questioned a concert pianist after his premier at the Metropolitan Opera House; had wandered into every church and synagogue on the Upper East and West Sides. He had even managed to sneak past the bouncers of Birdland only to find his allowance fell short of the cover charge. But, despite this herculean effort, Latrell had consistently struck out. Luckily, he was a uniquely optimistic boy, ostensibly unflappable from an early age.
Certainly, growing up without parents promoted its fair share of loneliness. And yet, the forty other boys in residence at the Bronx Boys Home did their part to fill the void. They provided a warm, if noisy substitute; doubling as a makeshift family, replacing customs like nightly tuck-ins with raucous joviality. As a child, Latrell excelled in school, socialized well, and busied himself with an only slightly above average number of daydreams. But as puberty approached, his restlessness increased, manifesting in the form of a constant vague dissatisfaction, an otherworldly distracted quality that caused Latrell to appear, even when listening, very much tuned out. By ten, this benign airiness evolved into something more worrisome, transmuting into what caretakers feared were the first flares of a temper. So it was with great relief that the director of the Home entertained Bella’s request and allowed her to leave her volunteer shift with Latrell in tow.
While hardship had a hand in forming Latrell, it had an unlikely effect, causing him to open himself to the world instead of turning against it. A natural musician from an early age, Latrell heard music where others heard noise, fashioning rhythm out of subway tracks, symphonies out of city traffic. Throughout his time at the Home, Latrell confounded his caretakers with his odd perception; hearing beats where they were inaudible to others, in the hum of a bulb, the rattle of an appliance, or in everyday silence. Gradually, his tastes refined through avid study of the radio. He favored early jazz to hiphop, Romantic composers to Baroque, and complex Indian beats to the eight counts of rock ’n’ roll. Soon interest turned into expertise. Piano lessons at the Barnacle house, though enforced with distasteful rigidity, allowed Latrell’s nascent skill to flourish from a knack to a talent.
Latrell’s new digs provided the perfect finishing school. The one to four male to female ratio at the Barnacles’ endowed him with the sense that the world was a burgeoning matriarchy and he its only prince. Having sisters often instills this unique respect for women. But, in Latrell’s case, it gave him a unique understanding of men. Being in the minority to such a confident contingent imparted the unshakable sense that men and women were equal contenders, and that women, perhaps, had the advantage in an impromptu wrestling match. The gifts of this new setting were incalculable, giving Latrell an ease with both genders, while instilling the best aspects of femininity. As a result, he was neither stranger to his emotions nor to the scores of most Broadway plays. He was the kind of boy women praise for being sensitive and macho men call “gay.”
Though his thoughts were consumed, much of the time, by the usual teenage things, Latrell was preoccupied by loftier concerns. Like all teenage boys, he spent a substantial amount of time considering and critiquing the great comic books, analyzing the big summer movie releases, and defending the hegemony of hip-hop. But he was not content simply to bang balls with bats, nor obsessed with the typical pornographic thoughts. To be sure, he spent a substantial amount of time considering baseballs and bra size, but these thoughts were peppered with other more aesthetic interests. He was blessed with a certain awareness, a sensitivity to sound, color, and feelings that gave him a sweetness usually associated with the female gender.
But the greatest single force on Latrell was a relatively recent acquaintance. His adopted sister Beryl bewitched him from his first day in the house. Closest in age and interests, Latrell and Beryl were fast friends, bonding over their shared love of music and general skepticism of people. Since their schools were close to each other, they traveled together, pooling financial resources for luxuries like taxis and three-pound bags of gummy bears. They spent after-school hours together as well, withstanding Barry’s enforced piano regime and a sentry so vigilant that it threatened to rob music of its appeal. But once these duties were complete, the two would linger in the music room, exhausting the Barnacles’ extensive archive of pieces for two hands or simply experimenting with free-form improvisation. Soon enough, teenage concerns polluted piano practice, forcing Beryl and Latrell to wince at pastimes they had enjoyed only months previously. Luckily, they quickly found more sophisticated modes of recreation and set out to fill their leisure time with a methodical exploration of the city.
Two things coincided with this trend to fuel their wanderings. The first was the innate and irresistible teenage craving for loud music, a force that pulls adolescents to dark, cacophonous venues much like lemmings to the sea. The second was Latrell’s sudden interest in finding his biological father, an obsession that grew in tandem with his interest in loud music and therefore seemed similarly connected to the hormones of puberty. So, it was with great vigor but age-appropriate nonchalance that Latrell and Beryl pursued these two goals simultaneously. Armed with little information on his father, Latrell enlisted Beryl to join him on a combined quest for truth and music and—pooling all disposable cash for concert tickets, using fake IDs borrowed from older siblings, and an impressive assortment of disguises fashioned from borrowed clothing—they managed to wriggle their ways into music venues where they had no business being. For a while, the two searches proceeded at the same pace. But when Latrell turned thirteen, the hunt for his father graduated from a half- to a whole-hearted search.
Throughout, it never occurred to either one that their relationship was particularly intense and when it did, it was only in the innermost quadrants of their hearts. At times, Latrell was completely overwhelmed by Beryl, finding her inexpressibly smart and beautiful, her inscrutable silences confounding, her long dark hair impossibly shiny, even at night. Sometimes, when they played piano together, their knees would accidentally touch and a small electric force would surge from his toes to his ears. Or, while sitting next to each other at the dinner table, her hand would casually brush his knee and he would have to fight the urge to grab and hold her hand. Just the other day, when the two were strolling in Central Park, her blue eyes looked so inexplicably sad he wanted to stop in the middle of the Great Lawn and kiss her closed eyelids. Of course, Latrell sensed there was a stigma attached to such strong feelings. But, having never had sisters before, he prayed these desires were among the correct and natural expressions of fraternal love.
But as puberty persisted, benign dreams gave way to bawdier ones and Latrell began to suspect himself of more serious perversions. Was it normal, for example, to find oneself consumed by such yearnings to touch a girl’s shoulders? Was it acceptable that even the mildest compliment from her made him blush from ear to ear? Was it odd, that when she was in the next room, he could still see the outlines of her face, that he spent minutes, sometimes hours mentally tracing the shape of her lips? Was it strange that when she sat in front of him while watching TV, he passed the time by staring at the hairs on her neck? Was it possible, he wondered, that these fascinations were, in fact, the first flowers of lust; that he was not only strange but sick and, worse still, condemned to love someone who would be forever off-limits?
And so it was with some effort that Latrell relegated Beryl from friend to nuisance, a demotion that was aided by the banality of domestic life. To this end, he focused on such things as Beryl’s unfortunate yellow flannel nightgown or her retainer, an apparatus whose ugliness was surpassed only by its compromise to dignity. (It attached to her braces with rubber bands, made a small clicking sound whenever she spoke, and was prescribed for use during sleep for another six months.) Focusing on such images helped, but it only made a dent. So, despite the pain it caused, Latrell made a conscious effort to treat Beryl with chauvinistic disdain to remind her of their slight age difference, to pull rank regarding their shared skills, and, whenever possible, to exclude her from activities. All of this helped transform lust to anger much like hydrogen to water at very high temperatures. Best of all, it allowed Latrell to mask his awkward and unholy feelings and to soften the blow when he realized he had to leave the house.
Now, as he headed up Central Park West, Latrell forced Beryl from his mind. He did his best to remain positive despite his recent setbacks. At the moment, he reminded himself, there were several things working in his favor: a hastily packed bag of provisions consisting of items from the seder table and a few critical articles of clothing, some much-needed space from his adopted sisters, and all the time in the world. On a whim, he headed out of the park toward Lincoln Center, crossing Broadway despite a red light and sprinting up the steps toward the grand central plaza. He had always loved the sensation of walking across the white granite, slowing down despite Bella’s urging that he hurry on those occasions when she brought him to the opera. The matte white stone colluded with the sparkle of the central fountain, amplifying its gurgles and splashes like sand does the ocean’s waves.
Careful to avoid making eye contact with anyone in the area, Latrell hurried across, glancing right at the symphony hall and left, at the ballet. Luckily, a previous foray endowed him special knowledge of the practices of Lincoln Center’s security guards. Having once joined Beryl in a covert dip in the reflecting pool in front of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, he knew the length of the intervals at which they patrolled the area. He walked up to the pool, threw in a penny, pretending to make a wish, and then managed to slip into the symphony space through the freight entrance. Walking on the tips of his toes, he hurried across the empty foyer and pushed at the doors to the central concert hall. Once inside, he remained at the door and surveyed the awesome space. He stayed this way, undetected, for several moments.
One other person occupied the vast space. A pianist sat at the grand piano in the center of the darkened stage, playing simple fourths and fifths as though leading a monastic chant. A mass of dark hair, not unlike Latrell’s, obscured the man’s face, filling Latrell with the usual surge of expectation. Frequent visits had endowed him with a detailed knowledge of the hall. Its piano boasted ninety keys as oppose to the traditional eighty-eight, extra pieces of ivory that were not meant to be played but rather to buzz in sympathy with the pianist’s notes. But to call these additional keys “extra” was to misunderstand their use. They were two wholly essential parts of the piano, integral facets of the hall’s sublime acoustics.
Slowly, Latrell walked down the center aisle and approached the stage.
The pianist, blessed with sensitive hearing, looked up immediately.
Now slightly closer to the stage, Latrell noticed the pianist’s light skin and felt the usual tightening in his heart.
“Can I help you?” the pianist asked.
“No, thank you,” said Latrell. He already knew. He stood motionless for another moment, stilled by a mixture of disappointment and awe. He apologized for the interruption, turned back up the aisle, and headed out of the divine quiet into the noisy city.
13
Calculated Hair
Long after their morning tennis game, Billy and Blaine were still plagued by a nagging awareness of the other. The boys were cursed with telepathy, both subjected to the other’s point of view as though a running commentary of the one’s thoughts had been broadcast into the other’s head with the explicit purpose of driving him slowly insane. And yet, even despite their differences, love made twins of Billy and Blaine, ostensibly leveling the boys and bringing them to their knees.
