“Didn’t really need to ask, I guess,” Sam mutters, laughing on it slightly. “It’s not like I can’t tell that’s Eileen saying we should get a room.” The word “room” reminds him, and, his eyes slamming open, he adds, “Hey, oh my God, don’tmove out of your apartment; is it too late? For you not to move? I mean, I guess probably it must be, right? Hell.”
“Uh,” Jake says, flushing. “I mean, no, because I didn’t want to break my lease and I couldn’t afford to get another place and Marty feltreallybad, so. I was just going to leave all my furniture here and sleep at my sister’s, honestly. We were going to crash out together, but I bet she’d be relieved to change that plan. And Marty’s been begging me not to go anyway, so. I think he’ll be chill.” Glancing at the window full of onlookers, which Sam has not yet been able to bring himself to face, he adds, “I’d say we could just go back to mine, but I wouldn’t call the condition it’s in right now…good. Currently, it’s more a series of trip hazards than an apartment.”
“And accessing my apartment requires entering the deli, which I may never be able to do again.” Deciding he has to face the music, Sam gives Jake one last swift kiss before he breaks away and turns around to look toward the window.
Sam was expecting to be mortified, but instead he’s oddly touched by the row of smiling faces, family whether by blood or bond. Ever since he was young, he’s thought of himself as a loner, the sort of soul doomed to singularity, but looking up at all these people so clearly happy for him, it’s hard to hold onto the lie. Sam’s made mistakes; he’s had to figure things out on his own—he’s been alone, time and again, of that there’s no doubt. But that doesn’t have to mean alone is how he’s supposed to be. Like anyone else, all he really needed was the right people.
“I’m taking the afternoon off!” Sam calls up to his crew, to another round of cheers. “But call me if you need anything, and if someone can come down and grab the dog?—”
“Yeah, yeah, kid, I’ll keep an eye on the place and the mutt,” Deb says, rolling her eyes. “Have some fun for once in your life.”
“Go already, you idiots!” Eileen snaps, and Sam beams up at her, at all of them, before he takes Jake’s hand and starts leading him towards the mouth of the alley.
“Wait!” Joanie sticks her head out of the back door, and flaps a hand at Sam when, wearily, he opens his mouth. “I know, I know, I’m not supposed to use this door, but first of all—Pastrami! Get in here!” She waits while Pastrami streaks inside, waving off Sam’s grateful nod with a hand. Then, lowering her voice, although not enough not to be perfectly audible, she says, “Jake. You knowMarty pretty well, right? So—while you’re here and everything—is he aniceguy, do you think? I just want to get a sense of him.”
Out of Joanie’s range of vision, Sam shakes his head violently; he sees Jake’s glance flick, amused, to the window above, where Deb is doing the same.
“He’s a perfect bastard, since you ask,” Jake says with remarkable conviction, “and you should absolutely avoid dating him at all costs.”
“Thank youverymuch,” Joanie says, beaming like she’ll never stop, “that’s all, have fun,” and she vanishes back into the deli.
Sam, shaking his head, resumes walking. “They’ll keep watching until we go away,” he explains, not that Jake seems to be putting up any resistance to being led. “Can you leave your car here for a minute?”
“For another hour at least,” Jake says, sounding a little breathless. “But Jesus, I mean, I thought they’d all hate me! I thoughtyouwould hate me! Forever! I thought?—”
Sam shrugs, still walking. He hasn’t let go of Jake’s hand. “People make mistakes, you know? They get that. God knows they’ve made plenty; God knows I have. Anyway, come on. I want to show you something.”
They walk in easy silence, holding hands, up the two blocks of East Ninth Street that stand between the deli and looking Lake Erie in the eye. The road doesn’t take them all the way to the shores; it dead-ends at the top of an incline, at the bottom of which sits industrial warehouses, machinery, and the shallowest of the Great Lakes.
Sam’s pleased, as they approach it, to find luck is on his side. Below them, as he hoped it would, the longest, ugliest rooftop of the longest, ugliest warehouse appears, in spite of being gray, almost white.
“They’re seagulls,” Sam explains, his voice low, when they’ve stopped. “They all gather here during the day, and then, if you catch them at the right moment, or something makes a loud enough?—”
He’s interrupted by a resonant boom below them, a sound like a forklift hitting a pole. It’s enough. The entire rooftopof birds takes flight at once, painting the whole sky briefly in dazzling, dizzying white.
“They do that,” Sam says, satisfied, as Jake gapes up at them.
“Holy shit,” Jake breathes. “It’s…beautiful.”
Sam agrees, although he’s not looking at the birds. He’s looking at Jake, all the versions of Jake he’s known and loved, the one he lost, the one he found again. He has no idea what’s going to happen from here, but for once in his life, he’s glad not to know. Deb was right. It’s about time he had some fun.
As if hearing this thought, Jake’s eyes slide to his, wide and still slightly disbelieving. Laughing on it a little, he says, “So, uh. Since we’re not going to go through with the traditional thirteen years of radio silence…what happens now?”
Sam smiles, and then he laughs, and then he shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t have the faintest idea. I was hoping maybe we could figure it out together?”
Jake’s answering smile is better than any natural wonder. “Deal.”
EPILOGUE
A FEW YEARS LATER…
Sam had been disappointed the first time he visited the Arcade as a child, a fact that he chalks up to the name. He had been expecting a low-ceilinged room full of Skee-Ball and video games, not a long, multi-story indoor shopping center with enormous, vaulted windows where there would, typically, be a roof. If it had been called “The Big Bright Hallway” or, indeed, “A Place Where You Will Be Allowed to Run Around Freely While Your Parents Study in the Tiny Food Court,” he might have taken to it more immediately.
Even so, after only a few minutes, his sense of loss wore off, and from that point on it had been one of Sam’s favorite childhood places. He’d spent hours exploring it, popping in and out of various shops, getting to know the owners—often elderly, at least back then, and settled in their old family businesses. Deb used to take him sometimes, too, the deli being only a few blocks away, and talk shop with the owners in the way only two proprietors of an old family business can.
It’s almost a shame, Sam thinks, that the place is closed today for the wedding, for all the decorations have made it sparkle and shine. He’d like to have some of those conversations for himself, now that he, too, has earned a place in those highly selectiveranks. He resolves to come back another day and, setting down a stack of covered hotel pans, reaches up to straighten his bow tie?—
“Stop!” Jake lets this bellow out like a war cry, descending on Sam as if from nowhere and gripping each of his wrists in one hand. “Don’ttouchthat, Sam, oh my God!”
