Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

“Tell me, Skippy. Why give up anything for Lent when you’re not even taking Communion?” “I am taking Communion.” Tim’s eyes remained closed and he was smiling. He seemed to be falling asleep, pleasantly exhausted. It was becoming clear to Fuller that Skippy now believed everything between them to have been somehow miraculously sanctified; he seemed to have reached the conclusion that he, too, could live as a bigamist. Just as Hawkins Fuller could go home to Lucy, Timothy Laughlin could go home to God—until it was again time to meet here, which the two of them would keep doing until the house was torn down, at which point they would presumably start going to the “place not far from where you used to be on I Street.” From the moment he had allowed things to resume, Fuller had feared that Tim would end up making trouble, would become a hysterical version of Tony Bianco, threatening a scene—not for money but assurance, for some further allotment of affection. One morning he would show up on the Fullers’ suburban doorstep, wracked with anger and some fresh twist of biblical shame. But here he was: happy, calm, wanting not so much as a second “I love you.” He had taken, it seemed, some vow of emotional poverty that he was willing to keep six days a week, if only on the seventh, or close enough, he could be released from it here. He would grow old in this city, become like all the other skinny, obedient clerks and bookshelvers keeping their heads down at the Library of Congress, ...