Where Earth Meets Water Read online

  “Know what a mycophile is?”

  “Nope.”

  “Someone who’s obsessed with mushrooms.”

  Karom got up and moved into the brush, carefully moving aside branches to peer under a heavy oak tree.

  “Come on,” he said to Lloyd. “Let’s go. It’s no energy bar, but it’s something.”

  “Are you sure you know—”

  “Those,” Karom said, pointing to a cluster of small orange fungi growing delicately on a root creeping up from under the earth, “will kill you.”

  He moved around the tree and tapped at another root on the other side. Lloyd hoisted himself up and moved under the brush to join him.

  “Aw, yeah. But these, these are awesome.” Karom was pointing to a clutch of mushrooms that grew together like brain tissue, curling around one another in layers. “The ranger I was with had us eat them raw, because you never do. But they’re rich, almost meaty. Know what these are?” Lloyd shook his head as Karom stooped to brush some dead leaves off the tops of the mushrooms and plucked the whole bunch from the earth. “Hen-of-the-woods,” he said, offering them to Lloyd. “They’re delicious, not to mention ridiculously expensive. Try a piece.”

  Lloyd hesitated. He was known in their circle as circumspect, hesitating, never the first to jump into the pond at the end of finals, not even one to jump in at all. Their friends teased him for his caution, so he constantly pushed himself to try new things: nibbling on a charred tentacle of grilled octopus at the Greek restaurant on Tasson, almost bungee jumping over spring break. He looked into the pit of his stomach for the courage—his stomach that had been emitting high-pitched squeals throughout the hike from hunger—but his stomach itself was the one that reneged on Karom’s offer.

  “I’m okay. Let’s just wait for the concession stand at the top. Besides, Karom, those might be something else, something that grows outside of New York. I’d really rather you didn’t eat them without someone identifying them for sure. It doesn’t sit right with me.”

  Karom snorted and ripped a tender ear off the knot of mushroom.

  “I know what I’m talking about,” he said, stuffing it into his mouth and chewing noisily. “See?”

  Lloyd closed his eyes. He saw his friend pitch forward violently, clutching at his stomach and tearing at his hair as the poison curled through his body like smoke. He wanted to grasp Karom gently about the waist and force the offending fungus from his esophagus, where it was winding down the curlicues of his insides. He could feel the weight of Karom’s long limp body in his arms as he tilted his chin toward the sun, squeezed his nostrils and breathed into him.

  But nothing happened. And nothing happened afterward as they continued to climb, Lloyd gasping to keep up with Karom in order to examine his face with every step, until Karom snapped at him.

  “What—” his voice was staccato, as if he had sliced off the ends of his sentences “—is. The. Matter?”

  “Are you...? How do you...? How are you feeling?”

  “Seriously?” Karom whipped around. “I told you that I knew what I was talking about. You’re such a baby. A complete worrywart. Lloyd, honestly. This is a pathetic way to live your life, always back up against the wall, never taking any risks, never accepting any challenges. It’s sad. Push yourself. Move yourself to act. You’re missing it. You’re missing all of it.”

  They hiked the remaining three hours in silence, Lloyd interrupting it only to point out a shorter, steeper way that would get them to the peak just as the buses loaded up for the long drive back. At the peak nothing happened either.

  On the return trip, CD players and excited chatter came to a dull drone as students dropped off to sleep, drowsy with the residue of the heat and gleam of the sun. Karom and Lloyd sat side by side, Karom’s long tapered fingers resting on his thighs as he stared vacantly out the window, Lloyd leaning back with his arms crossed as he counted and recounted the diamond shapes on the roof above his head. The face of Karom’s watch glinted in the passing highway lights. The watch had arrived by courier two days before. Lloyd had been sitting on his bed rereading his sociology notes when Karom accepted the package and sat on his bed to tear it open. He’d watched his face change as he read the note that accompanied it and then watched him stroke the face of the watch before he lovingly wrapped it around his wrist.

  As the crunch of gravel underneath their tires changed into the hum of the highway below them, Lloyd deigned to ask, the flickering of the approaching cars in the oncoming lane defiantly casting shadows across his face, “Did you really know? What those mushrooms were?” Karom continued to watch the cars approach him. Lloyd could see them in his pupils, dancing dangerously close until they shot by in the parallel lane.

  Karom cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling. He swallowed, water catching in the creases of his eyes. His voice shook as he spoke.

  “No. Not exactly. I thought so at first, but the longer I held them in my palm, I wasn’t sure. They looked familiar, but I didn’t recall seeing the white crests at the tip of the frond as they sprayed out. I thought I knew. I took a chance. I tested myself.” He looked down at his hands and gripped his thighs with his fingers before he turned his head back toward the window and closed his eyes. Lloyd curled his hand into a fist and brushed it against Karom’s. Karom’s eyelids fluttered slightly, but they remained closed. Lloyd watched him carefully for the first hour as Karom twitched instinctively until finally dropping off to sleep.

  * * *

  Back on solid ground, Lloyd feels sickened with himself. He has carried this around for eight years. He has to shake it. The trip is partially it—one final pep talk to himself to get over it and move on. And what has he accomplished? A few measly brown trout and a hike to the top of the nearby peak. Enough is enough. There is no one else he can speak to about this. His friends back home in San Francisco would happily clap him on the back along with an invisible label across his chest and send him straight to the Castro. But it isn’t like that.

  He’d looked it up. Homosexuality: romantic and/or sexual attraction or behavior among members of the same sex or gender. It isn’t behavior. Or romantic. It isn’t even members. Lloyd is in the ideal city to be gay if he wanted to be. In fact, it might even be easier than marrying a Haitian-born woman with an accent and skin the color of coffee beans. But this is love for only one man. Karom. His Karom. It balls up in his chest like a knotted clutch of yarn, tangled among his inner organs. It has taken years to unravel a few inches of it before the ends get lost in the mess once again. And this is his final attempt to pull it out, inch by inch, before he crosses the threshold into a life with Malina, a proper one, a committed one. One where he gives himself wholly to her—without the ball in his chest, without the yearning behind his eye sockets, without the sweat-stained T-shirt that barely holds the lingering scent of his best man. Besides, Malina is a terrible knitter.

  It is a start. Back in his tent, Lloyd pulls the T-shirt out from his sleeping bag and heads down to the riverbank. Squatting down on his haunches, he digs into the silt where the water laps softly at the shore, the moist dirt flecked with pebbles. He holds a ball of it in his hand and smears the shirt with it, grinding the mud into the cotton, covering the sweat stains, masking the scent. When he is satisfied, he stands abruptly. The blood rushes from his head. He sees stars. But he uses his disorientation to hurl the shirt in a straight arc over his shoulder, where it lands with a slight splash in the river. It sinks ever so slightly with the weight of the earth and immediately picks up the rapid current, sailing downstream, out of sight before Lloyd can catch his breath. And then, just like that, the start is finished.

  * * *

  “Explain something to me.” Lloyd jumps. He has been lying on his back, watching wisps of clouds as they trail across the sky. When he stares hard, he can see the tiny molecules of the atmosphere floating miles above him. They
appear like clear balloons, disappearing as soon as his eyes focus. He has been thinking about Malina, the nature of Malina, what Malina means. He fell asleep to her last night, imagining her fingers stroking the inside of his thigh, crooning her husky hum into his ear. He invoked the drag of her fingernails across his skin and his skin mottled with goose bumps almost immediately. He imagined the underside of her jaw, where the curve of her bone revealed her skin to be softer than anywhere else on her body. He kissed her fluttering eyelids. Her plump lips were tugging on his ear, urging him home. He was close. And then he was lost.

  But now Saul is next to him chewing on a long piece of grass. Lloyd sits up. He is lying on a large boulder that juts into the river. The boulder vibrates with the rush of the water around it and Lloyd had been lulled into a trance.

  “This whole solo-bachelor-party thing. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who doesn’t have friends. What gives?”

  “Why is this bothering you?”

  “It’s just a little different. I wanted to know your rationale. I might want to throw myself one of these one day.”

  “Well...” Lloyd hesitates. “It’s the last time I’m going to be truly alone. For the rest of my life, there will be my wife, hopefully kids, a family. There will be obligations and necessities and joint accounts and Little League uniforms and college educations. Besides, I keep myself in good company.”

  “Fair enough. And very mature, I might add. I want one.”

  “All you have to do is get engaged.” Lloyd grins.

  “When’s the big day?”

  “Two weeks from Saturday.”

  “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Well, she’s Haitian. With this flawless, luminous skin. She’s all angles, her face, her arms. She has strong, sharp features that at first glance appear almost masculine, but her smile, which happens frequently, softens everything. But her eyes are piercing, as though you have to win her over before she’d simply hand those to you on a silver platter. She’s... Well, here.” Lloyd removes his wallet from his cargo pants and shows Saul a picture. Saul lets out a low whistle. “But that’s not all. She’s so smart—she started a microloan NGO that supports single mothers in Third World countries. She’s fiercely loyal and insanely jealous. She’s an incredible...cook.”

  “You were going to say lover.”

  Lloyd blushes. “Was it that obvious?”

  “Just a smidge. But it’s good. It’s refreshing to see someone head over heels. It doesn’t happen enough.”

  “Sad.”

  “But true.”

  Lloyd develops a faraway look in his eyes. “When we first started dating, I was training for the New York City Marathon. And she just happened to be in town for the weekend. We’d only been out twice, so I didn’t even bother telling her how to look for me or anything. But here’s the thing that got me—she looked up my number and came to Brooklyn, to Greenpoint, and she saw me and she called my name, but I had my name on my shirt, right? Like everyone does so people can cheer for you? So I probably turned my head, didn’t think anything of it and just kept going.

  “Shoot forward eleven miles, where I’m in the home stretch—mile twenty-four—and I hear my name. I turn around, and there’s this girl, and she’s holding this sign with my name and hollering at me to go, go, go. I was exhausted at the time, just holding on by an inch. But I smiled and waved at her, not really registering that this was her—second-date Malina. So I finish the race, ice my legs, have a big dinner, pass out and fly back to San Francisco the next morning, and on my way back from the airport, I’m super groggy in the cab, but it hits me. I saw Malina at the race. I dial her number and she’s all sleepy sounding, but she answers the phone, ‘Congratulations, champ.’ And I say, ‘Was that you? Did I dream it?’ and she laughs and says, ‘It was me. I was there in Brooklyn but you didn’t see me at mile nine, so I hopped on the train and made sure you knew you had support before your big finish. How do you feel?’ and I felt this warm feeling spreading through my chest, like something engulfing my insides, enmeshing my heart. I wanted to see her right then, to hold her and kiss her and tell her that I would take care of her, too. That’s big. Those grand gestures, those don’t happen anymore.” Lloyd smiles, shaking his head.

  “Wow, man.”

  “Sorry, I got carried away, bragging about her.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You should never be sorry.”

  “What about you? You seeing anyone?”

  “I was married once.”

  “What happened? If you don’t mind—”

  Saul waves him away. “Usual story. She was young. I was stupid. We thought there was a baby but it turned out to be a false alarm. And so we went our separate ways. We’re still friends. I actually introduced her to her husband.”

  “Now, that is mature.”

  “What’s the point of grudges, right? It just wastes time.”

  Lloyd purses his lips, thinking.

  Saul taps his forehead. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Just that. Wasting time. I’ve spent so much of my life wasting time on things that will never, should never, amount to anything. I guess you could say I’m here trying to rid myself of them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Excess. Anything, really. Focusing on what’s important—my life, my job, my woman, my passions, eating, sleeping, waking up each morning. Everything else is beside the point. It’s irrelevant.”

  “Like?”

  “Considering other options. Temptation. Lust. It’s all stupid when you know you’re going home to one woman.”

  “Aren’t all those things the very crux of a bachelor party? Besides, who is tempting you around here?” Saul looks around to the small wading area where the river has created a small current-free pool where children splash in the shallows and heavyset women stand wading in T-shirts that reach to their knees.

  “Not here. Here.” Lloyd taps his own forehead.

  “Hmm.”

  Saul looks out to the river, where the waters approach the two men as they sit on the rock. If they want to, they can both hurtle forward and be embraced by the current. If they want to, they can both sit still and let the hum of the tide soothe them to sleep.

  “Is it Karom?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who is tempting you? Karom. What’s his—her?—presence in your life?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Well, I, er...” Saul looks down at his heels nervously. “Last night. I was on night patrol, checking the grounds. You’re technically out of the jurisdiction, but I knew where you were camped. You were whimpering and moving about pretty violently. I was going to unzip your tent but I thought that might freak you out even more. So I just knelt down next to your tent until the nightmares passed. They went on for a while. You said the name constantly.”

  Lloyd looks down at his ankles. He is silent as he traces the final line of hair that grows before the smoothness of his pale white feet begin.

  “Him. Karom is a him. He’s my college roommate. He... I... Nothing happened.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay if it did.”

  “It didn’t.” Lloyd says this not defensively but in regret. He still can’t meet Saul’s face.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Do you love him?”

  Lloyd looks at Saul. His face is so calm, so soft. There isn’t a trace of judgment lodged within his questions. “I’m not sure. I think so. But it’s not like that. It’s just him.”

  “Does he know?”

  Lloyd shakes his head. “Never has. Never will.”

  “What’s special about Karom?”

  “It’s inexplicable, really. We were roommates for four years and we
just...carried one another. We never talked about anything we needed or wanted. One always just filled in where the other fell short. If I needed someone to reread my thesis proposal, he’d print it out unbeknownst to me and leave notes on my desk. If he took the Greyhound into New York to visit his parents, I’d figure out the bus schedule and pick him up at the depot when he returned. We looked out for one another at parties and during finals. My parents were always abroad—they’re diplomats—and for the first few years of college, I’d spend Thanksgiving and long weekends with the Seths. He went through some personal stuff and I tried to be there for him. I guess the personal stuff is what drew us together. It’s hokey, but it was just this bond. And I can’t imagine having it with anyone else. Not even...Malina.”

  Saul nods, looking over Lloyd’s face. There are tears prickling in the corners of his eyes and they threaten to spill.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before. Not out loud. Not ever.”

  “Well, you’re safe here. The bigger question is, what are you going to do?”

  “Get rid of him. From here.” Lloyd taps his head again.

  “How?”

  Lloyd is beginning to anger. “What is this, a therapy session in a wooded glen? Don’t you think I’ve thought of all this?”

  “Socratic method, pal. Calm down. I’m just trying to help.”

  Lloyd sighs and pushes the hair out of his eyes.

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve tried everything, short of getting married. And don’t—” Lloyd looks directly into Saul’s eyes. “Don’t think this is a Band-Aid. Malina is in a totally different category. Malina, I love, and am in love with. She’s mine. That’s no question. The question is, can I live with both of them?”