The Lord Won't Mind (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (6 page)

“Fishing,” C. B. chided him.

“I’ll say,” Peter joined in unabashedly. “He knows perfectly well he’s the best-looking guy any of us know.”

“Ah, there’s a young man with discernment. He is, isn’t he? Now I suppose I’ll have to withdraw my question.” She returned to her bar and resumed the preparation of drinks.

“No, I can see a resemblance,” he continued with enthusiasm. His eyes sparkled at Charlie behind C. B.’s back. “All my family says you were the most attractive girl ever to come out of Alabama.”

“You’re a perfect dear. Here, my dearest, give this to Peter.” Charlie took glasses from her. Peter’s fingers caressed his as he handed him one. He acknowledged it, looking into dancing eyes, even though he knew he shouldn’t encourage this sort of public play. C. B. went on, “Conventional good looks are meaningless without magnetism. That’s what makes you two so irresistible.”

“Charlie certainly is. Everything you said about him is true.”

Charlie flushed. He was stunned by Peter’s outspokeness, but apparently he and C. B. understood each other. She was beaming when she brought a drink and sat with them. “I knew you’d appreciate him. Did he introduce you to all his friends at the club?”

“No,” Charlie interjected, glad for a change of subject. “We got to talking upstairs, and then I drove him all around and there really wasn’t much time for the club.”

“They have a treat in store for them. You must have some tennis tomorrow. Didn’t somebody tell me you were good at it?”

“Prety good,” Peter admitted. “But I’ll bet Charlie’s a champion. He looks as if he would be.”

“He’s very good at everything he does.”

“The champion.” A sudden gust of laughter burst from him. It was contagious, and C. B. joined in. After a breathless moment, Charlie did too.

When Henry announced dinner, they all rose and C. B. moved in between them and took their arms. “I was going to say the Three Musketeers,” she said as they proceeded to the dining room. “But I suppose I’d have to be Porthos, and I’d really rather not.”

Their talk ranged over a variety of subjects under C. B.’s guidance. They laughed a lot. Afterwards, once more on the veranda, Peter grew increasingly silent and withdrawn. Charlie tried to catch his eye repeatedly, but he avoided the contact. He wondered if he could have said anything to upset him. His longing to be alone with him made an agony of the necessity of sustaining the conversation with C. B. At last, she rose.

“I must drag myself away. I’ve loved every minute of it. Thank God for the young. They keep the rest of us alive. I suppose I should stir myself and have some people in, but give me time. I’m selfish. I want you both all to myself at the beginning.”

Charlie stood immediately, and Peter followed suit. “We might as well all go up,” Charlie said. “Peter’s had a long day.”

Once more, they traversed the lower floor and mounted the stairs together. At the first landing, C. B. kissed them both and walked briskly off down the hall. They continued up the stairs. Peter took the last few steps at a run and, when Charlie reached the top, seized him and covered his face with kisses: eyes, cheeks, forehead, mouth. His arms tightened around Charlie’s neck and he held him in a tight embrace.

“It’s been so horrible,” he breathed into his ear. “Not being able to touch you. Not even being able to look at you the way I wanted to. I don’t see how I’m going to stand it.”

“Did you feel it, too?” Charlie gripped his waist. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“Oh no, no. God, no. Never.” Peter’s mouth fluttered over Charlie’s face again.

“You were going great guns at the beginning. I wouldn’t have known what to do if C. B. had been saying those things to me about you.”

“Oh, that was easy. I was just saying the truth.”

“Make sure you don’t ever say too much of the truth. I guess we’ll get used to it.”

“There’s something else I’ve got to say.” He lowered his head and rested his forehead against Charlie’s shoulder. “Now. I must. I’m—I don’t know what you’re going to think, but I can’t help it.” His voice had dropped so low that the sound of his mouth forming the words was louder than the words themselves. “I’m—I’m in love with you. I didn’t know it could happen with two guys, but it has. There’s no doubt about it, no matter what you say. I’m just—completely madly in love with you.”

Charlie had been through this with others and it had always intensely embarrassed him, but now he found that the declaration made his heart sing. He circled Peter’s waist with his arms and held him closer. “What if I’m in love with you too? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Peter lifted his head. The light rising from the stairwell shadowed it with anguished beauty. “Isn’t there? Doesn’t it prove what I said—that I’m a fairy or a queer or whatever they call it?”

“Stop saying that,” Charlie replied savagely, but remembered to keep his voice down. “We’re friends, aren’t we? It’s perfectly natural.” He was sure there was a distinction to be made. The Greeks had made it. They recognized the passionate love that occurred between men as opposed to the serious everyday love of man and wife, based on childbearing and so forth. He lifted Peter’s chin and cupped it in his hands and said more gently, “Go get ready for bed and stop being silly. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“What about the clothes?”

“Keep them. C. B. knows I’ve given them to you. Go on.” He gave Peter a little push and turned toward his room. He took off his clothes and hung them up as usual, refusing to give way to the joy that surged in him, that urged him to fling everything at the ceiling. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and anointed himself with cologne. He gathered together towels and the tube of lubricant and was just coming out when he heard light footsteps and Peter appeared in the door. He was wearing striped cotton pajamas from which arms and legs protruded by a foot or more. Charlie threw his head back and laughed. This was the way he wantd it to be—silly and fun and relaxed. “What are you supposed to be dressed up for?” he demanded and laughed some more.

“Well, I—”

“You better take a quick look at me. This is the way you’ve been wanting to see me, thanks to that sexy costume.”

Peter took a step forward and stared. “It’s amazing,” he said. “Nobody would believe it can get so big. Talk about sexy. It looks so damn powerful, even like that. The champion.”

“All right now. Take those things off. Not here. We might forget them. I don’t want anybody to find them in here.”

Peter left obediently and Charlie completed his preparations, placing everything within easy reach. In a moment Peter returned naked, holding his hands in front of himself as a clumsy and inadequate screen. Charlie pulled them away.

“You’re beautiful, baby. Can’t you understand that? Stop hiding yourself. You like to look at me, don’t you?”

“God, yes.”

“Well, then, what’s wrong with my liking to look at you?”

Peter gave his head a little shake, his eyes wide and wondering. “I just can’t believe that any of this is the same for you as it is for me.”

Charlie took a step toward him, he slid his arms around him and pulled him close, and their mouths opened to each other. Charlie backed him up and they fell onto the bed on top of each other, grappling with each other, arms and legs intertwined, hands clinging and exploring, moaning and crying out and shouting with laughter in an exultant prelude to union.

After the first tumult of their lovemaking, when Charlie had washed, they lay side by side flat on their backs, their heads touching, their hair tangled together on the pillow. After a while, they talked.

“Do you understand now, baby?” Charlie asked. “It’s the same for both of us.”

“I guess I’m beginning to believe it. Anyway, I know what I’m going to do. I’ve thought about it all evening and now I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to New York with you. I never had any intention of going to West Point, but now it’s impossible. I can get a job. It doesn’t matter what. I’ll cook for you and clean for you and be with you. That’s all that matters.”

“But what about education and all that?”

“What difference does that make? There’ll probably be a war—my father says there’s going to be and he ought to know—and then what? At least I’ll be with you.”

“You mean, you’d live with me and—uh, well, the apartment’s pretty small.”

“If it’s as big as this room, I can’t imagine wanting anything more.”

“It isn’t actually, but that doesn’t matter.” He felt that he should resist the proposal and was astonished to find so little resistance in himself. He simply couldn’t quite grasp it. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking in terms of the future; three months seemed a long time away. He didn’t even know if they would still want to have sex together. He had had relationships extending over a year or more, but actual contact had been intermittent and interspersed with transient adventures. Peter was suggesting that they should actually live together like—well, they would really be roommates. There was nothing unusual about that. He had always longed to be grown-up and on his own, but now that the fact of it loomed before him, he found it intimidating. To face the world with an eager lover at his side made the prospect much more cheerful and gay. As he turned the idea over in his mind, he sought the hand at his side and pressed it.

“It’s the only thing we
can
do,” Peter said. “Can you imagine shaking hands and saying good-bye in a month or two? You do want me, don’t you? I wouldn’t be any trouble to you.”

Charlie lifted himself onto an elbow with a chuckle and rolled over slightly so that all his body was pressed against Peter’s. “It’s a fabulous idea. We could fix up the apartment together. Do you really know how to cook? I think you save money if you eat at home. Hey, it’s exciting.” He ran his hand over Peter’s chest and down to his navel to grasp his sex, which stood erect to the summons. Peter looked up at him with shining eyes.

“Can we tell C. B. tomorrow? I want to tell everybody. It’s like getting married.”

“Good God, no. We can’t tell C. B.”

The light went out of Peter’s eyes, and they widened with apprehension. “Why, doesn’t she like me? Does she suspect something? Did she say anything when she went out with you before dinner?”

“Of course not. She’s mad about you. You can see that for yourself. But—well, she has very firm ideas about college, for one thing. She wouldn’t approve of your not going on with school. We’ve got to work out the practical details. Maybe you could take some courses at Columbia or somewhere. That might make it all right with her.”

“You care a lot about what she thinks, don’t you?”

“Well, sure. She’s always been the most important person in my life. Besides, she’s going to give me an allowance at first. She says I’ve got to live like a gentleman and all that. It’s something I have to take into consideration.”

“What if she
is
against it? Would you still let me come?”

“Of course,” Charlie said impatiently, but he was unable to imagine himself in opposition to C. B. “We’ve just got to figure out the right way to put it to her.” To forestall more questions, he fluttered his fingers along Peter’s sex and brushed the silken curls at its base. The hair was so fine and delicate that the feel of it sent a shiver down his spine. He gathered the balls into the palm of his hand. Peter’s eyes turned dreamy with pleasure.

“When I told you I was in love with you, I was afraid you wouldn’t have anything more to do with me,” he said. “I had to tell you, before we could decide all this.”

“It’s all decided, baby,” Charlie promised him.

“It’s fabulous. We’re going to live together. I always knew there was something that would make life make sense.”

Later, at Peter’s request, they lay with their shoulders hunched up, propped on their elbows, their sexes riding side by side along their bellies to illustrate the difference between them.

“Are you sorry mine isn’t bigger?” Peter asked.

“Bigger? If it were, it’d be bigger than mine, and that isn’t allowed.”

“I should hope not. Hey champ, you’ve done it with lots of others. Is—is mine—?”

“You can take my word for it, it’s a lot bigger than most guys, if that’s what you want to know. So don’t start running around trying to check up for yourself.”

Peter burst into laughter. “Would you be jealous?”

“No,” Charlie said with a cold flash of anger. “I just wouldn’t ever speak to you again.”

Missing the steel in the voice, Peter laughed again. “Imagine me even looking at anybody else when I have you.”

Charlie rolled over abruptly and slid down and lowered his head to Peter’s sex. It was not his favorite erotic exercise and he knew by experience that he was incapable of equaling Peter’s prodigies, but he was driven by a sudden necessity for this additional act of possession and by an instinct to demonstrate the equality of their desires. He ran his tongue around the sex and Peter’s whole body leaped at the contact and he let out a shrill cry. Peter’s hand was tugging at his hair as he opened his mouth wide and took the head. Further effort was ended by the violent contortions of an immediate orgasm. The warm liquid filled his mouth and he tasted its sweetness as he drank it in grateful communion. He remained where he was, nursing the sex with his mouth in the convulsed aftermath, amazed at the tenderness swelling within him, at the richness of the reward. When it was over, he pulled himself up reluctantly. Peter lay with a forearm flung over his eyes, his mouth open, his lips tremulous. Charlie kissed the side of his face and murmured with playful reproach into his ear, “I thought you weren’t going to come without me any more.”