Memoirs of a Gigolo Volume Six

by Livia Ellis

  The concierge prepares to leave. Are we still on for dinner?

  We’re still on. I like him. He could be a friend. We’ve been mutually clear neither of us are looking for a relationship.

  He leaves after asking me to stop by his desk on my way out.

  I call Renata.

  She picks up nearly immediately.

  What the fuck did I do? What the fuck is wrong with me that I would do something like this?

  What did I do? I’ve had a long think about her need for cash. I think it’s a mistake letting her have money. Probably best to leave things as they are.

  Did I see the papers?

  I have. Then she’ll know that we’re in for more snow and ice. She’s to promise me that she’ll be very careful. I wouldn’t want her to get hurt in her delicate condition. As for meeting for lunch – I’ve reconsidered. Would Friday work for her?

  I’m never to call her again. I need to stay far away from her. She hangs up on me.

  My phone rings as I finish dressing. The concierge. There is a car waiting for me.

  I find one of Boris’ henchmen standing by the door of the sort of white stretch limo only children think fancy people ride around in.

  Boris is in the back.

  The door closes behind me. We move into traffic.

  I thank him for not nabbing me off the street. I compliment him on his taste in cars.

  The look he gives me would dry paint. It’s a rental.

  Ah. Still. Classy.

  We drive in silence. I have nothing to say and neither does he. I accept with cold detachment the possibility of my impending death.

  We stop at the edge of Hyde Park. We get out of the car. The sky is clear, but the air is bitingly cold. Except for a few intrepid joggers, we are on our own.

  The problem has been managed.

  I never doubted he would get on top of it.

  I’m smarter than he generally gives me credit for. He underestimates me far too often.

  Thanks?

  That was a compliment. Socks. Really?

  It’s was all weird. Honestly – when was the last time he opened his own door?

  It’s been a long time.

  I have an issue with how it was handled.

  I don’t know as much as I think I do.

  That is the truth.

  He wants me to work for him.

  I already work for him.

  Work that doesn’t require me to take off my trousers.

  I thought we’d already drawn a line under that?

  He’s extending the offer a second time.

  Is there a possibility for a third chance if I turn him down?

  Yes.

  Then I’m going to politely decline. I’m still living in hope of things somehow miraculously turning out for me. There may come a moment when I will happily go to work for him. I’m just not there yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be there. I’m willing to reorient my moral compass for a short period of time, but I’m not ready to totally turn in a new direction.

  God loves an optimist.

  Amen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  March

  Aer Lingus Flight 801 to Galway

  Enjoy holiday!

  Back to London

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Lads Weekend

  Lads Weekend

  I spent four years in Ireland. Sometimes I find it difficult to imagine it’s been five years since I’ve returned to England. What have I accomplished in the intervening years that even compares to what I did during those years in Dublin?

  Nothing?

  In my quiet moments, when my mind stills just enough for the thoughts for the normal buzz of my rambling inner dialog to be silenced, I think thoughts like I should have gone to graduate school. If I’d gone to graduate school I’d have a doctoral degree at this moment and probably a very different life.

  I wasn’t properly thinking during those years in Dublin. I’ll admit it. I let Renata and her insanity drag me along in her wake.

  I wanted to go to graduate school. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what else to do. This is what I let her believe. I wanted to go because I loved school. I was afraid to leave it behind.

  The only thing I’ve done in my life that garnered any praise from my grandfather was achieving so superbly in school.

  Actually that is incorrect.

  I have another achievement he considered to be nothing short of splendiferous.

  He died believing I would marry my former fiancée.

  This was an achievement in his mind.

  I’d bagged a wealthy wife. My worth was wholly invested in my ability to marry and procreate. My value to my family lay in being an attractive prospect to a woman who could restore the family coffers. This idea is so backwardly Byzantine it makes my head hurt.

  I liked school. I wanted to stay in school – forever.

  I could easily visualize myself lecturing in one of those grim and brutalistic concrete bunkers they called theatres in the Arts Block at Trinity.

  There is something ironical in that the arts are housed in the ugliest building on what is otherwise a beautiful campus. Boggles the mind.

  Had my grandfather known I wanted to go to graduate school his magnetic pull might have been stronger than Renata’s. Maybe. From the moment I graduated from college until I met my former fiancée, he led a focused campaign directed at finding me a suitable wife. That my former fiancée presented herself at precisely the right moment was a fluke.

  My fatal error was letting Renata know, before anyone else, what I wanted. Her response came at me as if I had asked her permission rather than informed her of my intention. It’s possible I sought out her permission. I wanted her approval.

  Good thing that’s a thing of the past.

  Renata simply said no. She was done living in Dublin. She wanted to return to England. Besides, school bored her and it was just too much work, so spoke the woman that used poor graduate students in need of money to write her papers.

  I loved her and wanted to make her happy.

  I so feared being without someone to love me that I capitulated.

  This was the depth of my loneliness and fear of abandonment.

  I didn’t apply to graduate school. I wrote Renata’s senior thesis along with my own because I loved her and wanted her to love me.

  Somehow she made it through the exams.

  The following October when I returned with my parents and my grandparents for commencement she was off somewhere in the South Pacific with a Rastafarian, with a Jamaican accent that sort of came and went like the tide, she’d picked up in London, who she let him move in with us and called me uptight when I protested. She liked to think of herself as a vegan hippy at this moment. The Rastafarian liked to tell me in great detail and depth with disturbing regularity what my problem was - I was a capitalist bourgeois pig that lived off the backs of others, and how I could be happy - namely giving his mission to bring his new religion to the world all of my money.

  I was able to get rid of both of them by conspicuously leaving a large sum of cash easily accessible and making it clear I’d be gone for no less than two nights. They took the bait. I returned home to the apartment in London after four days to find a note from Renata suggesting I learn to “chill out” and a promise that she’d call me when she’d cleansed her chi of my negative mojo. Or some bullshit like that.

  Fucking hippy dipshits.

  I drew a line under my relationship with Renata and considered applying for graduate school. But it always felt as if that ship had sailed. That door was somehow closed to me. All I had left was to cultivate that image of a devil-may-care playboy. And it worked. I met scores of appropriate women. I just wasn’t quite ready to settle down. But I knew based on experience that when I decided to get married, the field was open to me. I could pluck a wealthy wife from the crowd like a cherry from a bowl.

  Here I am. So many years later. Flying across the Irish Sea. Headed to I
reland. Just me, Marcus, and Elon. A lad’s trip to attend a party that has all sorts of salacious undertones and wrapped in secrecy. We are going to what I am imagining in my mind will be some sort of mannerbund with oaths and handshakes and secrets which have come down through the ages.

  Olga is excluded from this. She is a woman. This is a men’s only event. The invitation came to me through the Doctor. I was allowed to bring Elon and Marcus with me after assuring the Doctor that the two of them were in fact (in his words) a couple of goers.

  I am so looking forward to whatever it is that will happen over those days surrounding St Patrick’s Day. I hope there will be bonfires and general madness. This is the kind of crazy shit I signed on for.

  Wanting to go with just to men to Galway was just the sort of thing I knew was going to be an issue. I’ve never gone anywhere without Olga since our journey began. Never once since I started scheming (because what else could it be called?) with Elon to spend St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland with Marcus did I wonder whether or not she’d let me go without a fight. In fact, based on her Valentine’s Day bait and switch, I knew in my gut she’d kick off.

  This is how the conversation went:

  I’ve decided I’m going to Ireland with Elon and Marcus after all for the Doctor’s house party.

  Fine. She doesn’t want to go, but she’ll go. Obviously I must want to go since I keep bringing it up.

  She already knows this is a men’s only event.

  That’s stupid. It’s not like they’ll turn her away if she just shows up.

  She’s not invited. I’m going to Ireland with Elon and Marcus for the Doctor’s St. Patrick’s Day party. Just us men.

  She wants to go too. She doesn’t like when we’re apart.

  It’s just the boys this time darling. Maybe next time.

  Why can’t she go?

  Because it’s just the lads (I’m being very jovial and light still although an edge is starting to creep in).

  She can be one of the boys. She wants to go too.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  What am I planning on doing in Ireland that I don’t want her to know about?

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  So why can’t she go?

  Because it’s just men.

  Marcus is Elon’s boyfriend.

  And?

  They’re a couple. We’re a couple. It should be a couple’s trip. Not a boy’s trip.

  (I’ll admit she was coming at me with arguments I hadn’t anticipated. The couple thing threw me off. I don’t think of Elon and Marcus as a couple. I know Elon thinks of Marcus and Elon as a couple, but I don’t know what Marcus thinks about that.)

  She’ll book a hotel in Galway. She’ll stay there when I’m off doing whatever the hell it is those freaky cultists do.

  I don’t think they’re freaky cultists. It’s sort of this thing with men to have secret societies. We’ve been doing it for a long time.

  What kind of sex party doesn’t have women?

  (The kind filled with men that don’t want to have to put up with a bunch of women for a couple of days?)

  I don’t really know darling. I truly haven’t been given many details. As she well knows.

  (This thing I’m going to has been shrouded in so much secrecy that it’s starting to make me uneasy. If it weren’t for the fact The Doctor would be present I wouldn’t be going. This is his thing. Secret societies aren’t my thing. But honestly he is my friend, he has invited me along with Marcus and Elon, so I will go.)

  So I’m going to be gone for nearly a week…

  Actually I’ll be gone a week. After the secret society sex party we’re all driving up to Northern Ireland to see my crumbling ruins.

  I have a castle in Northern Ireland?

  More like a crumbling tower. Or it was a crumbling tower. It’s been taken over by a trust that was set up by my former fiancée to restore it. Who knows what’s up now? Not me.

  She cannot believe that I would go and do something like that without her.

  Would it help if I were to tell her that her usual footwear would probably be wholly inappropriate to make the trek across the bogs to get to the site?

  No.

  I’m going without her. Either she can accept this or she can let it make her angry. I’m going without her.

  But…

  No.

  But… (petulant sigh)

  No.

  But… (foot stomping)

  No.

  But… (eyes filling with tears)

  No.

  But… (hands going for my trousers)

  No. She’s welcome to go for my junk, but she’s still not going to Ireland.

  But…

  No. Unless she grows a penis in the next hour…

  What do I mean hour?

  I’m leaving in an hour.

  But… Why didn’t I tell her sooner?

  Because we just decided that morning and she was gone.

  But…

  And this continues until the doorbell rings and Elon bounds into my bedroom like a puppy. Thank god he’s early for once. For a man with a wristwatch obsession, there is a sort of predictability about his constant lateness.

  Olga turns to him. Her tears appear just for his benefit.

  She wants to go to.

  Elon kisses her on the cheek. Not this time. Men only.

  I won’t say that I had to chew off my leg to get out of the house, but I nearly lost a shoe trying to slip out the door before it slammed shut and locked me inside.

  Marcus is waiting at the car Elon hired to bring us to the airport. Blond Marcus with his American good looks and perpetual grin. He’s a good time, but not good enough for Elon. Unfortunately I’ve lost my vote when it comes to who Elon chooses to spend his time with. There are moments when I wonder if Marcus isn’t his way of demonstrating how much I’ve lost by giving him that final push.

  I look at Marcus for just a moment before climbing into the back of the car.

  Why didn’t he come inside?

  He didn’t want to see Olga.

  Any particular reason?

  He would rather stay as far out of the shit storm brewing between Olga and Vladimir as possible.

  I thought things were better after Christmas.

  Marcus stares at me. He looks like a cowboy. All steely gaze and pouting lips. He’s sizing me up.

  (What do I know? What to tell me? How deep in this ocean should he dip his oar? Does he in fact have a horse in this race or not? These are the questions I can see in the set of his mouth.)

  He heard I might be going to work for Vladimir.

  I laugh loudly. The spontaneity of it surprises me. I’m certain I snort at some point.

  No. Not ever. I have no intention of going to work for Vladimir. What has he heard?

  I impressed Vladimir over Christmas. And him for that matter. I can play polo. Vladimir wanted to know if he could find a place for me on the team. He told Vladimir he could. That was it.

  I know nothing about this. Not a thing. I need to have a conversation with Olga.

  That might be in my best interest. What’s the plan for Ireland Dublin?

  (that’s that conversation finished)

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Company of Men

  We drive to Galway. But not quite Galway. We end up in some valley on the edge of a lake surrounded by those sheep dotted rolling hills so typical of western Ireland. The GPS stops working at some point and there is no signal for the mobiles. We are left with luck and a map. One man may not ask for directions. Three men together become quickly convinced they have the skills of homing birds and have the blood of Native American trackers running through their veins.

  We were hopelessly lost. Just hopelessly lost. Not that any of us would admit it.

  In truth, Ireland isn’t all that large. It’s an island. And a small island at that. We drove in circles for longer than it would
take to drive the length and breadth of the country.

  By the time we make it to “civilization,” in the form of a small village that time forgot we accept the fact we have lost our way. Not that any one of the three of us admits it out loud.

  Here is the first of several slightly insane and inexplicable things that will mark the course of the next forty-eight hours.

  Elon is driving. I am in the passenger seat. Marcus finds driving on the “wrong” side of the road unnerving and prefers to sit in the back with his eyes averted out the window.

  The car comes to a halt in front of a pub. Signs all in Irish. Not English. We are truly strangers in a strange land.

  Who walks right in front of the car?

  The Doctor.

  I stare at him for a good long moment before I realize the man in the wide brim hat and well waxed Barbour field jacket is the Doctor himself.

  We’re not lost.

  I scramble out of the car.

  The Doctor stops at the sound of his name. I’m given a hearty hello there my good fellow what are you doing so far from the house he’s only just come to town on a whim to see if anyone has seen hide or hair of us and here we are.

  Here we are indeed! I’ve never been so happy to see someone before in my life.

  Introductions are made. I get in the Land Rover he drove to town as Marcus and Elon follow behind.

  We make it to the manor house on the edge of the lake just as the sun begins to slip beneath the lip of the hills.

  We will be sharing a room. He hopes I don’t mind too terribly. Space is at a premium.

  I don’t mind in the slightest. In fact I’m rather pleased to have the Doctor as my human shield. I’ve now been to a couple of these parties. Pushing off an unwanted paramour can get tricky. I need a convenient excuse to hide behind. Since Olga is back in London pacing the floors and sticking pins into a voodoo doll she has no doubt fashioned to resemble me, which leaves the Doctor.

  The house is filled with men. Men that know me not as James, but as Oliver. I know these people by sight. Many were friends of my grandfather. Some have been to Wold Hall. I am Lord Harkslon. I am a guest. A friend of the Doctor. A potential initiate to this small coterie of crazy wealthy older men that have nothing better to do with their time than play at secret society.