Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (15 page)

He shook his head as if to say, Never mind, then turned and headed across the street, mindless of traffic. A bus honked at him and he hurled back such a glare of anger that Lionel thought it might shear the roof right off it. A moment later the bus obscured him from view, and when it had gone by Emil was nowhere to be seen.

I wish I could just cease to exist, right here,
he told himself, and he meant it.
I wish I could disappear off the face of the earth. Dissolve into vapor. I don’t deserve any better.

He staggered into the salon and was greeted in the reception area by Toné, who wore a silk chemise and leather pants, and whose ponytail was braided and hung over his left shoulder, curling at the end like the tail of a rhesus monkey.
“Mon brave!”
he cried. “You’re a tad
en retard
, you dear tease, you. One thought perhaps you had forgot. Tomorrow is the
grande affaire
, is it not? Come, sit; time escapes us.”

Lionel looked at him with what must have been too naked an expression of despair, because the hairdresser’s hands flew to his face. (Since two of his fingers were inserted in a pair of scissors, this came perilously close to resulting in the loss of an eye.) “But
cher ami
,” he trilled, “what
horreurs
have you been suffering?”

“Forget it,” he said, grunting in agony. He strode past Toné and into the crowded salon, where he climbed in the chair at Toné’s station. “Just cut my hair.”

The hairdresser followed, and made a little
tch-tch
noise as he swept a full-length vinyl bib around Lionel’s neck and fastened it behind his head. Then he put both hands on Lionel’s shoulders and said, “
N’importe,
dear lad,
n’importe.
There is
rien
in this world that is so bad as to cause such a
visage
as this.” And grabbing Lionel’s cheeks, he turned his head so that he could see himself in a mirror.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Lionel said, pulling himself out of Toné’s grip.

The hairdresser sighed. “
Alors.
Come, one must shampoo you.” He sashayed across the salon at a pace so leisurely that a runway model would’ve seemed an Olympic sprinter by comparison. Lionel lumbered after him, trying not to meet the gaze of the other stylists or customers. He wasn’t in the mood for any style-conscious queens today.

When he and Toné reached the sink, he at once plopped into the reclining chair and stuck his head back toward the faucet. From this vantage point, he was able to watch as Toné lifted his hands to the level of his ears, waggled his fingers, and looked around perplexedly. “Now, if you were one, where would you have left one’s shampoo?”

Lionel could see the bottle of viscous emerald liquid at the hairdresser’s elbow. “It’s right there,” he said testily, pointing to it with his nose.

Toné looked down and said, “Oh, no,
ce n’est pas la.
One meant the
amber
variety that one uses on
thinning
hair.”

“My hair is not thinning!”

There was a slight pause. Toné put his hands on his hips and stared at him with one eyebrow arched. After a moment’s contemplation, he took up the green shampoo. Then he turned on the water (perhaps it was only Lionel’s imagination that it was measurably hotter than usual), pumped a glob of the shampoo into his palm, and began massaging it into Lionel’s scalp. “One gets the feeling one mustn’t cross you today. Well,
ça ne fait rien.
One’s mood is so light and pleasant that even the most uncivil humors cannot affect it.” He ran the scalding hose over Lionel’s head; Lionel gasped and jerked up. “Be still,
mon brave. La reine le veut.
Anyway, one suspects the occasion of your date with that
jeune fille
is to blame. Are you perhaps, at the eleventh hour, finding yourself reluctant to squire a member of the opposite sex to an evening of music and merriment?
Quelle surprise!
”

He turned away, and Lionel seized the opportunity to reach from beneath the vinyl sheet and feel for his head. It was still there; his scalp hadn’t been flayed away. “I’m perfectly comfortable about my date tomorrow,” he said in what he hoped was his most disdainful tones. “I really wish you’d butt out of my personal life and just do your job.”

When Toné turned around again, he was holding a large white towel and his lips were pursed. “Or perhaps one is wrong,” he said, and began drying Lionel’s head with the kind of manic fervor that might have resulted in lifelong paralysis had Lionel tried even slightly to resist. “Perhaps your disagreeable mood is caused by
quelque chose d’autre.
A flat tire, perhaps. Or a large credit card bill in today’s mail. Or a recent arrest for participating in a Transylvanian riot on
le rue Michigan
. It could be any one of those things. But one would never be so rude as to inquire.” He lifted the towel from Lionel’s head, and Lionel watched the world spin for a moment. “If one’s
cher ami
wishes to treat one like a simple service provider and to keep secrets from one, then one will by all means acknowledge his right to do so.” He dropped the towel into a basket and said, “Come back to one’s chair now, and one will see what one can do to make you look worthy of the
grand monde
in which you will be seen
demain
.”

Lionel shut his eyes and cursed his stupidity. He’d forgotten that Toné had witnessed the whole embarrassing incident in front of the Romanian consulate. Of
course
he’d be expecting a complete recounting of the events leading up to it. Instead of which, Lionel had come in and treated him — his sole gay buddy! — like hired help. First Emil, now Toné … how many more of the people he cared about could he manage to hurt today? He hated to think.

As he resettled himself in Toné’s chair, he made up his mind to come clean. After all, if he persisted in keeping him in the dark, there was no telling what kind of haircut he’d end up with. He’d go to the Trippy Awards looking like Emo Phillips, or Larry Fine. And so, while Toné began to clip and snip and spray, Lionel let the whole sordid story gush forth: how he’d been walking down the street with Tracy, freaked out when he spotted Toné coming at him, and leapt into the demonstration as a means of avoiding having to introduce them. Then, his arrest and the subsequent notoriety at the office. He only left out any reference to having fallen in love with Emil; it was a little too painful at present.

Toné was silent throughout, until it was clear that Lionel had finished. Then he lifted his scissors and comb from Lionel’s head and stood in front of the mirror where Lionel could see him. “One thanks you for your honesty and candor,” he said. “But one is rather hurt that you considered one so socially irresponsible that you actually feared one would betray you to the
jeune fille
. What kind of barbaric savage do you think one is, Monsieur Frank? Hasn’t one earned your friendship and trust many times over? Hasn’t one always acted in compliance with your wishes, even when one considered those wishes sadly misguided?”

“You have, you have,” Lionel admitted while wiping stray hairs from his nose. “What can I say? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I thought you might go all scampy, or something. I panicked, and I paid for it. It’ll never happen again. You’re a good friend, Toné. Good friends forgive. So forgive me?”

Toné took an atomizer and spritzed the top of his head. “One might consent to forgive you if you admit to one that your hair is thinning.”

“It
isn’t
, Toné. It’s just very fine. It always has been.”

He sighed. “
D’accord, d’accord.
One forgives you anyway.”

Lionel smiled and let his shoulders relax. “Thanks. It means a lot to me.”

“Well,” he said, plugging in the hairdryer, “One is only being so lenient because, as one said earlier, one’s own spirits are so delightedly high today. One is actually feeling quite
laissez-faire
, as a matter of fact — one might always say
gamin
. And can you guess why?”

“Why else?” said Lionel, scooting his buttocks back up in the seat (he’d slid several more inches during the haircut). “Same reason as always. You’re in love.”

“Ah, but this time, it is real, Lionel!” He switched on the hairdryer and then, to Lionel’s mortification, continued his narrative by shouting above the roar of the motor.
“His name is Guillaume,”
he cried,
“and he is French! As you know, it has always been one’s dream to be French, but as one was born half-Japanese, half-Iraqi —
such
a burden — one has had to resign oneself to going through life otherwise.”
He fluffed up the sides of Lionel’s head, aimed the dryer at his ears, and raised his voice even higher.
“BUT IF ONE CANNOT
BE
A FRENCHMAN, IS NOT THE NEXT BEST THING TO
ROMANCE
A FRENCHMAN, TO TAKE HIM AS YOUR
LOVER
?”
He turned off the dryer, grabbed a razor, and said, “Well, officially he’s Belgian, but it’s nearly as good.” Then he straightened out the edge of one of Lionel’s sideburns.

Lionel had by this time slid down in his seat again. He had come close to expiring of embarrassment during Toné’s shrieking declaration of love for his Belgian beau; certainly everyone else in the salon had heard him, and probably a few on the street outside. Thank God it was over.

Except, it wasn’t. His hair was still damp, so Toné fired up the dryer again and continued.
“GUILLAUME HASN’T GOT HIS GREEN CARD YET, SO HE’S BEEN UNABLE TO FIND A JOB,”
he blared as he aimed the dryer up and down the back of Lionel’s head.
“HE WAS WORKING AS A WAITER AT CHEZ DIERDRE UNTIL IMMIGRATION GOT WIND OF IT, AND HE WAS NEARLY APPREHENDED! THAT WOULD HAVE KILLED ONE’S HEART.”
He turned off the dryer and said, “Look up.” Lionel obeyed, in the hope that Toné would now slit his throat — a mercy really, as it would spare him having to walk past everyone in the salon after this appalling scene. But Toné merely took up the razor and scraped a tiny patch of beard from his throat, then resumed both the hair-drying and his earsplitting narrative.
“AND YET, LIONEL, ONE MUST CONFESS, IT TRIES ONE’S PATIENCE TO HAVE ONE’S LOVER ACTUALLY
LIVING
WITH ONE. IT HAS ONLY BEEN A WEEK, BUT ONE FEELS THE WEIGHT OF A CENTURY.”
He moved to the right side of the chair and continued drying around Lionel’s temple.
“ON THURSDAY HE CAME HOME AT TWO IN THE MORNING AND ONE COULD
SMELL
THE SEX ON HIM. WHAT COULD ONE DO BUT ACCUSE HIM? OH, THE FIGHT THAT ENSUED! ONE THREW A
CHAIR
AT HIM, LIONEL! ONE WAS REDUCED TO THAT! AND NOT JUST A CHAIR, BUT A
FAVORED
CHAIR — A LOUIS
QUINZE
! THAT ONE PURCHASED FOR
BEAUCOUP D’ARGENT
AT THE ESTATE SALE OF ONE OF ONE’S UNFORTUNATELY DECEASED CLIENTS!”
By now Toné had ceased his labors but was pointing the still-running hairdryer aimlessly into the air, caught up in his impassioned account and eager to get Lionel to share in his indignation.
“AND HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE GUILLAUME RESPONDED? HE HAD THE UTTER DEPRAVITY TO COME AT ONE WITH A KNIFE, LIONEL — YES, A
KNIFE
! THE SAME WITH WHICH ONE HAD ONLY JUST BEEN CUTTING ONE’S BELOVED CHICKEN CUTLETS FOR HIM! LOOK!”
He turned off the dryer at last and rolled up his sleeve, then extended his arm to show Lionel a fresh, red wound, about an inch long, on his triceps. “Note well,
mon brave
,” he said, “the extremities to which love drives one. Seldom does such satisfaction as one has found with Guillaume come without great attendant cost.” He turned on the hairdryer again and gave Lionel one last going over.
“OF COURSE,”
he shouted,
“AFTERWARDS, OUR LOVEMAKING WAS
MAGNIFIQUE
.”

And then it was finished. Lionel was relieved of his vinyl sheet, dusted off, and sent on his way with a cheery
“A bientôt!”
On the sole occasion he dared lift his eyes from his shoes, he saw that he was being scrutinized as he departed the salon, stared at by smiling young men with billowing blond hair in Italian clothes who, he was sure, had brawled with and brutalized each of
their
procession of one-week lovers, and would probably gladly perform the same service for him, if he cared to ask.

Outside the night air was cool, and when it met his face he could feel how hot his skin had become. He gulped down a breath and began making his way home. The sweat that saturated his shirt grew cold and uncomfortable.

Was that what he had longed for with Emil? Savage jealousy, sexual voraciousness, flying furniture —
knife fights
? With, no doubt, an embittered separation not more than a few days later? It was a narrow escape; too narrow. Emil’s being straight was without a doubt the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

No such sick, perverted relationships for him. He’d descended into the pit and been plucked out at the last moment, by the merest whim of fate — by the object of his homosexual lust turning out to have been resolutely hetero. Well, if he could somehow make himself love Tracy,
she
would be able to reciprocate, and she’d rescue him from the kind of disgusting life Toné was leading. He owed it to himself to try for it; to give himself the chance to escape this whirlwind of savage lust and self-disgust.

His breathing grew steadier with the thought of Tracy and tomorrow night. Tomorrow night! Just twenty-four measly hours away. It was so short a time to have to wait for salvation!

Lionel’s armpits were
killing
him. He had managed to convince himself that heterosexual desire might come if only he were
clean
enough, and had accordingly scrubbed himself almost raw. And so, when he applied his environmentally incorrect aerosol deodorant, it had settled on his tender flesh with the approximate virulence of nuclear fallout.

He stood now at the door to Tracy’s apartment building with his sharp new haircut, bedecked in his rather dashing rented tuxedo, and holding a bouquet of ripe, red roses. And yet the air of easy sophistication and worldly charm he desired to give off was more than a little undone by the fact that he found it excruciatingly painful to lower his arms to his sides. He had to swivel his entire torso to ring Tracy’s bell, then stand with his shoulders hunched awaiting a response, looking something like a gentrified scarecrow.

The speaker above the doorbell crackled to life. “Who is it?” said an electronically distorted voice that was still recognizable as Tracy’s.

“Lionel and Abner,” he called out. “Wait a minute —
Abner! Come back here! Leave that gelato vendor alone! ABNER!”
A pause. “Make that just Lionel.”

He couldn’t hear whether she laughed or not, but a moment later the door buzzed and he was allowed to enter the building.

Try to relax your arms,
he commanded himself as he mounted the stairs. He let his shoulders drop a little and instantly his armpits scraped against his starched cotton shirt, resulting in the kind of shooting pain he might’ve felt had he tied twenty-five pound weights to his armpit hairs.

He found Tracy’s apartment, 2-B, and knocked. There was a flurry of whispers and then footsteps beyond the door, before a strange woman opened it — a chunky, rather plain brunette wearing a T-shirt that read PARTY NAKED. She said, “Hi — Lionel?” He nodded and she continued. “I’m Connie, Tracy’s friend? I was just leaving?” She gave him a quick once over, then called behind the door, “TRACE, I’M LEAVING? HAVE A GOOD TIME? CALL ME?” And she darted past him and down the stairs.

A little put off, he tried to step through the door she’d left open, but before he could do so two more women appeared, one with stringy yellow hair and a sweater with baby chicks around the collar, the other with too much lipstick and mascara and wearing a leather skirt. They too gave him a quick appraisal, as though they believed if they did it swiftly enough, he might not figure out they’d been waiting around solely to get a look at him. “Hi,” the overly made-up one said, “friends of Trace. Just leaving.”

They slipped past him and down the stairs. There was giggling on the landing, then it receded; eventually he heard the front door fall shut.

He felt a little silly now about having made that joke about Abner over the intercom. Abner was for Tracy’s ears only; the others must have thought him some kind of raging geek.

He grimaced and stepped into Tracy’s apartment, then closed the door behind him. He looked around; pretty place — the kind of standard good taste a girl without much money could assemble from pieces purchased all at once at stores like Crate & Barrel and Pier One. On an étagère sat a collection of photographs in teak frames: an older couple, presumably her parents, a gaggle of girls in sorority sweatshirts clutching plastic beer cups, a Siamese cat rolled up like a croissant on a sofa. There was an open spot among the photos, too wide to have been a simple aesthetic miscalculation; he knew intuitively that this is where Guy’s picture had been. He went and looked at the glass shelf. Sure enough, there was a little film of dust across its surface, except for a clear strip where the hypothetical frame would have sat. Too bad; Lionel had been curious to see whether Guy was cute.

But no, no, he scolded himself; no more succumbing to
that
. Tonight, with any luck, his life as a fully initiated heterosexual would begin.

“LIONEL?” It was Tracy’s voice, calling down the hall from what he presumed must be her bedroom. “YOU THERE?”

“HOLD ON, LET ME CHECK,”
he called back. A short pause. “YES, I’M HERE.”

He could hear her laugh. “BE WITH YOU IN A SECOND.”

“A METAPHORICAL SECOND OR A MATHEMATICAL ONE?” No laughter. Why was he babbling like this? Was he
that
nervous? He walked across the apartment to the kitchen and it felt like he was floating — or rather, that his body was dangling from his head. He
must
be nervous. Everything was suddenly dreamlike and indistinct, scarily unreal.

He put the bouquet on the counter. “DO YOU HAVE A VASE? SOMEONE BROUGHT YOU A DOZEN ROSES. I THINK IT MIGHT’VE BEEN CONNIE.”

Again he heard her laugh, and he thought,
Why am I doing this? Why can’t I stop being a joker?
Maybe, he thought, because he’d been a joker with her all along, and it had gotten him this far. Maybe it was because laughter really
was
an aphrodisiac, and he needed all the help he could get.

He decided not to worry about it. He was having too much trouble breathing at the moment to worry about anything else. He reached up and opened one of her cabinets. No vase here; just an array of drinking glasses, all tinted green. He lowered his arm, wincing in pain as he did so.

A flicker of movement at the corner of his eye caused him to turn; there was Tracy, standing at the end of the hallway. She looked — astonishing. Transformed. Her girlishness, her kid-sisterishness, had been streamlined and tucked away. She wore a black strapless cocktail dress that flared at the waist and erupted into layers of diaphanous webbing. It wasn’t quite see-through, but it gave that impression. She was perched atop incredibly tiny shoes with diamond-sharp heels, and a pair of earrings that looked like dangling black Lego blocks. Her hair had been pulled back from her face and her cheekbones accented by some arcane cosmetic or other. Tracy, he realized, was in fact a great beauty. He appreciated that beauty; admired it; was even moved by it. He forced himself to admit, however, that he was not aroused by it — not even slightly.

“JUST LOOKING FOR A VASE,” he shouted at her.

She jumped back a few inches and put her hand to her nearly naked chest. “For God’s sake, Lionel, why are you
yelling
?”

“WE’VE BEEN YELLING FOR FIVE MINUTES,” he cried. “YOU STARTED IT.”

She laughed, but through gritted teeth; he could tell that he was frustrating her. She’d obviously imagined this moment differently.

Chastened by her reaction, he picked up the bouquet and came out of the kitchen. “Seriously,” he said, “these are for you. I only wish they looked half as good as you do.”

She visibly melted. She gathered the roses in her arms and sniffed them, then took them back to the kitchen and put them in a pitcher she filled with tap water. “They’re lovely,” she said, returning to the living room. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, touched by her, loving her, but not wanting her.
Dear God,
he thought;
I’m really going to have to knock back the drinks to pull this off.

All at once she leaned into him and parted her lips. He kissed her, and before he could stop himself he thought of the kiss he’d wanted to desperately from Emil — big, hairy, vulgar Emil, so different from this slight, fair young woman — and when their lips touched he felt the flash of that fantasy for a split second, but that was apparently long enough. Because when Tracy drew away, he could see that she had felt it too, and it had been real for her. Her lips were still parted, and her eyes were gazing into his without even a trace of self-consciousness.

He swallowed hard and said, “Shall we go?”

She nodded, her eyes still locked on his.

“I’ll race you,” he said. “You take the elevator, I’ll take the fire escape. Last one down pays for parking.”

She grimaced, but there was affection in it. “Do you
ever
stop clowning?”

“When I’m shaving. Not ‘cause I want to. I just bleed less that way.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled, then plucked up her purse. Lionel headed for the door. “Why are you walking that way?” she asked, following him.

“What way?” He turned to face her.

“
That
way,” she said, nodding at his shoulders. “With your arms like that. You look like a bad mime or something.”

“Oh,” he said sheepishly. “Well — this is true, I swear it — I scrubbed my armpits too hard, and when I sprayed on my deodorant it scalded me. I feel like I’ve got third-degree burns under there.” He shrugged. “Stupid, I know.”

She regarded him for a moment, as if uncertain whether to believe him. Then she shook her head and said, “My great big goofball.” She carefully slipped her arm through his. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Beat me, whip me, whatever you want,” he said airily. “Do your worst. My laundry detergent gets out most stains.”