Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (4 page)

These were credentials Lionel could not begin to match. Even the bad ones were good. Because of them, Bob’s heterosexuality wasn’t just an accepted fact; it was the stuff of scandal. Despite his flaming effeminacy, no one doubted he was all man. After all, in order to be a father, one must have entered a woman. In order to be a cuckold, one must have claimed a woman. Was that enough? Lionel wondered. Despite Bob’s braying and preening, did it come down to just that? Was it effeminacy that must be punished, or was it sleeping with men? The two didn’t always go hand in hand, as he and Bob so ably proved. Was a nice, normal, plain-brown-wrapper gay man like himself preferable in the eyes of the world to a whiny, dandyish breeder like Bob — or was it the other way around? Was it even fair to condemn either of them?

It was the same series of questions Lionel always asked himself when confronted with this man he had come to think of as his
bête noire
. And the questions always boiled down to two, neither of which he could answer: Would he be Bob Smartt if he had the chance? Would he
kill
Bob Smartt if he had the chance?

Lionel’s recognition of Bob as his opposite number was made all the more frustrating by its not having been reciprocated by Bob, who appeared to be blind to anything to do with Lionel beyond his capacity to form an audience of one. Nor could Bob have appreciated the differences between them even if he
had
been willing to … because he didn’t know Lionel was gay. Despite Yolanda’s assurances that it would make no difference to him, Lionel insisted that she not tell him.

“We’re going to this
camp
new restaurant,” Bob continued with enthusiasm bordering on the assaultive. “Everyone’s been talking about it. It hasn’t gotten a write-up in any of the papers yet, so it’s still a really hip joint. Diana Ross was there last week!”

“I thought you said it was hip,” said Lionel.

Bob didn’t even hear the jibe; he was too busy barreling on. “It’s called Café Krypton and all the wait staff dress like comic-book heroes. Angie and Tom Gunther went last weekend and got waited on by the Invisible Girl. They said she was perfect for the part because they didn’t see her for half an hour after they were seated.” He hooted with laughter.

Come down, Yolanda,
Lionel commanded telepathically as Bob, a touchy-feely type, leaned in and clasped his shoulder, the better to share his glee. “What kind of food do they serve?” Lionel asked politely, to disguise the fact that he was inching back to Yolanda’s front door. It was no use; Bob stepped up and closed the gap. Lionel desperately fondled the brass doorknob.

“Oh, American,” Bob said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “I guess it’s kind of
nouvelle
but I’m not sure. It’s gonna be a scream just to be able to say we’ve been there once everyone finally learns about it.”

I’m gay and he’s straight,
though Lionel.

“It’s B.Y.O.B.,” Bob continued. “They don’t have their liquor license yet. So I picked up this great Pinot Blanc with a picture of Queen Victoria on the label.” He waited for a reaction and, getting none, he said, “
Queen Victoria
on the label. I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, ‘It must be a New Zealand vintner.’”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” said Lionel.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were. But in fact this is an
English
wine. Yes! There are actually English vineyards!” His eyes opened and his eyebrows danced as though he’d just announced the finding of intelligent life on Saturn. “This one’s just twenty miles outside London! They don’t ship to the States yet but I worked out a private deal with them.” He straightened his spine proudly.

Lionel wondered how many people would have to hear this story tonight.
Come down NOW, Yolanda,
he thought, giving telepathy another try. He was so worked up that he reached behind him and gave her doorknob a good yank, and a screw dislodged and fell onto the floor.
“Shit,”
he said, and he picked it up and tried to reinstall it. He was all thumbs; he dropped it again.

Bob made no move to help, but gave the tulips a plumping, then shook his head and chuckled. “Invisible Girl,” he repeated, giggling. “Didn’t see her for half an hour after they sat down!”

Lionel, who hadn’t found it funny the first time, finished reinserting the screw and said, “Let me put those in water or something, while we’re waiting.” He turned the knob, flung open the door, took the tulips from Bob, and ducked into Yolanda’s kitchen, where he pulled a mason jar from a shelf and filled it at the sink. Over the sound of the running water, he could hear Bob still giggling in the hallway — and, upstairs, Spencer still screeching like a condor with a bad case of throat polyps. The world seemed suddenly very irrational to him.

He left the jar on the kitchen counter, resisted the urge to redistribute the blooms more aesthetically, and went to rejoin Bob in the hallway with a sight of resignation.

Fortunately, he had no sooner arrived than Yolanda came bounding down the stairs, both hands behind her left lobe, busily reattaching her earring. “Bob! Hello! I am finally ready!” Due to the dizzying height of her heels, she almost pitched forward, but managed to put out a hand to right herself and continued more carefully to the landing. “I am so sorry for making you wait. It could not be helped.” She was actually panting by the time she came to a halt before him.

“That’s okay,” Bob said, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was appraising her outfit. “Cute,” he said. “I knew that’d be a good color on you. Brings out your cinnamon undertones.”

“Does it really?” she said, pleased, pulling the strap of her tiny purse over her shoulder.

“Oh,
yeah.
I brought some tulips — white, to offset the pastel — but Lionel had to put them in water ‘cause you were taking so long. You can see them when we get back.”

She smiled and turned towards her door. “Oh, may I not just have a quick peek at them before —”

“No.”
Bob suddenly became red-faced and petulant. “We’re late enough as it is. I want to get some shots of us in front of the old Italian market before they close up for the night.”

“The … Italian market?” she said, puzzled.

“Yeah.” He placed his hand over the small of her back and guided her down the next flight of stairs. “They have this great antique tin sign with a picture of a cow on it, and I got this idea of how it’d be a
great
backdrop for us all dressed up for dinner. You know, a contrast kind of thing: sophisticated nightlife taking over a squat little commercial setting. I have a whole scrapbook of photos like that at home.”

“I know,” said Yolanda, her voice now spiraling away from Lionel, but its tone of worshipful awe still audible to him. “You have shown it to me many times.”

I’m gay and he’s straight,
Lionel thought.
He’s straight and I’m gay.

He shut Yolanda’s door behind him and had just started up the stairs to his own place, when he heard Bob call out, “Oh, wait —
so long, Shoeless Joe!”
followed by his inane cackling. He’d obviously had the idea to make a joke about Lionel’s bare feet but had been distracted by too much other urgent business, and had only remembered it at the last possible moment. Lionel stood on the landing and tried not to make a sound; he didn’t want to give Bob the satisfaction of knowing he’d heard it.

After they’d left the building Lionel let his breath out in a big gush. He climbed back up to his apartment, shut the door, and leaned against it. “That guy bugs the
fuck
out of me,” he said, addressing his reflection in the mirror on the facing wall — knowing, at least, that it would share the sentiment.

Utterly dejected, he went to the bedroom, threw himself onto his pillows, and dialed the phone.

“Welcome to one-nine-hundred-HOT-GUYZ,” said the congenial, rather lispy recorded voice at the other end of the line. “The charge for our service is two dollars a minute. If you’d like to speak to a leatherman, touch One. If you’d like to speak to a cowboy, touch Two. If you’d like to speak to a cop, touch Three. If you’d like to speak to a construction worker, touch Four. If your fantasy isn’t any of these, touch Zero and ask a live operator for more options.”

Lionel wasted no time in pressing 0, and within two rings an operator picked up. “Hot Guyz,” he said chirpily. “How many I help you?”

“Well,” said Lionel, burying half his face in a pillow; “I — this may sound kind of out there — I don’t even know if you — well,
do
you have any — priests?”

Without missing a beat, the operator asked, “What denomination?”

Lionel’s heard started pounding. “Roman Catholic?”

A few minutes later, he was asking “Father Lance” what he wore under his cassock. To his delight, the answer confirmed what he had always suspected.

In the elevator up to the office the next morning, Lionel was nearly overcome by anxiety. He’d intended to get there early so that he could lay in wait for Donna, ready to pounce on her the moment she arrived and demand that she tell no one of their meeting at The Hague. But there had been a collision on the Kennedy Expressway that brought traffic to a halt for forty-five minutes while ambulances hurtled by on the shoulders, wailing like banshees. Lionel’s own wails came close to matching these; he pounded on his steering wheel, punched the door, and rocked back and forth in his seat, wracked by frustration. After about five full minutes of this deranged behavior, he happened to turn his head while emitting a particularly violent shriek and saw that the woman in the car next to him was regarding him with an expression of no small alarm. Mortified, he slid down in his seat and waited for traffic to begin moving again, simmering all the while, like a vat of poison over a low flame.

Now it was well past nine o’clock, and as he swung open the glass door to the Deming, Stark & Williams offices and took a faltering step in, he tried to decide how to behave: should he hang his head and avert his eyes, thereby missing any smug, mocking glances that might come his way? No; if Donna
had
told anyone she’d seen him at a gay bar the night before, any sign of embarrassment on his part would only serve as confirmation. He’d be
acting
guilty. Better to brazen it out, head held high.

“Good morning, Alice,” he chirped to the receptionist. He breezed past her with a smile and continued down the corridor. “Top o’ the morning, Tomster! Lookin’ fine and mellow, Maggie!” Actually, this was a little
too
confident and self-assured; better dial it down a notch. “What’s the word, Angie-bird? Hey, Soo! Get off o’ my cloud!” It was no use: everything he said this morning was going to sound like a catch phrase from a bad sitcom. He might as well resign himself to it.

He felt some relief that no one had thus far looked at him with sly amusement or disgust. Everyone was wrapped up in private thoughts or pursuing urgent errands, and treated his greetings as negligible social exchanges, to be forgotten immediately. He wouldn’t be so easily ignored if he were the subject of a brand-new office scandal. Donna must have kept her mouth shut. Well, he’d better make sure she continued to do so.

He reached his office and stopped in long enough to drop his briefcase and doff his jacket. Then, unbuttoning and rolling up his sleeves, he stepped back into the hallway and began ambling over to the Creative Department. “Gimme five, Dave-monster!” he said, palm extended to the hirsute keyline artist, who responded by grunting, “How ‘bout I just give you one,” and flipping him the bird.

His heart quivering like a glob of Jell-O, he stuck his head into Donna’s office. She had her back to him, and was typing a message onto her TDD telephone line. He snuck up behind her and peered at the readout to determine whether it was a business or a personal call. On the screen were the words NEXT IN LINE AS OF TUESDAY, and Donna kept typing in a similar obscure vein so that he couldn’t tell if she was “talking” to a business contact or a friend. In either case, it would be rude to interrupt; plus, he’d have to touch her shoulder to call attention to himself, and he disliked the presumption of intimacy that entailed. He’d be better off waiting for a more opportune moment.

He was on his way back down the hall when Rosa, the tiny bookkeeper who had the office next to Tracy’s, turned the corner and approached him, carrying a big blue ledger that looked like it might weigh a few more pounds than she did. He smiled, met her eyes, and was prepared to toss a pleasantry her way, but noticed that her lips were parted in an impish grin, and as she passed she flicked her eyebrows up and down suggestively.
“Morning,
Lionel,” she said, laughter in her voice.

He immediately went scarlet; his entire face felt like a newly burst blister. He dashed back to his office, threw himself into his chair, and sat there, terrified, not daring to leave his desk.

They knew! They knew! Donna
had
told them! It was spreading around the office even now — the delighted, delicious, malicious whispers, relating the tale third- and fourth-hand: Lionel at a gay bar! Lionel kissing another man! Lionel slavering over a g-stringed male dancer!

“Oh, God,” he croaked; “Oh, Jesus. Jesus Harry
Christ.”
He opened the drawers of his desk one by one, hoping to find something with potential lethal capacity. Suicide was clearly the only answer. But not before he arranged to take Donna with him.

Time
crawled.
On an ordinary day, he’d have been prowling the corridors, haunting the media buyers, plaguing the creatives, exhorting everyone to do more, better, faster for All-Pro Power Tools. Today he couldn’t bring himself to get out of his chair. He’d get
that look
again. That smirk Rosa had given him, as though as though she were imagining what he’d look like with a cock in his mouth. It was beyond mortifying; it was paralyzing. He wished he could call someone for advice or consolation, but there was no one, no one at all.

Finally, at a little after eleven, Carlton Wenck stuck his head in Lionel’s office and smiled surreptitiously. “Knock, knock,” he said, a grin on his face that would have shamed the Cheshire Cat. Lionel’s heart skipped a beat, then skipped another two, as though it were playing hopscotch. Of
all
the people to be the one finally to confront him! Carlton was Lionel’s chief rival at the agency. They had started in the same week, with the same number of accounts, but now, four years later, Lionel had only one account left, while Carlton had five — one of which he’d actually brought on board himself. Lionel consoled himself by remembering that All-Pro brought the agency more than the combined billings of all five of Carlton’s clients (a radio station, a mail-order photo development service, a bridal magazine, a industrial valve wholesaler, and an accounting software package for universities). But Carlton was perceived as a golden boy, while Lionel’s reputation was merely that of a good, hard worker. The difference galled him.

And Carlton’s appearance at Lionel’s door right now could only mean he meant to gloat; they were no longer rivals, and Carlton would know that. Lionel’s career was over, and Carlton hadn’t had to lift a finger; he was both victorious
and
innocent; what better reason to crow than that? Oh, he’d disguise his triumph in camaraderie, but that wouldn’t fool Lionel. He’d say, “Gosh, buddy, why didn’t you
tell
anyone you’re a homo? You don’t think it makes any
difference,
do you? Hell, I’ve already talked to all the partners about it, and we all agree: your personal life is none of our goddamn business. But
hey,
pal, I’m a little
hurt
you didn’t think you could confide in us. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we? This isn’t going to make
one bit
of difference in the way anyone thinks about you.” And all the while there’d be that predatory look in his eyes, as he calculated just how long it’d be before Lionel was canned (for some invented failing, to cover for the illegality of the
real
reason), after which he, Carlton, would be awarded the plum prize of All-Pro Power Tools.

Now Carlton, grinning, entered Lionel’s office without being invited and quietly shut the door behind him. That single action eliminated any small shred of doubt from Lionel’s mind. This was definitely the encounter he’d been dreading for four years. He steeled himself, gripping the armrests of his chair. On his tongue he could taste a film of blood — or was it bile? His foot flopped on the plastic mat beneath the desk, making a sound like hailstones on a window pane; he couldn’t seem to stop it.

Carlton sat on the edge of Lionel’s desk and leaned across it. His tie fell onto Lionel’s blotter and draped across Lionel’s Cross pen. It was as if he were already claiming his rival’s belongings.

Lionel tried to return his smile, but felt it must look more like he was biting a bullet. And then Carlton parted his lips ever so slightly, and whispered, barely audibly,
“So.”

Lionel flinched as though he’d been hit.
“So,”
he whispered back.

Carlton nodded and shifted his thigh so that it was closer to Lionel’s arm. “Tracy, huh?” he said, still whispering.

Lionel blinked. His foot stopped flopping. He studied Carlton’s face; the smile had turned to a leer. Lionel was confused. What did Tracy have to do with this?

“Tracy?” he muttered.

“It’s all over the office, man,” Carlton said, his voice thick with excitement. “You asked her out, and she actually said yes.”

Lionel almost levitated out of his seat. He felt no longer bound by the laws of physics. His relief was inexpressible.
That’s
what this was all about! Not Donna and The Hague — Tracy and the Trippys!

“Not a date, really,” he said, coloring with embarrassed pleasure. “Just the Trippy dinner.”

Carlton ignored this. “Man, I’ve been achin’ to bang that bitch ever since she started. Wouldn’t ever give me the time of day. Don’t know what you did to get through to her, pal, but whatever it is, you oughtta fuckin’
bottle
it.”

Against his better judgment, Lionel laughed, as if acknowledging his studhood. Then, common sense reclaiming him, he said, “Listen. Like I said, I’m just taking her to the Trippy Awards. Deming and Perlman are gonna be there, and
Magellan,
for God’s sake, so what kind of date could it possibly —”

Carlton cut him off by extending his arm. “I just wanna shake your hand, is all I’ve got to say.”

Lionel obliged, for lack of any other idea how to respond. Then Carlton slid off his desk and went back to the door. Just before he opened it, he cocked an eyebrow and said, “I want a
full report
the next morning, buddy.”

“‘Full report’?” repeated Lionel, confused.

“And it’s not just for me. Couple other guys on the staff are
very
interested in hearing what Miss Tracy Pfaff is like when she’s out of her business casual, if you know what I mean.” He opened the door, and then said, almost as an afterthought, “Kinda relieved about you, too, guy. Gotta tell you … was getting to the point we almost thought you were a back-door boy.”

And then he was gone.

Lionel felt the floor fall away, then come back up again to meet him. Both accused and absolved in the space of a single sentence! He took a gulp of air, raised his eyes to heaven, and said thank you to whatever presence might be looking out for him up there. Then got to his feet, slowly and shakily, and began to integrate himself into the day.

But in fact he hadn’t had the complete escape he’d thought; out of the frying pan was more like it. A secretary told him she thought it was great that he and Tracy were “finally getting together.” Forty minutes after that, Julius Deming buzzed him on the intercom and said, “Congratulations, Tracy just told me. Always thought you kids had something going on, if you’d only just sit up and notice it.” And as he left for lunch Alice, the receptionist, without any preamble, blurted, “Yellow roses are her favorite,” then wore a beaming smile as if she’d just been of immeasurable help to him.

He darted into the elevator as it was closing, and just as the door slid shut he saw Tracy enter the reception area, purse slung over her shoulder. A narrow escape! Another few seconds and he’d have had to share an elevator with her. He heaved a sigh of relief, so heavy that it took him from the twenty-third to the nineteenth floor to complete it. He couldn’t face her, not today — not with some many people expecting so much from them, watching them for any little indicator of romantic passion.

Despite the rather dire nature of his personal predicament, he spent his lunch hour pondering the differences between gay and straight relationships. As he sat on a bench in the shady plaza outside the building, eating his take-out Szechuan and watching about two dozen angry Transylvanian demonstrators march in front of the building that housed the Romanian consulate, he remembered the single major love affair he’d had before landing his advertising job. It had been such a secret thing; every stage from the initial introduction to the final breakup had been conducted behind closed doors. The few gay parties he and Kevin attended together had been dark, clandestine affairs as well, as though all the guests tacitly acknowledged this undercurrent of intrigue in their affairs; it was like being at a party for Soviet sleeper agents. During the entire length of their relationship, no one had known of it — not his family, certainly, and only one of his college friends, who was openly uncomfortable with the confidence. And if he and Kevin had difficulties, they had to resolve them on their own. If they had problems with money, living arrangements, monogamy, or any other major issue, they had to work from scratch toward a solution. The toll of all this secrecy and isolation eventually proved too much; and when they felt the first twinges of a desire to separate, what was to stop them? There was no local agency, no social institution, that compelled them to consider staying together.

But heterosexual relationships! Now
there
was a different story. At the first sign of mutual interest, a couple could count on encouragement from all quarters. And if they succeeded in finally getting together, that encouragement became congratulation. Straight relationships were as much a spectator sport as they were an adventure in intimacy; everyone connected with the lovers was expected to shower them with approval, and even strangers in the street were taught to beam their goodwill at young hand-holding men and women. And if heterosexual partners had any difficulties, they could turn anywhere for aid, from libraries lined with self-help books for straights, to the storehouse of experience willingly shared by long-married relatives and friends. Even movies and television offered continual examples of ideal relationships from which straight couples could draw strength and inspiration.