Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (23 page)

“I
do
go, to kindergarten!”

“Kindergarten isn’t school,” retorted Monica, with withering scorn. “Kindergarten is nothing but napping and snacks.” She’ll make a great Lady Bracknell in fifty years.

“Now,” Cosgrove continued, “Alfie’s mother warned him, ‘Don’t
ever
go near the den of the Candymouse.’ ”

“He’s in the
den?”
echoed Alfie, with wonder.

“It’s not like our den,” Monica explained. “It’s his lair.”

“I watch
X-Men
in the den.”

“But there can be no TV in the Candymouse’s den,” said Cosgrove. “Instead, we see a table piled to the grim with candy of every kind, and cookies of such sweet liberation, yes, and every sort of caramel cream and Lady Gucci.”

“Godiva,” Dennis Savage corrected, in a mild manner.

“You can smell the Candymouse’s candy horde for miles around. But if that’s not enough to draw you in, the Candymouse whistles for you. And once you hear his whistle—”

“What is he like?” asked Alfie.

“Oh, you don’t want to know the Candymouse.”

“I’m staying home that day.”

“But this was the day when Alfie had to pass the Candymouse’s den. And Alfie
tried
to be good. But the Candymouse whistled at Alfie, and who can resist?”

Monica gave a sniff of disbelief, and Dennis Savage told her, “Fairy tales are for everyone, Monica.”

“It’s so made up,” she complained.

“All fairy tales are. And they’re all true.”

Monica, who had long since picked up on (and sternly approved of) Dennis Savage’s opposition to Cosgrove, gave her uncle a funny look, even as the storyteller had pressed on:

“Alfie heard the whistle, and he couldn’t help but peep into the Candymouse’s den. There he saw the treasure trove of candy, so beautiful and tasty. He thought he might grab an exquisite shell candy and slip away. But then he saw a lollipop squirrel and Almond Joy dolls and the most dainty little rim candies, and Alfie began to feast and feast at the Candymouse’s table.

“Suddenly, as he was biting the head off a chocolate milkmaid, he sensed something behind him. Alfie turned. And there was the Candymouse.”

“That’s when I left,” said Alfie.

“But Alfie’s
couldn’t
leave, for the Candymouse had put a spell on him.” Here Cosgrove went into a raspy, gnarly Candymouse voice: “ ‘You ate my candy, little one, and now you must pay the bill!’ ”

“I didn’t eat anything,” Alfie cried.

“ ‘You will go down the trapdoor to the Zookoo’s kitchen and be cooked into delicious candy morsels, like so many children before you. That chocolate milkmaid was Lisa Brownstein of New Rochelle. She blundered into my den, too, and she ended up in the Zookoo’s kitchen.’ ”

“Insipid,” said Monica scornfully, bemusing Dennis Savage
and catching Cosgrove, who was ignorant of her meaning, off guard.

“Monica’s awfully advanced for nine,” I ventured, and Dennis Savage preened with “It’s quite genetic, they say.”

“I want more story,” said Alfie.

“So,” Cosgrove went on, “the Candymouse moved closer and closer as Alfie backed away. How could he escape?”

“He calls for his T-Rex!”

“No. He grabbed the edge of the table and said, ‘Candymouse, I will throw this table over and destroy all your lovely candy if you don’t let me go!’ The Candymouse hopped up and down in fury. But even
he
had to admit that there
was
one way out of his den.
One way only
. [The rasping again:] ‘You must give up candy
forever
! One lick and you will instantly become a prisoner of the Candymouse!’ ”

“That does it,” said Alfie. “I’m staying.”

“In the
Candymouse’s den?”

“I’m not giving up M&M’s. And what about Halloween?”

“This
is the
most
completely
stupid
story I have
ever
heard,” Monica declared, with an emphasis that, lest one dare offend one’s readers with a failure of verisimilitude, would have to be characterized as “titanic.”

“You must forever give up candy,” Cosgrove insisted. “Or there’s no escape from the Zookoo’s kitchen.”

“I
won’t
!”

“Alfie,” said Monica, “it’s
just
some dumb
story
!”

“Uncle Cosgrove, please don’t make me give up—”

“What did I just hear?” said Dennis Savage, apparently coming out of a trance. “Uncle
what?”

His expression betokened the destabilizing terror of haircut jokes, so I hustled us all off to the Park for a carousel ride.

“Where’s Virgil, anyway?” I asked Dennis Savage as we started off.

He shrugged.

“I thought you were always—”

“We always used to be. Checking in, you mean. ‘I’m off to the store.’ ‘I’ll be back in two shakes.’ Yes. Yes, we were.”

We walked a bit, i nevodi, ahead of us, dancing in and out of the great New York street crowd.

“Yes, we were,” he repeated, at Madison and Fifty-eighth. “Lately he’s become kind of independent.”

All right, now comes the middle; and I’ll get right to it. This is a few days later, the last afternoon before i nevodi were to return to Toronto, and I came into the apartment to find a strange man sitting on the couch. He rose expectantly as Cosgrove, doing the dishes in the kitchen, called out, “This guy’s a friend of Peter Keene’s. He said it was important, so could he wait for you.”

The man didn’t look like a friend of Peter Keene’s. He looked like a construction worker fresh from the site, and of course then I suddenly realized who it was.

Konstantin.

“Cosgrove,” I said, “why don’t you go upstairs and see what Alfie’s up to?”

He came out of the kitchen drying his hands. “Can I take the Risk? I want to teach Alfie how to play.”

“He’s too young for Risk, but anything, anything.”

I turned to our guest as Cosgrove went into the bedroom. “Tak vi Konstantin,” I said, offering my hand. You must be Konstantin.

As we shook, he said, “No vi nye govoritye pa-russki?” You speak Russian?

“Ya izuchal Russki yazik v shkolye i v univyersityetye.” I took it in school.

Actually, I was only being hostly. My Russian is decrepit these days; besides, I was curious to hear the charmingly lame English that Peter had so often described to me.

“Okay, folks, I’m on my way,” Cosgrove called out, heading for the door with the game under his arm.

“A kto on?” Konstantin asked as Cosgrove vanished. Who is he?

How does one explain who Cosgrove is?

“You know,” I said, “we’d better speak English, because my Russian is . . . Please sit down. Did Cosgrove offer you . . .”

“He give this,” said Konstantin, pointing out an open Beck’s dark.

“Khorasho.” Fine.

It was interesting seeing him up close for once. Some men are arresting only at a distance, but Konstantin’s smart eyes and melting mouth gave him presence; and, too, there was that odd feeling you get when socializing in clothes with someone who is possibly unaware that you’ve seen him half-naked. You note the pec line in his T-shirt, rising and falling with his breathing, and you think, I know about that.

“Why I visit is, wanting to talk you,” Konstantin said, by way of plunging in. “Pityer say you know about this secret thing. He take me before this building, say his friends live here and know. Is whole life for us. Like in Ukraina, Gruziya. Each these place has life different from our great always Russian life. Under the life you see is
other life
, you know?”

I nodded.

“Pityer say, of my family, would I. . .” A gesture of negation.

“Ostavlyat?” Abandon.

“Da. Ostavlyat syemyu.” Abandon my family.

“He asked you to leave your—”

“Not to do it. Only, do I think of it? This, never.
Never
this.” He touched my wrist, asking, “Is permitted? To show pictures? Here is Alyosha i Masha.”

“Konyechna.” Of course.

His kids were really cute, the boy a feisty four-year-old in a baseball uniform and the girl just walking at a year and a half.

“Here is at wedding,” he went on, with more pictures, “perhaps of cousin Syeryozha. Who would go away from loving children, such these? Each day, when I come home, they run up to
touch, they hold on so close. They say, ‘Oi, I miss you all day till now, Batyushka.’ So perfect in love, these children, and I would go? How is it to ask this question?”

I was thinking,
This
is a father? This bundle of tender considerations, barely old enough to drive a car? He’s heavy in the chest and tight in the waist and his kids are so lucky.

“You are not pleased I come here? Nye kulturni?” Crass of me?

“No, it’s fine,” I said, reassuring him with a pat on my favorite hunk terrain, the shoulder caps. “But I feel you want to learn something from me. Something specific.”

“Yes. Pityer say how . . . certain people in U.S.A. [which he pronounced as “Oo Ess Ah”] live free. No fake . . . fooling others. No fear of . . . nasyedki?”

I didn’t know the word.

“They report on you to authorities,” he said.

“Shpioni?” Spies?

“Less than spies, but also everywhere. Going around with tales. No one was safe, that was Russia. Now is Oo Ess Ah, old style no more. Svoboda!” Freedom! “But what is, freedom? Pityer say you, what we do? He say me you know this. Pityer and I, together, alone, safe from nasyedki, in bed?” He was blushing. “He say you?”

I nodded.

“What you think of this, that I permit?”

“If you like it,” I offered, “you do it. If you don’t like it, you don’t do it.”

“Oh, yes? But
why
I like? How I answer when Alyosha ask, ‘Batyushka, what you do with this man that I do not see? Why you need this?’ ”

He was looking at me, hard, beseechingly.

“Pityer say you are smart, you know the answers.”

“I only know the questions, actually.”

“All men do this? Moi father,
he
did?
Your?”

“Some do, some don’t.”

“You not help me. Please. To . . . explain it?”

“Konstantin . . . kak vas pa batyushkye?” What’s your father’s name?

“Ilya.”

“Konstantin Ilyitch,” I said, going into the formal Russian address, “nobody knows how sex works. The laws of culture”—I shot that into Russian as best I could—“confuse us all. Some
must
have it. Some think they might try it. Some hope they don’t need it, the ridiculous fools. Because all of them desperately want it.”

“To want it
into
you? To be down-face, ya khachu, you put it to me all full?
Why
I want this?” He seemed bewildered, pleading, accepting of his actions but not of his motivations. “Why a man wants this?”

“You tell me.”

“I
would tell? Does a woman tell? My, wife, these many times? She so enjoy to be . . . you know? Not from behind, as with Pityer and me. Is regular way, as in marriage always of man and woman. From behind would hurt her, I
never
would. So, we are loving, and she say—
says
—’Oh, my Stizha, when you do this! Yes, yes!’ With cries out of happiness. I think, what this? Why it so pleases? How would this feel to Konstantin? Then Pityer . . . he
says
, just to try it, why not? I permit him, like woman. Am I ashamed, you ask? How can I help? Do I not also want love, someone to do such yes, yes! to
me
?”

“In the future,” I said, “everyone will be fucked for fifteen minutes.”

“I should feel shame to say this to you.”

“But you don’t.”

He shook his head with a mildly apologetic smile.

“Well, there’s no shame in it. But Peter told me you won’t let him use a rubber.”

“Shto eta?” What’s that?

I explained the condom thing, and he reacted as if I’d suggested leaving the windows open in fourteenth-century Florence during the plague.

“This crazy American . . .
mashini?”

“It isn’t crazy. It is protection from a terrifying disease that you might call down not only upon yourself but upon this family that you love so much.”

I was speaking slowly and he was staring at my mouth as one who is deaf and needs visual aid.

“Anyway,” I went on, “do you really think you can balance this ‘other’ life with your family? You can’t—and you know why? You’re too good-looking to take a sample here and a sample there. Everywhere you turn will be a Peter Keene signaling to you. You will be
widely
wanted, do you understand me? It is hard enough to turn down opportunity when you are closeted, but once you start saying yes, you’ll never stop. You know why? Because it’s so good. It’s not just playful temptation; it is life itself. What do you fear most?”

“What this means?” he asked, startled.

“Shto vy boityes bolshe vsyevo?”