Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

The martini glass, with its high center of gravity, threatened to spill. Mr. Shaw took it from his hand and set it on the table, then placed an arm over his shoulders. The exotic-looking man sighed with what seemed a craving for something deeper than sex, some wildly imbalanced alignment. Tim recognized it through an awareness of the same desire—its other, symmetrical half—within himself. “I think you should stay here tonight,” said Mr. Shaw. “You’ll be perfectly safe.” He pointed to the whip. “We can put that between us, like Tristan’s sword.” There was a brief silence, perhaps encouraging. And yet the gentlemanly Mr. Shaw soon sensed, whatever might be in the air, that his guest was too sad and nervous to go much further. So he made them both some coffee, told some army stories of his own (a Bronze Star rested not far from the crucifix), and listened to an anguished outpouring about Hawkins Fuller. After an hour or so passed, he was walking Tim to his rooming house across Dauphine Street, and telling him: “You’ll hear again and again that he’s ‘not worth it.’ And that will be true. It will also be the stupidest thing anyone ever says to you.”