“And that was it,” said Stanley. “He was standing there for just a minute, and the shells came. The Germans had been testing the distance for days, and Isaac and I—”
“Who’s Isaac?” asked Devon, taking another sip of his wine, which made his mouth moist and red, and Stanley had to jerk his attention away.
“Isaac was one of the fellows I met when I enlisted; we went all the way through basic together.”
“What was that like?” asked Devon, in a way that told Stanley that Devon was about to get out a pencil and a pad of paper and start taking notes. His eyes had lit up, and he leaned forward. “Had they started training with gas masks when you came in? What kind of canvas were they made of? How did it feel when you put one on?”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Stanley. He felt soothed by Devon’s interest, and the fact that Devon seemed entirely sympathetic to what Stanley had gone through. “We lost ours in transport, anyway.”
“I’m sorry about all the questions,” said Devon. “It’s just hard to deal with an obsession that nobody else can understand. Here you are with all that you know, so it’s hard to stop.” He looked down at his fingers curled around his little jelly jar of wine. “And I might be a little drunk.”
“Maybe I am too,” said Stanley, his heart warming to the idea of it, that Devon could feel comfortable enough around him, with a small dose of wine, to be himself. He tipped his glass to Devon’s so they could clink a small toast because it was good to be able to talk about his fears and self-doubt, and Devon was a good listener.
“What really matters is that Isaac was my friend, and I let him get killed,” said Stanley. “He was sitting right where I’d been sitting. It had started to rain, but my spot was dry and his feet were aching, so I let him sit down. Right where I’d been sitting was where the shell hit. The three of them, they were nothing but pieces. Isaac was looking at me when he died.”
“You liked him,” said Devon.
“Yes, I liked him,” said Stanley, and that was okay to say; a fellow could like another fellow without anything being read into it. “He was good to me, always giving me his chocolate, saying he never really liked it, though I knew he was lying because his eyes did this thing—” Stanley gestured near his own eyes, hands on either side of his head, swirling his fingers to describe what he meant. “They would twinkle, you know? How eyes can do. He was always so sweet to me.”
“You were in love with him,” said Devon. “That must have made it very hard—”
“I wasn’t inlovewith him.” Stanley sat up straight and shook his head. “We were just friends, buddies, you know.”
“Oh, damn it,” said Devon. He clenched his fists for a second, then spread his fingers out as if they’d just been smacked by a ruler. “I forgot that it was against the law to be gay in 1917.” He looked atStanley with some sympathy, his brow furrowed. “That is, if we’re going along with the premise that you really did come from then.”
“It wasn’t against the law to be gay,” said Stanley, now completely confused. “We laughed all the time; Isaac would pretend to be very serious and I would make him laugh, anyway.”
“No, I mean—” Devon stopped, running his hand through his hair, making it messy. “Being gay’s what we call it now when you’re a homosexual.”
Stanley knew what the word meant. He’d avoided thinking about it for so long, even in his own head, that it was like a slap in the face to hear it said the way Devon said it. Casually, as if there were no sting to be found in it, no shame, as if he had no idea that the word was wrong and that to say it out loud was to bring unwanted attention.
“I’m not a ho—” Stanley stopped, his mouth trembling. He pressed the back of his hand against his lips. “I’mnot, do you hear? Isaac and I were friends, and that’s all there was to it.”
“Seriously, it’s not against the law now,” said Devon. “Well, in some countries, stupid, vile, backwards countries it is, but not here in France. Not in the States, not in England, not anywhere you might want to go. Like Iceland.” Devon smiled like it was some big, wonderful thing. “Gays can get married in Iceland, you know. Australia, too.”
The thought of marrying Isaac made Stanley go very still. The thought of marrying another fellow, someone like Devon, say—Stanley was warm all over and his heart was racing.
Devon was looking at him, his eyes wide open, as though waiting for a response to his statement. Perhaps he was waiting for Stanley to admit who he was. To admit that he was a homosexual himself, as Devon had just seemingly admitted with the use of words likeweandyou. Stanley had to make sure, so emboldened by the wine and his own exhaustion, he dipped his head to look up at Devon, completely unsure of the response he would get.
“Are you—are you one?” Stanley asked. Then he added hurriedly, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah,” said Devon, completely casual about it while he waved hishand over the plates as if they could confirm his statement. “I’m one of the quiet, stay-at-home ones. Too geeky to leave the house, too wrapped up in my studies. I barely qualify.” He laughed, at the statement, perhaps, or at himself, or at the idea of being one kind of homosexual instead of another, as if it were all quite easy and natural and accepted. “I mean, there’s all kinds; I’d be geeky, regardless.”
Stanley opened his mouth, but found that he could not articulate the whirl of ideas in his head, how it might have been if he could have told Isaac how he really felt. How it might have been to kiss Isaac on the mouth, to trace the little pencil scar on Isaac’s chin with his thumb. To wrap his arms around Isaac and keep him safe. Except Isaac wasn’t safe. He was dead, and Stanley was in the same cottage that, while building trenches, they’d taken breaks in to get out of the rain, to have a smoke, using bars of chocolate in barter like they were made of gold.
Swallowing, Stanley fiddled with his empty glass, swirling the dregs of wine around, red ribbons at the bottom of a jelly jar. He felt almost too warm in the heat that came from the white radiators along the walls. In Stanley’s day, radiators were brown or black or tinged red with rust. If there was any evidence that he was in the future, it was that everything was so clean and orderly, and it was these thoughts that helped him stay calm instead of bursting into blubbering tears, like he so much wanted to do.
“I’m sorry,” said Devon, his eyes grave and still. “Whether or not you came from 1917, you miss him, don’t you.”
“I never told him,” said Stanley. He was somewhat shocked at his own honesty, but Devon had done nothing but be kind and sympathetic to everything Stanley had gone through, so perhaps he could be trusted with this. “It’s nothing I could ever do, and he just seemed to like being my friend, so telling him would have ruined it. Maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Devon.
He got up from the table, grabbing the plates and bowls before taking them to the sink. He puttered around for a bit, doing ordinary things, making the moment seem as normal as it could be, given the circumstances. Stanley sat at the table, too tired to move, still feelingshell-shocked, as the fellows in the trench would have said. All he could do was watch as Devon brought to the table a little cardboard box with grease stains on the bottom.
When Devon opened the box, Stanley saw that inside were French pastries, crumbling and brown, flecked with delicate curls of frosting, the merest bits of sugar. He, Isaac, Bertie, and Rex had taken a trek into the nearby village when the frost had first hit the ground. It had been wonderful to walk in a foreign place with strange coins in their pockets, pretending that there wasn’t a war on, and Stanley and his buddies had gone into a bakery, just like back home. Maybe that had been the same bakery the pastries had come from, though that was impossible, as Devon had said the whole village had been wiped out.
“If you really did come from back then,” said Devon. “Or even if you didn’t, maybe I could get you some help.”
