illustration by Jameson Currier
DIM GEM
by Jameson Currier
Steven and I were together for seven years before we got married. Before we went down to City Hall our lives were already intertwined—we were both in our fifties and had a joint bank account, a joint lease to a Chelsea apartment, and a joint mortgage to a weekend house in Pennsylvania. Despite Steven’s objections, we avoided the expenses of a large wedding to take a honeymoon trip that would not bankrupt us: a cruise to the Baltic capitals to escape the sweltering summer temperatures since neither of us liked being out in the heat or sitting on a beach. But in rapid succession after our modest ceremony, Steven had an emergency root canal, an unexpected heart attack, resulting open heart surgery, followed by a burst appendix and complications from peritonitis. I suffered through all of it with him; I was his support system: his dedicated nurse, maid, chauffeur, messenger, and private bellhop.
Steven was never without a complaint. He was never a patient partner and I think that was why I enjoyed our relationship its first six months and believed he was the one for me for all eternity. For a while I was entertained by his opinions and his opinion on opinions made me laugh. Steven had an evil wit honed from years of watching TV and studying pop culture. He was a critic. A paid critic. Mostly he reviewed Broadway and off-Broadway theater performances for a Los Angeles trade daily, but he also reviewed books, opera, and movies when he got an assignment. He was always busy, always heading out to somewhere or always on deadline. He did not make much money but this was his dream job: he never had to pay a penny for any sort of entertainment and his profession was to find fault in others. I made up for Steven’s stinging critiques by being his dull partner, his “Dim Gem” as he often referred to me on his social media accounts, the man he lived with who made too much money working for an insurance company, though my salary kept Steven living in the style he felt he truly deserved. Steven once saw a presentation I had brought home to read through before a meeting the next morning. “This is what you do?” he said, when he looked through the draft. “I think I would slit my wrists.” In hindsight, I wish I had offered him a knife.
We postponed our honeymoon cruise several times over the course of almost four years. By the time Steven was sufficiently healed and his schedule was open to travel, the pandemic began, and when we finally felt comfortable enough to travel the only cruise we could book without incurring excessive extra charges and penalties and fines was a Caribbean cruise. Steven was stir crazy and neither of us had been to the Caribbean.
On the first day at sea of our postponed honeymoon, Steven claimed he was not in his right mind when he had agreed to this cruise. We had unpacked our bags in our cabin and were sitting on the balcony, the sky a bright blue and a beautiful ocean before us. “This is it?” he said. Steven thought the room was too small, the bathroom too tiny, the balcony not private enough, and the seating uncomfortable. He was unhappy that there was no movie channel included on the ship’s cable TV selections.
“Were you expecting Gilligan’s Island?”
“I’m not going snorkeling,” he said. He was flipping through the brochure of off-shore excursions and it was only making him unhappier. “Everything is about a beach!”
“It’s about relaxing,” I said. “We have a lovely balcony.”
“You want to kill me off, right? Making me sit out here in the sun so I will get skin cancer. Then you don’t have to divvy anything up.”
Since Steven’s health complications he had become more shrewish, but his observation was not entirely inaccurate. After all, his job was to see the cracks beneath the surface of things and our relationship had cracks so deep we were separate halves. I suppose I should add that Steven’s health woes had cost me a tidy sum. Not only did his productivity drop during his convalescence and the pandemic, so did his earnings, but he was also covered under my company health insurance plan, which translated for him into free medical care since the co-pays and bills came under my policy and my name and out of my paycheck. After shouldering Steven for so many years my attitude had changed. I no longer loved him and I no longer loved being with him.
“I was rather hoping you might get food poisoning so I wouldn’t have to go through any more effort on your behalf.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then you can go out and find a new beau without any guilt.”
A new beau? I thought. Did he really just say that? It was like I was caught in a Bette Davis melodrama. There’s no denying that Steven and I had aged differently. Steven’s waist expanded and his hairline disappeared. My hair turned gray before we met and I never lost my waist. I jogged every morning till my knees started complaining, so I now took long walks to keep in shape. Long solitary walks.
“We can sit out by one of the pools,” I suggested.
“Are you crazy? There’s no way I can concentrate with all those kids running around.”
“You brought work to do on our honeymoon?”
“Don’t even try to guilt trip me,” he said. “You’ve been checking your work email constantly.”
“Because it keeps me from divorcing you.”
“Go ahead,” Steven taunted. “Let’s go to court. I will get half of everything. We’re legit in fifty states.”
“If it’s so uncomfortable out here we could go to the gym. Or the spa. Why don’t you get a massage?”
“When was the last time you looked at me?” he yelled. He stood up from his chair and lifted the bottom of his T-shirt to his neck. “See? See this scar?” Steven had a nasty-looking red scar from his heart and appendix surgeries that went from his chest to his groin. “I have no belly button. Do you know what it means not to have a belly button?”
“No, dear, I don’t. For once there is something that is really different about us. Illuminate me. What is life like without a belly button?”
“I’m damaged. I’m disconnected.”
“Well, I certainly agree with you on those points.”
“You love mocking me, don’t you? We might as well make appointments for the melanoma treatments,” he said.
He went into the room and took a nap. I sat on the balcony and read until it was time for dinner. We walked along the shops that lined the corridor that led to the main dining room. There was an art gallery, a casino, and displays of discounted watches and jewelry. The ship was crowded with overweight families who thought they were nicely dressed, waiting in line to have their portraits snapped by the ship’s photographer, an impossibly handsome tall young man. When I mentioned that there was no need to have our portrait made together, Steven turned sour. “You’re ashamed of me,” he said. “You’re so ashamed of me you don’t even want to take a picture together. It’s our fucking honeymoon!”
“No,” I answered, drawing in every ounce of patience I still possessed. “There’s no fucking on this honeymoon.”
* * *
Attacks and digs continued through drinks, through dinner, through after-dinner drinks, through the live comic’s stand-up routine, and through the cabaret performances of show tunes by a cast so young they could be our grandchildren. Steven hated the performances. Nothing was new, everything was recycled, and the dancing and singing were mannered and off-key. Steven ate too much and drank too much and then brought a drink back to the room, telling a bartender he needed “a magic potion to sleep through my dear husband’s snoring.”
I was grateful for the insult because Steven’s dislike of sleeping with a snoring partner meant we did not have to push together the narrow single beds in the cabin and, since this was his adamant decision made painfully clear to our cabin steward, I did not have to endure further insult of “not wanting to embrace” my husband on our honeymoon. When Steven called room service and ordered another sleeping potion, I told him I was going to take a walk.
“That’s right,” he said. “Go have hot sex on the deck with one of the boys in the crew, but don’t come complaining to me when it burns when you pee.”
As I closed the cabin door, I thought perhaps I would gamble away all of our money at the ship’s casino so that they would have to throw us off the cruise and at least I could be miserable in my own shared home and there would be nothing left to divvy up with Steven, but instead I took the elevator to the deck with the outside promenade that circled the ship. Several couples were walking and a father and his two young sons were playing shuffle ball. It was a calm, warm night. I walked two laps, which a sign posted on a wall said equaled a mile, and then I stopped at the stern of the ship, watching the white foam of the waves created by the ship’s engine rise up out of the darkness of the sea.
I was trying to think how I could change my life so I would be happier when a young man walked around the corner and stopped not far from where I stood. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and white linen pants. He was slender but not slight, with a waist thinner than his shoulders and curly hair that caught the light like a halo. He reminded me of an ad I once saw, of a young man rising out of the surf. It made no sense that he was on this cruise and alone at this hour and pausing beside a miserable, aggressively aging gay man hoping for his husband’s demise. This was the conclusion I had reached when the young man had appeared: I had to get rid of Steven. I wanted Steven out of the picture.
“Did you enjoy the show?” the young man turned and asked me and all at once I realized I had admired him earlier in the singing and dancing cast, or at least I thought I had.
“Very much,” I answered him. “I was raised on show tunes. While everyone was going crazy for heavy metal, I was playing original cast albums.”
He laughed and smiled and introduced himself. His name was Jack. He had just finished his junior year of college before joining the ship’s crew. I remembered when I was his age, I had worked at a summer stock theater in Maine. We would build and paint sets, rehearse chorus routines, and serve as ushers until we could join the more experienced cast members on stage for the large production numbers. I loved that summer. My first boyfriend, Wes, looked a lot like Jack, though he really was never my boyfriend because we were young and neither of us understood who we were or who we were on our way to becoming. That summer, we performed together in The Music Man, Bye, Bye, Birdie, and South Pacific. I told Jack my favorite show had been Guys and Dolls.
“I’d love to be in that show,” he said. “The music is terrific.”
We talked about other Broadway musicals, some new ones, some vintage, what other roles Jack wanted to play. I learned that everyone in the cast had double duties on the ship. “One night we’re in a show, the next day we take photographs,” and it was then that I wondered if I had seen him on stage or if he had been helping take the family portraits earlier in the evening or, perhaps, if I had just conjured him up from my own memories and fantasies.
And then he said he had to get back to his bunk because he had an early morning shift. “Enjoy the cruise,” he said and disappeared.
I returned to the cabin. Steven was asleep and snoring. I thought about shaking him awake, the way he would do to me if roles were reversed, but Steven was more tolerable snoring and sleeping than awake and complaining.
I dreamt about Jack that night. They were indecent dreams. No, there was nothing indecent about them, that was Steven’s way of thinking. They were erotic dreams. I admired Jack’s youth and passion, his wide shoulders, long legs, and slender waist. I ran my fingers through he curls of his hair We had sex and conversations about show tunes. It all ended with Steven violently shaking my shoulder. “You sound like a dying bull,” he said. “For god’s sake, turn over so I don’t have to hear you!”
* * *
The next morning before breakfast I did laps at the pool. I hoped I would see Jack again. I hoped he would pass by on his morning duties and notice I kept myself in shape. I also imagined his double duty might be as a lifeguard and he could rescue me from drowning, or, at best, I would have a chance to ogle his beauty and physique outside of my dreamlife. No such luck.
Steven had breakfast delivered to the room so we could eat on our balcony. He complained that the eggs were cold, there was a lousy selection of jam, and the coffee tasted like dishwater. On his social media accounts, Steven liked to offer stinging criticisms of his daily life, mostly which translated into what he had to endure living with his “Dim Gem.” He had a large and loyal following who responded with their own evil stings and emoticons. Steven snapped photos of the coffee and pastries and eggs. I knew the comments would wound or infuriate me which is why I pretended I never checked them.
After breakfast, we took the ship’s tender to the port to shop for souvenirs. Even before noon the heat was intolerable but the breadth of poverty ashore was astonishing. “Local artisans” lined the dirt path outside a lane of tiny wood and tin shacks trying to sell anything they could. For once Steven was speechless. He took pictures and posted them with tags, “this is where my husband brought me for our honeymoon.”
I bought a hand-painted tin sign that read “Welcome,” hoping as I handed over cash to the local dealer that he would then hold a knife to Steven’s neck demanding more money and I would respond by showing him my empty wallet.
Steven lifted his sunglasses off his face so he could look into my eyes. “We must leave here immediately,” he said. “I just got a text from someone to be on the lookout for roving gangs of kids who will swarm around you and take your wallet or anything they can get.”
I wasn’t in such a hurry. I looked down the dirt path in search of a gang of kids or even an evil ally. Surely someone must recognize that Steven was more valuable to me dead than alive.
Steven caught wind of my hesitation. “My life will not be turned into a Tennessee Williams movie,” he said.
“Pity,” I answered. “It could be your claim to fame.”
Back at the ship Steven retreated to a bar where there was an afternoon showing of a movie, but the projection was not good and the sound was muddy, so he sat and made snarky online posts until he returned to the cabin where he stayed until suppertime.
At dinner, Steven ate too much and drank too much. I looked for Jack in the shops and the casino. The evening show was a magician who specialized in hypnotism, but unfortunately, I was not called onstage to forget Steven forever and Steven was not placed into a coma.
Later, at a bar where there was karaoke machine, I had too much to drink and I approached the DJ and the microphone, leaning in to introduce a song I had chosen to sing. “This is for the love of my life,” I said. “Where ever you are, Wes, this is for you.”
While Steven scowled and keyed at his cellphone, I sang a beautiful slow rendition of “One Boy” and received a standing ovation. Steven left the bar before I returned to our table.
“How can you wound me like that?” he asked me later, when we were sitting in the uncomfortable chairs on our balcony. “In public.”
“There were less than twenty people in the bar.”
“I’m sure you saw I posted a video of it.”
“I did.”
“So many people are telling me I should leave you.”
“Will you?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“Then I’ll keep trying harder.”
* * *
The next morning after laps I did not bother to return to the room for breakfast. I made a tray from the buffet and sat in the cafeteria. I was looking out at the reflection of the sun wondering how to get rid of Steven when Jack appeared again.
“What a coincidence!” he said. “Your song was terrific last night.”
“You were there?”
“I saw it online.”
“You know Steven?”
“A few in the cast follow him,” Jack said. “Especially after his nasty post about the show.”
“Well, then, I hope they—and you—don’t believe everything Steven writes,” I said. “Or hold it against me. Can you join me?”
“For a few minutes,” he said and took a seat at the table. “Then back to work.”
“It’s only opinions, you know. But they’re so wounding. I’m not the sort of guy to hire someone to do my lover in, though I would certainly reap a lot of benefits if I could knock him off. Less expenses. Peace. Happiness. Or at least a chance at them.”
“Don’t you think that because he’s so… vicious, he might also, really love you?”
“Like a Sondheim musical? Of course not,” I answered and laughed. “I wish you were as real as he is vicious. The problem is this is all fantasy. You. Being here with me. Imagining Steven gone. Life without Steven. Imaging what my life would have been like without Steven. Or a different Steven.”
My cellphone let off a dull buzz, meaning someone from work—or Steven—was trying to reach me. I tried to ignore it. “I’m sorry, we’re talking too much about me,” I said to Jack. “What about you? What’s new with you?”
“I might go on tonight,” he said. “One of the chorus boys is sick.” He leaned in closer and said in a loud stage whisper. “You know, that nasty virus you can get at sea on a ship of fools.”
“I’m sorry for him but happy for you.” My cellphone buzzed again. And then again. I looked down at the table but refused to pick up the phone.
“Will you come see the show tonight?” he asked, standing up from his chair.
“Of course,” I answered. “And I’ll do my best to keep Steven from being there.”
I watched Jack leave. I drank in as much as I could of him until he was out of sight and then I kept looking to see if he was returning. I know I had only conjured him to combat loneliness. I fell into a daydream about Jack—how we would look together, the house we would share, the friends we would entertain, how angry Steven would be when he found out that I was leaving him for a handsome, tall, younger man who made less money than he did.
After a while I looked down at my cellphone and saw that there were several text messages from Steven and one from the ship’s steward. I skipped Steven’s messages and read the one from the ship. “Please visit the Customer Service desk for your new room assignment.”
My blood pressure spiked. Steven must have complained about something and we had been moved to another room. Why, oh why, did I put up with him? I took the elevator to the ship’s desk and mentioned to the clerk on duty that I was responding to a message I had received about a new room. I wanted to know all of the facts before I confronted Steven.
“We’re so sorry for the inconvenience,” she began. “We’ve had to quarantine your roommate. Your cabin steward moved your things into a separate room at the end of the hall.”
“Quarantine?”
“Yes, the ship’s physician thought it would be best, given the amount of… discharge.”
I looked down at my phone and read the messages from Steven. The text messages said “Vomiting.” “Shitting.” “More vomiting.” “Where are you?” “Help!”
“We just ask that you not visit your roommate for a while,” she said.
“A while?”
“It can take up to thirty-six hours before there is no worry about contagion,” she said. “Please follow these instructions on being sure to wash your hands.” She handed me a list of instructions, a face mask, a packet of hand sanitizer, and a card key for my new room.
* * *
My day without Steven was bliss. I settled into the room—a vacant suite with a balcony, read a book, took a long nap, then dressed for dinner. Occasionally my glee would be interrupted by a text from Steven. “Can you bring me some towels?” “I need ice!” “Where are my compression socks?” My response was always: “Sorry, darling, quarantine works both ways!”
After dinner, I strolled around the deck, listened to a string quartet, wandered through the shops trying on watches, chatted up a bartender, then went to the theater to see the evening show. It was a review of songs from the 1960s. Steven would have hated it because the costumes and wigs looked like they had been recycled from other decades. I kept expecting Jack to be in one of the numbers, but he wasn’t among the onstage performers.
After the show, I was sitting in one of the deck chairs on the outdoor promenade when Jack found me. I could tell he was upset, and I stood up to greet him.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” Jack said. “I might lose my job. I could be kicked off the ship at the next port.”
It took some fast questions and slow breathing to uncover the barrage of phone messages and social media posts Steven had made.
The gist of them were: “My husband’s new younger boyfriend is a tramp, a drunk, and a whore. Here are pictures of his private parts from a reliable source.”
“Why would he do this?” Jack asked.
I looked at him in the dark magic of the night and glow of the ship lights. He was beautiful in his misery. “Because you are perfect, and he wants to tear down the perfection.”
“I’ve worked so hard. I just want my chance at happiness.”
We ordered drinks and walked back to my suite. I offered Jack comfort in every manner I knew how. We talked. We hugged. We kissed. We drank. When he regained his self-worth, we plotted ways to kill off Steven. The perfect crime no one would suspect. Jack was now my ally. I thought up thirty-seven ways to kill Steven. Jack said I only needed one to work.
Later, while we were snuggling in bed, I asked Jack if I could take a picture of us together. “For Steven.”
Jack nodded and asked how much of himself did I want to photograph. Of course, I wanted all I could get away with.
A few minutes later I sent the photo by text to Steven with this message: “I will leave you for this.”
* * *
In the morning, Jack left a note on the desktop beside the video monitor. “I’ll find you later.” There was no communication from Steven—no voice mail or text or a message slipped under my door. I hoped for the worst, but knew that even in all of my fantasy and dreaming, that would never likely come true. I had breakfast at the cafeteria and signed up for the boat ride to a private beach.
To my surprise, the private beach was a nude beach. For both men and women. I briefly wondered if Steven and I had mistakenly booked a swinging singles cruise, then gave in to fashion and peer pressure and removed my clothing and started sending Steven video clips of what he was missing. I filmed every aspect of nudity that was legal and illegal. Maybe my salvation rested not by offing Steven on this cruise, but by being jailed for my own illicit behavior. Maybe my life in jail could mean lots of new friends and unexpected sex.
Steven remained unresponsive to all of my taunts and, in the afternoon, I returned to the ship. At the Customer Service desk, I inquired about Steven. The young man on duty said, “Oh, he’s needed a lot of attention.” When I asked for more specifics, he responded with “a bit of high maintenance.” I panicked when I reviewed the list of room charges, and instructed the clerk that since Steven and I were no longer sharing a room, Steven should be financially responsible for all of his future charges. I knew it was a deceitful thing to do, but it was my first real chance to cut the cord.
I was napping in a deck chair on the promenade level, which is where Jack found me.
“Have you decided the best way we can get rid of Steven?” I asked Jack.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“You haven’t changed your mind?”
“It seems so… so spiteful.”
“Because it has to be,” I answered. “You can’t change your mind. That’s not possible! You’re my fantasy. I conjured you!”
“I don’t like that word.”
“Conjure?”
“It has such a negative connotation. And I’m not that simplistic.”
How was this happening to me? “If I created you, how do you have a conscience?” I asked.
“Things have changed,” Jack answered. “Some other opportunities have emerged.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve gone viral. That video Steven posted, you know, has been… seen worldwide. I’ve got some… new clients in the suite on the Pinnacle Deck. They’ve got really deep pockets. And there’s a producer who wants me to audition for him. He’s sending a private jet for me when we dock.”
“And Steven?”
“It wouldn’t be right, would it, since I now owe so much to him.”
I was speechless. Dumbfounded. Wounded. Angry. Bitter. Humiliated. I watched Jack leave and twilight settle over the horizon, picked myself up out of the deck chair and headed to bar. Sometime after my fifth or sixth drink, Steven texted me. “All clear, dear! Nasty bug vamoose! Have been invited to a private late-night dinner on the Pinnacle Deck. Don’t miss me too much!”
* * *
The next morning, I woke mad. I felt betrayed on every side. Cuckolded is the theatrical term Steven might have used in one of his reviews. Sometime during the night, I realized that I hadn’t fantasized my ideal new partner, but an image of a partner that might make Steven jealous—but if I had that kind of power—and imagination—to conjure Jack, then certainly I had the power—and imagination—to conjure someone else. Jeff was the antithesis to Jack. Short, surly, gruff, awkward, but not without social skills and respect for his conjurer. He came right to my suite door and knocked.
With Jeff, I was able to get right to the point. Or right to the point after we got through some other matters first.
“I don’t want anything bloody. Or traceable. Can you push him overboard? Or have him electrocuted? Maybe have a lifeboat fall on him?”
“It’s best to keep it simple,” Jeff said, with what I detected might be a bit of a cockney accent, or maybe it was an Appalachian twang. “Accidental.”
It was the last day of our cruise. I gave Jeff Steven’s room number. As he left my suite, I wish I could have spent the day with Jeff instead of having him trail Steven and do him in. I felt momentary regrets, an emotional breakdown, but then relief and acceptance came from my decision that it was time to do Steven in. I skipped breakfast and went to the ship’s gym.
Jeff found me in the steam room, which was more like a misty, plastic closet. “It don’t seem right,” he said in his crazy accent.
“So, he got to you too.”
I watched a bead of sweat move around the stubble of Jeff’s chin.
After a pause, when the heat seemed unbearable, Jeff admitted, “He’s a good tipper.”
I felt my blood pressure spike. “He’s tipping you with my money!”
I walked out of the steam room and began to dress. Jeff stood behind me, watching.
“Maybe you just need an open relationship,” Jeff said.
“We would have to have a relationship first for anything to be ‘open.’”
“He said you would be angry.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing, except to give you this note.”
Jeff handed me a small piece of folded paper. I opened Steven’s note. It read: “You will pay for this.”
* * *
The rest of the day was spent emailing excuses to avoid each other. Steven went shopping and had spa treatments. He texted me photos of himself trying on caftans, turbans, and turquoise rings and necklaces. I ordered room service for dinner and an extra bottle of wine to make sure I passed out.
Disembarkation arrived early the next morning. There were more than a dozen texts from Steven when I woke up. They began with requests for my assistance taking his suitcases and shopping bags off the ship—he had forgotten to place his items in the hallway for the porters to assist with loading them on the dock. Then, the texts became more manic. “What is this bill?” “You need to settle the account with Customer Service!” “Meet me at the office now!”
I found Steven at the Customer Service desk. He was surrounded by enough luggage and bags to convince someone that he was an international touring star with the Ziegfield Follies. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and was wrapped with a silk scarf that flowed from a strange headpiece and snaked around his neck and body. Once it was possible to move beyond the hideous expression on his face, his annoyance was displayed by the tight-fisted placement of his hands where his hips had once been.
“What seems to be the problem, dear?” I greeted him.
“This bill!”
“Those are your charges. I believe you are responsible for them.”
“Please settle the account and get us off this dreadful ship as soon as possible. I will do anything you want.”
“I want you to pay your bill.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I know you can.”
Steven huffed and puffed and then, with great flair, began searching through his bags. The body scarf needed constant attention—slipping and gathering and clutching and balancing. A few minutes later Steven handed a credit card to the Customer Service clerk. A personal credit card that he made repeated attempts to keep private and separate from our joint accounts, but since I also funded the account, I knew there was no secret behind it.
“The least you can do is help with my bags,” Steven said.
“I’ve my bags to attend to when we get off the ship,” I answered. “Why don’t you arrange for a good, strong porter? I’m sure you have enough money left to give someone a nice tip.”
Steven stamped a foot. It was a tiny, magical stamp—a princely stamp that could summon genies and fairies and chimeras and demons in a millisecond. In fact, Jeff suddenly appeared pushing an empty luggage trolley and asked Steven if he needed any assistance. “You’re such a doll,” Steven said, gathering up the folds of his scarf atop a shoulder. “My husband has made this honeymoon voyage interminable.” Together, they loaded the trolley with the suitcases and shopping bags and Steven removed his headpiece and tied an end of the scarf around the trolley post.
Jeff began to push the trolley to the gangway exit platforms. He passed by Jack, impossibly handsome tall Jack, who was carrying a camera. Steven caught sight of Jack and said, in his most demure, seductive voice to the young man, “Oh, honey, you are divine, you must capture the end of this misery for posterity—a honeymoon week of hell with my husband who made me pay for the adventure of his dull company!”
There was jockeying of the trolley and the luggage and Steven and I for a final photograph together on the cruise. At the last minute, Steven wanted to be photographed in his headpiece and scarf, though he was too lazy to untie it from the trolley post. He placed the headpiece on top of his head and then twisted himself into the scarf so that it wrapped around his neck and body as if he were about to perform the dance of seven veils. We stood at opposite ends of our luggage at the top of the gangway, the roofs of the shipping terminals behind us, showing the camera our exasperated, fake smiles. Jeff stepped out of the camera range and I held the heavy weight of the trolley in place as it teetered back and forth, as if it wanted to make a hasty exit from all of us by sliding down the ramp.
The flash was too bright. There was a rapid succession of glaring lights as Jack took several photographs. In my momentary blindness, I stumbled, lost my footing, and the trolley began to descend the gangway. Steven’s scarf remained tied to the trolley post—and to Steven.
Steven’s scream was ear shattering. I didn’t care if it was reality or fantasy, if I had conjured it up in my hallucinations or if it was the physical embodiment of my partner’s true pain. I would never forget it. How could I? It was heavenly. It would make me happy for years and years and years.
