How Long Has This Been Going On (70 page)

"Cuff links," said Blue later, in Mason's house, examining the pair, made of gold and shaped like watchworks. "This is getting serious."

"I want that," said Mason, as a servant cleared away the lunch things. Silence till they were alone again. Then: "I'm tired of using services and opening my door to strangers, trying to accommodate these... one-night fellows. I want a relationship, and I want it with you."

"Suits me, long as you don't mind that I got me a friend livin' in that I feel real tender about."

"Yes, of course. Jerrett Troy, the satiric entertainer. But you've been with him for years now. Hasn't the erotic aspect of your alliance... well, cooled down?"

"I don't mean Johnny. I got a new friend, special-close."

"More coffee?"

"Thank you kindly."

Refilling Blue's cup, Mason said, "I'm not one of those... sponsors?... who behaves like a boss. In truth, I prefer that we live apart and keep our schedules flexible. My feeling is that you are a very giving kind of chap, with room for more than one... what was that, 'special-close'?... man in your life. Am I right?"

"Never heard anyone describe me just like so," said Blue, with that slow smile. He can't help it; he's a natural man.

"May I ask how old you are?"

"Thirty-three and a bit."

Mason nodded. "I presume... well, I hope... that you've gotten all that youthful running around out of your system."

"Never ran around that much. I always hooked up with someone. Like Johnny, and now my boy Walt."

"Very, very good," said Mason. He put his hand on top of Blue's. "I think this is going to work out quite well for all of us."

Across town, in the Kid's house, he and Walt were playing over a song they had just written, a torch number for Suspicia Pushmore. Though she's the villain of the piece, they decided to empathize with her: At the next-to-closing spot, when the audience expected an eleven-o'clock song from the Kid, the spotlight would lock on the also-ran, singing "Collecting Friends":

Rememb'ring men can get awfully bleak.

You try to hold on,

Keep the dike-burstings mended—

But if ten were splendid

Can one be unique?

The Kid was fiercely proud of his lyrics and delighted with Walt's jazzily loitering melody. "I can hear Libby Holman!" the Kid declared. The pair were so stoned on success that they ran the piece over and over, the Kid singing to Walt's accompaniment, and, at the last repetition, they fell into each other's arms.

Startled by how good Walt felt, the Kid broke the embrace immediately, asking, "How do you like living with Blue?"

"Oh, he's so nice to me. And thank you for letting me move in here."

The Kid waved this away. "It makes our work easier. And I love company. It's so cute watching you wrestling every morning with Miss Coffee."

"That machine hates me, I know."

Now the Kid is smiling at Walt, fresh out of things to say, staring at the boy's eyes to keep from being seen looking at the rest of him in a hungry manner; and there is this pause.

"I need a shower," says Walt, and off he goes.

The Kid, who has never glimpsed Walt undressed, and is dying to, retires to his bedroom, seeks out some conversation piece—yes! the Davy Crockett bubble-gum trading cards that he collected in the 1950s, the second, green-backed series. Walt will be amused. Craftily timing his reappearance, the Kid stalks Walt in Blue's room just as Walt, having toweled off, stands nude and open.

"Oh, sorry," the Kid smiles, as Walt anchors the towel around his waist. "I thought you'd be agreeably amazed by the innocent pursuits of postwar youth." The Kid babbles on, and Walt is dutifully impressed; but it is all the Kid can do to keep his hands to himself, and soon enough he flees the room with his Davy Crockett cards thinking,
Fuck,
that boy is cute all over.

Luke said, "He's twenty-nine years old, Tom. We can't tell him what to do any—"

"We never told him what to do. We gave him all the choices in the world."

"Which proves that kids outfox you whether you're strict or easygoing. They just have their ways."

"I resent us having to get up a fancy meal to bribe him home for—" "Tom, I cooked it, first off, and what you resent is playing host to Blue."

"Well, I was right about
him,
anyway. What kind of man calls himself a color?"

Luke, checking the oven, said, "If you push Blue away, you'll push Walt away. Welcome Blue and you welcome Walt." "What did you make? Is it his favorite?"

"It's stuffed cabbage and bow ties, which is one of his eight hundred favorites. He changed them by the month, if you were listening." "Golly, it's like we raised a kid."

"Besides," said Luke, "we've got a bonus on our side." He pointed to an envelope lying on the sideboard. "He got a letter from Danny today."

Dear Walt:

Danny wouldn't let me come with him to the hospital, he thinks I'm too
sensitive
! Ha, I'm much tougher than Danny. Anyway, I've been getting reports from his friends. Thank heaven for them, they really cheer him up, though it looks eerie with everyone but Danny wearing mouth masks. The nurses are mostly okay, except a few of them who treat Danny as if he was in prison for some terrible crime. He can't complain about them or even ask them to be more polite, though, because one of the other patients said then they don't come to see what's wrong if you buzz them at night. Even if the bed is wet and you're shivering.

But at least Danny has his visitors, and they bring strawberries and things. I guess he always knew that the main thing is to have fine friends, but times like this really make you know it.

The rest of the letter meandered into local gossip, as always, and there was not a word about Danny's condition, or what ailment had brought him to the hospital in the first place. Walt felt frustrated, especially at the closing paragraph:

I said maybe you should come out and see Danny, he likes you best of all. But Danny said he doesn't want you to see him like this. He was very fierce when he said it, so I know he means business.

Love, Claude

Luke had expected the letter to thrill Walt; instead, he spent the dinner now distracted, now morose, leaning his head to the side, ear to shoulder,

taking little interest in anything. So the dinner became a trio, Luke and Tom entertaining Blue; and that was strained as baby's prunes.

"Bad news from Danny, it seems," said Luke, closing the door as Walt and Blue departed.

"Tell me, are we going to have to go through this regularly? Because I can't take another minute of that Pride of the Ozarks noise he makes. Guy sounds like a fucking folk song or something."

"'The Ballad of Whitey Blue,'" Luke imagined, rendering it while he mimed the plucking of a banjo:

Goin' up by Jonesville,

Mountains mighty steep.

Wavin' at the purty belles,

Screwin' all the sheep.

Tom barked out a laugh and Luke put a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Walt is doing a phase. A year from now, you'll say 'blue' and all he'll think is 'sky.' Trust me."

Blue can be so dumb sometimes! Mason invites him to an intimate dinner, "so you can break in your new suit." It's a table for four, with two of Mason's oldest friends (both Stanford '66, like Mason)—and can't Blue see through this charade? Break in his suit? Oh, please. Isn't this a cautionary run-through for our Blue, a last-minute cram session in table manners, small talk, and how not to be too much larger than life?

Blue catches none of this. He thinks the event is just more of Mason, more relationship, a surer grounding in what is to be the source of Blue's revenue. He cannot hustle forever. He has heard of men like himself hooking up with men like Mason on such lucrative terms that they are more or less fixed for life, so this matters a lot to Blue. It has to work.

The evening goes well. Blue drinks Johnnie Walker Black with the other three—he's had scotch before—and evades mishap by ignoring the high-tech hors d'oeuvres. Yet he doesn't realize that he is under suspicion, utterly missing the highly pointed way in which the two guests ask after Blue's opinion on a host of subjects. He cannot divine the intentions of Mason's friend Sutter Morgan, who, during a discussion of the potential candidates in the 1988 presidential election, and favoring Baker over Bush, announces, "Everyone can be replaced," with his inflection and eyebrow raised in Blue's direction.

Indeed, all three men appear to aim their considerations at Blue in this moment, as if to ask, Are you going to pan out as Mason's protege, or will you fail the final cut?

What a relief to get home and out of the fancy duds to Walt and his piano playing!

"What do you want to hear?" asks Walt, as Blue settles on the couch.

Blue says, "I like everythin' you play me."

"No, you're supposed to be in the mood for a certain thing. Like, I'm so maxed out, nothing less than Chopin will do. Or, Shoot me some ragtime."

"Either a those."

"How about ragtime Chopin?"

"Sure, it's my favorite."

Walt pounds into the opening of the twelfth Etude, in C Minor,
Allegro confuoco,
suddenly ragging it when the harmony goes into the tonic and the melody leaps in. After a bit, he breaks off and joins Blue on the couch.

"What's wrong?" Blue asks, shifting his weight to make room and take hold of the boy.

"I want to sit with you and think how happy I am. What was that dinner like?"

"'S'okay."

"Does this guy have one of those old San Francisco mansions?"

"He does, certainly."

"Is it bigger than Tom and Luke's house?"

"A mite. 'S'more a matter a what's in it than how big."

"Statues? Marble? Mahogany built-ins? Old family retainers?"

"Guess so."

"What's this guy like? Is he cute?"

"Well, he's old-fashioned. Always dress-up. Makes these little bows, kinda. Handsome guy, good shape."

"What do you talk about?"

"He talks. I smile."

"You know what? You can be sure it's true love if you never run out of anything to say. Because lovers keep being interested in each other."

"My man Mason is not about love, now."

"I meant us."

Blue folds his arms behind his head, slowly nodding at the fascinated Walt. "Yeah, so you really like me, huh?"

"Yes, Blue."

* * *

"You're my first black woman," Alice told Fay.

"You're my first Asian," Fay replied, in the drolly lingering tongue of the South. "Wonder how you'll taste."

The women laugh as they undress. To Alice, it feels like mischief. To Fay, it feels dangerous, compelling but slippery. Alice is so relaxed that she unnerves you. How calmly, sweetly, she said, "I would love to do it with you." Fay is playing along with bravado, but she's nervous: about showing her body, about needing to be appreciated, about what happens to them after this one time.

Alice doesn't throw her clothes off. She finds a correct place for them, folds them, confident in her rosy-white beauty. She tells Fay, "I wish Evan could know about this. She'd think I'm cheating on her. She owns me, she thinks."

Fay, stepping out of her panties, says, "I wish you hadn't said that."

"I wonder why not."

Fay is immobile, uncomfortable in her own apartment. "It's just... Who wants to be an episode in the saga of Alice and Evan?"

Alice goes to her, laughing. "I couldn't mean it like that."

Fay says, "One, I think you could, and, two, am I supposed to compete with Evan?"

Alice tastes of Fay's nipples, left, then right, her head emphasizing the circular, closing-in-on-you motion, her eyes wide, rapt. Alice smiles at Fay.

Fay backs up a step or two. "No, I'm very unhappy about this," she announces.

"Maybe it's racial anxiety?"

"Maybe I don't get what you're up to!"

"Oh no, Fay, please," Alice tells her. "It was going so sweetly, too. I only want what you want."

Fay has retrieved her panties. She's thinking it over—no, she puts them on, and her hand touches her chin as she regards Alice. "I
wanted
to come a little closer," Fay says. "To you, I mean. But now it seems you want to make a point with me."

"No—"

"Yes!"

"I'm finished with Evan. Come now, didn't she throw me out of her life?"

"You're one of the kind who never says, The End. It's always—"

"Never, babe." Pulling at Fay now with a delicious touch, wheedling her with caresses and kisses. "It's now, with me, Fay. Please, Fay. Yes, Fay?"

Drawing Fay to the bed, waxing passionate to envelop her, but Fay retreats, says no, not that, which drives Alice wild. She explodes upon Fay's body, seeking her most tender parts to invade them, drive Fay out of her cool, or her fear, make her cry
yes!
"Heavenly quim," Alice murmurs, lapping away as Fay's legs, dangling on Alice's shoulders, stretch forth to assist. Fay is happy—Alice makes sure, asking, "Are you a happy girl, my Fay?" as she turns her over to finger-ass her. And now Fay is fearful again, wondering what Alice will find, what Alice will then know of her. Fay's fear makes Alice wetter than ever.

"You don't understand," Chris was telling David J. "Walt was this cannonballing little boy, all over the place, and we were in charge of him, because his parents were busy with golf and canasta. So now when he—"

"Christine, did you ever consider going lesbian?"

"One doesn't
go
lesbian any more than one goes Irish. Anyway, as I've told you a thousand times, I'm a gay man manqué. Right taste, wrong biology. I know what gay men know, so I wanted to... Do you really care about this?"

"Yes."

"I wanted to share their amazing romantic notions about sex. Like when they saw some great-looking guy and imagined how their life would change if only they could get close to him. I always knew about that and I wanted to be part of it. I did. I did, J." She smiled. "So now what?"