After a moment of silence, Jeffery said, "I'll talk to you later, then."
Evan hung up without saying goodbye. He'd had the urge to drink since he'd been discharged from Havilland but it had never been this strong. He clenched his fists and pounded the mattress a few times. He thought about Carson and how disappointed he'd been when he'd discovered Carson wasn't as interested in a serious monogamous relationship as Evan had thought he'd been. Although they were still friends and Evan didn't hold anything against him, Evan couldn't help wondering why he always seemed to attract the same kind of man. He'd thought it would be different with Carson and he'd been wrong again. But more than that, he'd given up all hope of ever having a real marriage and family with anyone.
Before he got dressed, he phoned Cadin to see how Michele was doing. Cadin answered on the second ring.
"She's just sitting on the sofa, staring at a martini glass," Cadin said. He spoke in a soft whisper so Michele wouldn't hear him. "I've never seen her take anything so hard."
Evan sighed aloud. "I'm coming over. I'll be there in about a half hour." Michele had been seeing the same guy since Evan had been back from Havilland and she'd sounded so happy. They hadn't seen much of each other because she'd been so busy with the new boyfriend. That night, at Evan's thirtieth birthday party, Evan would have met the guy for the first time.
"I think that's a good idea," Cadin said. "Between the two of us I'm sure we can at least make her feel a little better."
The last thing Evan felt like doing that night was cheering someone else up. And Cadin sounded just as depressed at Michele. But Evan couldn't disappoint Michele. She'd always been there for him and now it was his turn to be there for her. "Did you phone everyone and tell them the party was canceled?"
Cadin said, "Yes. I took care of all that. What about Jeffery?"
"Don't ask," Evan said. "I'll see you in a half hour."
After he hung up, he put on the clothes he'd been planning to wear to the party: a black sport jacket, white shirt, and new jeans. Then he went downstairs and walked to the avenue to hail a cab. But it wasn't always easy to get a cab in his neighborhood, so he continued walking toward the West Village. Each bar he passed along the way made him tighten his fists and lower his gaze to the sidewalk. At one point, he stopped and gaped at the open door of a bar he'd been to in the past. He held his breath and counted to twenty, holding back the urge to run inside and head for the bartender nearest the door. This overwhelming urge, this craving for alcohol of any kind, consumed him so fully nothing else seemed to matter.
But he took a deep breath, exhaled, and continued walking to the next corner. When he finally found a taxi, he climbed into the backseat and told the driver where to go with such a sense of urgency the driver sent him a second glance before he pulled away from the curb. For a moment, Evan felt a slight sense of relief. He rested his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. He'd been strong enough to resist the urge to go into that bar. A year earlier he wouldn't have resisted that urge. He would have gone inside and he wouldn't have come out until the bar closed. There was no doubt in his mind he would have left the bar with whatever man there at the time had shown him the slightest amount of interest.
Although the urge to drink lightened a little by the time he reached Michele's apartment, it didn't disappear. It never really did, not forever. He should have known; he should have expected this. His doctor at Havilland had warned him. When Cadin answered the door and he walked in and found Michele sitting on the sofa with a martini glass in her hand and a huge tray of food on the coffee table, the urge to drink returned with even more intensity.
He kissed Cadin on the cheek and crossed to the sofa. He sat down beside Michele and put his arm around her. "I'm so sorry," he said.
Michele shrugged and leaned into him. "I'm sorry I ruined your birthday."
He held her closer. "Sweetie, this isn't about my birthday. You've been through a shock and that's all that matters."
Michele sat up and said, "You have no idea, trust me."
"What do you mean?" Evan asked. He glanced up at Cadin, who'd been standing next to the sofa, and Cadin rolled his eyes.
"It's the last thing I expected," Michele said.
Evan felt a lump in his throat. He had a feeling he knew what she was talking about. "Is it another woman?" They were both getting older and Michele wasn't dealing with it well. She'd just turned thirty and she was already doing Botox and talking about plastic surgery.
"Not exactly," Michele said. "It's another man."
Evan's head jerked back. "You were dating a gay guy?" He sent Cadin another look and pressed his palm to his throat. They'd always joked around that Michele would be happier if she could just find a nice gay man and settle down. But they'd never been serious about it.
She turned and glared at him. "I didn't know he was gay. I had no idea until he met me for lunch this afternoon and told me he'd met a guy, he'd fallen in love with him, and they're planning to get married."
"You didn't see any signs? Your two best friends are gay and you didn't see anything unusual about this guy?"
"He's not really gay," she said. "He told me he's bi-sexual. And get this, the guy he fell in love with is twenty years old." She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm so she wouldn't ruin her makeup. "Now I not only have to compete with younger women, but also younger men. How fucked up is that?"
Evan put his arms around her this time and hugged her tightly. "It's not like that, it really isn't. You just got mixed up with the wrong guy, is all."
She sniffed and said, "I can compete with another woman. But I can't compete with a twenty-year-old guy. That not even possible."
Evan knew there was nothing he could say or do that would make her feel any better that night. So he took her martini glass, stood up, and walked over to the bar next to a white baby grand piano. He mixed a full pitcher of vodka martinis without even realizing what he was doing. By the time he started to pour the mixture into Michele's martini glass, he glanced up and saw both Cadin and Michele gaping at him.
They seemed to be waiting for his next move. He lifted the martini glass and smiled. "It's not for me. It's for you." Then he brought the martini to the sofa and set it on the coffee table beside the tray of party food and picked up a canopy of caviar and chopped egg and popped it into his mouth.
Then Michele started to cry and they listened to her story about the way the guy had dumped her. He'd met her for lunch in a restaurant and dumped her before they had a chance to order. As if that wasn't enough, he gestured to the front of the restaurant and the twenty-year-old guy walked over to their table and sat down with them.
Both Cadin and Evan leaned forward at the same time. "He brought the new boyfriend with him?" Evan asked, exchanging a quick glance with Cadin when Michele wasn't looking.
She nodded. "He introduced me, asked the guy to join us, and said he hoped we could all be good friends."
Cadin's mouth was hanging open by then. "What did you do?
She shrugged again. "I put up a good front. What could I do? We were sitting in the middle of a busy restaurant and I couldn't make a scene. You know how it is: women aren't supposed to make scenes in public or show aggression. We're supposed to be nice and smile all the time."
"I would have kicked them both in the ass," Evan said. He reached for Michele's hand. "I know that's not something I would have done a year ago, but the older I get, the more tired I get of people like this guy making assumptions. I've learned a few things about some men in the past few months, let me tell you. They seem to drift through life making their own rules, expecting everyone around them to just go along with them. And I'm getting tired of it. I say fuck them all and you're better off without this guy. If more gay men and straight women took on this attitude we'd all be a lot better off for it. We need to start making our own rules."
When Michele got up to use the powder room, Cadin went to the bar and poured himself a martini. He took a huge sip and said, "God, I don't know how I'm going to get through this night in one piece."
Evan walked over and asked, "What's wrong with you?" "I wasn't going to say anything, but the guy I've been seeing just told me he thinks we should start seeing other people." Cadin finished the drink in one swallow. "And we all know what that means. He's probably already seeing other people."
"The guy with the child-bearing hips?"
"Yup."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Evan said. "I thought everything was going so well." They'd all been so caught up in their own lives in the past few months Evan realized they hadn't been paying attention to each other.
"He didn't even have the decency to ask me out to lunch," Cadin said. "He mentioned this to me on the phone."
"Oh, not the phone."
As Cadin nodded, Michele walked into the living room, took one look at their expressions, and asked, "What's wrong?"
Evan wanted a drink now more than ever. "The guy Cadin has been seeing told him he wants to see other people."
Michele reached for his hand and said, "I'm so sorry. I know how serious you were about this one."