“Come on,” Kelsey said, wrapping her legs tighter around his shoulders, as if to pin him into place. “It sounds fun.”
Terrence kissed her inner thigh, and then they both closed their eyes. Keith looked at Scotty, who shrugged and whispered, “I’ll try anything once.” Everyone else was doing what they were told. The flowers on the wall looked bigger now that he was on the ground, theirpetals so large that they were almost scary, and so Keith closed his eyes too.
Scotty’s fantasy was simple. They were all there, Boy Talk, like the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, everyone in their places on the stage. Scotty held his mic, and he danced, and the audience cheered, but the cheers were deeper than usual, a lower sound. He stepped toward the front of the stage, close enough to hold his hand over his eyes to block the lights. The audience was a sea of men. All kinds of men. Men his age, younger men. Men with beards. Men of every color and shape. Men, glorious men. Scotty was a teenager, and if he wanted to kiss any one of them, he could. He licked his lips, and they cheered harder.
The vessel would be round, or maybe a shape that people on Earth didn’t have a name for yet. It would hover off the ground, the height of a small house, or a large tree, and an internal mechanism would make a buzzing noise. A door would open, and a beam of light, orange and full, would go right down to the ground. That’s where Terrence was, standing in the center of the light, and Kelsey too. They would be holding hands, and her skirt would blow in the wind, maybe so much that he could see her little underpants that he loved so much, and then he couldn’t think about his wife’s underpants anymore because they would be moving up, up, up into the ship, into whatever the rest of theuniverse had waiting for them, and Terrence wasn’t even a little bit afraid.
When Corey closed his eyes, he saw flashbulbs. He was getting out of a car, and there were photographers waiting, and they all loved him. “Corey!” they called. They knew his name, and they said it with smiles on their lips. Corey climbed out of the car and waved, and they cheered. Crowds had gathered, men and women in equal number, and they were all pumping their fists in the air. Just seeing him had made their day, Corey knew it. He jogged quickly up a flight of stairs, where a doorman in a top hat was waiting to pull open a heavy gold door. Corey walked through the door and found more people, more flashbulbs. The crowd parted for him, like Moses and the Red Sea, which Corey knew all about, because in this fantasy, Corey was very well read, including the entire Bible. At the end of the clear path was a stage, and on the stage was Oprah Winfrey. Corey got tears in his eyes as he made his way, slowly now, toward Oprah and the purple velvet chair that was for him, and he waved at the crowd and at Oprah, and she smiled too. All had been forgiven. He was forgiven. His wife was somewhere else, but she had forgiven him too.
Shawn and Jonathan had already done this exercise, so Shawn didn’t even have to think about it. He was old, the kind of old where all the candles wouldn’t fit on a cake, a hundred years old, and he still looked so good. He was in a tracksuit, and he was dancing, and there wereTalkers all around him, and they were all old too. They were all old together. Shawn was swinging his hips back and forth, and he was going to keep swinging them until the second he died. His brothers were all there too, and now they were swinging their hips in unison, like five grandfather clocks that would keep going forever and ever and ever.
Sarah liked games like this. It reminded her of summer camp and kissing girls in dark, squeaky bunk beds when everyone else was asleep. Yes, she was a lesbian. What of it, Tiffany? Sarah had always hated Tiffany. What did she want? What was her vision of the future? Sarah wanted to live on land all the time, except if a friend of hers wanted to go fishing or watch whales or whatever. She wanted to be close to music, which was, she still believed, as close as humans could get to the divine, whatever that meant. Not god. Not heaven. Just actual transcendence, connection, the web that slung around everyone’s shoulders when they were all standing in a room together, listening to live music they loved. Sarah wanted to make that room and to fill it night after night. Sure, she’d still have to worry about drunks, but she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone falling off and dying or whether a guitar player was going to barf because the ship was pitching. She could live in Los Angeles and learn how to hike. She could live in Ridgewood and be a queer elder. She could move near her parents in Virginia and save money on rent and hang out at the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat. Sarah was done with pastels. She was done with the past! Thirty used to seem old, but it didn’t anymore. Maybe she’d start taking drum lessons again. There was still time for her to do everything she wanted to do, even things she hadn’t imagined yet.
No one had asked Pancake for his fantasy, but they hadn’t had to. It was happening at that exact moment. There was no future other than the song that he would play next. It was his ship, his dance floor, his people, from now until forever, or until the sun came up, whichever happened first.
What did Keith want? No one ever asked him. Keith’s fantasy was the anti-Keith life. This was what he knew deep down—it was the opposite of what his brother wanted. It was like the story about the comb and the haircut, about how one person’s sacrifice never worked. Was that how it went? Or like when people broke up because only one of them wanted children. Mutually exclusive fantasies. Shawn’s fantasy was this. They all knew that. Keith had tried for so long to make it his fantasy too, or at least his reality, which for a long time had felt like the same thing. No one ever asked him what he actually desired himself.Desire, that was a good start. He wanted to be loved. He wanted to be inspired. Keith didn’t know how to picture any of that, it was too big, so he started by seeing himself wearing a robe and walking around a garden, his hairy toes visible in a pair of sandals like Jonathan’s. Keith had never worn a pair of sandals, not even at the beach. Steffani wasn’t there to complain, though. She wasn’t there at all. It was just Keith and wildflowers and a soft breeze against his skin. Quiet concentration, focus. Could quiet be a fantasy? He didn’t know what the rules were.
Then he was still in his robe but walking down a city street. Thecity was alive—with people, with images, with words. A place of possibility. Paul Simon’s city, Bob Dylan’s city, Billy Joel’s city, Neil Diamond’s city, Lou Reed’s city, Ella Fitzgerald’s city, Carly Simon’s city, Madonna’s city, John Lennon’s city. Maybe it could be his, too. The pavement sparkled, and the words all rhymed. No one did a double take. No one tried to sneak a photo. If people smiled, they smiled because they were in a good mood, for their own reasons. He felt himself smile back, his eyes still closed, his back against the pool. It wasn’t too late for his own fantasy; that was the fantasy. There would be loss, and he would survive it. There was still time for firsts and bests. There was always more time. That was the truth. He was never getting on this ship ever again.
Annie was already in a fantasy, so she opened her eyes and looked over at Keith, whose eyes were still closed. It hadn’t been her fantasy, this trip, or this night, but she could recognize it for what it was. Any of the thousands of women on the ship would kill to be sitting where she was sitting, seeing what she was seeing. This was more than one could pay for—this was actual intimacy. The fact that she had paid to be here should have disqualified the moment from ever happening, but somehow it had happened anyway. A glitch in the system. Annie didn’t know what was going to come next, and neither did the Talkers, for all their theories and message boards. There were no guarantees in life. Annie knew that now. She hadn’t when she was younger. Keith was sitting with his back straight against the wall of the pool, with his knees tucked up against his chest, and his arms wrapped around his legs. Crash position. When Annie had told her friends about her divorce, one of them, a divorcée herself, had given her a bottle of expensivechampagne with a note that readYou were married for twenty years. That’s asuccess. Just because it’s over doesn’t mean that it failed!Annie had kept that note, and now she wanted to give it to Keith. She didn’t know what his house looked like or what his daughter thought of him or what went on inside his marriage, but she knew this feeling. The wheels of change were in motion, and he wasn’t going to stop them the way he’d stopped them before. There was happiness in the release if you made room for it. Annie wanted to tell him so many things.Send in the clowns. Don’t bother; they’re here.There was still time.
48
Monday, 12:02 a.m.
Deck 7
The extra cabin in the Sanctuary was on the side near the greenroom. There was a massage table set up between the bed and the television cabinet, but other than that, it was a regular room, and Keith showed it to Annie with the exhausted charm of a telethon host who’d been up for twenty-three hours.
“The lights are over here. The balcony’s over there—it’s a pretty nice balcony—and the reading lights for the bed are pretty great. You know how sometimes in hotel rooms you can’t figure out how to turn the lights on? I don’t know if they have the same ones on the whole ship.” He clicked on one of the lights and then held his hand beneath it, the Vanna White of theAmerican Fantasy. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m showing it to you like this. You know how rooms work.”
“I appreciate it. I never did know how lights worked. Honestly, it’s a relief.” Annie smiled and then sat down on the edge of the bed.
Keith put his face in his hands, embarrassed. The room was cool, with fresh air-conditioning pumping through the vent right over his head.
“Really, though,” Annie said. “I’m happy to be here.”
“Did you have a good time? Sorry, that’s a ridiculous question,” Keith said. Sitting on the bed seemed like too much, so he sat in the chair by the sliding door to the balcony. She was so unlike his wife, Annie. Her loose dress, her naked face, the way she sat with her knees splayed out, the dress pulled taut against her legs. The way she looked at him, the way she looked at his face, like she wanted to know what he was thinking. He hadn’t been alone in a room with a woman like this in a long time. “I know it ended in a weird way.”
“I did,” Annie said. “I still am.”
Keith remembered this. It was one of the top feelings, not knowing where something would go. It happened in songs too—finding a melody, writing a phrase—knowing that not all of it would stay but hoping that some tiny spark would turn into something worthwhile. It had happened a thousand years ago with the boys, the luck and alchemy and timing of a thing going exactlyright. Keith could have lived a dozen lifetimes and had it never happen it again, not the way it did. It was balancing a whole world on the head of a pin.
She was staring at him. Not Keith Fiore, just him. He could tell the difference most of the time. “What about you? Seems like maybe you’ve had enough of them for a little while?”
Keith shook his head. “Not them. Him. My brother.”
“I’m sorry. That sounds really hard.” Annie put her hand flat on the bed and moved it back and forth, watching her own fingers. He watched them too.
“I’m glad, though,” Keith said. “Said some things I needed to say.” The room was silent, but the air was thick. He wanted to cross the room to her, to cross the threshold of whatever they’d been doing into something else. He could see it happening, see a more reckless version of himself get up and move to Annie’s side and pull her face to his. Keith could practically feel it. “Maybe you should be a therapist next,” he said, though it wasn’t what he was feeling.
Annie looked up at him. She didn’t smile. They were having so many conversations at once. “Maybe,” she said. “You should get some sleep, Keith.” Annie exhaled and put her hands on her thighs, then stood up and walked back to the cabin door. The air was practically shimmering. It had been so long since he’d felt anything like it that it was almost enough on its own.
He nodded and crossed to the door. They stood facing each other, eye to eye.
“Good night,” Keith said.
“Night,” Annie said. She opened her arms, and he stepped inside them, wrapping his arms around her back. The sides of their faces pressed lightly against each other, and Keith could feel each point of connection. Annie turned her head and kissed him. It was gentle at first, a small gift, but when he breathed in her air, it was like all the possibility in the room caught fire, and he held her against him and kissed her back. Keith hadn’t kissed someone like this in decades. He wanted her to kiss him all night long. He didn’t even care if they did anything else; this was enough. How could there be anything better than this feeling? Annie pulled back and looked at him. She was looking at his face like it was a puzzle to solve, like it was both the question and the answer. Annie exhaled, and Keith inhaled because he wanted more. She put her hand on his chest, and he put both of his hands on top of it.
