Just Beneath

The Caribbean vacation was Tony’s idea. It was suggested by him, planned and paid for by him. It was proposed as a celebration of Robert’s recent promotion, the real reason squirming just beneath the surface, unmentioned. They had been together nearly ten years, and their life had long ago settled into grooves, comforting and constricting. They had both cheated; one of them had been caught.

Tony had not expected to have an affair. The whole situation seemed to foam up around him without his knowledge or consent. He was not even attracted to Riley initially, finding his long hair flamboyant, and yet, over time, that same hair, so soft and silky, transformed into something appealing if not altogether irresistible. Riley was a luxurious man and Tony indulged with abandon.

Robert had not doubted Tony’s faithfulness since the early days of their relationship, when the terms of their togetherness had been clearly established. They had just begun spending time together, cautiously exploring each other like pioneers in a new world, probing for indicators of future peril, when Robert planned a weekend in Provincetown with a few friends. He had been careful not to invite Tony. Hurtling into domesticity would be a mistake, Robert reasoned. While meeting other men was not uppermost in his mind, he was not closed to this possibility and assumed that this was understood, until, on the evening before the trip, Tony whispered into his ear, his breath damp and warm: “And if I find out you’ve been fiddling with other boys, I’m going to rip your cock off.” The words were electric, and Robert surged. It felt good to be wanted so plainly, so ravenously.

Robert had no reason for suspicion until the barrage of cinnamon. Returning early from a business meeting in Pittsburgh, he opened the door of their home and was overwhelmed by the aroma. He was catapulted back to a particular winter of his childhood, when his mother, in a short-lived attempt at professional baking, turned their kitchen into an assembly line for the production of cinnamon rolls, which emerged from the oven hour after hour, drenched in sugary frosting, warm and oozing. Disoriented by recollection, he hesitated on the threshold, and his stomach continued to grumble in anticipation long after his grin withered. The spice was not emanating from the kitchen.

There were dozens of cinnamon-scented candles scattered about, an effusion of them, beyond the bounds of taste and proportion, generating a fragrant haze so dense it was visible. It was as though the candles had reproduced madly, like voracious primeval creatures trembling and teeming with life. The candles were on the window panes, on the television set, and on the floor. They were on the book shelves, on the side tables, and on the mantel, thrust carelessly amongst photographs of Robert and Tony and illuminating their smiling faces.

“Someone’s downstairs!”

The words were breathless, panicked, and most unwelcome to Robert’s ears. Robert blinked, his mind like a computer, scanning rapidly through possible scenarios, searching restlessly for an explanation, however improbable, which might negate all of the accumulating evidence.

“Oh, Jesus,” moaned Tony. “You’ve got to get out of here. Go!”

On hearing these words, so perversely unambiguous, Robert scrunched up his face. He felt as though he had lost his footing in the dark, and, like one in the throes of free-fall, was unsure he would survive the ordeal.

Moments later, Tony and the other man fluttered down the stairs, fumbling with their clothes like teenagers discovered by a disapproving uncle. Tony’s face was flushed, but Robert was unsure if this was a demonstration of shame or simply interrupted passion. He did not want to see those wide, frightened eyes. Robert focused his attention on the other man, who tripped on the last step and nearly fell headlong into a portrait of Robert’s grandmother. After brushing a pale, delicate hand through his hair, the man maneuvered to the front door, murmuring, “Excuse me,” as he slunk past Robert.

Tony and Robert stared at each other mutely, like enemies sizing each other up before a battle. Tony was hesitant to speak the first words. He had an urge to dash forward and wrap his arms around Robert, who looked so lost, so defenseless, but knew that Robert would push him away. He watched helplessly as Robert’s face hardened. Fists clenched at his sides, Robert strode to the sanctuary of his study and shut the door behind him. In the middle of the living room, his suitcase sat forgotten, an abandoned child feigning bravery.

Robert was not surprised so much as disappointed. He decided not to rage at Tony. How could he? He had been with others himself, though his own infidelities had been furtive affairs in musty hotel rooms, hungrily rushed through and immediately regretted. There had never been candles. There had never been a room brimming with cinnamon-scented candles.

Robert stayed in his office for over an hour, and when he ventured out to the living room, he found Tony sitting on the sofa, his hands clasped together in his lap. The candles had disappeared but their fragrance lingered on like a whispered incrimination. Robert held up his left hand peremptorily, collected his suitcase, and retired to their bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, stalled, and stared at a puddle of dried wax on the bedside table. He felt tired and worn, like a discarded old sweater.

Tony spent the night in the guest bedroom, too rattled to even get under the covers. When he awoke to the sound of Robert showering the next morning, he remained on the plaid comforter as though paralyzed until Robert left for work. The oddity of sleeping in an unaccustomed room had sharpened his senses and he looked about critically, as though he were in the house of a stranger—a person that he did not much like. Adrift on the mattress firm with disuse, he gazed at the ceiling and reflected how poorly the corners of the wall had been painted, with the caramel of the walls slovenly splashed onto the white ceiling. He had painted these walls himself, years ago, and was shocked and disappointed at his own carelessness.

Tony called his father and said that he would not be in the shop that day, that he didn’t feel well. “No, I don’t want to go into detail now but I’m sure I’ll be in tomorrow, goddammit.” On settling the phone into its base, he regretted his curtness, and could envision his father shaking his head at his son’s impudence and then heaving himself out of his chair with a grunt. Tony usually confided in his father, but he had a shaky feeling, like he used to get after those nights when he drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes until dawn, and did not want to risk blubbering to his father how he had fucked everything up.

Sitting at his desk at work, Robert found himself neglecting the columns of numbers on his computer screen awaiting his analysis and slipping instead into daydreams in which he sharpened a series of knives and spent the day shredding Tony’s clothes, starting with his Diesel jeans and progressing through the closets with measured diligence, lacerating cashmere sweaters, slicing well-worn T-shirts, and making gashes in blue mechanic’s uniforms. The thought of carefully drawing a blade down the seam of Tony’s best black dress pants, splitting the fabric into geometrically perfect unusable tatters, was exhilarating.

Tony spent the day moping and cleaning and rehearsing carefully worded speeches to the full-length bedroom mirror. With a sense of childish invincibility, he had never considered the consequences of being caught, and the unfamiliar pangs of guilt made him irritable. It was a relief when Robert returned home. Tony had not eaten all day, and his belly churned with the urge to explain, to apologize, to regurgitate. And yet he could not seize an opportunity to begin. Robert was a butterfly, within reach but maddening to catch; he was always in motion, pacing the house with his cell phone in his hand, prepared to take a call that might come at any second. Tony had not prepared dinner, so Robert decided to order Chinese food, and they had a conversation about wonton soup and Kung Pao chicken and steamed dumplings, but Tony could not break the flow of that discussion; it was as though he were a dutiful actor reading lines from a play, unable to speak even one word unscripted. Over dinner, as they sat behind a coffee table littered with little white cartons, Tony’s eyes darted back and forth until Robert snatched the remote control and turned on the television. As the evening progressed, Tony’s courage withered and he settled back into the soft padding of the sofa, vanquished.

New routines emerged. When Tony brought flowers home, Robert was gracious as he accepted them, as he cut their stems and arranged them in clear crystal vases. The vases multiplied; the orchids had barely begun drooping when they were augmented by lilies, and then hydrangeas, and even roses, red and heady with optimism.

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Robert welcomed Tony’s invitation to Curacao. It would be good to forget about the office for a week, to lie in the sun without worrying about fussy supervisors or financial forecasts. That is what he told Tony, and then he thanked him for his generosity. Guilt clearly fueled Tony’s proposal: Robert was being offered a consolation prize in exchange for his own good behavior, for his own continuing silence. Nonetheless, in their darkened bedroom that night, lying with his back to Tony, Robert imagined that perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps it was not a reward at all, but a test, to see whether what they had could be saved, whether it deserved saving.

Six weeks later, they found themselves sprawled on the beach, with pale slushy cocktails on the little table between their lounge chairs, and turquoise water spread out before them like a tapestry. When Tony flipped over onto his stomach, Robert was struck by his skin, as milky and supple as when they first met, as though the intervening decade had been a hallucination. He crouched beside Tony’s slackened body, and smothered his back with sunscreen, massaging with firm strokes, as Tony purred into his beach towel. Robert persisted kneading even after the lotion was fully absorbed. It had been so long since he had touched him.

At the start of their relationship, though his body shuddered whenever Tony nibbled his earlobe or nuzzled into his neck, though simply touching Tony’s naked body was galvanizing, Robert could not resist dwelling on their differences. There was so much disparity, with regard to education and background and temperament. In those days, Robert had not yet gone to business school but it was all planned out. In contrast, Tony was reluctant to work at his father’s auto shop, and seemed adrift in life. While Robert was controlled, Tony was impetuous and loud and emotional. Tony cried watching movies, read trashy novels, drank too much, played the trumpet.

Robert could pinpoint the moment that he had fallen in love with Tony. They had been dating for about four months, and though Tony was adorable, Robert was holding back, agonizing over whether this was the right match, whether they were meant to intertwine their lives together. They were walking back to Robert’s apartment after sharing sushi (which had seemed a dinner of indulgence, considering their meager salaries at the time) and a white cat had scurried across their path. Robert himself would not have taken notice, would not even have paused the conversation, and in fact raised his eyebrows in annoyance when Tony scampered after the cat cooing and calling. Nevertheless, hearing Tony’s yelp of delight on catching it, and seeing the brightness in his eyes as he stroked the squirming, dirty, little animal proved too much; his irritation dribbled away. It all started with that stray cat, Robert mused. This moment, which was in many ways unremarkable, just another of life’s episodes to be witnessed and forgotten, became as extraordinary to Robert as if the world’s slow rotation suddenly and irrevocably halted. In that instant, Robert comprehended all that Tony was offering him, and how it matched with what he had been seeking.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Robert found himself now asking Tony, blurting it out before he could change his mind, wanting to connect with Tony again, even if just for a moment.

“Sure,” Tony answered without hesitation. He had been thinking of his father and was feeling guilty. Of late, things had been changing in the shop. His father, once an unapologetic autocrat, now sought Tony’s advice on whether they should advertise on the internet, when they should hire another mechanic, even what approach they should pursue to investigate the rattling that dreary Mrs. Windsor continued to grumble about. Being integral to the shop was a source of pride, but it was also laden with responsibility. Taking a week off seemed capricious and juvenile.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his father said, when Tony had mentioned this. “You need a vacation. I can fend for myself. Did it for years.”

“I know, Pa,” Tony had responded, “but I don’t want to leave you in the lurch. Maybe I should wait until the new guy starts.”

“Just go,” his father said. And then added offhandedly, “Things will work out. Your mother and I used to squabble too.”

Robert was already parading ahead along the water’s edge, looking back over his shoulder. Tony caught up and matched his pace for a bit, but then rebelled and pulled back. There was no reason to hurry. He waded into the marvelous greenish-blue water and spread his arms out, as if to encompass the whole world. Their lives in Philadelphia were increasingly blurry, and even the whole situation with Riley seemed to have lost some of its immediacy. For once, Tony imagined that it might be forgotten, that he might be forgiven.

“There’s a ship out there in the distance,” Robert said, coming up behind. Tony immediately turned, splashing him with two handfuls of water, and Robert squealed with surprise. He stood dumbfounded a moment, and then barreled into Tony, forcing them both underwater, giggling and squirming.

When they resumed their walk, now at a more relaxed pace, Tony occasionally bent over to pluck up a seashell. Robert grinned, pleased with the familiarity. In their bedroom back home there was a transparent urn nearly overflowing with shells smuggled back from Greece, Miami, and St. John—pieces of the earth that they had walked on together. Robert watched Tony scan the shore, eyes narrowed, determining which were most worthy of selection. Feeling playful, Robert squatted next to him.

“This is a nice one,” he said, pointing to a small, perfectly formed ochre-colored shell.

“Too boring,” Tony pronounced, tossing his head, and held out a hand displaying his trophies, all of which were notable for some excess: the rocks either brazenly white or obsidian; the shells jagged or splotched with color; the chunk of coral crudely phallic.

We are so ill-matched, Robert thought, and felt a queasiness in his stomach. This is ludicrous. He felt an urge to lash out.

“I cheated on you too, you know,” he said. “Many times.”

“Yeah, I gathered that.” Tony laughed, scooping his collection into the pocket of his swim trunks.

“You did?” Robert asked. He was outraged.

“You’re a horrible liar,” Tony said, thinking of Robert’s agitation after certain business trips, the way he looked off to the left when questioned, nearly stammering with nervousness.

“You never said anything,” Robert said, after a pause.

“Sometimes there are bumps in the road,” Tony said. “But life goes on. And you always came back.”

In fact, Tony had been distraught when he first realized that Robert was meeting with other men, touching them, holding them. He even packed a suitcase in a frenzy one evening, and then, while waiting on the sofa for Robert to return home from work, suddenly decided to unpack. I can’t overreact, he told himself. I’m just going to wait and see.

An elderly woman walking from the other direction, bejeweled with golden bracelets, approached and murmured a muffled greeting. Robert started, shocked that he and Tony, and all that reverberated between them, left space enough on the island for another person.

“I’m done with Riley,” Tony said, as soon as the woman passed. “I haven’t spoken to him since that night.” Tony did not regret this, but he did occasionally think of how Riley would serenade him with opera arias in a wavering tenor, how Riley would weep right along with him when they watched sad movies. But Tony never meant to displace Robert. Robert could be cold and serious, but underneath there was kindness and generosity and a love whose depth stretched fathoms below the swollen, self-important waves of infatuation.

“I don’t want to know,” Robert said, turning away.

Riley, he thought. That is his name. Robert did not want this piece of information, which he had so far successfully eluded. He could not forget the sight of that man tightening his belt on his way down their staircase, and yet, as time passed, the details were growing shadowy. Now equipped with a name, the man acquired a new solidity. Riley flickered just outside the periphery of Robert’s vision, taunting, smirking.

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Their last full day on the island, Tony was edgy. He dreaded going back to their lives in Philadelphia, uncertain what this tropical interlude had accomplished. The iceberg that had developed between them had begun to melt, and Robert’s laughter had at times seemed unchecked, but nonetheless, Tony was conscious that something was being withheld. Robert was tanned and serene, but his eyes were impenetrable.

Tony watched a young straight couple emerge from the water like two alien creatures with oversized eyes, stumbling onto the shore with floppy neon flippers, faces ablaze with excitement. He turned to Robert in supplication.

“Let’s go snorkeling!”

“Neither of us can swim very well,” Robert cautioned.

“So what?” Tony responded. “It will be fun.”

Robert was dubious. He had attempted snorkeling once before, as a gangly teenager, on vacation in Puerto Rico with his parents. Though Robert would have preferred idle sun-bathing, his father, a towering, ruddy-faced man unused to opposition, threw the goggles at him. No instruction was offered, and Robert splashed his way towards his father’s sun-scorched back, anxious but proud to be included in this manly adventure, with his mother left behind on her flowered beach towel. When he finally submerged his head, it was hard to concentrate because the mask was so constrictive. Planning to loosen the straps, Robert pushed himself up from the shallow water and felt a sharp sting of pain in his right hand. No one had warned him to be cautious of sea urchins crowded amongst the rocks. He still remembered leaning against the sink in the hotel room’s bathroom that afternoon, his mother curled over his hand with her tweezers, and his father hovering in the doorway with eyes full of amusement and disdain.

That was years ago, Robert admonished himself. Feeling brazen, he shrugged his shoulders and leapt out of his lounge chair.

“Sweet!” Tony said.

As he watched Tony negotiate the equipment rental with the woman at the towel booth, Robert wavered, considering the potential embarrassment of flapping about awkwardly in the water under the watchful eyes of strangers sunbathing nearby. I’m a bit old to be trying new things, he reflected. Tony winked at him as he handed over lemon-colored goggles, and Robert smiled self-consciously. Strapping them around his head, Robert was cheered that they fit perfectly, even without adjustment.

They plodded out into the water, serious and methodical. Unable to speak intelligibly with the snorkel in his mouth, Tony pointed down at the water as the signal for them to go underwater. He was their leader, their captain, and Robert obeyed without question.

Robert expected to feel his breathing constricted, and was prepared to hoist himself upright immediately, snorting and choking, but air traveled unimpeded through his clenched teeth. He filled up his lungs to their limit, feeling invincible, breaking all laws of common sense, breathing while underwater. The most startling sensation was the silence: not simply an absence of noise but a resounding stillness not possible in the air above, as though he were not simply surrounded by water, but integrated within it. This element of otherworldliness was spurred by a vision of yellow-striped fish, indecipherable from above, skittering ahead not an arm’s length away.

The coral Robert had complained about earlier, trumpeting his preference for soft sand which did not lacerate the feet, was now miraculous—a playing ground for the creatures of the water. He propelled himself forward, chasing after the yellow fish. When his hand nearly grazed one, he pulled back instinctively, not wanting to overstep the bounds. He did not want to disturb this underwater world. He wanted only to see its marvels, to revel in them.

Robert became conscious that Tony was at his side, motioning him forward with an outstretched arm. On the ocean’s floor, the terrain seemed plucked out of a science-fiction film, with ridged, spherical chunks of coral resembling monstrous brains, and freakish weeds undulating like boneless fingers. They swam above an outcropping of rocks and stumbled onto a subterranean city bustling with activity. More of the yellow-striped fish were here, racing past each other with gleeful impatience, but there were others as well, a multitude of creatures beautiful and strange. Some fish, tiny and nearly transparent, hovered just below the surface, luminescent as the haloes depicted in medieval paintings; others had bodies which twinkled back and forth between blackness and blue iridescence depending on how the sunlight fell on them. Creatures were in motion everywhere, pulsing forward and backward in the currents.

Not everything seemed innocent. An elongated creature slithered ominously along the bottom and, scattered amongst the rocks, a group of spiky sea urchins lurked, dark and menacing, but Robert remained undaunted. He was not bothered that there would be potential dangers here, as there were up on land; the key was only to recognize and maneuver past them.

Tony pointed, and Robert saw the most wonderful sight: a school of fish whose skin seemed crafted of interlocking maroon and gray hexagonal mosaic tiles, and he wondered what element of evolution would produce marvels such as these, which seemed to serve no purpose other than to delight. There must have been thirty or even fifty of them, just inches apart, a battalion gliding forward, decisive and glorious. Robert and Tony stopped swimming and remained side by side, splayed out on the water’s surface, godlike, looking down on the life teeming below them.

Robert felt giddy, like a boy presented with a mountain of wrapped birthday gifts. So the world still has wonders to offer, he reflected. Immediately, another thought trickled through the crevices: And Tony is right beside me.

“That was amazing,” Tony said later, as they plopped back onto their lounge chairs, exhausted with overstimulation after so many days of idleness.

“Those blue fish were unbelievable,” Robert added, and Tony moaned in appreciation. “I wonder what they’re called.”

They were silent until Tony could restrain himself no longer. “So what happens next?” he asked.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Robert said, locking his eyes on the horizon as if to stabilize himself. He swallowed. “But we should come back here every year.”

Seeking more, Tony turned his head slowly towards Robert and saw that no further words were necessary. The smile twittering about Robert’s lips, undisguised, unsuppressed, provided more than enough.

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