Silver Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

his hand down your shorts, but the next day he pretended not to know you, and youwould spend the next hundred years searching for Tom Field in every man you met and tried to love.
    The police would inquire about a sexual relationship or anything proximate to one, and Robbie would not mention the kiss.
    He turned around and headed back onto the court and, once through the gate, pivoted back toward Tom still on the other side of the chain-link, and said, “I shouldn’t, Tom. I don’t. We don’t.”
    “You don’t,” Tom said. “Everyone does these days.”
    “Not us.”
    “Never?”
    “Not in twenty years,” Robbie said.
    “Get out. Twenty years? No way.”
    “It’s fine for other people, their deals, whatever,” Robbie said. “It’s not our thing is all.”
    “Really?” Tom asked—and why did he seem so astonished? “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, really,” Robbie said. “I’m quite sure.”
    And then Tom nodded with quick acceptance the way he had back at the office when he was told at first he wouldn’t be served espresso (and eventually he was handed an espresso). He ho-hummed, tugged up his shorts, returned to the court, picked up his racket, and headed around to the other side of the net.
    Robbie glanced up at the sun. Would he tell Carlo about what had transpired? He might, he might not.
    They hit balls back and forth, and a short while later, Tom yelled, “We can do this Saturdays all year long.”
    Robbie was relieved Tom didn’t appear put off by being rebuffed. Maybe Tom’s pass was a mere stile to step across. This was Tom: provocative, sexual, testing. But he liked maps, whichwas to say he knew how borders ran, and now the lines were clear. They could keep walking the way they had been headed.
    “That’s what you’re supposed to like about Los Angeles,” Tom shouted, “the weather.”
    “What’s not to like?” Robbie asked.
    They played for another half hour, and while Tom wanted to keep going, Robbie had to say, “I should probably get back.”
    “Just a little longer,” Tom pleaded.
    “I’m pooped.”
    “One more game.”
    “I shouldn’t.”
    “Ah. Okay,” Tom said.
    They walked down to the parking lot where their cars were the only ones left. It was clear Tom didn’t want to give Robbie up to the evening.
    Robbie put his things in his car and said, “How about next Saturday? Do you want to play again?”
    Tom wagged his head yes.
    “I’ll book the court,” Robbie said, and he should have gotten in his car and driven off, but instead he lingered.
    A stranger had appeared that September afternoon and presented an ancient dilemma: How did anyone become a known person in the world—how did a stranger become no longer strange? Maybe it was grand to suggest, but solve this problem, Robbie thought, and it was possible every other wrong among men might be righted.
    “At some point,” he said, “we’ll have to have you over for dinner.”
    “Dinner?” Tom asked, picking up a bit. “Dinner when?”
    “Sometime soon,” Robbie said.
    “Soon,” Tom said, and turned toward his car.
    A cirrose armada overhead moved fast across the sky, gunboat clouds outpacing carrier clouds.
    “Actually—,” Robbie said.
    Tom was odd, but Tom had verve, and once again it was not difficult to see that he’d been feeling small in the city. Everyone needed friends. Though he might not readily admit it, Robbie himself had been feeling lonesome lately, for even within the walled estate of a good marriage, loneliness was possible.
    So Robbie asked, “Do you have plans this evening?”
    And Tom did not.
    “Good,” Robbie said, grinning, which in turn made Tom grin again, too. “Then why don’t you follow me home?”
    • • •
    C ARLO MEANWHILE spent the balance of the afternoon at the house, gardening in front. By contrast to the anarchic cascade of flora in back, the street-side landscaping remained well-legislated: There was the flat and shallow lawn, respectfully mown, bisected