Jeremy Thrane (10 page)

“No, I mean afterward. You weren’t with your mother all night, were you?”

“What is this, an interrogation? I had a drink and then I saw a movie. I thought you might want to be alone with your family tonight. I’ve missed you, Ted.”

He set his glass down. “It’s so good to see you,” he said contritely. I walked across the room and took his face in my hands and kissed him, clutching hanks of his rich, silky hair in both my fists, inhaling its spicy smell. He nestled the top of his head against the underside of my chin, his hands around my waist. I rested my hands on his muscled haunches, slid my palms under his shirt, and ran them up his belly and chest. We were both hard already.

“Let’s go up to my room,” I muttered.

He put his hands on my waist and held me at arm’s length. “Look at you,” he said tenderly. “You look terrible.”

Surprised, I looked down at myself; I was wearing jeans, a black
sweater, unobjectionable if ordinary black shoes. I looked all right, and no one else had commented on my appearance tonight, neither my mother nor my sister, who’d be sure to let me know if I looked sub-par.

He moved away from me and picked up his glass, which was nearly empty. As he took a gulp of his martini, it occurred to me that he was drunk.

“What do you mean, I look terrible?” I asked him.

He patted his own perfect stomach. “I should talk,” he said. “Look at me! I’m a total sow.”

“You look so hot, I could eat you alive,” I said. “Come back here.”

He submitted himself again to my embrace, but only barely this time; I felt him try to pull away from me, but I held him by the hips so he couldn’t break free.

“Giselle’s coming back soon,” he said.

“So we’ll make it fast,” I said brusquely. “Look, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you upstairs if you don’t go of your own free will.”

He pushed me away with both hands on my chest, so firmly I had to let him go. He moved away from me, down the room, patting his torso and face and scalp as he went as if to demonstrate his point. “I’m serious,” he said vehemently. “Look, I’m getting crow’s-feet, I’m losing muscle tone, and I’m looking into hair implants; we’ve got to start doing whatever we can.”

“I’d rather drink and ignore it,” I said.

“Alcohol ages you as much as the sun,” said Ted. “In Los Angeles I have a new health regime, you’d be very impressed. It’s only when I’m with you that I let myself go.” He sat down in one of the chairs by the fire.

“So it’s my fault you’ve been drinking.”

“Well, I was waiting for you to come home,” he said.

I stared at him, laughing angrily. “What’s happened to you? Has someone else taken over your brain?”

“It’s not funny,” he snapped.

There was a brief, fizzing silence.

I said cautiously, “Why exactly are we fighting?”

Ted looked at me, then looked away. “It’s my fault,” he said, his face still averted.

The blood thudded in my ears. My mouth was dry. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been going through a lot lately,” he said to the fire. “A lot of thinking. I’ve reached some difficult conclusions, Jeremy. I’m not sure how to tell you, but it’s time.”

“You’re dumping me,” I said incredulously.

He looked at me, startled. “God, what an awful way to put it. We just need to clear the air, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Aren’t you getting tired of having to be separated all the time, and sneaking around? I would be if I were you.”

“I think sneaking around is hot,” I said breezily, although I was shaking with anger and fear; I was damned if I’d collude with him in this bullshit. “I don’t mind our separations; I get a lot of work done. We’ve been through this, remember? I’ve always accepted this arrangement.”

He gave an elaborate sigh. “But not forever, not as a whole life, a relationship,” he said with a pained, actorlike furrow in his forehead. “It’s not fair to you.”

“I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself.” I went over to the liquor cabinet. “Ready for another drink?”

“Oh,” he said distractedly, as if I were an importunate host and he a guest too polite to refuse. “Why not.” I had gone into a state of mild shock; I mixed the martinis automatically, glad to have something to do, and to have a stiff drink in the offing. I piled ice in the shaker and poured in a hefty dollop of gin (I considered vermouth a pollution of good liquor), then agitated the shaker with the rhythmic aplomb of a maracas player, shaking it over one shoulder, then the other, amusing myself any way I could in the midst of disaster. Then I poured the ice-frothed liquid into two martini glasses, plopped three olives into each, and handed one to Ted.

I sat in the chair next to him. “Ted,” I said, trying not to sound pleading.

“I was so sure you would understand,” he said. “This is stressing me
out so much, I can’t sleep at night. There are rumors. It’s only a matter of time.”

I felt a jolt of guilt: Benito’s, Gary O’Nan. But that had been just a few hours ago; it couldn’t have reached Ted’s ears yet, that was impossible. And in all this time, I had told only four people about my affair with Ted: my mother and sister, Max and Felicia, all of whom I trusted to keep my secret. None of them had told anyone else as far as I knew. Yoshi had probably guessed, but I was sure he wouldn’t tell anyone. He had his own stake in preserving Ted’s secret, I was sure. No one had ever seen Ted and me together, except maybe his bodyguards, but they’d signed legally binding agreements not to reveal any details of their jobs; if they couldn’t be relied upon to be discreet, that wasn’t my fault.

“What rumors?” I asked. “Who could possibly know anything?”

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid,” he said, “but people have been hinting; it’s in the air. You know how you can sense it when people are saying things about you.”

“Then it might be time to just come on out,” I said. “You’d have to make some sacrifices, but it would be worth it.”

“But for what? What’s in this now for either of us? We hardly ever see each other.”

“We could see each other every day if you wanted to.”

“Why, when I’ve finally got what I’ve wanted all my life?”

I had no answer to this, or, rather, I had no answer that Ted would have found acceptable. “How will you live with yourself?” I asked as mildly as I could, as if I were merely curious and this had nothing to do with me.

“I’ll find a way,” he said. It was difficult for me to believe that this was the same Ted who had once, drunkenly, wearing nothing but socks, recited King Lear’s mad-on-the-stormy-heath soliloquy, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” in Ronald Reagan’s cheery, senile wheeze, waving inanely at an imaginary audience.

“You were awful in that movie,” I said.

“What?” he said, caught completely off guard.

“What a piece of shit. You used to be so much better than that.”

“You mean the movie was awful?”

“Your performance.”

He laughed, but it sounded hollow. “Are you getting me back for calling you fat?”

A hot black ball of fury slammed itself into my chest and exploded. “I’m not fat.”

“We could both stand to—”

“You’re not fat either, you look exactly the same as ever. It’s just L.A. making you paranoid and puritanical and narcissistic like everyone else out there. Should I move out tomorrow?”

He stared at me, looking pale and distressed, but, I thought, secretly relieved. “Jeremy,” he said. “You don’t have to move out. I just can’t—I can’t live a double life any more. But you’re welcome to live here as long as you want.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said, and snorted with bitter, half-hysterical laughter. I couldn’t stop. The cold gin warmed my innards and loosened my brain. “You’re chickening out.”

“That isn’t at all the point,” he said pleadingly. “You’re not listening.”

“Tell me the point.”

“I’m married,” he said urgently. “I have a daughter. It used to be worth it, but now it’s not. I know that sounds harsh, but you made me say it point-blank.”

I felt as if I hadn’t inhaled for a few minutes. I drew a deep, jagged breath; the oxygen went immediately to my head and cleared it somewhat. “Where is your lovely wife tonight, by the way?”

“She met some friends for a drink after Bret went to bed. She should be back any minute.” He stood up, carefully placing his empty glass on the coffee table in front of us. “I have to pee,” he said. “I’ll be right back, don’t say anything interesting while I’m gone.” This was an old joke between us, but I didn’t smile. How dare he refer to our past life now?

I sat numbly in my armchair and stared at the fire, trying to ascertain what, exactly, had just happened here. Ted’s presence in this house felt intrusive and unfamiliar. I had become proprietary about this room; I’d spent far more time in it than he ever had. The burning wood snapped as flames bit their way through and turned it to ash.

Ted returned and stood by the window with his hands in his pockets. “I hope there won’t be bad feelings between us,” he said in the unhappy
but self-assured tone of someone who’d always had his way, all his life, and was used to having people do exactly what he asked of them.

I resolved never to let him see that he had broken my heart, assuming my heart was really broken. Just then, I felt numb, horny, and angry, but those feelings were easy enough to hide under a veneer of proud indifference. I could act too.

“I don’t see how that can be avoided,” I said.

“I wish it could,” he said, running an aggrieved hand through his hair, which hadn’t thinned at all as far as I could tell. “I’d hoped, after all we’ve been through, that you would understand.”

“Did you,” I said.

“I was thinking maybe—financially. God, it sounds so crass and I don’t mean it that way. I want to set things up so you never have to—”

“I don’t want your money,” I said. “You’ll just have to trust me. Although of course there’s no guarantee that you can, is there? ‘I was Ted Masterson’s Gay Love Slave.’ ‘Ted’s Dirty Little Secret—Male Lover Tells All.’ ”

“Please remember that I have a daughter,” he said tersely.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “I never realized you were such a devoted father.”

“It’s amazing what parenthood does to you. It makes you want to be better than you are. For the first time in my life, I know what it means to put someone else before myself. I’ve grown up, I guess.” He flashed me his puckish, self-deprecating grin.

“Won’t you miss me?” I said, hating myself for asking but unable not to.

“Well, of course I’ll miss you,” he said with a ruefulness that seemed involuntary and maybe even genuine.

Suddenly, things felt a little more familiar between us. “I wish you didn’t have to be so noble and hypocritical.”

“Noble and hypocritical,” he repeated, laughing wincingly. He sat in the chair next to me, but he didn’t take the hand I held out to him, so I let it fall onto the armrest of my chair.

There was a sound behind us. We turned, swiveling our heads in tandem so Giselle saw our faces between the chairs, backlit by the fire.
“Hello, boys,” she said in her silvery-metallic voice. “Mind if I join you for a nightcap?”

“I’ll make another pitcher of martinis, that all right with everyone?” said Ted in a voice I didn’t know, a husbandly, hearty, manly-man voice. He stood up and headed over to the bar. “Did you have a good time, honey?”

Honey. A look flew between them, a look I would have missed if I hadn’t been paying strict attention. I sat up straighter in my chair.

“It was okay,” she said as she ruffled her hair with both hands, slid out of her sweater, and slung it and her bag over the table by the door. “Brr,” she said, coming into the room to greet her devoted husband’s old friend and longtime employee, “it’s getting chilly out. It’s great to be here. Like real fall. Jeremy, hi, it’s so good to see you again, it’s been what. Five years? Wow.”

I stood and allowed her to buss me on both cheeks, making an effort to buss her back but managing only to stir the air by her cheeks because of the angles of our heads. We seated ourselves; she took Ted’s chair, perching on the edge of it and rubbing her hands together in the warmth of the fire. She smelled expensive, and she looked amazing. Her hair fell in artful, luminous, golden fronds around her wide, firm-jawed face. She wore a long-sleeved, form-fitting black silk dress with plum-colored tights and chunky-heeled black leather boots. Her face sparkled and caught the light as if tiny bits of glitter or mica had been spread evenly over her skin.

“How are you, Giselle?” My hands were trembling; I slid them between my knees.

“Great!” she said. “Just great. Things have never been better, actually. How ’bout you?”

“How’s L.A.?”

“Oh, God, L.A.,” she said with a wave of the hand and a jaded little laugh, both of which seemed to occur not as an expression of any genuine urge or feeling but as a reflex dictated by some imaginary, ever-present camera.

“L.A.,” agreed Ted with a laugh that was a deeper echo of hers.

They’d excluded me from their life in L.A., so I had nothing to say
to this. Also, I sensed a flash of something telegraphed between them again as fast as an electrical pulse.

She was saying to me, “It’s been such a crazy summer, Ted’s probably filled you in.”

“No,” I said in my homo voice. “Do tell.”

She delivered what I immediately gathered was a practiced monologue about the movie industry or, at least, the attitude toward it she had taken it upon herself to manifest, a darkly charming flippancy concerning the pitfalls, labors, negotiations, and machinations of playing a character in front of the cameras.
Catch as Catch Can
had been filmed almost entirely in London; she loved making movies in London, it felt so authentic, as opposed to soundstages in L.A., which removed her from real life and made her feel sort of like a zoo animal. She loved watching passersby while she played a scene on a blocked-off street; when they recognized her, they would do a tiny double take, and then play it very cool. The English were so great that way. To them she was an actor, not a movie star. The premiere Monday night promised to be an enormous publicity event; her next film was due to start shooting in Maui the following month. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was a refractive surface, a lake on a windy day, all surface motion and play of light that hid whatever depths lay below, so you wouldn’t want to dive in headfirst without checking.