Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (38 page)

Cosgrove, next to the magazine woman, was in his element. “You know the Limelight story, of course,” he said. “The Night of the Big-Hung Contest?”

“Tell me
everything,”
she breathed out, conspiratorially.

I was stuck with the academic, but at least he quoted Byron more than himself. He was working on translating
Don Juan
into Toscano, which boggled the mind—isn’t
Don Juan
the most untranslatable of works because it uses language to summon up a culture yet at the same time uses that culture to summon up the entire world?

So the academic and I had quite a nice chat about all of that. And the food was great, and the wine was tangy, and the feelings were warm. But I did notice a sense of challenge and defiance from Zuleto and Candio, the one’s more relentless
no
calling up the other’s now more organized and determined
yes
.

This was not good. I saw Zuleto leaning across the table, pointing and certain. I saw Candio looking less bemused than offended. There were ructions. At times, the aunts, uncles, and cousins got into the debate. “Sta tedesca!” some were saying. That German girl! Again and again, tempers would flare
almost
to the danger zone, someone would cajole and soothe, and then it would start anew.

Meanwhile, I would hear Cosgrove saying, “They called Sly’s name, and of course he was kissing up his harem to get ready,” and “So then he dropped his pants . . .” Also meanwhile, the academic was fluting out his Byron, complete with spoken footnotes such as “But be warned, this particular usage went decadent in the sixteenth century in all regions north of Cremona and was almost entirely suppressed in the Veneto at that singular time.”

I was woozy on wine and not entirely clear on the next order of events. I remember Candio and his father in a shouting match. They were standing. Others were standing, too, I think. Candio was stalking out, and someone was . . . You know? Fights. All I remember is Cosgrove telling the magazine woman, “Then they
learned that Arnold was there, and the crowd went
absolutely wild.”

“Do you want a job with our publication?” the woman asked him. “We pay well for this information.”

“I make most of mine up.”

“Then we pay better.”

After that shambles of a banquet, Cosgrove and I enjoyed a quiet day, climaxed by a rematch of the race. I won again. This time I got him a miniature pizza for the post-Olympics snack.

That night we went to la Fenice, Venice’s historic opera house. Cosgrove has been to the Met a few times, but never to anything like this “little jewel,” famously known, until arsonists took it out in 1995, as the most beautiful theatre in the world.

Mingling with the jazzy crowd in his beloved suit, Cosgrove felt like Gene Kelly in the title number of
Singin’ in the Rain:
truly carefree. At one point, someone said something to him that he couldn’t catch, and Cos simply nodded and replied, “Figurarse,” the Venetian “nichevo.”

The opera was Puccini’s
Manon Lescaut
, in which young love is destroyed by an old man’s jealousy. The audience sided almost from the start with the tenor, wooden but very full-voiced, though the soprano was, if shrill, very personable. American audiences are good sports, splitting the difference between the best and worst and clapping for all; Italian audiences play favorites.

“That lady was nice” was Cosgrove’s review of Act One. She may have reminded him of Dianne Wiest, his favorite movie star, because—I believe—he wants the mother in
Edward Scissorhands
to have been his mother. Too late now.

Anyway, we all trooped outside for the first intermission and had pizza at the taverna. Some years ago, my brother Andrew was almost burned to death in this place, a story Cosgrove never tires of hearing. I’m his Scheherazade, maybe; could that be the secret of our success?

Manon Lescaut
, Act Two: Cosgrove is getting involved. There is a moment when the old guy’s denunciation of the heroine to the
police hangs in balance. She could run—but she is paralyzed by the luxury she must, yet cannot, abandon.

“The geezer’s coming!” Cosgrove called out. Nobody noticed; there’s a lot of commentary from an Italian audience during opera performances, so no one minded. Still, she
was
diddling around, losing escape time while singing.

“Move it!” Cosgrove cried.

She didn’t, the geezer led the police in, and the rest was torment and death.

Cosgrove couldn’t stop talking about it. “Why didn’t they run when they could?” he asked, back in our pensione. “Everything you get from old guys is bad news, right? It’s about control.”

“Depends on the old guy, maybe.”

Then Cosgrove went into my favorite of his expressions, bespeaking contentment, confidence, and anticipation. “Thank you for this trip,” he said.

The phone rang. It was Zuleto. Urgent, we must talk.

“Hold the fort,” I told Cosgrove, who had stretched out on the bed to page through
Oggi
magazine. “I’ll be back in time for the climax.”

I found Zuleto, as agreed, on the Zattere end of our old street, anxiously pacing. “Miseria,” he said. “What can I? Is there no justice for fathers?”

“Well,
what?”

“But no. To behave so, whining on the street like some immigrant from the south. Come!”

We had to walk some to find a place open that late, and, like all Italians, Zuleto would not begin his lamento until we’d settled ourselves at a table. It’s called Being Civilized.

“That son of mine!” I heard at last. “Ungrateful! Arrogant! Good for nothing! I finally told him that no one living in my house will sing an antiphon with una de ste tedesche. It’s so simple—he will move out tonight or he will give up sto sono annoiato.” This irritating dream.

I said, “I love you only as long as you do what I want?”

“Ma che?”

“I do not accept you if you defy my taboos?”

“Dai!”

“Live within my rules or I kill you?”

“Then so
what
is that which you say?” he cried, in utter bewilderment.

I was thinking, Tell him? Don’t tell him?

Tell him
. “All my life,” I said, “I have been sexually attracted to men. Teachers. Counselors at summer camp. You. And another eight or nine hundred thousand, many of whose names are unknown to me.”

He got this look on his face: the weary guy getting wearier. “Bravo mio, can we do this some other time, when my life is not falling apart?”

“I have to be honest with you.”

“My life is turning into an opera, and you want
honesty?”
Reaching across the table, he grabbed me at the sides of my head and planted one on my mouth, deep, long, and angry. “Cussì for your honesty!” he spat out. “Now can I have your help?”

After a bit, as suavely as possible, I said, “Okay, you’re not shocked.”

“Tell me
what do I do with my son!”

“Nothing.”

“Benone!”
he replied, utterly exasperated.

“Calm down and listen. Remember the Three Rules of the Happy Life. One: Always check the mirror before going out, even if you’re only off to the kiosk for a paper.”

“Sì, sì,” impatiently.

“Two: Go on a white diet
at least once a year, whether you need to or not.”

“Bene, mi so.” I know that.

“Three: Never do anything irrevocable, unless you’re
absolutely sure you want it over.”

“Why to speak of ‘over’?” he asked me, suddenly saddened, almost tearful. “Why must I know this?”

“Your kiss packs a wallop. Your life force is overwhelming. Europe was invented in this country. Rome was a metropolis when the French were making mystic passes at oak trees and Austrians made Wiener Schnitzel by locking a calf in a barn and burning down the barn. Be magnificent in your power: Give it up. If you’re right, he’ll learn the hard way, soon enough. If you’re wrong, he’ll be happy. You want him happy, right?”

Head in his hands, he more or less nodded.

“It could have been worse,” I said. “She might have been from Chioza. Imagine the in-laws.”

“Aráf!” he cried.

“Let’s go back.”

“I am not happy,” he announced, as we walked along the Zattere. “It is not resolved. You say, it is so. I do not feel that it is so.”

We had reached Zuleto’s street, and he suddenly pulled me back into the shadows.

“It’s those two,” he whispered. “Why must they always be out in the road at night, like robbers?”

I stealthily leaned out to see: It was indeed Candio and his tedesca, gamboling about, laughing, shushing each other, and wrestling the way kids do when they’re drunk on the genuinely guiltless high of youth at its freest and most beautiful.

Hey, do you remember that? Your First Symphony?

La tedesca was not the hard-faced taker whom Zuleto had described but a spirited little doll, stacked and ready, a fresh breeze from the north. Of course Candio was wild for her.

“She’s lovely,” I whispered.

“No, that is her mask,” Zuleto assured me sotto voce. “Then comes the stiletto.”

He leaned out to have another look, then jumped back against
the wall, flattening me along with him, for the two were right at the end of the street, at the drinking fountain. (Not to worry—it’s not canal water, but pure stuff, piped in from the mountains.) Pranking around, Candio pulled a long and bizarrely thin black comb out of his pocket, stuck his head under the stream of water for a while, then parted his dark hair way to one side and held the comb above his upper lip.

“Now he’s Hitler!” la tedesca cried, in English, collapsing in giggles.

“I am your Führer,” Candio told her, mildly enough and also in English. “You must undergo my orders.”

“But I am the Resistance,” she answered, gently taking the comb from him.

“There is none,” he said, all eyes and holding on; oh, I know how those Italian guys hold on, and you know. It’s in the gay file, this knowledge. Then comes the kiss, and caresses. I had seldom seen so exalted a delineation of what the term “feeling her up” means since . . . well, since that day, long before, when I saw his father and that girl in the garden. When I saw what yes wants when a boy is straight. It’s just yes and total, desire in its truest sense, unstoppable because the white goo is life to all the generations.

The two eventually took themselves off up the street, and I told Zuleto, “Now you saw and now you know. Can you fight that? You had other plans, okay. But now these two are very yes and you must give your plans up. This is not about
your
hard-on. This is about
his
hard-on. (My Venetian went a little sketchy here, but Zuleto got the point.)

“I am not happy,” Zuleto told me, thoroughly deflated. He shook his head and repeated the sentence. “He jokes about Nazis.”

“Do we have to keep on hiding behind the corner? I think they’re gone.”

Zuleto peeled himself off the wall, still shaking his head.

“But you’re not shocked at my revelation,” I said. “Omosessuale, frocio, gay . . . That’s something, anyway.”

Mourning his lost authority, Zuleto sent me that Italian gesture
of the fingers bunched together and banging on the chest: Will you
please?

“Okay, okay,” I said. But I learned something, didn’t I? The best time to come out to someone is when his life is falling apart.

The next day was our last full one in Venice, and Cosgrove challenged me to a second rematch, this time from the station to Castello, the precise reverse of the classic course.

“It’s only sporting,” he explained. “This way, we’ll both be new to it, instead of just me.”

“Fine,” I said.

But Candio called and invited us to a motorboat tour to, and lunch at, Torcello, a famed near—ghost town in a silted-up corner of the lagoon. “I would like you to meet my sweetheart,” Candio added. “She is called Brenda and is always more pleased to meet Americans and learn the slang.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“My wonderful father of course does not want to come. Maybe this is grouching day. But I am charging this most expensive lunch at Cipriani to the business, so he pays for it, anyway.”