MICHIGAN
SEEMS LIKE A DREAM TO ME NOW
for Jae's birthday
(It's 1998. Or 2010.)
It's the crossroads of America. It's the well-oiled engine of capitalism. It's a damn near vivisection of democracy.
"It's a fucking cheeseburger," Toby says, pushing his plastic tray to the edge of the table. They're at a McDonald's on one of those skyway things on the I-95. Josh meant the highway, but whatever. "Eat it, don't eat it, do you have to have your relapse into keeping kosher at this very second? We have --" Toby waves his hands. "There are things to finish."
"Yeah," Josh sighs. He chews and swallows and when he blinks he sees his grandmother's dishes in neat, separate stacks in the cupboard. Not a crumb to be found, not even before Pesach. "It's just. I think I didn't really think people came to these places. Like, to eat."
"They don't come here to eat, Josh. They come because they're driving from wherever to wherever and their kids are yelling about, I don't know, toy surprises or something --"
"Toy surprises?" Josh squeezes the tip of his straw. Everything is really overly fluorescent. Even the kids yelling and screaming and fighting over who gets to go down the waist-high slide into the bin of plastic primary-colored balls. He's eating rainforest fries, potatoes that killed the tropics in some way he can't quite remember because that's what Sam's for, to remember those things. But Sam's not here and so it's not ironic that Josh is both fucking the environment over and eating its spoils, it's just kind of pathetic.
Toby shrugs. "Are you trying to stretch this out? Believe me when I say --"
"This hurts you worse?" Grease stains on the paper lining Josh's tray look like Congressional districts. That one there, it's the Mississippi ninth. There's the Ohio twelfth. Josh looks up and Toby is pushing at his temples like he's trying to climb out of his skull and just needs a good handhold.
"It could be worse," Toby says. "We could be doing this for, for, you know. Some asshole politician who doesn't deserve it."
"He deserves it," Josh says. "He, we're so close, and for this --"
"Yup." Toby nods, then juts his head toward the door. "Here's our guy."
Mackay's wearing a cheap white dress-shirt with stains in the armpits and Josh has never really realized before but the guy has no ass, just absolutely nothing there, it's like he got pressed on an ironing board, like a gingerbread man he's so flat. He has a manila envelope under one arm and he sets it on the table, picks his cuticles and clears his throat.
"If this is it," Toby says. "There's nothing you need to say."
Mackay nods three times in rapid succession, swallowing audibly. His dirty nails trace the arc of the envelope flap and then walk away. He nods again.
Josh can taste chopped onions and mustard in his throat, and back behind that is something dark and ugly that he thinks might stain. "Thanks," Josh says, and Toby throws a glare at him. Josh sips at the last of his drink and pushes out of the booth.
He and Toby drove separately and he has to stop twice on the way back to D.C. to take a leak. He has to very carefully hold his breath and remind himself not to throw up. It's dark by the time he pulls up in front of Sam's.
"How'd it go?"
"Fine," Josh says. Sam thinks Josh and Toby were vetting a cabinet secretary.
Sam sniffs into Josh's collar, follows his nose with a wet tongue. "McDonald's? I thought you were gonna start eating healthy."
The thing about Sam is that Sam looks like the best thing that's ever happened to Josh. He's smart and he knows it, which is almost better because it's the part Josh can never pull off, being it and knowing it at the same time. Josh doesn't really get pretty men, in the sense that he always forgets to notice, just like how he mostly doesn't notice what a knock-out a woman is until she's naked and saying his name.
He doesn't quite get that Sam is pretty except by the way the girls in the office talk about him. And also one morning last week he stopped shaving and turned around and kissed Josh, a long hard kiss and then Josh had to change shirts because there was Kiehl's sensitive skin formula all over his collar. Half a day's worth of beard and half a face of smudged shaving cream and Sam wasn't pretty but he was something else. Something worth keeping clean, and so Toby said let's just do this the two of us, let's make this go away, and Josh said yes, yes. That's better. It's better that way. It's easier.
Sam looks like the best thing that's ever happened to Josh. But really Sam is just a bad habit. He's a bad habit like going to the gym is a bad habit. The kind of little adjustment that makes Josh think that if he just gets his ass out of bed every day, he can change the kind of guy he is. He can be fit. He can be healthy. He can be the kind of guy who looks up at age fifty-five or sixty and says, these are the best years of my life. He can be the kind of guy who has someone to say that to.
Sam laps at Josh's collarbone, tugging down his undershirt. He anchors himself with the yoke of his hand on cotton that Josh knows reeks of grease and bile from where he wiped his mouth.
"You --" Josh pushes just a little at Sam's shoulder and Sam tips back onto the bed, pulling Josh with him. "You wanna take a shower?" Josh asks, closing his eyes.
"I already did," Sam says.
"Yeah," Josh sighs. Politics is really the worst habit. Politics and good men and the men who stand behind them. "Yeah," he says. You. You wanna take one anyway?"
Sam props his chin on Josh's shoulder, tilts his neck and looks up at him. "With you?" he asks, smiling.
"That's the general idea," Josh says, but Sam is already standing, pulling his sweatshirt over his head. Sam is running the water and flipping on the waterproof radio, because he knows Josh likes to sing classic rock in the shower even when it's not late enough yet to wake up the neighbors. Sam is standing naked in the door to the bathroom, one arm up on the towel rack.
END.
Title by Paul Simon. Beta by kel and Jess. Aaron Sorkin is the kind of spectacularly flawed, fucked-up genius I only wish I could be. These men are his.