Alternatives to Sex (17 page)

I’d instructed Sylvia to wait for me in front of Edward’s building so we could arrive at his front door together. “It’s better if I go in with you. Makes the whole thing more professional. And be sure to give yourself at least twenty extra minutes to find a parking space. Parking is hell down there.”

After waiting for a long time on Edward’s front stoop, I concluded with relief that Sylvia had changed her mind and backed out of the deal already. I rang his bell and was buzzed into the building. Sylvia opened the door to his apartment. She looked at me over the tops of her turquoise glasses and shook her head slowly from side to side, either in disgust or delight. Finally, she threw her arms around me.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “It’s perfection.”

I reminded her that we’d agreed to meet on the stoop.

“I gave myself twenty minutes, as instructed, but there was a parking space directly in front of the door, so I figured I might as well come in.”

“Believe me,” I said, “that will never happen again. Call it beginner’s luck. Where’s Edward?”

“He went out to get some wine or cookies or something. Celebration is in order. We’ve already settled on a price and agreed on the closing date.” She hooked her arm through mine and led me into the galley kitchen that Edward had outfitted with salvage from railroad cars. “Look at what he’s done in here,” she said. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

“I’ve spent vast amounts of time here. I’m familiar with every corner. I told you you’d like it,” I said. “You should have waited for me to start negotiating.”

“When you see the right thing, William, you must leap. You must seize it.” She folded her arms over her thin chest and said very calmly, “You must simply buy it.”

I’d heard her utter these words of wisdom at least half a dozen times before, but there was a new note of resolve in her voice. It was not comforting. If someone is going to behave as erratically as Sylvia, she at least owes you the courtesy of being consistent.

“You should know,” I said, “that he gets almost no afternoon sunlight in here.”

“I hate afternoon sunlight. By three in the afternoon, all sunlight is redundant. I never understood the attraction.”

“There’s also a problem with the dishwasher.” I went over to the cleverly concealed unit and opened it. “It’s never worked right, and it seems to be beyond repair. Cute exterior, but you can’t count on it to do what it’s supposed to do.”

Sylvia closed it. “I don’t eat. Why would a dishwasher interest me? Don’t get practical on me. This time, I’m going through with the purchase, so there’s no point in hauling out the problems. I welcome them, each and every one. Show me more so I can get really excited. Hopefully the windows don’t open. And I’d be in despair if there was central heating.”

“I have a moral obligation to disclose everything, that’s all.”

“You’re in the wrong business for moral obligations. And speaking of disclosure, you should have told me that you and Edward are buddies.”

“Buddies,” I said. “What a ridiculous way to describe our relationship.”

“How would you describe it?”

“I have no idea. That’s probably why I didn’t mention it.”

Edward showed up about fifteen minutes later, carrying a bag from the bakery around the corner and a bottle of wine. He handed the latter to Sylvia. She peered at the label over the top of her big eyeglasses and complimented his choice. “This is the best year for this wine,” she said, tapping the bottle with one of her long, unpainted fingernails. “We must have read the same review.”

Edward had a vast storehouse of knowledge about wine—years, vineyards, and countries of origin. He studied wines the way he studied mutual funds and the scorecards in
Consumer Reports.
I never understood how he sustained this particular interest; he rarely drank.

Since the last time I’d seen him, his light hair had grown even longer and curlier. He had the faint glow of a suntan that brought out the boyish clarity of his eyes, and he was wearing a pair of slim gray flannel pants and a striped dress shirt, buttoned to the chin. The outfit, tidy and age-appropriate, combined with the hair and the tan made him look as if some internal gear had clicked into place and brought into alignment all the bits and pieces of his personality. For a minute, I felt my face flush with a shameful combination of envy and angst: he was pulling his life together and moving it elsewhere. Perhaps the airline pilot was coaching him on his wardrobe.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “That horrible look you’re giving me.”

“I was just thinking about how nice you look.”

“Oh, why aren’t I a man?” Sylvia cooed. “A woman would never say that to another woman unless she didn’t mean it.”

“I wouldn’t waste too much envy,” Edward said. He spilled the bag of cookies onto a plate, a thoughtful but wasted effort since no one would eat them. “William doesn’t mean it either.”

“I do mean it,” I said. “Why can’t you accept a simple compliment from me? I’m trying to be kind and sincere and you’re turning it into something else. It’s ridiculous. Now I’m angry at you. I retract the compliment.”

“I’m glad we cleared that up,” Sylvia said.

These two new best friends had agreed upon a price that was only slightly lower than the one I had suggested Edward ask for his place. Their negotiations, although brief, had been mature and productive. As for a closing date, they’d settled on something in early December.

I couldn’t have asked for a more amiable or happy outcome. In addition to that, my involvement had been minimal, thus making the whole thing incredibly easy. And in addition to
that,
Sylvia generously and unnecessarily agreed to pay a couple percentage points more in a broker’s fee than I was expecting, largely because she felt guilty about the amount of time I’d spent with her over the years.

Still, the closing date made the sale seem real, and there was something in the general tone of Sylvia’s voice and questions about the building that made me think she was going to go through with the deal this time. As I sat watching them chatting about the apartment and the neighborhood, encouraging each other to nibble at the cookies, I realized that by getting Sylvia involved in the deal, I might have made Edward’s plans for leaving easier, not more complicated.

“You might want to think about moving the closing date to January,” I said. “That will give you more time to get everything together.”

“I’m not going to move in the heart of winter,” Edward said.

“You’re right to move to San Diego,” Sylvia said. “If I didn’t have that god-awful tenure, I’d move there myself. For you, at this stage, it’s the perfect city. It’s a balm to the senses. On top of that, it’s full of homosexuals.”

“Yes,” I pointed out. “In fact, there are hardly any heterosexuals in the whole city and no straight men whatsoever. In short, Edward will never get a date.”

“That is utterly untrue,” Sylvia pointed out. “Don’t you remember the chapter in my book about southern California?” I had a vague memory of something entitled “The Earth Moves.” “I had the most shattering orgasm of my life there and it was most definitely
not
with a gay man. You should look him up, Edward. He wrote me a letter after the book came out, furious that I hadn’t used his real name, threatening a lawsuit if I didn’t have it included in the next edition. Fortunately, there wasn’t one.”

It was late in the afternoon, and I had an appointment I had to get to in fifteen minutes. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the two of them in the apartment alone, but I had no choice.

I asked Edward to see me out, and he walked down to the street with me. The air was suddenly cool; the wind had changed direction and brought in a strong smell of the ocean, and the tops of the brick town houses along Edward’s street were painted with the deep gold of afternoon sun. It was the dog-walking hour, and the sidewalks were alive with the howling of dogs and the happy reproaches of their owners, trying to sound irritated by their wayward behavior. I thought of Spirou with a pang.

“I almost got a dog the other day,” I said. “Well, what I mean is, I wanted one. Getting him wasn’t exactly an option, since he belonged to someone else.” I was dithering. “Edward, are you sure you want to sell?”

“I’m not interested in being a landlord, I’ll eventually want to buy something out there. Of course I want to sell.”

“How is it practical? Working with Marty? I don’t see it.”

“You don’t have to see it. I see it. It’s not for the rest of my life, that’s obvious. I’m learning a few skills, how to use a computer. I want out—out of the airlines, out of Boston. Think of it as a convenient excuse.”

At that moment, he sounded depressingly practical. “You’ll miss this neighborhood.”

“What you really mean,” he said, “is that you’ll miss it, once I’m not here for you to visit. Unfortunately, I’m the one who has to point that out.”

C & S offer accepted,
I wrote in my notes.
Samuel plsed—dinner w/ happy couple at Indian restaurant—Charlotte radiant—grn blouse, NOT silk—food mediocre—sag paneer—heartburn—bring champagne (and Edward) to Nahant cocktail party.

I called Andrew Scali a number of times to thank him for helping me convince Samuel and Charlotte, but he was never at home, and on principle—what principle he couldn’t articulate—he never answered his cell phone. I finally got through one night as I was driving back from a visit to a man supposedly named Cory.

It turned out that Cory was not thirty-seven, not a swimmer, did not weigh 150 pounds, and was not, by most objective standards, “vry gdlkng.” He was, he explained while I was getting dressed, in a “monogamous” relationship with a sixty-three-year-
old man named Bob. Cory, like a lot of men who have considerably older lovers, thought of himself as perennially young, and despite graying hair and some slackening in the triceps, he had a boyish quality in his exaggerated gestures and grin.

“Monogamous,” I said, buckling my belt. “Really. That’s rare these days.”

“I can’t answer for everyone.”

“No.” I doubted he could answer for himself, but I tried anyway. “And just out of curiosity, you define monogamous as…”

He shrugged, as if it should be obvious. “We never fool around with other people. No threesomes, no group things. It’s just the two of us. When we’re together.”

At least, I thought as I was driving home along the river, he had a definition. Maybe my problem in sticking to my celibacy resolution was not that I was continuing to have meaningless, semianonymous sex on a regular basis, but that I hadn’t defined my terms properly. Maybe that was what I needed to work on.

I called Andrew’s house again, and Sean answered.

“William Collins,” he said. “It’s been months. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “And you?”

“Not terrible,” he said. “Exhausted, but that’s not new.” Sean was thirty-two, and was perpetually exhausted. This seemed to be the case for a lot of pretty people, as if there was something wearying about lugging around the burden of beauty and always being the object of admiration and envy. Sean had the kind of dramatic, slightly exaggerated looks that arouse a great number of second glances, comments, and blunt advances, and there undoubtedly
was
something tiring about the barrage of attention he received, no matter how flattering it was and how addicted to it he’d become.

“You must be working too hard, Sean.”

“I was hoping the store would be a flop so I could retire, but it’s doing better all the time. All of a sudden, everyone wants to buy expensive little things. Designer soap, expensive body lotion, my bottles of specially made perfume.” He yawned. “You’ve never been in. Come to the shop and take me out for lunch.”

“I’d love to. I’ll call and make a date.”

Of course I never would. Sean had a languid manner that made me feel like a lecherous uncle around him. Spending time with him and Andrew was complicated because you were required to lavish vast amounts of inappropriate attention on Sean and squeeze his ass every once in a while. If you didn’t, Andrew would be insulted and Sean would get bored. But there was a fine line of decorum that you couldn’t cross, so you always had to be on your toes.

“Where are you?” he asked. “It sounds as if you’re driving.”

“I’m driving along the river, up past Harvard.”

“Describe it to me, William. I’m stuck on Beacon Hill.”

“In a three-million-dollar town house. Poor boy. Well, there’s a full moon tonight, and the trees along the riverbank have all turned yellow and red. It’s windy and the air is full of leaves.”

“You’re full of longing. I can hear it in your voice. Are you coming from a date?”

A date. “Not exactly.”

“I see,” he said, and from those two syllables, it was clear that he saw correctly.

Sean was Brazilian by birth but had spent the majority of his life around Boston. It seemed rude to ask him where he got his name. He had a faint accent that added a note of lubricious glamour to his enervated speech. Despite the fact that he colored his hair an unnatural shade of blond, I suspected him of enormous integrity. It was tempting to think of him as a hustler, using Andrew for his money, but when you saw the two of them together, you realized that Sean did most of the caretaking, and it was easy to imagine him sticking by Andy forever, no matter how wide the age difference. I’d always suspected them of being monogamous, in the Webster’s sense of the word.

Andrew had “found” Sean (to quote Andy’s Dickensian way of putting it) working in a body care shop in Lawrence, one of the blighted mill towns outside of Boston. There had been a nineteenth-century-style courtship involving Sunday dinners with Sean’s large extended family—cousins and the aunts who’d raised him—followed by Andy setting Sean up in his own business on Newbury Street.

“I’m sure you’re calling for Andrew,” he said. “You never call for me, William.”

“I’m intimidated by your youth and beauty.” It was always a forgivable excuse. “Is he there?”

“He’s out having dinner with some clients. At least that’s what he tells me.”

“I’m sure it’s true. He’s completely loyal. Tell him I called. I wanted to thank him for helping me out with some customers. Charlotte O’Malley and Samuel Thompson.”

“Oh, those two,” he said, yawning. “She buys perfume from me. She’s unhappy, but I’m doing my best to change that.”

“Funny,” I said, “but I thought I was doing the same thing.”

“Just don’t make her too happy. I need her business. And if you ever want to work on your own happiness, come and see me. In the meantime, you’d better hang up. Pay attention to the road and the moonlight on the water. Enjoy the longing.”