Free The Men from the Boys by William J. Mann Page B

afraid, do we.”
    Is that what happened with Javitz and me? I wondered, but didn’t ask: we rarely discuss such things. But his words seemed to acknowledge that Lloyd and I were different than he and I had been—that the yin and yang that existed between Lloyd and me could possibly survive the end of the endorphins.
    â€œYou’ll be good for each other,” Javitz said. “You’ll give him nest and he’ll give you flight.”
    â€œHey,” I say, turning the corner now into his hospital room.
    â€œGet me my pants,” Javitz commands. He’s stumbling around the room in one of those johnnies they make you wear, a flimsy white apron that exposes the butt. “I just scared a nurse by winking at her with my asshole.”
    I barely smile. I hand him his jeans from the top of a cabinet. “You happy to be going home?”
    What a stupid question. He looks at me, with that Javitz look. “No, I’m as glum as you. What’samattah?”
    Damn him for always knowing. “Nothing,” I say. “Let’s just get you out of here.”
    â€œNot until you tell me what’s wrong.”
    â€œJavitz, I’m here to take you home from the hospital after you have spent weeks languishing in your bed, obsessing on life and death. Let’s take one thing at a time, shall we?”
    He doesn’t respond. He just stands there, hands on his hips, looking ridiculous in that johnny, and I know he won’t budge from that silly pose until I tell him.
    â€œOh, Lloyd and I were bickering.”
    He sighs, as if relieved. As if so what else is new. He pulls up his jeans.
    I’m annoyed that he’s dismissive. “He didn’t come home last night,” I say, trying to make it more significant. I feel like a tattletale.
    â€œOh?” This seems to pique his interest.
    â€œHis name is Drake.”
    â€œOhh,” Javitz says, and he smiles. “Tell me more.”
    â€œI don’t know much more,” I say. “Except that he’s in love with Lloyd.”
    Javitz is pulling on a shirt. I help him. He needs to sit down afterward, a little dizzy.
    â€œYou okay?” I ask, my hand on his shoulder.
    â€œThat’s what happens when they keep you down for five days straight.”
    â€œYou don’t do anything straight,” I remind him.
    â€œOh, right.” He feels his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “God, am I dying for one of these.”
    â€œPrecisely,” I tell him.
    He gives me a face. “So tell me. How do you know he’s in love with Lloyd?”
    â€œHis eyes.” And I hate it, this power. Hate always knowing, always being right.
    Javitz understands. “It’s still bothering you, isn’t it?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat conversation. The one you’d like to forget you told me about.”
    And I shouldn’t have told him, except that I tell Javitz everything. I had to talk to someone about it, even though it pained me to do so, to say the words, to repeat exactly what Lloyd had said that late Sunday morning several weeks ago.
    â€œThere’s no more passion.”
    It struck me hard. As if this was it, the one conversation that was too primal to tell anyone, too frightening even to admit to ourselves. We were in bed, lethargic and lazy, or at least I was, until he said the words. We had been watching through the skylight as the sun seared the rain clouds. “It’s going to be a nice day after all,” I said, just before he landed the bomb.
    â€œJeff,” he said. “There’s no more passion.”
    I rejected his statement at first, because it came so soon after my father’s death. I was in the throes of passion. Lloyd had been there, helped me through it. I loved him all the more for it. What was he talking about?
    â€œUs,” he said. “The passion between us.”
    â€œThere’s passion between us,” I insisted. I touched