Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

I just wish they’d speed things up and hire me.” He leaned in and kissed Fuller’s bare chest. They had climaxed once already, but as they lay on the blankets together Tim was once more hard against Hawk’s stomach, experiencing, he thought, a kind of unified happiness: God and politics and love were for once aligned in peaceful coexistence. The other day he’d bought a portable radio and brought it here. Set to Twilight Tunes on WRC, it was now playing “These Foolish Things.” Hawk, who had greeted the radio’s arrival with a questioning look, casually reached over and moved the dial until he landed on Bob and Ray. Wally Ballou was running for mayor, and after a moment or two Tim was enjoying the comic routine even more than the romantic music. “They used to do ‘Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons,’” he explained to Fuller. But at the first commercial he clicked off the little box, the better to concentrate on kissing Hawk, who soon flipped him over and entered him. Their rhythms and avidity matched; familiarity—their own history—now allowed them to merge with a completeness they hadn’t been able to manage, even during the good moments, three years before. Hawk pulled on his hair a precise moment before they both came. The days had grown a bit longer, but even so, by the time the two of them were finished the streetlamps had come on. Realizing it was time to go find his Plymouth and drive home to Alexandria for dinner, Fuller retrieved his car keys from under one of the blankets.