Though maybe Mike had a point when he’d said that Phil had been unfaithful first, that Phil had always closed his eyes and thought of Nick.
Phil made a face at his memory of the final argument with Mike, as he passed an eighteen wheeler.
Mike could never compare to Nick. Nick who had had the voice of an angel the mind of a guiltless imp. Nick, with his large black eyes, his pointed little chin and his just-a-little-too-long fur-fine black hair always disarrayed around his pale-skinned face.
That face would have been at home in an Elizabethan portrait, painted on a board, in an old fashioned inn, the background all black and only Nick’s face staring out.
Only no portrait could capture Nick’s voice. Nick’s strong, clear voice that could lend depth to the most trivial of songs.
Phil had tried to find Nick, off and on, through the last twenty years. When regret shook him, when another relationship collapsed, Phil hired detectives to find Nick.
The detectives had traced Nick’s family. No clues there. His parents, once solid denizens of Akron, Ohio, had divorced. His father had moved to Italy, or maybe France. No one seemed to know for sure. His mother had dropped off the face of the Earth. Nick’s older sister had married an Australian and moved across the globe. Letters addressed to her came back unopened.
So it had come down to Phil personally looking for Nick. And he was looking for Nick where he’d left him; in the same place where they had parted. As though Nick were a piece of clothing Phil had misplaced or a book he’d left half-read on the kitchen table, face down, waiting to be picked up and resumed.
The arrogance of his action burned clear into Phil’s mind, as he turned off the highway and up the little curving ridge towards Gateways motel.
It was where it should be and, thank God, didn’t look so different. Someone had got the brilliant idea of painting the boxy structure white with a blue trim, and of sprinkling little Swedish folk-couple motifs all around. A little picket fence encircled the handkerchief-size garden. Twenty years ago, the house had been green, and the garden an overgrown patch.
Phil got out of the car, pulling his collar up against the chill wind from the sea. The houses around the motel looked as he remembered them: modest fifties cubes in Earth tones. Gold-port was not your most fashionable seaside resort.
His heart beat fast, in anticipation, though he couldn’t say what he anticipated, not even to himself, without laughing.
Nick couldn’t be inside this shabby motel, waiting for Phil. And yet, Phil’s heart beat near his throat.
Okay, Nick, okay, last chance, he thought. He threw his cigarette butt down, stepped on it. Last chance to see me still looking more or less as you knew me. Last chance to see me grovel and beg your forgiveness. Last chance to hear me tell you I was an idiot and I should never have left. Last chance, Nicky. Oh, please, give me a last chance.
A blonde woman, walking her dog, shot Phil an odd look. He forced a smile in her direction and hurried down narrow cement steps into the motel.
The motel lobby looked just as Phil remembered—maybe large enough to hold three thin people. Mildew stained the wooden wall paneling. The receptionist’s desk was a narrow, waist-high table. It all smelled of stale crackers, though no crackers were in sight.
A cheerful, matronly blonde smiled at him from behind the desk. “You’d be Mr. Cesari?” she asked. “Phillip Cesari?”
Phil nodded.
“I’m Joanna. I’m the manager here.” She reached under the desk for a key, handed it to him. “Room three, right? Well, they’re actually efficiencies, with a little kitchen, you know? Glad you requested it in advance, because normally it would be booked, with the weekend coming up.” She pointed him out of the office. “It’s out that door to your left as you go, down the sidewalk, and through the gate in the picket fence. Then straight ahead, down the five steps. If you find anything wrong, let me know.”
Phil followed her instructions. Out and down to the left and through the garden gate, to a patio door that his key opened.
Inside the room, memories returned. Phil’s mind showed him the suite as it had been superimposed on the suite as it now was. The violently green shag pile carpeting peeked through the ecru Berber of the nineties. The wide, wide brown couch trembled like a double exposure over today’s three prim blue and pink armchairs.
On the couch, Nick reclined and smiled his cat smile. There was a pad of paper on his knees. He would be writing a song. Nick’s long hand moved over the paper, holding the pen; Nick’s black eyes stared straight into Phil’s.
Phil stared and smiled at Nick, then swallowed, shook his head. Nothing there. His memory played tricks on him.
The living room smelled musty. The only pieces of furniture Phil remembered was the brown Formica dining room table and the four metallic chairs clustered around it. They sat in front of the counter that divided the kitchenette from the living room.
The small kitchenette had been painted white and decorated in blue Swedish motifs.
Incongruous for an Oregon coast motel. Or maybe not.
Phil knew little of the region and its ethnic composition. Twenty years ago, he and Nicky had come from Ohio for a month, because Nick’s parents had paid for them to take a vacation. Twenty years ago, neither Nick nor Phil had been interested in anthropological studies.
Phil felt a vague discontent.
In the bedroom that formed a short leg of an L off the living room the four poster bed had endured a coat of pastel pink paint, but it was the same bed Phil remembered in its natural pine state. Teddy bears adorned the top of the built-in dresser, the built-in vanity and the bedside table. Phil dropped his suitcase on the bed and frowned.
He’d thought
Back in the living room, Phil looked around again, as if expecting Nick to materialize out of the pale yellow walls.
An old radio cabinet just inside the door called Phil’s gaze. It was narrow and its domed top stood waist high. Its ivory buttons were almost as yellow as the horrible paint someone had slapped on the fine old wood. Worse, someone had nailed pieces of wood on either side of the dome, so as to balance a TV on top of the radio.
Nick’s grandparents had owned a radio like this, but it had been kept, waxed and spotless, in a corner of Nick’s grandmother’s living room.
Phil’s discontent remained.
A sense of let down set in, after his frantic race to get here. A feeling of emptiness made his throat close.
Some part of him, some deluded part that still believed in happy endings and premonitions, must really have expected to find Nick here, sleeping on the bed, as Phil had last left him.
Phil glared at the mirror on the wall, above the built-in chest of drawers. His sunken eyes glared back at him, from within dark circles.
So, he didn’t have active AIDS. Something to be grateful for, these days, that the final illness could be kept away with drugs. But those same drugs robbed him of energy and strength, of desire to live and hope. Daily, almost hourly, they reminded him of the death sentence that hung suspended over his head.
He ran his hands back through his brown hair, trying to ignore the grey threads. If cancer came—when cancer came—then the hair would be gone and perhaps, before long-drawn death finished her invasion of his ravaged body, he would long for his hair back, grey and all.
For now Phil should sleep, recover from the journey. He needed his rest, a regular schedule. Dr. Michelopolis had been very specific about that. All the medicines in the world would not save him if he didn’t eat and didn’t sleep.
So first the medicines.
Phil pulled the first of his tablet case from his bag. The label, glued to the plastic cover of the giant daisy wheel, read “Six p.m.” It was five local time, so it would be six in Denver. The compartment for today contained the fifteen pills he’d carefully sorted and counted into it this morning, before leaving home. He had five such cases, carefully labeled with the hour at which he should take the medicines.