last client of the day has left, and Jasper is busy tidying his desk at the institute, hiding files from his nosy colleagues and renaming computer documents in the event a certain party decides to sneak in after hours and meddle. In other words — Luke, chairman of the board of the institute and currently at war with Jasper. For this reason Jasper likes to be the last one in the office, the person who turns off lights and printers and copy machines, then lowers the blinds in anticipation of morning sun. It’s the most peaceful time of day, agenda swept clear and the smell of burned coffee hanging heavy in the air. There was a time when he loved his job, and that time was not so long ago. Luke was elected chair at the last AGM, and it seemed like a grand thing. Jasper dared to believe the two men shared a vision.
Toby will be getting peckish back home, he decides. Sometimes he feels Toby’s hunger before the boy feels it himself; they’ve been together that long. His lover — a term Jasper favours over the sexually neutral “partner” — makes forays to the fridge, tears off lettuce leaves for a salad, and stirs a bay leaf into the stew pot.
Or doesn’t.
Since Toby got this daft idea of entering the Montreal International Classical Guitar Competition, he doesn’t always get around to cooking dinner on weekdays. Jasper can’t help feeling peeved by this; after all, he’s the one with a complex full-time job while all Toby needs to do is teach Guitar Choir once a week. Just for a moment he wonders what it would be like if Toby didn’t exist, how much simpler his life would become — and how empty.
There are days when Jasper craves such emptiness.
The screensaver floats into view: beads of dew gleaming off iguana hide, so unlike this dry, frightened city in summer where the virus has chased citizens into their homes. The institute’s walls are painted sea-green, a hue chosen by a former chairman after she read that green invoked tranquility, a mood much prized in these parts. That bare patch next to the window used to contain a Frida Kahlo print, a creepy self-portrait with mini-Diego peering out of her forehead. Jasper tore it down, for his clients crave the ordinary, not an artist’s mad leap of imagination.
The elevator slides down to bustling University Avenue, crisp dusk of early autumn. As always, Jasper pauses before exiting the building to wave to the security guard, nice kid, inching his way through college a credit at a time.
Mail is trapped in the slot, though it must have arrived hours ago. Jasper pushes open the door to the flat and frowns. He can hear the stomping of feet inside. They always remove their shoes before entering — why track city filth inside? Clues rain down. Yet he’s not exactly worried. It is a too-quiet room with no response that he dreads. Feeling the old jet of excitement, intact after all these years, he calls out Toby’s name.
The pacing stops.
Jasper takes his time loosening his laces, kicking off his shoes, then sets his cap on the hook. He spots Toby in the middle room, dressed only in a pair of plaid boxers.
“Everything okay?” Jasper asks in a voice carefully shorn of concern.
Toby slams a bookcase with his open hand, and Jasper’s collection of European history texts rattles.
“Don’t touch me,” Toby whispers as his lover reaches for his arm.
The kid was his merry self this morning, but evidently this morning was a different universe. He loses contact with his own skin, gets so he can’t stand the lightest caress. His guitar is propped against the chair, but the metal stand has capsized and lies skeletal on the rug.
“What’s happening, baby?” Jasper asks.
“I don’t know,” Toby says. His face is flushed. “You tell me.”
“Is the practising not going well?”
“Blame music,” snaps Toby. “Blame the guitar competition.”
“I’m not blaming anything. I just want to find out what’s wrong.”
“You can’t help.”
“Then I won’t try.” This is something Jasper has learned — not to get pulled in where he’s not welcome. Besides, he has things to do, especially since it’s clear nothing has been done about supper, and he should call his sister out in Victoria who is turning forty today.
Toby tags along as Jasper moves into the kitchen, and then the story emerges, as Jasper knew it would.
“Who the hell do I think I am, going back to competition after all this time? Someone will be there who saw me nosedive in Paris. I couldn’t stand that, Jazz.”
Jasper peers in the fridge, finds the pot of soup nearly a week old, and sets it on the stove to heat up. He feels the boy press in and reaches back to clasp one of his hands, those pebbly, callused fingertips. Touch never fails; it’s what Toby needs to be reminded of.
“Are you afraid?” Jasper asks.
“Of course.”
“Because you don’t have to do it.”
“I sent in my application.”
“Un-send it. No shame in a change of mind.” Jasper hears the encouragement in his voice.
“Put my engine in reverse? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
The men face each other, and pretty soon Toby’s hands are sliding all over him, popping open Jasper’s shirt, burrowing between his legs, and they collapse to the ground in a slow-motion dance. The carpet that tattoos their knees is a fake kilim, courtesy of Klaus. If the old man could see them now.
They untangle to the sound of a kettle whistling in the apartment above. Jill calls, “All set,” and Miranda’s feet clatter across the floor. There is a long sigh of water pouring into a teapot. That rhythmic thump is the dog’s tail hitting the wall.
Jasper eyes his lover, who now lies on his back, naked and breathing evenly. Though he is nearly thirty, Toby has a face as unlined as a child’s and shaves no more than twice a week. Jasper rubs his own bristly chin: night and day.
Toby’s eyes flicker open, and he asks lazily, “Don’t you get tired of looking at me?”
“Never.”
Toby smiles and lifts himself to his feet all in one move, no creaking joints. Fourteen years younger; it makes a difference. Then he tosses his head, a gesture going back to a time when he wore dreadlocks. Upstairs, cutlery clinks against china and someone turns on the stereo: Edith Piaf, the little sparrow.
“Your soup is burning,” Toby says, stretching his arms so his fingertips tickle the low ceiling.
“Shit!” Jasper rises carefully, mindful of his lower back, and heads for the stove.
“I haven’t decided on my free choice,” Toby says, watching the soup rescue.
“What free choice?”
“After playing the required program, we get to choose a piece from our repertoire,” Toby says. “The kids go for flashy. I might be different.”
Jasper stirs thoughtfully. He understands that sex has changed nothing. “Tell me why you want to do this.”
Toby
