“Hi,” she said when Hudson stopped. “Brian, you remember Hudson,” she said, as if they were an old married couple running into a recent acquaintance.

  “Sure,” Brian said. “How’s it going?”

  “Nice to see you,” Hudson said shortly. “How’s your dad, Caddie?”

  “He’s fine,” she answered. “Busy.”

  “I was on my way to see him,” Hudson said.

  Caddie’s heart skipped a beat. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “He’s right in the middle of something.”

  Hudson nodded. “Thanks for the warning,” he said evenly. “But I think I’ll chance it.” He smiled, and Caddie understood that they were now enemies. Something had changed in him since she’d last seen him. He seemed colder somehow, more determined. More dangerous, she thought with some alarm.

  “We’re going to lunch,” Brian said when no one spoke.

  “Enjoy it,” said Hudson. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

  He walked away from them. Caddie turned and watched. She wanted to run after him, to jump on his back and pound his face with her fists. She wanted to tell him to stay away. But then Brian pulled on her hand, and she felt herself being dragged forward as Hudson went to meet her father.

  CHAPTER 36

  “We need to talk.” Hudson cringed as he heard himself say it. It was so melodramatic. He imagined Norma Shearer saying it to one of her movie husbands. Chester Morris, maybe, in The Divorcee.

  “Where have you been?” Ben asked, looking at him from behind the desk. “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”

  Okay, now it’s turning into Imitation of Life, Hudson thought. He shut the door to Ben’s office and walked toward him, taking a seat in one of the chairs. Ben, he thought, looked terrible, as if he hadn’t slept in a couple of nights.

  “Caddie said there was an emergency with the house,” Ben said cryptically. “Is everything all right?”

  “The house,” Hudson repeated, not quite understanding. Then he realized that Caddie must have made up some story to explain his premature departure. “It’s fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine there.”

  “Then why—” Ben began.

  “I left because of something Caddie said,” Hudson said.

  Ben looked confused. “What did she say?” he asked, clearly unable to imagine anything his daughter could say that would make Hudson upset enough to leave and not call for almost a week.

  Hudson moved uncomfortably in his chair. “This probably isn’t the best place to talk about this,” he said. “I thought maybe we could go somewhere else.”

  Before Ben could answer, his door opened and Angela popped her head in. Seeing Hudson, she smiled brightly. “Hey, stranger,” she said.

  Hudson smiled back, wishing she would go away. Instead, she looked at Ben. “I compiled the data you wanted for your report,” she said. “Do you need me to do anything else?”

  “No,” Ben said. “I’ll handle the rest. Thanks.”

  Angela looked once more at Hudson. “We should do dinner again sometime,” she said.

  “Sure,” Hudson agreed. “That would be fun.” He mentally pushed her out the door. A moment later, she actually went.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” said Ben.

  Hudson started to get up. “This was a bad idea,” he said. “I should have waited. How about we talk tonight?”

  Ben motioned for him to sit. “If Caddie said something, I want to know what it is,” he said. He hesitated. “It wasn’t something about you being gay, was it? Because I never told her—”

  “It wasn’t about me,” said Hudson. “It was about you ... and me,” he added.

  Ben shook his head. “What about us?” he said. “Is she jealous that we’re spending time together?”

  “That’s part of it,” Hudson said. “But it’s more than that.” He paused, half hoping that Angela would come in again and save him from having to continue. But she didn’t, and Ben was looking at him, waiting. “She thinks there’s something between us,” he said finally.

  “Between us?” Ben said. He leaned back in his chair. “Between us,” he repeated, but his voice had taken on a different tone. “You mean she thinks ...”

  Hudson nodded. “She said she thinks that you have ... feelings.” He took a deep breath. “For me,” he concluded.

  He watched as the color drained from Ben’s face. Ben scratched his forehead. “Why would she ...” He wasn’t looking at Hudson. “Why would she say something like that?” He seemed to be speaking to himself.

  “I told her it was ridiculous,” Hudson said.

  Ben finally looked at him. His face was blank, as if, not knowing how to respond, his muscles had simply frozen in place. He seemed to be waiting for Hudson to continue.

  “But maybe it isn’t,” said Hudson.

  Ben played with the papers on his desk, saying nothing.

  “Ben,” Hudson said, and Ben stopped fiddling with the papers. He looked at Hudson. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Hudson asked him.

  “Not entirely, no,” Ben said. “But I think I have some idea.”

  “At first I thought she was just trying to make me angry,” Hudson said. “I didn’t want her to do the same thing to you, so I left. I figured all she wanted was for me to be out of the way. I certainly never thought that you might ...” He stopped again. No matter how he ended the sentence, he knew it was going to put Ben in an even more awkward position. Instead he asked, “Are you all right?”

  Ben nodded. “She said that?” he asked again.

  “She did,” Hudson confirmed. “And I’m not sure she was wrong.”

  “I can’t talk about this right now,” Ben said suddenly. “I have a meeting. I have to prepare. I ...” He looked at Hudson with an expression of such total confusion that Hudson stood up. He leaned across the desk and put his hand on Ben’s.

  Ben pulled away. Hudson, startled, stepped back. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “We can talk about this later,” said Ben.

  “All right,” Hudson said. “How about tonight? I could come over.”

  “That would be fine,” Ben said mechanically.

  “I’ll come by around seven,” said Hudson, and Ben nodded. Hudson waited, then asked, “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure,” Ben answered. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Hudson left his office, shutting the door behind him. As he walked out, he passed Angela coming in the opposite direction. “You’d better not have distracted him,” she said reprovingly. “I need him fully functioning this afternoon.”

  “Good luck with that,” Hudson said under his breath, replying afterward with, “You know he’ll come through.”

  As he walked back toward Cannery Row, he felt none of the relief he’d hoped to get from talking to Ben. Instead, he felt even more anxious. From Ben’s reaction, he guessed that the idea that there might be something between them had come as a total shock. Clearly, it had never occurred to him. Or, if it had, he had already dismissed it as an impossibility.

  Again he thought of just leaving. But every time he tried to outrun the weight on his shoulders, the burden just became heavier. It was time to face his demons. Not just Ben, the newest of them, but all of the others, the ones from which he’d run for too long. It was Ben’s misfortune that he had, by whatever means, become one of them.

  It’s your doing. The dark voice rose in his mind, harsh and accusing. His father’s voice. You did it to him, Lincoln Jones continued. You touched him. It’s your poison doing this to him.

  His father had once spoken aloud the words he now whispered in silence. Hudson was thirteen, in the throes of becoming a man. The one to whom his father had said the words was already a man. He was a neighbor, a man with a wife and two boys, one of them Hudson’s classmate. One hot summer afternoon when Hudson was at the neighbor’s house enjoying their newly acquired aboveground swimming pool, he had walked into the bathroom and found the father masturbating furiously over a magazine lying open on the pink tile floor. Hudson had stared at the picture of a naked man, trying very hard not to look at the one in front of him. Then the father had taken Hudson’s hand and placed it on his hard cock.

  It was a month later that his father caught them together in the garage. This time, Hudson was standing while the neighbor knelt on the floor, his head bobbing up and down on Hudson’s erect penis. Hudson, close to release, had opened his eyes to see his father standing not ten feet away, the garbage bag he was carrying to the trash hanging from his hand like a headless corpse.

  The neighbor had made excuses, accused Hudson of initiating their couplings. Mr. Jones had silenced him with threats of imprisonment and bodily harm until the man, begging for mercy, had fled from the garage. When, two days later, the news came that he had left his bewildered wife and sons and disappeared, Lincoln Jones had said nothing. Hudson, however, had wept in his room until his father had come and ordered him to take out the trash.

  When, five years later, Hudson came out to his parents, his father had said only, “Some poison you can’t never get out.” They had never discussed it again, but Lincoln Jones had made no secret of his disappointment in his son. Even a scholarship to Yale had failed to impress him, and Hudson had departed for New Haven with little more than a handshake and the ten dollars his father handed him at the bus station.

  What would his father think of him now? he wondered. But he knew the answer to that question; he wouldn’t think anything. Hudson had failed to matter to him from the moment Lincoln Jones had realized that his son was smarter than he was. Hudson’s homosexuality was merely further proof of his uselessness. Probably his father had even been expecting it, so sure was he that Hudson would betray his parentage in every way possible.

  For a year following the discovery of his shame, Hudson had waited for the neighbor to return for him. He’d told Hudson that he loved him, whispered it in his ear while Hudson touched him in the way he liked, while he released himself into Hudson’s hand. Every day for a year he’d watched for that face, waited for a letter or phone call promising salvation. All through the long Maine winter he’d waited, dreaming of waking up in another bed far away from the cold eyes of his father.

  For a long time after coming out he had found himself attracted to men who resembled the neighbor. Making love with them, he had manufactured the smell of the cheap cologne the man had favored. The sight of a grease-stained hand holding a Camel cigarette brought back every yearning of his thirteen years, and he found himself following men in red pickup trucks, although surely the man had long since given up his rusted Chevy for something else. Once he had by chance found a copy of the magazine that had been on the floor of that pink tiled bathroom, an issue of Playgirl which, he assumed, had belonged to the man’s wife. He’d purchased it and taken it back to his room, where every night for two weeks he stood over it and let his memories rain down on the face of the unlucky centerfold, until the pages no longer opened without tearing.

  Then he’d met Paul, and it had all begun again. Although Paul had in no physical way resembled the neighbor, Hudson’s attraction to him was just as powerful. Their first time together, Paul had been surprised when Hudson had asked if they could do it in the bathroom of his tiny apartment, where the faded tile—this time a pale lavender instead of pink—provided the necessary backdrop. There, his face buried in Paul’s chest, Hudson had run his fingers over the thin gold band on Paul’s left hand and listened for the sound of children splashing outside.

  He had never told Paul about the neighbor—had never, in fact, told anyone. Eventually they had taken their lovemaking into other rooms, into Hudson’s inconveniently small student bed, where they had thrust against each other and left the sheets damp with sweat. And, slowly, Hudson had ceased to think of the neighbor when Paul was inside of him, although sometimes at the moment of climax he still smelled the sharp odor of cologne and felt calloused fingers on the back of his neck.

  After Paul’s death, after the months of wrestling with the feelings of guilt and blame until he was too worn out to continue bearing the weight of misery and had exchanged it for the mantle of a champion, he had promised himself he would never again become involved with someone it was impossible to ever fully love. This, he told himself, had been his life’s curse, placed upon him by his father that afternoon in the garage. It had followed him from Maine, a reminder—along with the flatness of his accent and his habit of giving directions based on landmarks rather than the names of streets—that there were some things he could never change.

  Since then he had tried, and failed, to partner with men who were good for him. He selected them as he might a dinner wine, attempting to choose those that would bring out the best in his character and balance his flaws. Occasionally he even convinced himself that he had found one. But always, usually after their first time together in bed, he was dissatisfied.

  And now there was Ben. Ben who was so completely unlike either the neighbor or Paul. Ben who, until Caddie’s revelation, Hudson had thought of only as a friend. A friend he had been only too pleased to have, as the relationship involved no land mines to tread lightly around. Like Marty, Ben had been, until now, a part of his life that required only that he enjoy it.

  Now the enjoyment had changed to dread. Sitting in Ben’s office he had, for the first time, feared what words might come out of the other man’s mouth. And his worry was not just for himself. He was afraid for Ben, afraid what he, Hudson, might have done to him. Some poison you can’t never get out. Had he somehow tainted this man who only wanted to be his friend? Logically, he knew it to be an absurd idea, one of his father’s ignorant explanations for something he could not accept any other way.

  Yet he found it impossible to completely dismiss the possibility, and the strength of purpose he had felt after swearing to banish the ghosts from his car was quickly flooding out of him in the aftermath of his meeting with Ben. There had been no great revelation, no release, only a quiet struggling that left him feeling weary and alone. They would talk, later, but he wondered if there was any point to that. Perhaps everything that was going to happen had happened, and now his friendship with Ben was over.

  “Fuck!” he said, the purity and forcefulness of the profanity cleansing in its simplicity. Fuck. Odd, he thought, how the word considered the most unutterable should be the one that represented, for many, the greatest pleasure of which the human body was capable. The sacred and the profane, he supposed, the ultimate proof of the perversity of human nature, to make a curse of the very act that kept the species in existence.

  He realized that he was distracting himself from thinking about Ben. He knew, too, that thinking about Ben was going to neither change nor improve the situation. He felt an intensifying of his anger toward Caddie—Caddie who, like some kind of snot-nosed Cassandra, made predictions of calamity and ruination.

  Cassandra, a favorite of Paul’s. Cassandra, whose name meant “she who entangles men.” Cassandra, whose predictions of the future were met with disbelief, no matter how many times she was right. Had Caddie, like the cursed daughter of the king of Troy, brought about his destruction by speaking the truth? Was she merely a mouthpiece or was her role in the current drama more complicated than that? In her desire to have her father to herself, had she taken something small (however true it might be) and turned it into something else, something more certain to put distance between her father and her perceived rival? Even if her suspicions were correct, what was to say they would ultimately have amounted to anything? Had she just waited, Hudson would have left and any feelings he might have stirred in Ben would, in all likelihood, have dissipated.

  But she had chosen to speak, and now her prophecy was growing in strength and could not be ignored. He and Ben would need to face it, tonight, and both would have to live with whatever havoc was wrought by having heard her words. Hudson could only hope that, unlike the revelations of Cassandra, this one might not be inescapable.

  A child sees what we are, through all the fictions of what we would be. He had not thought of the quote in many years. They were the words of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a mostly forgotten Swiss philosopher whose writings on God, art, and science had been thrust upon Hudson and his peers as part of an undergraduate seminar and whom they had all found exceedingly tiresome. But a handful of Amiel’s pronouncements had found their way into Hudson’s mental filing cabinet, and he sometimes recalled them and gave grudging credit to the philosopher–poet.

  He thought of his own childhood, when he’d observed his parents and recognized instantly their unhappiness and loathing for one another. It had not occurred to him until much later that they were unaware of it—were, in fact, pretending that everything was fine. This had surprised him, as he’d assumed that adults had passed beyond the days of dress-up and make-believe that children found so necessary to their existence. With that realization, the scales had fallen from his eyes, and he had never seen the world in the same way again.

  Had Caddie seen through him? Was that the real problem? Her accusation had been directed at her father, but Hudson had been included in it. He had been blind to what was happening between himself and Ben, and she had torn away the veil and forced him to see it for what it was.

  No, he realized, it wasn’t Caddie he hated; it was himself.

  CHAPTER 37

  In the tank, the two Flabellina iodinea were mating, joined at their head ends. Their reproductive organs, pale extensions of their deep purple bodies, exchanged eggs and sperm as each fertilized the other. Their oral tentacles, sinuous as eels, explored the surrounding rock, feeding and copulation occurring simultaneously.

  It was unusual for nudibranchs to breed in captivity, and Ben was pleased that the tricky mechanics of recreating a cold-water ocean environment had succeeded in encouraging the Spanish shawls to engage in the behavior. Tropical fish were much easier to keep, and he occasionally envied his colleagues whose interests centered around the brightly colored and far less particular residents of warmer waters.