I do. I know because Mik has eyes and Mik's eyes function the way Mars's eyes function: comprehensively, without permission, reading the geometry of a room and the people in it with the automatic precision of a man who has survived by seeing everything.
Mik has seen me with Eli. Mik has seen the distance on the bus and the proximity in the corridors and the way my posture changes when Eli enters a room. The change is small. A degree. A fraction. The fraction is visible to Mik because Mik spent eleven years managing his own fractions and recognizes the management in others.
"The kid is good for you," Mik says.
"The kid is twenty-two."
"Cole was twenty-three when I met him. Age is not the variable you are worried about."
He is correct. The age is not the variable. The age is the excuse the variable hides behind.
"You are afraid of the access," Mik says. "Someone had access before and the access was misused. This is not a guess. This is recognition. I recognize the shape because I wore the shape for eleven years."
Mik's eleven years. The years of silence. The years of the wall that looked like privacy and functioned as a prison. Mikhas talked about those years publicly (in the Sports Illustrated feature, in the AJC piece that Declan wrote, in the speech he gave at a charity event that Cole says made the entire room cry, including the waitstaff). Mik's eleven years are documented. Mik's eleven years are public.
What is not public is the weight of them. The weight of eleven years of hiding is not communicable through journalism or speeches. The weight is communicable only through the specific, private frequency of one man who hid saying to another man who is hiding: I know what this costs.
"My situation is different," I say.
"Your situation is identical. The details are different. The architecture is the same. You built a structure to survive something, and the structure worked, and the working became the problem, because the structure that protects you from the bad thing also protects you from the good thing, and the good thing is in your apartment cooking in your kitchen and wearing your clothes and filling your rooms with a noise you did not know you needed."
The sentence is the longest sentence Mik Volkov has produced in my presence. Mik's sentences are typically short and precise, each word placed with the economy of a man who learned English as a second language and who treats every word as a resource that should not be wasted. This sentence is not economical. This sentence is generous. Mik is spending words on me, and the spending is the care.
"How did you know?" I ask. "With Cole. How did you know the access was safe."
"I did not know. I chose." He pauses. "Knowing is for mathematics. Trusting is for people. You cannot calculate whether the access will be misused. You can only decide whether the person is worth the risk of finding out."
"And if they are not?"
"Then you rebuild. You have rebuilt before. You are good at building. But rebuilding is not the same as living, Nikolai. Rebuilding is maintenance. Living is the thing you are afraid to do because living requires the wall to come down, and the wall coming down is the thing you have been preventing for three years."
He stands. He is finished. Mik is finished in the way that Mik is finished: completely, without residual conversation, the words delivered and the delivery concluded. He walks to the bench press. He loads the bar. He begins his next set.
The conversation is over. The information is on the bench between us, available for me to pick up when I am ready, not requiring me to pick it up now.
I finish my cable rows. The reps are mechanical. The counting is automatic. The weight moves and the weight is not the weight I am thinking about.
In the corridor, I pass Cole. Cole is waiting, the way Cole waits for Mik after film sessions: leaning against the wall, phone in hand, the casual patience of a man who knows his person is coming and who does not need to hurry the coming. Cole looks at me. The look is brief. The look says: Mik talked to you. The look says: Mik talks to very few people about the real things, and the talking is a gift, and the gift is not given lightly.
I nod. The nod says: I heard him.
Cole nods back. The nod says: good.
Two nods. Four seconds. Three seasons of shared history compressed into a corridor exchange that contains no words and requires none.
I drive home. The apartment is warm. Not the thermostat. The evidence of habitation: Eli's sneakers by the door. The plant on the windowsill. The coffee mug that says "World's Most Adequate Boyfriend" sitting on the counter with a teaspoon still in it because Eli does not believe in putting teaspoons away.
The teaspoon. Three years ago, a teaspoon left in a mug would have been an affront. The teaspoon would have been corrected. The teaspoon would have been washed, dried, returned to the drawer, the disorder repaired. Tonight the teaspoon sits in the mug and I look at it and the looking produces something that is not irritation. The looking produces a warmth that is specific to the recognition that another person's habits are in my space and the habits are staying and the staying is not a threat.
The teaspoon is staying.
Eli appears from the bedroom in sweats and a T-shirt that is mine (the T-shirt migration has been occurring for two weeks. My wardrobe is slowly being absorbed into Eli's body, garment by garment, and the absorption is deliberate and unapologetic).
"Hey," he says. "How was film?"
"Informative."
"You have the face."
