But, man, she missed this connection. She had long ago mourned the loss of this friend, accepting the yoga-teacher relationship as being the only one he could reasonably expect to give. Right now, holding him like this, she fell back and yet again felt the pang for all she had lost eighteen years ago.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him.
Aqua nodded, lifting his head. His face was filled with tears and snot. So was Kat’s blouse. She didn’t care. She started welling up too, not just for the loss of Jeff or what she and Aqua once had, but just from physically comforting someone you care about. It had been so long. Much too long.
“A little hungry, I guess,” Aqua said.
“Do you want to get something to eat?”
“I should go.”
“No, no, let’s get something to eat, okay?”
“I don’t think so, Kat.”
“I don’t understand. Why did you come here in the first place?”
“Class tomorrow,” Aqua said. “I need to prepare.”
“Come on,” she said, holding on to his hand, trying to keep the plea from her voice. “Stay with me a little while, okay?”
He didn’t respond.
“You said you’re hungry, right?”
“Right.”
“So let’s get something to eat, okay?”
Aqua wiped his face with his sleeve. “Okay.” They started down the block, arm in arm, a rather bizarre-looking couple, she guessed, but again, this was New York. They walked in silence for a while. Aqua stopped crying. Kat didn’t want to push him, but then, she couldn’t just leave it alone.
“You miss him,” she said.
Aqua squeezed his eyes shut as if wishing the words away.
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“You don’t understand anything,” Aqua said.
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she went with “So explain it to me.”
“I miss him,” Aqua said. Then he stopped, turned, and faced her full-on. When he looked at her, the wide-eyed look had been replaced with something akin to pity. “But not like you, Kat.”
He started to walk away. She hurried to catch up.
“I’m fine,” Kat said.
“It should have been.”
“What should have been?”
“You and Jeff,” Aqua said. “It should have been.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t happen.”
“It is like you two were traveling down separate roads for your whole lives—two roads that were destined to become one. You have to see that. Both of you.”
“Well, clearly not both of us,” she said.
“You travel down those life roads. You choose journeys, but sometimes you are forced to take another route.”
She really wasn’t in the mood for the yoga woo-woo right now. “Aqua?”
“Yes?”
“Have you seen Jeff?”
He stopped again.
“I mean, since he left me. Have you seen him?”
Aqua tightened his grip on her arm. He started to walk again. She stayed with him. They made the right on Columbus Avenue and headed north.
“Twice,” he said.
“You’ve seen him twice?”
Aqua looked up toward the sky and closed his eyes. Kat let him take his time. He used to do this back at school too. He would talk about the sun on his face, how it relaxed and centered him. For a while, it had even seemed to work. But that face was weathered now. You could see the bad years in the lines around his eyes and mouth. His “mocha latte” skin had taken on the leathery cracking of those who live on the streets too long.
“He came back to the room,” Aqua said. “After he ended it with you.”
“Oh,” she said. Not the answer she’d hoped for.
Because of how he was, Aqua had always been in a single on campus. The school tried him with a roommate, but it never worked out. Some were freaked out by the cross-dressing, but the real problem was that Aqua never slept. He studied. He read. He worked in the lab, the school cafeteria—and at night, he had a job in a fetish club in Jersey City. Sometime in his junior year, Aqua lost his single room. Housing insisted on putting him with three other students. There was no way that would work out. At the same time, Jeff had found a two-bedroom on 178th Street. Serendipity, Jeff had called it.
Aqua was tearing up again. “Jeff was destroyed, you know.”
“Thanks. That means a lot eighteen years later.”
“Don’t be like that, Kat.”
Aqua may be confused, but he hadn’t missed the sarcasm.
“So when was the second time you saw him?” Kat asked.
“March twenty-first,” he said.
“What year?”
“What do you mean, what year? This year.”
Kat pulled up. “Wait. Are you telling me you saw Jeff six months ago for the first time since we broke up?”
Aqua started to fidget.
“Aqua?”
“I teach yoga.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m a good teacher.”
“The best. Where did you see Jeff exactly?”
“You were there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You took my class. On March twenty-first. You aren’t my best student. But you try. You are conscientious.”
“Aqua, where did you see Jeff?”
“At class,” Aqua said. “March twenty-first.”
“This year?”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me that Jeff took your class six months ago?”
“He didn’t take the class,” Aqua said. “He stayed behind a tree. He watched you. He was in so much pain.”
“Did you talk to him?”
Aqua shook his head. “I taught class. I thought perhaps he spoke to you.”
“No,” she said. Then, remembering that she wasn’t dealing with the most dependable mind in the free world, she tried to let it go. There was no way Jeff was in Central Park six months ago, watching their class from behind a tree. It made no sense.
“I’m so sorry, Kat.”
“Don’t worry about it, okay?”
“It changed everything. I didn’t know it would.”
“It’s okay now.”
They were half a block from O’Malley’s. In the old days, they would all hang out here—Kat, Jeff, Aqua, a few other friends. You would think O’Malley’s would have been a rough place for a biracial cross-dresser back then. It was. In the beginning, Aqua dressed like a man at O’Malley’s, but that didn’t really stop the sneers. Dad would just shake his head. He wasn’t as bad as most from the neighborhood, but he still had no patience for “fruits.”
“Gotta stop hanging around those types,” Kat’s father would tell her. “They ain’t right.”
She would shake her head and roll her eyes at him. At all of them. People often referred to these cops now as “old school.” True enough. But it wasn’t always a compliment. They were narrow and insulated. Excuses could be made (and were), but in the end, they were bigots. Lovable bigots maybe. But bigots nonetheless. Gays were treated with derision, but to a lesser extent, so was pretty much every other group or nationality. It was part of the lexicon. If someone negotiated with you too hard, you complained that they “Jewed” you down. Any activity not deemed macho was for “fags.” A ballplayer choked because he was playing like an N-word. Kat didn’t excuse it, but when she was younger, she didn’t really let it get to her either.
To his credit (or maybe patience?), Aqua hadn’t seemed to care. “How do you think we get views to evolve?” he’d say. He took it as a challenge even. Aqua would breeze into O’Malley’s, either not caring about—or, more likely, making himself ignore—the sneers and snickers. After a while, most of the cops moved on, got bored, barely looking twice when Aqua strolled in. Dad and his buddies kept their distance.
It pissed Kat off, especially coming from her father, but Aqua would shrug and say, “Progress.”
As they reached the pub door, Aqua pulled up short. His eyes went wide again.
“What is it?” Kat asked.
“I have to teach class.”
“Right, I know. That’s tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “I need to prepare. I’m a yogi. A teacher. An instructor.”