Contemporary Gay Romances (19 page)

At home in his bed-sitter, later on, he allowed himself an indulgence, supping upon a treacle tea-cake salvaged from his earlier repast. With the two-penny coal grate filled, our hero basked in a solitude which he was cognizant would become far more customary, gathering for comfort around himself the remnants of his fine intelligence and his immense scruples.

7.

From one crystal-studded and holly-encrusted end of the vast celebratory groaning board to about midway up one side, some months further on, the Widow Van Pryor espied, among a brood of young female eligibles, the exceptionally distinct, candlelit fair hair and side whiskers of her publisher and business associate. Barely perceptible, beneath one glisteningly curved wing of his ashen crown, emerged a sprig of holly, which jiggled ever so slowly with every slight motion of his handsome young head, nearly requisitioning her fullest attention. For her own part, she recognized, the funereal materials that had virtually defined her physical presence within society for so long had been at last thrown asunder, replaced tonight by a sable and magenta conception arising from across the Channel, a study of fine fabrics and subtly woven gradations that if not yet merry still evinced the porcelain of her complexion and reflected the vast mystery of her eyes. It had been months, more than half an annum, since they’d last encountered, and she wondered if when they did more abundantly encounter, as seemed almost perilously probable this evening, they would actually deign to discuss what most persons of breeding in their midst considered to be utterly indiscussable.

A moment later she found herself distracted by a military gentleman of more than usual wit, and it wasn’t until hours later, when she discovered herself in the house’s great foyer, awaiting her brougham, that the widow again remarked DeHaven, himself just now fully cloaked and stepped into the festively decorated rotunda, a lackey sent out to his own driver.

They bowed and brushed fingertips, and even for a second, if not quite successfully, attempted to brush lips against cheeks. He flattered her, and she returned the insincerity with compliments upon his own not inconsiderable person. In the chill marble echoing antechamber they could discern as though from afar little calls and cries from guests in other chambers and halls still not ready to depart; even so at closer range silence frostily encased them, as they looked away from faces to gloves, nearby sculptures, the floor, anything it seemed but each other.

Only once the house’s well-swaddled footman had stepped in to announce her car, then exited back out into the now totally white evening, did her companion in place step forward ever so slightly and utter in the most irresolved of voices, “Did he ever actually say
why
he did it?”

“How could he possibly?” she asked in turn. “As no further communication from him was to be acceptable afterward. And not to you, either, I gather. No, of course not.” Then she added, as she began gathering her mantilla more closely about her person, “The widespread presumption, if one is to even listen to it, is that he did it of course for the publicity.”

“Ah, of course, for the publicity!” DeHaven replied. “The publicity, I must warrant was enormous, almost incalculable. Poor me, poor you, my dear lady, are as beggars to him these days in the size, the scope, the sheer intercontinental scandalousness of his all-abiding publicity.”

Her driver had pulled up outside the sliver of doorway she held ajar and the courser’s bells were subtly shaking as she turned a final time and said, “And then of course, there are those more sobering moments, when I wonder if after all, he wasn’t merely, and yet so characteristically in his dim, chivalrous manner, attempting to protect us.”

“Ah!” DeHaven uttered, “To protect us!” Then he groped. “To protect us from…our…not entirely…wholesome…pasts?”

“From that surely enough, but more crucially from our
instincts
!”

He once again groped. “Our instincts to admit…certain connections, you mean.”

“He took them
all
upon himself, poor foolish doomed admirable young creature, declaring himself the perpetrator, the instrument, the receptor of any possible infidelity, thoughtless monstrosity, lubricity, or utter imbecility. We once, you and I, dreamed we might be able to cope. That was the very essence of our projected endeavor utilizing his services—that we
would
more than be able to cope: we’d as much as bask in it all. In retrospect, observing him, a veritable clod of solidity, barely able to retain his feet within the maelstrom of so much…self-admission, well, it’s evident now we couldn’t for a second have coped, not really, not at all, don’t you see? Nor escaped without being ourselves mortally wounded.”

“Yes, I see now,” DeHaven admitted. “He did it all for us. Because he loved us.”

“He did it because he loved us,” she confirmed quietly. “But most of all, he did it because the fool acolyte adored his Master and wasn’t it
he
, after all, who was
least
in need of protection, but
most
in need of perpetuation?”

It wasn’t in truth a question, and the last thing she expected was a response, so they brushed gloved fingers once again, before allowing the footman to help her down the icy steps and into her brougham. A moment later, the footman was returned, her carriage driven off, and Samson icily fretting aperch the landau at the curb, whereupon DeHaven also descended.

They’d proceeded barely a furlong when he heard the first of morning’s criers with his boy-sized chalkboard hawking the habitually salacious journalistic wares, and as usual, leading the dawn’s sensations was yet another unimaginable revelation concerning the increasingly invidious juridical fortunes of his now infamous young acquaintance.

Within the carriage all was leather and wool, cashmere mufflers, fawn-skin gloves and shearling throws, toasty and warm; DeHaven had had such a long and tiring day of it; in seconds, without wishing it, he was dozing. All about him, if never ever quite touching him, the tempest intensified.

Hang gliders dappled the sky as the T-Bird convertible ascended then flattened out onto the seashore plateau along Torrey Pines Road. Red and yellow, white and blue, purple and orange, the fragile little man/mechanisms seemed no bigger than dragonflies levitating upon the strong Pacific Ocean currents a hundred and eighty feet below, gliding in slightly askew formation as though out of a child’s illustration.

“That’s Jonas Salk’s Institute,” Craig said from the backseat, still playing tour guide. “He’s supposed to be working on a new vaccine,” he added. “Keep going to the end. The parking lot’s a right turn.” Craig’s voice, normally strained, even raspy, was even more tense from him having to yell.

The turn-off led past where the hang gliders were taking off. I turned to face them, watching a gang of people gather around one glider just landing. Did they simply run off the cliff to get going? Or were they lifted by currents from the rock ledge? The latter, I supposed.

The geologist in me couldn’t help but notice the cliffs. The rock here looked pretty undistinguished, but California’s geologic history was complex. These Southern Peninsula Ranges were defined Quaternary laid over a basement of Mid-Mesozoic rock, all part of what was known as the Nevadan Orogenic belt, the earliest lifting of this westernmost part of the continent when dinosaurs filled the land. Since then, under the influence of subducting plates and shifting masses, these coastlines had risen and dropped many times, picking up fragments of various plates that slowly drifted north to form Alaska.

“Now remember,” Craig poked me from behind, “no shilly shallying! You must go directly down the cliff path! No matter how frightened you are!” He meant it to be a command, but the combination of Midwest twang and childish whine undercut his authority.

“Cliffs don’t frighten me,” I said.

“Nothing frightens Roger,” Mark said as he lightly spun the steering wheel. He looked great behind the wheel of the T-Bird. For that matter, he looked great in any convertible in Southern California, his thick black hair riffling like a fine pelt in the maritime breeze, his skin quickly tanning, tiny tension lines resolving from around his eyes. We’d been talking about possibly moving out here, and this visit had been partly about him opening a San Diego office. Mark was staying with a law-school friend, Sue, a woman my age who’d returned to school after her children were grown. She worked in the attorney general’s office but was still open to the idea of joining a commercial practice, especially one as successful as Mark’s.

“Yeah! Well,” Craig sputtered. “Maybe he’s not frightened because he’s never
seen
a cliff like this!” Craig insisted. “He’ll be plenty frightened.”

“I’m astigmatic,” I explained. “All depths look shallower. That’s why heights don’t frighten me. I can’t grasp how high they are.”

Mark looked my way briefly, a smile hovering on his lips.

“We’ll see! We’ll see!” Craig warned darkly from behind us, not getting the joke. That evoked another tiny smile from Mark.

What I really wanted was to get into one of those hang gliders and rise, rise, rise above the earth, the sea, into the sky, and just soar away. How much could that cost? A few hundred dollars? All I had to do was tell Mark to drive to where they were taking off.

“It’ll be good to get more sun,” Mark said. Although I’d just arrived in San Diego, he’d arrived five days earlier for the Bar Association Weekend. “The June Glooms,” Diegans called the overcast, foggy weather, even though it was mid May, the city’s thousands of jacaranda trees just reaching bloom, littering the lawns and streets with pale purple blossoms. Mark had caught a bit of sun the first few days around the pool at the Del Coronado Hotel where the conference was held, but since then the weather had been dismal. It was difficult to know how to adjust to it. We had formed today’s plans just last night at dinner, with the four of us—Craig, Mark, Sue and I—down the Baja coast at that hacienda-turned-restaurant overlooking the channel islands near Enseñada. Craig had said he knew the most magnificent beach in this area. We’d go, he’d said, if the sun came out.

“…people have fallen from that cliff.” Craig was now warning of dire consequences. “Miles Parker fell and almost died. He’s got a metal plate in his head. His jaw was broken in three places and had to be rebuilt. A pacemaker had to be installed in his chest…”

Mark would have a conniption if I said I wanted to hang glide. He silently worried all those days in the Caribbean as I’d discovered, put on, and tested the snorkeling equipment. He grew more tense hourly as I taught myself how to use it all in the bayside house pool until I was certain I knew how to breathe right. I clumped along the deck in the big rubber fins down the ladder into that pale green baywater, where, from the first instant that I arranged the face-mask and breathing tube and put my head down and spread my arms and legs and floated, gently kicking, I knew this was what I wanted, what
I’d always wanted
to experience in the water. When I’d got back out, Mark was in the deck chair, right there on the quay—a first—wearing that worried face he couldn’t shake. “You went so far! I could barely see you!” And even though I explained how safe it was, how easy, how I could see far off, every inch of water, enough to chivvy and chase a magenta-and-white octopus across the stark, barely vegetated, limestone sea floor, I saw how worried Mark continued to be whenever I snorkeled, afraid that I’d be sliced by a barracuda, stung by a ray. No: hang gliding was definitely out.

Mark pulled the T-Bird to the end of the macadam at the post and wire guardrail. Craig leapt out, grabbing bags out of the backseat.

“Ocean looks dirty,” Mark said.

With less familiarity than I had of the West Coast, he was still surprised by how dark the sand was, how green steel rather than marine blue the Pacific usually looked.

“C’mon, Craig! Get off me!”

“You can’t handle that! Let a real man carry it,” Craig insisted. He’d grabbed me from behind and was trying to wrest the bag away, then shouldering it and tossing his own, smaller bag at my feet. “Once you get on the cliff’s face, it’ll drag you down.”

Ever since I’d arrived at the airport, Craig had been doing things like this, designed to show Mark how tall, strong, virile and manly Craig was. In short, how desirable. Which he undoubtedly was. Why else would I be out here?

Not that anything Craig did would make a bit of difference to Mark, I knew. Except perhaps to the degree that it pleased or annoyed me. (Nothing should
ever
annoy me.) But Craig didn’t know that. Despite how intelligent and well read he was, Craig wasn’t very observant of others. Besides which he tended to act almost entirely out of a welter of instinct, exhibitionism, and petty revenge. All of which made him unpredictable and thus a lot more attractive.

We headed to the break in the guardrail and protective hedges to the path hewn into and down the cliff. It was very high. Even with my astigmatism, I could see that the beach lay quite far below. Suddenly across it ran the shadow of an insect. I looked up behind myself: another hang glider had taken off. It soared above us, off into the distance.

“I knew you’d be scared the second you got here,” Craig was crowing. He’d already begun down the path, a makeshift steep decline around boulders and grass tussocks and through sand patches. I followed. Mark brought up the rear.

At most points in the descent, I was so busy trying to hold on and get around obstacles, that I seldom looked around. This portion of coast around La Jolla uplands is of the late Miocene Era, sedimentary rock on top of and cut through by striated metamorphic and plutonic rock, the whole business known as the San Onofre Breccia. I had lectured often about how these high cliffs were formed when the most recent part of this coast had risen, relatively late geologically speaking, long after the dinosaurs were fossils and the earth was undergoing repeated hard glaciations. And thus, all this was, for me, a source of great interest. All around I could make out a mass of indurated rock, gray wales, shales, bedded cherts, and an occasional limestone lens or two, and infrequently interbedded among it all, pillow basalt, indicating oceanic origin. It might have been a textbook diagram.