No one answered their knocking, and Cap finally tried and easily pushed open the front door. They looked around and asked if anyone was home. No one. The place looked both closed up and yet somehow lived in. They were heading across the entry again, past the steep stairway up, to look over in the other rooms they’d sighted before, when someone appeared at the top of the stairs above them; a good-looking, slim, naked young man, washing his erection with a small face cloth.
He wasn’t Lowell, no, he told them. Lowell wasn’t out this weekend. They’d switched. And no, Lowell hadn’t at all told him they were coming. In fact, other people were invited. He kept washing his glans thoroughly at the top of the stairs, looking from it down to them all the while he spoke. He was expecting the others to arrive in an hour or so. That’s when the next train came. Maybe they could get back to the station in time for it? No. Sorry, no room for them here. And no, it wasn’t a good idea to put their sleeping bags around the back of the house, as Cap suggested, and come back later. People paid good money to come out to the Hamptons and they complained of anyone sand-squatting to the sheriff. Sorry.”
Done, he tossed the face cloth into the bathroom sink nearby and said, “Lock the door as you leave, will you? As you can see,” making his erection bounce up and down without touching it, “I’m kinda busy.” And vanished.
Out on the street, Roger lighted a jay and thought, bummer! Though he didn’t say it, he also wondered at the immense savoir faire of the guy, not only naked, but cute with a boner, and clearly in between bouts of sex. No doubt this was a party house. Too bad they couldn’t stay.
Always the optimist, Cap said, “We’re not going back to the city tonight. We’ll find a place in town. One of us will rent the smallest, cheapest place—I will, since you’re under aged—and you can sneak in later on.” That became the new plan.
This walk was more difficult because either it was actually longer or because it had a less certain goal in sight. Past the score of aged wood houses, the road once more looped lazily and went downhill. But clearly ahead the bay water shimmered, and beyond that Roger could see a low glimmer on the horizon that was the beach itself.
The glimmer got brighter as the sun began to set.
They trudged on, reaching the bridge, which now that they were on it looked to be at least as long as the distance they’d already walked. Duckweed half as high as the pylons undulated as by some unseen force: possibly tidal.
Cap stopped for a cigarette. Roger wanted to ask what if they couldn’t find a place. He wanted Cap to reassure him. Cap meanwhile said nothing and looked down into the pristine water.
That was when the big white Eldorado convertible drove past, and Roger stuck out a thumb. To their surprise, it stopped twenty feet ahead.
At the wheel was a big crew cut blond in a business suit and hard-looking, two-finger-wide tie. In the passenger seat was a voluptuous redhead wearing a print sundress of big reddish and brown flowers against beige.
“You guys need a ride?” she asked.
“Do we ever,” Roger said.
She opened her door and he slid into the backseat. She held Cap’s hand long enough for Roger to realize her amazing resemblance to Trish Tanager. A few years older, her eyes bright blue rather than hazel, her hair twisted up with a pale yellow scarf and Irish red, but otherwise…
She was Diane, and the driver was Guy. Later on, Roger would wonder if the names, as well as the stories they told Cap, were totally fabricated. Her accent was local, New York; the driver’s was Western-Midwestern.
Guy drove quickly and after Cap had leaned forward and told Diane their tale of woe, she tenderly yet firmly declared, “There’s no available room here tonight for any kind of money. They sold out weeks in advance. But you can check if you want to.”
Guy parked the Caddy in front of several restaurants and they tossed their bags into the vast trunk, which already held a folded-over winter coat, a small, dark gym bag, and three pieces of pink fabric matching luggage.
Diane went with Cap to look for rooms, and after a few minutes, Guy got out of the car, and without turning around, gestured for Roger to follow.
Wooden stairs led up to an empty deck bar around a pool. Guy sat at a table and ordered a martini. He pointed at Roger with his index finger stuck out shaping a revolver. Roger ordered a beer.
Guy drank the martini quickly and ordered another. Looked around at the dozen people at the bar and tables with a boredom all over his face, saying nothing. This gave Roger a chance to look him over more closely and confirm that he was perhaps the handsomest, most masculine man Roger had ever laid eyes on: six foot three, muscular even through the corporate suit, with huge, maybe forty-eight-inch shoulders, huge hands, a square-jawed, dimpled chin, almost blank green-blue eyes, your standard American-issue comic-book-hero gorgeous, especially topped as he was by an unvarying half inch of fresh corn-yellow hair sticking up in a perfect brush cut that sometimes swayed as he moved and sported a twist down peak in the center of his forehead. Roger couldn’t believe Guy was real.
After what seemed forever, and was at least a half hour, Diane and Cap reappeared, very chatty and obviously newly friendly. Before they could say anything, Roger understood their quest had been fruitless. Guy downed his second martini and said to Diane, “This place is post-graduate. Let’s go by the canal.”
He got up and again gestured for Roger to follow. Diane and Cap dawdled, and this time they got into the backseat together, while he sat up front with America’s most astounding male, and tried not to notice too much whenever Guy touched himself, dropping a big hand onto an obviously muscled-to-the-hilt thigh or teasing a chiseled upper lip.
Guy seemed oblivious to the others in the back, who truth to say seemed almost in another car as the wind was up, and they couldn’t be heard. The few times Roger looked back, they acted as though they were alone. Even granting what a dish she was, and her resemblance to Trish, Roger was kind of resentful of Diane. This was supposed to be his and Cap’s weekend together, the last time together before Cap flew away to P.R. At one point, Guy turned to Roger and he smiled weirdly, one side of his mouth dropped a half inch as though about to make some really snide comment. Instead he asked, “Okay?”
Roger hadn’t a clue what he was being asked or why. He gestured okay and then said it, thinking screw it, screw the whole weekend. Guy went back to driving, the others in the backseat were now laughing.
They drove along the beach and back up another even longer bridge among weeds, ending up on a road that banked toward a white and gray wooden bar/restaurant at the Shinnecock Canal. They took a steep stairway onto a two-story-high roof-deck bar not fifty feet from the double locks of the canal. The ocean glittered on all sides and a very campy, unattractive waiter, with a slightly club foot, who knew both Guy and Diane, got them drinks and asked for their dinner order.
That’s when the roll of fifties made its first appearance and Cap and Roger were informed, extremely offhandedly by Guy, that they were being treated to dinner. “On Uncle Sam,” Guy added, “so eat, drink, and be…you know.” He voice was tight. As though each piece of dialogue cost him one of those fifties.
Because of their elevation and the otherwise flat surrounding, the sun was just setting here and it made a glorious spectacle for a surprisingly long time. A little wind came up, and Cap and Diane went to another, even higher deck, to view it from there. Their heads together looked like a single lit match in the purple-orange final glow. Guy drank a fourth martini, heedless, and joked with the bartender nearby and gave the waiter complicated food orders.
“We’re post-graduates too,” Roger said, to break the silence. “At least he is. I graduate college next year.”
“You’re okay,” Guy decreed. “Here’s the food.”
He ate fast, a big steak, and ordered another smaller steak dish, even before Cap and Diane returned. They remained at their table as the restaurant filled up and then got up and went to the bar, where they continued, eating
dessert and drinking. Roger had maybe four beers, slowly nursing them, because despite the food, he wasn’t that used to drinking. Diane and Cap were having mixed drinks like Guy and they danced a sort of lindy together at one point. They appeared to Roger as though they were out together on a date, which would make sense, given how good-looking and young Cap was, and how voluptuous, not to mention how amazingly similar to Trish Diane looked. How, exactly, this could be happening in front of Guy, Roger couldn’t quite figure out. Wasn’t she with Guy? Then they were slow-dancing, and the waiter from before was sitting next to Guy on the other side of Roger, speaking low into his ear, they were talking about someone Roger didn’t know.
Guy had sort of loosened up meanwhile, Roger figured because he was among his friends, or at least people he knew. He let the waiter and some of the women flirt with him. Most of what they said went way over Roger’s head, slang, argot, who knew, names and people he’d never heard of. Every once in a while, Guy would suddenly remember that Roger was still there and ask him if he wanted a drink or needed to use the john, or was okay. Like he was his big brother and he had to mind Roger.
Nothing was settled. In truth, everything was totally unsettled. Roger had never been in a situation before with so very many unknowns and so very many variables. Where would they go? Where would they sleep tonight? Were there rentals in one of those other beach towns that he knew ranged from here out to Montauk Point? Or would those be filled too? Of course they would be, he knew it already. And what was Guy doing here tonight? Was he a Fed? A G-man? As he looked to be? Was he on some case? Was Diane working with him? Or was she some kind of blind for him? And they too now, Cap and he, now that they joined, had they been picked up to make Guy even less suspicious? Was he going to arrest someone, here tonight?
At a certain point, Roger thought, it’s like I’m in an Antonioni movie.
He loved Antonioni’s movies more even than Bergman’s; the Hellfire Club had taken part in multiple off-campus discussions of the great trio: L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse. This whole thing today, Roger, thought, is exactly like one of those movies: not meeting who they were supposed to, wandering around without any goal, plotless, nothing explained, all sorts of odd happenings, strange people suddenly coming together with them while others didn’t communicate at all, even though they were together hours on end. Sitting back in the bar chair, looking up at the stars, admittedly a little drunk, Roger thought, it’s an adventure. I’m having a grown-up adventure and I have no idea where it’s headed.
He must have laughed, because suddenly Guy said, “Now you’re relaxed.”
That’s when his unbuttoned suit jacket opened enough for Roger to see he had a pistol holder and a pistol too: dark blue, tubular, glinting.
The waiter, whose name was revealed as Monte, was telling a story, about some people in a place called The Duchess, which ended with him saying, “At which point she went—Shazam!”
All of them but Roger laughed.
The waiter turned and out of the side of his mouth said. “A little before your time, kiddo. It’s Captain Marvel. This regular guy, Billy Bates, becomes Captain Marvel whenever he says the word ‘Shazam.’”
Roger had smiled politely. And that was when Guy said the phrase, “Everyone has a ‘Shazam.’” He said it directly at Roger, as though informing him, or demanding a comment on what he’d said, or even a denial from him.
Roger didn’t know what to say and was silent. Guy’s statement, however, provoked both laughter and a great deal more discussion from those at the bar.
That was the moment that Cap and Diane left the dance floor and joined them.
Cap asked, “What’s going on?” low voiced so only Roger could hear and Roger replied, “He’s got a gun.”
“I know. Diane says he works for the F.B.I. How are you doing?”
“Well, between the drinks and the past week, I think I’m completely blotto,” Roger said.
*
He didn’t know how he made it to the beach. He probably passed out or fell asleep up there and some of the others dragged him.
Roger woke up about an hour later, wrapped in the sleeping bag. He was in the dunes, in a deep and wide decline. About ten feet away he could see a large dark figure that must be Guy, wrapped in some sort of outer coat. No sign of Cap and Diane, but suddenly he could hear their voices. They were out on the beach somewhere ahead, in that strong mist curtained over the water, talking low or perhaps they were far away. Then their voices were smeared by what must be kissing. Soon they were gone, or into it. But quieted somehow.
Roger was on the beach. He was drunk and exhausted. But he’d made it to the beach. He was within what looked like two sleeping bags zipped together.
So when he heard a sound like chattering, he listened more closely and decided it was Guy, cold with only the coat to cover him.
He dragged the bags over to the immense dark body.
“Get in!”
Guy had been sleeping. Chattering in his sleep.
“What are you doing here?” Guy awakened and asked. He sounded angry.
“There are two sleeping bags together here. Get in. You’re cold. You’re chattering. I could hear it over there.”
“No!” Guy said and rolled over.
Roger lifted the zipped-together bags and threw one side of them over Guy. Guy squirmed around to look up at him. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’ll freeze here.”
He pulled the bag around Guy so his feet were in it. “C’mon, lift up your body. Get in.”
“I can’t sleep in this with you.”
“Why not?” Roger asked.
“I just can’t…You’re a kid, right?”
“So what? Up you go, that’s right! Pull it around! See, you fit into it fine! I’m getting in now.”
“It’s too small.”
“I’ll back up against you.”
“Christ! You’re kidding me.”
Roger eased himself into the bag backward, then slid his feet in. “You don’t need your coat. With the two of us like this, it’ll heat up fine. Might be a good idea to take off your jacket.”
“What about my pants too?” Guy whispered.
“Probably a good idea, otherwise you’ll be overheated by morning. I’m in my shorts!”
“What?” Guy sat up. “I’m keeping my pants on.”
“Suit yourself.”
“No one will believe this,” Guy said. “Gee, Officer, he forced me into the bag and then told me to strip too.”
“Your body is nice and warm,” Roger said, squiggling in deeper.
“You have no idea what a rocket I am tonight.”
“How can that be?” he asked sleepily. “You drank so many martinis. Eight? Ten?”
“Go to sleep.”
“I am. I’m now going to sleep.”
Roger closed his eyes but when he opened them, the big blond head was inches away, and Guy was looking right at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Guy said in the oddest tone of voice, strangely, hoarse. “It’s just that suddenly…I remembered why I do this. Why it’s worth it. You know what I mean?”
“No idea at all,” Roger admitted, mumbling very sleepily. Now that he was warm and comfortable, he was being rapidly overtaken again.
“Want me to…?” was the last thing Guy more or less clearly said, and Roger mumbled back an unintelligible but he hoped positive reply as he sank deeper and deeper.
*
“I don’t know what happened,” Cap admitted, decades later. “When I woke up, Diane was gone. Guy was gone. Their car was gone. You had a fifty dollar bill stuffed in your underwear. No! I’m kidding about the last part.”
They were out on the beach again. Venice Beach, this time. It was sunset again, and the other bartender had come back, and they’d stepped out of the bar, across the very public promenade and onto the sand. headed to the water’s edge. Cap said he would return and finish
off a night shift as they were busy at the bar tonight.
“And you and Diane?” Roger found he had to ask.
“I couldn’t! I just couldn’t do it with her! Everything was too…weird! But I had a great time! I only got about two hours’ sleep! We were up all night…In a sense, Diane was what I’d always hoped Trish would be. Grown-up, mostly. Not clingy. Not possessing. But it was all too late for me with…either of them.”
“And the guy? The G-man?” I had to ask. “I’m so oblivious…Was he queer? Or what?”
Cap shrugged. “Their friends at that bar were. And the ones they talked about. But…who knows what either of them were. Or if they were anything definite at all… They were sensational-looking, weren’t they?”
“He was a ’mo’s dream come true! If only I’d known what to do with him then!” Roger laughed. “Or could stay awake.”
That was when Cap said the sentence that would haunt Roger forever after. “You know, Rog, you turned out to be the lucky of the two of us in relationships.”
“Some luck. Mark’s dying,” Roger reminded him.
“I know. I know. But at least you never had to feel that you were in sexual bondage to someone who was your inferior. You and Mark are equal, and strong together. Maybe that’s what I was looking for back then, myself.”
“You mean when you allegedly tried to seduce me. Which, by the way, I don’t for a second believe or remember.”
Roger did recall them lying side by side, later that morning, when he woke up, their sleeping bags half-opened next to each other, their shirts off, their shorts on, the morning sun radiating gently onto them, the mist rising off the surf, evaporating with this funny little noise, them talking quietly for maybe an hour, before they got up, got dressed, and walked back over a half bridge to the little town for breakfast, then spent the day at the beach, arriving back in Manhattan around midnight. He recalled nothing more.
Contemporary Gay Romances Page 18
