Like People in History (27 page)

Junior Obregon had dropped off the side of the bunk and come over to us. He was standing there staring as though Anatole were a celebrity.

I ignored Junior. "To answer your questions in their order of importance... First, the as yet unasked question," I said to Anatole. "The newscaster is cuter in person than on the tube. And shorter. And too butch to breathe."

"That's what Tucker thought," Anatole said. Then, to Junior, "You expecting an autograph?"

"No, I... we... You wouldn't happen to have a condom on you, would you? They took our wallets and we couldn't, you know, ask!"

Anatole looked from Junior to me with those hooded eyes of his and said, "Where do you
find
them? Do you
ad
vertise? Or
what?"

I introduced them. James joined us and attempted to explain how he usually didn't get sodomized, but the excitement of the demonstration and the protest and the banner and the arrest and the handcuffs, what with the built-in fantasy potential of being in a jail cell and all... until Anatole put up a hand to stop him and promised he'd try to locate a condom if the two of them went away right now and stayed away while he and I talked... if they could manage to contain themselves that long.

"Now what
is
all this?" Anatole asked me. "You were arrested on criminal trespass. It remains open to question whether or not your statements on TV were slanderous. They're certainly not going to endear you to the municipal government. Or make it easier for me to get the charges dropped."

"Is criminal trespass a felony?"

"Misdemeanor."

"Find a judge who hates the mayor and get him to drop the charges."

"Perhaps," Anatole said, probably knowing full well that was exactly what he intended to do and already lining up potential candidates. "The real question is: What are you doing, Rog? This awning leaping isn't like you. It's behavior I'd expect from Wally. Not you. Where is Wally, anyway?"

"He was at the demonstration. I lost him. That's why I did this," I said and went on to explain what had happened.

Halfway through my explanation, I could see Anatole's eyes begin to glaze over. He'd already heard more than enough.

"...so," I moved toward summation, "I joined them on the roof."

Anatole shook his head slowly. "Then I'm to take it this is an isolated incident and not early Alzheimer's or some manifestation of dementia?"

"Come on, Anny! It's politics! There was no self-aggrandizement in it."

"Maybe."

"We did it for all those poor queens dying out in the gutter. For all your yuppishness, that must mean something to you too."

"I said, maybe!" he said so strenuously he might as well have said no.

Now, I've known Anatole for close to a decade, and I know he can't be bullied. I also know that he carries some deep-seated resentment about being gay. Nothing personal or even psychological, mind you, and most of the time he'll deny it. It exists on a simple, practical level: Anatole believes that being gay has held him back, kept him from reaching his fullest social potential among the rich and powerful of this world. That, Anatole will be the first to admit, is all he ever really desired. He'll also admit that it's a silly, superficial desire, but desires being what they are, that makes no difference at all. Anatole's belief is, of course, true: his gayness
has
held him back. What he hasn't recognized is that it's also protected him from getting too close to that great source of American decadence and—worse—dullness: the upper crust. To Anatole, however, it's all particularly irritating, in that he sees being gay as the only thing holding him back, when in fact being Jewish with a made-up last name is at least as crucial a factor. However; as a result, at times—one can never predict exactly when—Anatole's resentment will suddenly settle in deeply and he'll take on some case,
pro bono
or not, almost invariably against someone in power or position who's been recently weakened. And Anatole will attack—with great strength and accuracy and persistence, until his opponent is left eviscerated on the sidewalk. It was this very potential in Anatole I was now counting on.

"Anyway," I asked, "when's the last time you had to bail me out?"

"You've made your point."

"You
can
bail me out, can't you?" I asked.

"It'll take an hour or two."

"Good. Because I've got to get out tonight."

Anatole looked suspicious.

"I'm not going back to the demonstration. Cross my scrotum and hope to get crotch rot if I'm lying. What time is it?" I checked my $29.95 Radio Shack black rubber special against Anatole's thousand-dollar diamond-studded Tourneau Special. "After midnight. The demonstration'll be over in a half hour."

"So what's the hurry?" Anatole asked.

"It's nothing."

"Ro-ger!" Anatole suddenly sounded like my Great Aunt Lillian.

"Okay, okay! It's my cousin, Alistair. You remember him?"

Anatole remembered. In fact the way he looked made me suddenly wonder if I were on shaky ground. "Did you guys have a thing?" It was unlikely that I'd not know about it. Or was it?

"Not a 'thing.' Anyway it was a century ago. What about Alistair?"

Now I really wondered. Should I tell Anatole? Maybe not. He was already pondering how flaky I'd become.

"It's his birthday tonight. A big party. I promised I'd go."

Anatole relaxed. "I'll see what I can do."

He stood up, tucked in his shirt, and picked up his attaché case. "What about them?" referring to James and Junior, still madly necking.

"They'll be okay."

As Anatole knocked on the door to be let out, Junior reminded him to get the condom.

They went back to their necking, and I went back to trying to get the TV to work, then settled for the sound from MTV, which I turned on low. The lights suddenly dimmed, although they didn't go out completely.

I lay back on the sofa and pondered: when did Anatole and Alistair have an affair? They did have one: that was obvious now. But it had to have been before Tucker arrived on the scene.

Let me think. It must have been... By 1976 I was back here in New York, working at the magazine. Could they have met that summer at the Pines? No, Alistair was still in Europe with Doriot. Yet it had to have been earlier than '79, because after then it was years before Alistair and I spoke again. When had I first met Anatole? Fall of '78! Up at the Cape! Of course! Alistair had left his wife in Italy and had visited there briefly at the time and...

"Bake, broil, or boil?" Patrick asked.

"Why ask me?" I asked, helping to chop the crudités.

"You're the seafood maven," Luis explained.

"Give me a break!" I said, and moved along the counter to reach for more ice cubes. Patrick's Bloody Marys were superb, but strong. We didn't have too far to drive to get home from here later tonight, but the night was still young, and Truro can get totally fogged in mid-September; I didn't trust the others behind the wheel trying to locate the place we'd rented.

"Lu said you were into biology," Patrick said.

"I know something about animals. Biology sounds... well, like paramecia and all that."

"Animals then. So you'd know which way kills the lobsters fastest. With the least pain and thus the least release of bad chemicals."

"Lobsters don't have brains," I explained. "They have four clumps of neural retia. Here, here and... along this axis." I illustrated with the knife point on the cutting board, then saw Patrick and Luis's nearly blank looks in response and tried again. "Have they been in the freezer?"

"Four hours."

"Boil 'em!"

"Don't they kick against the sides of the pot and scream in high-pitched voices?" Patrick asked.

"Sometimes. It may be a reflex. You did ask for the quickest way."

Patrick opened the freezer compartment and poked at the bags filled with several unmoving four-pound crustaceans. He chomped down hard on a carrot stick and did his best Bogie imitation: "You're gonna take the fall, angel!"

Luis pulled me halfway out of the huge kitchen, to where Patrick couldn't hear us. A little stairway rose from this side deck to the wraparound deck. Unlike up there, from here the sunset view was at best sketchy.

"Well? What do you think?" Luis asked.

"As I said before, freeze 'em and boil 'em!"

He slapped my face lightly. "Queen! I meant about Patrick!"

"He's divinity fudge."

"You're just saying that to be nice."

"Okay! He's Quasimodo in a Speedo. Happy now?"

"What do you really think?" Luis insisted.

"Luis,„ puss, I'm sunned out, I'm fucked out, I'm grassed out, I'm Bloody-Mary-ed out. Truth is, I'm far too fagged out to be able to evaluate anyone!" But since Luis was unhappy with this, I added, "I think he's handsome and nice and smart."

"That's all I wanted to hear."

"Sis-ters!" I moaned.

"Speaking of which," Luis said, "I just heard from our very own Sister of the Eternal Suntan. A long, detailed, and extremely dishy letter."

"From Miss Ritchie? No! I want to read it too."

"Later. It's all about getting down in the Jaguar Bookshop and Mike Muletta's weekend parties on the Embarcadero. Those West Coast girls are getting it together, you know."

"About time. The last time I was there—"

"Yes?" Luis interrupted me to speak in a semiprofessional tone of

voice as he simultaneously moved aside to allow two guests to pass down the stairs and toward the kitchen. "Need a refill, kids?"

One held up his glass. "I'll marry whoever's making those Bloody Marys!"

"Too late, Roy-Jean," Luis beamed. "He's already taken! Tell you what, though, why not go back up to the deck and I'll try to convince him to make another pitcher."

Patrick was happy to oblige, and I was handed a freshly made pitcherful and appointed Aquarius.

The other guests were gathered on the main deck that opened off the cathedral-ceilinged second-story living room and went three-quarters around the house—perhaps the best and most extensive view of all among the scattered, expensive, jeu d'esprit houses in what we referred to as "Corn Hole (actually Corn Hill) Estates," one of the Upper Cape's posher neighborhoods. I looked for and located Matt on the side of the deck that gives a phenomenal vista of P-Town. He'd brought the token straight couple from Wellfleet there and was talking to them (leave it to him!) with that intensity of interest he sometimes had that made you feel you were the last human on earth.

Lest I embarrass him with my continued naked need for affection, I merely lifted the pitcher so they'd see it, then put it down on a table and turned in the other direction to watch the sun developing a fat red bottom as it descended into the enormous orange-speckled silver of Cape Cod Bay. Everything seemed to conspire to an absolute stillness and silence. Equally sudden a peroration of chatter from a local mockingbird broke the silence. I sighed for so much beauty.

"Shall we ever eat?" a voice next to me asked.

Alistair, leaning next to me over the terrace's little fence. He'd been at the beach all afternoon, long after Matt and I had left, somewhere out of sight, and, we'd assumed, up to no good. Now he looked splendidly healthy, with a casual splatter of fresh red-tan across forehead, cheeks, and nose, and pale streaks in his long dark-blond hair from where the sun had encountered his lemon-juice rinse.

"Crudités and aioli are coming," I announced, filling his glass.

"I've had crudités and aioli up to here!" He accepted the scarlet liquid, however, and sipped at it. "This is good! Well, what do you think?" "Boiled. Even if they do scream!"

Alistair turned to me, puzzled. Then, "The lobsters! Of course they should be boiled!"

I leaned over the terrace and shouted down—"Luis! Patrick! It's settled! Boiled!"

"Only Brazilians know how to broil them properly," Alistair said.

"You are the cleverest thing. No matter how arcane I get, you still understand me."

"If after all this time I didn't, who the hell would? But no, dear, I didn't mean the lobsters. I meant what do you think about the manflesh upon the terrace here? Aside from your own totally scrumptious pussikins and the straight man who is off-limits and thus automatically intriguing, the question is: whom shall I have as an after-dinner mint?"

"I thought you got laid on the beach today," I said, not bothering to ask the even more obvious question,

"You know how it is: sometimes it just whets the appetite for more."

I turned with him to inspect the other six on the deck. "Domingo, the Cuban, has skin like silk, and he can't get fucked enough."

"Hmmmn!" Alistair purred. Then: "What do you know about the gaunt but athletic-looking one in the hot pink jams?"

"That's Nils Adlersson, the novelist. Brilliant but erratic writer. Don't know shit about his sex life."

"What do they say at the magazine?"

"Seems our much hated editor in chief is hopelessly in love with Nils, so not an iota of dish has been able to freely circulate. It's unnatural!"