When they returned to Harvard, Elroy suggested they start sleeping in the same bed all the time. “We slept together in Florida every night. I’ve never slept better. We might as well sleep together here,” was how he’d put it.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kyle had said. “I think it might be too distracting for you. And I’m not ready to have sex with anyone right now. If I have sex with you, you’ll just wind up getting bored and dumping me. I have too much respect for myself to let that happen.”
Elroy laughed and made a joke of this. “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning.”
But Kyle didn’t reply.
Then, as if all that business with Lev Godwin studying again with Kyle hadn’t been enough, that pain in the ass Lev Godwin went out and got himself run over by a goddman truck on his way to lab one morning in December. He’d been planning to meet Kyle early so they could study together. He’d been rushing and he didn’t look both ways twice. That idiot Lev stepped off the sidewalk, stopped to glance down at his watch in the middle of the street, and he was run over by an exterminator’s van that had a huge brown cockroach festooned to the roof.
After that, Elroy hardly saw Kyle at all. Kyle spent most of his free time at the hospital sitting by Lev Godwin’s bedside studying. Lev had been knocked so hard by the cockroach truck he’d wound up in a coma, in a body cast, hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes. It was all extremely annoying. Elroy had gone to visit Lev once for Kyle’s sake. He knew how close Kyle was to Lev. But Elroy was not fond of hospitals and sick people and he only went that one time. That clinical alcohol smell in the hospital made Elroy’s stomach turn. He had no patience for old people pushing walkers. In order to please Kyle, he donated a large sum of money for a new emergency wing in the same hospital where a large plaque with Lev Godwin’s name would be hung in the waiting room.
Then Lev finally died and that only made things even worse for Elroy. He thought it would make things better, but not this time. Nothing Elroy did seemed to comfort Kyle. He tried buying him gifts, telling him jokes, and taking him out to dinner. But Kyle preferred to remain alone in their room, with his books and his studies. The only time Kyle did laugh was one evening when Elroy put on Kyle’s Halloween drag costume and paraded around the room in high heels and wig. And that didn’t last long. He laughed for a minute or two, then sighed and said, “Nothing ever upsets you, does it? Can’t you see that I’m grieving for a friend?”
Elroy pulled off the wig and said, “I think you’re taking this too seriously. Maybe you need to get interested in something else.”
“I just lost a good friend,” Kyle said. “How could I be taking it too seriously? You’re heartless sometimes. Your problem is you lack empathy.”
“Look at it this way,” Elroy said. “He’s better off dead. He’s not suffering anymore.” Elroy believed in moving forward, not looking back. That’s how he’d handled the death of his parents after the accident, and nothing would ever be worse than that.
“Like I said, nothing ever upsets you, Elroy. You’re an iceberg.”
Elroy sat down on Kyle’s bed and looked into his eyes. “The way you’re acting upsets me. I hate to see you this way. It kills me to see you so depressed and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make it better. And just so you know, when you lose your family the way I did a few years ago, then you can tell me how to act when someone insignificant like Lev Godwin dies. Because once you’ve been through the ultimate losses in life, like mother, father, husband, or wife, the minor ones don’t matter as much. And that’s just a cold, hard fact of life, buddy. So buck up and let the little foot-sniffer rest in peace once and for all.” Then he got up and left Kyle alone for the rest of the night. There was only so much drama he could take at one time.
Through all this, Ricky the married guy had been Elroy’s only stress relief. He continued to meet Ricky once or twice a week for what had turned into nothing more than fast sex that left him satisfied enough not to go looking for more until the next time he saw Ricky. The man was addictive; Elroy couldn’t get enough of him. Elroy wanted to stop but couldn’t seem to find a way to say no. He’d reached a point where he would plan to tell Ricky he didn’t want to see him again, and then Ricky would throw him down, turn him over, and he’d forget everything he’d wanted to say. Elroy gave himself until New Year’s to break it off for good. He knew deep down he had no emotional feelings for Ricky, and he wasn’t fond of the control Ricky seemed to have over him.
When Kyle asked, “Would you like to come home with me for the holidays?” a few days before Christmas, Elroy’s coffee went up his nose.
Elroy was in bed watching a video, planning the plausible excuse he would give his relatives for why he wouldn’t be joining them that year for Christmas. He sent Kyle a glance and said, “You’re joking.”
“I’m serious,” Kyle said. “I know you don’t want to go home and spend Christmas with your family, and to be honest I don’t want to go home alone.”
“We could fly to Paris,” Elroy said. “Or spend the holidays in New York.”
For the first time in a long time, Kyle laughed. “I can’t. I would love to, but not this year. I promised my mom I’d be home. She’s old-fashioned about Christmas.”
“They won’t mind you bringing me along?” Elroy said. Now he definitely had the mother pegged as the controlling type. “I thought you said they weren’t thrilled about you being gay.”
“I’m not bringing you there as my lover or boyfriend,” Kyle said. “Get that through your head. I’m bringing you there as my friend, my roommate. We won’t be sleeping in the same bed.”
Elroy thought for a moment. As he saw it he had three choices. He could turn Kyle down and spend Christmas alone—he’d been thinking about going to New York alone. He could turn Kyle down and spend Christmas with his dreadful, greedy, bloodsucking relatives and listen to their bourgeois stories of suburbia, from soccer to PTA meetings. Or he could spend Christmas with Kyle’s homophobic family in the backwoods of fucking Vermont in the middle of nowhere, sleeping alone on a cot with synthetic sheets. Although the latter wasn’t exactly what Elroy considered a good time, it was better than nothing and he would be with Kyle.