My stepdaughter’s father.
How can I judge Logan for engaging in a relationship with a boy young enough to be his son? When I’ve done far worse, and worse yet, I am aching to do it again.
I push aside what Victor said about not regretting what we’d done. I can’t think about whether he was telling the truth or just placating my obvious freakout.
Not right now, not when every part of me yearns to go back in the other room and beg him to beg me to do it to him again.
I wash up in the en suite bathroom, crack the door open to tell Victor that he can take his turn if he needs to, and am in bed, covers over my shoulders, back to the door, before he decides whether to do so.
I sleep like the dead, thankfully, after two whiskies at dinner, the glass of wine afterwards, and the emotional upheaval of last night.
A raucous cawing wakes me just before dawn. In the first light, a flock of birds flies across the patch of sky I can see from the bed. I grab my phone and open the Merlin bird ID app and record the last of their calls as they disappear from view. These are crimson-fronted parakeets, the app tells me. When I look that bird up, they remind me a little of the green monk parakeets that have built elaborate nests in the upper reaches of the Green-Wood cemetery gate in Brooklyn. I pull on a pair of hiking pants and a long-sleeved shirt, grab my binoculars, and tiptoe out of the bedroom.
Victor is stretched out on the sofa, his long legs hanging over one of the arms. I feel a pang of annoyance at myself for selfishly taking the bed last night. It was his insistence, but I knew that the sofa is too short for him, and I should have insisted he take the bed. His eyes are closed and he’s breathing evenly, but something about his posture suggests he’s not asleep. I take the coward’s way out and leave before he opens his eyes and I have to face him.
The air is cool and damp as I walk along the path from the casita. I reach the wooden sign marking the turnoff to the birding platform and step off the neat gravel path onto a dirt track that heads into the rainforest. What little sounds of human habitation that accompanied me along the manicured resort path fade away and all I hear are chirps and twitters and the quiet rustling of my own footsteps.
I take a deep breath and let the rest of it fall away—Victor, the confession, everything. My binoculars hang from the harness straps and bounce gently against my chest as I walk. Being outdoors, in nature, always soothes me. It’s Monday, and I spare a brief thought of how my assistant director handled three Masses yesterday at Saint Sebastian’s when she normally only directs the one-thirty Mass in Spanish.
Nine a.m. Mass at Saint Sebastian’s is for the traditionalists, the ones who went to Catholic schools where the Baltimore Catechism was still taught, the elderly ladies who still cover their heads with lacy mantillas in church, and the admittedly small number of younger people who appreciate the full pomp and circumstance of a millennium of Catholic tradition.
The Saint Sebastian Six leads congregants at the nine and eleven-thirty Masses in songs that are part of the Mass, of course, but also performs a cappella sacred choral music before and after Mass, plus a handful of full concerts every year. I hum a bit of the baritone part of the Kyrie we sing during Mass under my breath as I walk along the path.
Kelsey attended school attached to Saint Sebastian through high school but stopped attending Mass when she came out to me as a lesbian. Not that I blamed her. The Church’s position on homosexuality is…problematic, at best, and getting increasingly uncomfortable for me.
Anyway, God is in nature as much or more as he is in any church building, so I have no issues skipping Mass yesterday.
The birding platform turns out to be a literal wooden platform, raised a few feet above the ground, with a couple of wooden benches, and a rudimentary roof. The benches face a pair of low trees planted between the wooded section of the grounds and a small clearing ringed with a scattering of low bushes.
Between the trees, there is a rough fence that’s clearly not meant to keep anything in or out. A trio of large spikes stick up along the top rail and the decaying remnants of a banana peel dangle limply from the center spike. I settle on one of the benches with my laminated field guide to Costa Rican birds and start an e-Bird checklist.
It’s only moments after I sit down that the first few birds fly in. A pair of Baltimore orioles and a bright red summer tanager are migratory birds that winter down here and I’ll see in Central Park in May. But there are several birds flittering around the trees and bushes that are new to me.
Using my field guide, I’m able to identify two blue-gray tanagers, a small handful of scarlet-rumped tanagers, and a Tennessee warbler, which also migrates in the spring to breed in Canada, but somehow I haven’t managed to see one yet.
I’m juggling my field guide and the Birds of the World website on my phone, trying to identify a tiny bronzy green finch-like bird with a yellow forehead patch, when a man clears his throat at the edge of the platform.
“Am I disturbing you?” Logan asks.
“No, not at all,“ I reply. I re-fold the laminated guide and set it on the bench next to me, my phone on top. “Please, sit.”
Logan steps up on the platform and sits next to me on the bench. He’s wearing a pair of muddy hiking shoes and there are splashes of mud on his pant legs.
“I think the resort has a selection of rubber boots you can borrow,” I tell him.
He stretches a leg out and rotates it, revealing mud splashed halfway up the back of his calf. “I should have taken them up on that.” He stretches both legs out in front of him “The trails are muddier than I expected.”
“Do much hiking at home?” I ask. “You live in New York City, right?”
“I have a condo on the Upper West Side,” he says. “But also a house in Connecticut. I used to do a fair bit of hiking and camping in the state parks in New York and Connecticut, when I was younger and had both more time and energy.”
He looks to be around my age, with graying hair and a close-shaved beard. He’s got an air of quiet confidence about him, like he’s equally at home in the wilderness or a boardroom, and large hands that are currently resting on his thighs. I look at them and remember that Victor said Logan was a Daddy Dom, whatever the hell that means.
Not that I’m going to ask this almost-stranger to explain his relationship to me.
“Does Silas like hiking?” I settle for asking.
Logan chuckles, a low, pleasant sound, and for a second, I see exactly what Silas must see in him. “Ah, no. Silas doesn’t like being too hot, or too cold, for that matter. He prefers eating in restaurants to cooking over a campfire, and sleeping in his own bed rather than in a clammy sleeping bag with rocks for a pillow.”
