If all goes well--and to me that is never just a figure of speech or a convention; I do not expect things to go well, ever--I will see the boy in New York City in three weeks.

***

The boy has a lovely laugh; mine has been described by a friend as “having something woodland about it”.  I believe that is a kind way of saying that I sound like a hyena, but I’m not sure.  Whatever its quality, a lot of it rings and mingles with the boy’s own when we are together.  Because we like to talk about funny things and laugh at the proclivities of people we both know and shake our heads and giggle at things like reality TV, whose attractions neither of us understands.

One of our shared experiences I found distinctly unfunny at the time it happened, but I laugh about it now.  The boy is still puzzled by the whole thing, and so does not share my view of it, although he laughs anyway, on principle, because he likes to laugh, and because he knows I like to hear him do so.  He is, as I’ve mentioned before, an innocent in some essential way that is no longer accessible to me, or perhaps never was.  

***

The boy has a dog.  It is, to my eyes, a small, ratty, undistinguished-looking creature that barks snappily at me whenever it sees me, and is, in the way of all dogs, far too ecstatic about every damned thing in the world that comes across its path.  Not that I dislike dogs, please understand, or even this dog in particular; I am extremely fond of them, in fact.  I am, however, essentially a cat person, and so find dogs’ attractions variable, whereas cats, to my sensibility, are almost universally gorgeous.  Regardless, the boy loves this dog like life, and so I am fond of it, too, in my way.

When I visited his city last year, we walked from the place I was staying to his home in order to take the dog for a walk before we continued on with our evening.  The boy, like many of his generation in his country and those surrounding it, lives with his family--an even more common situation for struggling actors and their ilk.  As we walked toward the apartment where his family lived, he asked if I would please come up to his home.  I immediately asked if anyone else would be there.  He said he didn’t think so, although he couldn’t be sure.

I could not, in good conscience, come out and say to him, “Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no desire to meet your parents.”  I rather thought he might fill this part in for himself if I expressed any reluctance to take him up on his kind invitation.  In the event, I didn’t get the chance.  As we approached the front door of the beautiful and formidable-looking old building where he lives, he looked through the glass of the front door and said, “Oh!  There is my mother!”

Too late.  She had seen him, too.  And, thus, she had seen me.

We entered the building and I was introduced to a distinguished-looking middle-aged physician who, of course, spoke no English.  We crammed into the small elevator with which all such older buildings are graced.  For what seemed like an eternity, I stood glued to one side of it, being regarded from the other side with a mix of open curiosity and slightly bared fangs.  The boy’s mother lowered her head so that it seemed to me she was all dark eyes, and stared at me intently as the boy stood against the door of the lift, chatting to her casually, explaining where I was from, that I was a friend.  I smiled in a manner which I believe could be described as wan, and attempted to look at the boy and say something pleasant in their language, then worried that the manner in which I looked at him would, itself, incriminate me further.  For the look in the woman’s eyes was clear:  Who is this middle-aged foreigner, and what is she doing with my beloved only son?

The visit was over quickly enough.  The dog was got.  I believe I may have used the washroom.

As we left the building and walked with the dog toward a local park, I remarked to the boy that his mother, shall we say, did not like me.

“Oh, no,” he said, “she’s always like that.  Until you get to know her.”

“My dearest,” I said, “I know an unhappy possessive female when I see one.  Trust me on this one.”

He shook his head dismissively.  We went on with the walk, returned the dog, had dinner, and eventually retired to my own quarters.

The next day we were exploring some magnificent church or other when his cell phone rang.  He chatted on it for a few minutes, and then laughed as he rang off.  “It was my mother,” he said.  “Strange.  She didn’t want anything in particular, she was just, like, ‘Oh, no, I just wanted to see how you were doing, what you were up to, you know . . .’.”

“Darling”, I said, “you would say that your mother is a very intelligent woman, yes?  Good doctors are very observant--your mum is observant, wouldn’t you say?”

He agreed.

“So, then.  Yesterday afternoon you show up with an older woman whom she has neither seen nor heard of before.  You leave with some gear, and with me, and she doesn’t see you again that night.”

I should add here that the boy has a girlfriend, a countrywoman of his close to his age (although, interestingly, still a few years older than he).  I’m sure I should feel dreadful about this, but frankly, as she is young, doubtless gorgeous, and will probably have him for the rest of her life, I will take my stolen days and just let the weight of that sin link itself to the already-ponderous chain I dragged around with me long before ever I knew him.  We’ll all live.  But of course, the mother knows the girlfriend.  And she doesn’t know me.

“Do you really think your mother cannot add all this up?”

He laughed that laugh, and seemed to concede the point.  Then he took my hand and we walked on.

I have declined all further invitations to step across his family's threshhold.  He doesn't attempt to talk me out of it anymore.