Acclaim for
The Millionaire of Love
“Anyone who has suffered from the agonies of romantic obsession and unrequited love will empathize with Nevis, the protagonist of David Leddick’s new novel The Millionaire of Love. In Nevis’s beloved Radomir, Leddick accurately depicts the charming, selfish, beautiful young men who lend so many of our lives both delight and despair. Composed of shifting viewpoints and tones, set in locales as varied as Paris, Crete, the Loire Valley, Turin, Miami, and Sandusky, Ohio, this novel is infused with the deep regret we all must face, sooner or later, when the object of our passions proves unattainable.”
—Jeff Mann, MA
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing,
Virginia Tech
“This moody and introspective novel of obsession follows the intertwined not-quite relationship between the wealthy patron Nevis and his would-be charge Radomir, an unconventional beauty thirty years younger.
But this is no modern-day Death in Venice; Nevis is far too self-aware of his history with men, and that history forms part of this contemplative novel. Radomir, on the other hand, becomes more than the unattainable prize, the heartbreaker, the ‘millionaire of love,’ as we see how he has carefully constructed himself over time.
Nevis and Radomir spend the years spinning through each other’s orbits, changing each other’s lives as they dissect their own. Leddick deftly characterizes each of them as well as minor characters, and gives Nevis and Radomir the authentic voices that carry the book.”
—Jonathan Cohen
Author of Bear Like Me
“Leddick deftly chronicles the inexhaustible love Nevis has for Radomir, the object of his obsession—complete with hot back massages and erotic fantasies. Readers will find this book much like Nevis finds Radomir—sexy, fascinating, and utterly irresistible.”
—Gary M. Kramer
Author of Independent Queer Cinema:
Reviews and Interviews
“The millionaire of love is richly loved and desired, yet he is unable or unwilling to return the favor. That doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of the one who unselfishly loves and cares for him the most.
In his most recent novel, David Leddick creates a tapestry of feeling and unfilled desires that is unsettlingly familiar, a mosaic of introspection and inner conflict that is compelling and stunningly beautiful. Leddick aptly explores the overlapping contours of undying passion and never-ending obsession, of heroic persistence and dreaded folly that any of us can fall victim to when faced with unrequited love.
Passionate, unrelenting, obsessive, and beautiful, The Millionaire of Love will capture your heart.”
—David M. Pierce
Author of Elf Child
NOTES FOR PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIANS
AND LIBRARY USERS
This book is published by Southern Tier Editions™, Harrington Park Press®, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc. Unless otherwise noted in specific chapters with attribution, materials in this book have not been previously published elsewhere in any format or language.
CONSERVATION AND PRESERVATION NOTES
All books published by The Haworth Press, Inc., and its imprints are printed on certified pH neutral, acid-free book grade paper. This paper meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Material, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
The Millionaire of Love
HARRINGTON PARK PRESS®
Southern Tier Editions™
Gay Men’s Fiction
Elf Child by David M. Pierce
Huddle by Dan Boyle
The Man Pilot by James W. Ridout IV
Shadows of the Night: Queer Tales of the Uncanny and Unusual edited by Greg Herren
Van Allen’s Ecstasy by Jim Tushinski
Beyond the Wind by Rob N. Hood
The Handsomest Man in the World by David Leddick
The Song of a Manchild by Durrell Owens
The Ice Sculptures: A Novel of Hollywood by Michael D. Craig
Between the Palms: A Collection of Gay Travel Erotica edited by Michael T. Luongo
Aura by Gary Glickman
Love Under Foot: An Erotic Celebration of Feet edited by Greg Wharton and M. Christian
The Tenth Man by E. William Podojil
Upon a Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Tales edited by Greg Herren
Dryland’s End by Felice Picano
Whose Eye Is on Which Sparrow? by Robert Taylor
Deep Water: A Sailor’s Passage by E. M. Kahn
The Boys in the Brownstone by Kevin Scott
The Best of Both Worlds: Bisexual Erotica edited by Sage Vivant and M. Christian
Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco, 1970-1982 by Jack Fritscher
Confessions of a Male Nurse by Richard S. Ferri
The Millionaire of Love by David Leddick
Transgender Erotica: Trans Figures edited by M. Christian
Skip Macalester by J. E. Robinson
Chemistry by Lewis DeSimone
Friends, Lovers, and Roses by Vernon Clay
Beyond Machu by William Maltese
Virginia Bedfellows by Gavin Morris
Seventy Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza
Going Down in La-La Land by Andy Zeffer
Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews by Gary M. Kramer
Planting Eli by Jeff Black
Tales from the Levee by Martha Miller
The Millionaire of Love
David Leddick
Southern Tier Editions™
Harrington Park Press®
An Imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.
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© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Kerry E. Mack.
Cover design concept by David Leddick.
Photography copyright 2005 by David Vance.
Cover model is Eduardo Goicolea.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leddick, David.
The millionaire of love / David Leddick.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56023-563-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-56023-563-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Gay men—Fiction. 2. Young men—Fiction. 3. Unrequited love—Fiction. 4. Middle aged men—Fiction. 5. Americans—France—Fiction. 6 France—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.E28444M55 2005
813'.54—dc22
2005009125
“My dear, do not give your love to one of those millionaires of love. Give it to someone who really needs it.”
Quenti
n Crisp
~Contents~
~ 1~ Going to Crete
~ 2~ The First Night on Crete
~ 3~ The First Day on Crete
~ 4~ Radomir’s Side
~ 5~ Nevis Speaks
~ 6~ Lunch in Plakias
~ 7~ Radomir’s Body
~ 8~ Radomir Speaks Again
~ 9~ The Terrible Christmas
~10~ Amanda’s Take on Things
~11~ The Second Day at the Beach
~12~ Radomir’s Perversions
~13~ Minerva Minot
~14~ The Last Night on Crete
~15~ Lo De Coy
~16~ Fanette
~17~ This Is a Fantasy
~18~ Radomir’s First Return
~19~ Radomir’s Second Return
~20~ Radomir Gets a New Life
~21~ Radomir Speaks His Piece
~22~ The Prison Fantasy
~23~ Nevis Discusses Things with His Ex, Who Is Dead
~24~ Radomir Makes a List
~25~ Radomir Returns Again!
~26~ Nevis Thinks About AIDS
~27~ Passage de Salut
~28~ Why Do I Keep Talking About My Sex Life?
~29~ Nevis Finishes the Talk
~30~ Nevis and Amanda Have Another Chat
~31~ The Trip to Turin
~32~ Amanda Reports In
~33~ Radomir Visits Miami Beach
~34~ The List of Lovers Gets Too Long
~35~ The Ghost Lover
~36~ On Géricault
~37~ A Visit to Sandusky
~38~ Ronald Pool
~39~ Can We Talk About Obsession?
~40~ Letters from Lo De Coy
~41~ A Few Last Words from Radomir
~42~ My Last-Minute Thoughts
~1~
Going to Crete
It was storming in Heraklion, although it was May. The Athens airport, where passengers sat in large stalls ready to embark for Rhodes or Cyprus or Kios or Samothrace, lay low in a steadily dripping curtain of rain. So far the flight to Heraklion had not been canceled, although the loudspeaker voice, always so loud as to be broken and incoherent, kept referring to possibilities of delay.
To the left the Mykonos flight was canceled. The shoal of stranded passengers rose, milled, drifted, and then a few guide fish headed back through luggage inspection toward the ticket counters. The rest of the shoal followed.
Nevis had arrived from Paris at noon with a long afternoon to spend. He watched the rainy roulette of the skies disappoint some stalls full of passengers, while others slipped away through the steady drip in their plane-bound coaches across the tarmac.
Nevis remembered coming to Athens long before on a flight from Rome that also carried Melina Mercouri, then on the upswell of her international rise to blonde stardom. Melina and her mini-starmaker husband rode in first class, while her secretary sat not far from Nevis in tourist class. When they descended from the plane, Melina shrugged off suggestions that she take ground transport and strode off toward the airport, two blond dogs on a leash, blond furs on her shoulder, blonde hair flying, husband and secretary and airline officials dangling about behind. She headed intuitively toward a mob of reporters and photographers, who had broken loose to rush toward their very own blonde Greek goddess of a star. Finally, Greece was in the twentieth century.
God, thought Nevis. Can this be the same place? All these Greek widows in black, these gray-suited tavern owners snoring in the corners, these red-legged backpackers all looking half-grown, half-awake, half-attractive. Nevis graded travel routes on the basis of the number of passengers aboard the plane he’d be willing to sleep with. So far, the Miami-Los Angeles run had been the low ranker. Athens-Heraklion was not down at the bottom yet. Nevis rated cities the same way and preferred living in Paris because it maintained a steady one-or-two-people-per-block of sexual potential. New York City rated very low. One a day perhaps, and anyone you’d consider sleeping with you already had.
The 7:00 departure for Heraklion inched closer. Nevis had finished reading The Last Picture Show. He had also brought Kundera’s Laughable Loves for the flight back.
He was beginning to want this trip to be over. It was a long way to the village of Mythios on Crete, a village on the obscure south shore where Radomir had a summer job in a hotel. Who is Radomir? A lost friend? A lost love? A laughable love? Nevis wasn’t sure, but ever since his cards had been read two months ago, he had been looking for Radomir. Whether the cards had been laid out in rows, circles, or straight lines, the piercing Russian eyes of his card-reading friend kept underlining, “There is a young man in trouble here.” Both she and he knew the cards usually reported, “You are going to earn more money. There is money here. There is money waiting.” But this time there was no money, just a lost boy.
Radomir had departed suddenly from Nevis’s life some months before. He had originally been a friend of a friend at a Christmas house party at Nevis’s country place in the Loire Valley. There had been an unmistakable sexual pull. The hunched shoulders with the hands in the pockets. The slightly rolling American athlete walk, as though the soles of the feet were slightly sore. The always slightly furrowed brow. It was not an uncommon type. Nevis defined it as the “I may not be much on conversation but I’ll fuck your brains out if I get the chance” type.
Then one evening, as everyone was going to their rooms, Radomir raised his arms and his sweatshirt pulled up and exposed his very hard, flat stomach. I’m going to get into a lot of trouble here if I’m not careful, registered Nevis, and then wiped his brain clear of the memory.
On a sunny day walking through the streets below the chateau at Amboise Radomir had gone ahead with Nevis’s niece and her boyfriend, Randy. They wanted to look over the gates of a townhouse and Radomir reached up to the gate pillar and leaped high onto a jutting portion of wall. The unsuspected strength of his arms pulled him higher than his perch and he almost floated into place beside the pillar. Nevis saw a large-shouldered, leather-jacketed Cocteau angel floating down to Earth. An Orpheus messenger. Or an eighteenth-century-ceiling Apollo, surrounded with the drifting sculpture of his draperies, the sun behind. Or a Mercury alighting. The moment flashed and was gone, but it had been there. Nevis pushed this thought away, too.
Nevis’s niece Amanda cut Radomir’s hair one evening in the bathroom that lay between two bedrooms. Radomir took off his shirt, and his powerful shoulders and arms gleamed in the overhead light. This is not fair, thought Nevis as he passed through the room, but he managed to force the image into the “Forget It” file along with the others.
Radomir was visiting with an advertising friend Nevis knew from New York. One morning Nevis noticed his houseguest’s eyes shining as he came down the stairs from the attic guest room. It was the look you have when you’ve just had sex—pleasure, victory, being wanted. He found out only later that it was the last time the friend and Radomir had slept together.
When Radomir left after the holiday, he had never really spoken to Nevis directly. Radomir was not big on dinner table conversation, which made it all the more surprising at the New Year’s Eve dinner when Nevis overheard Radomir at the young people’s table in another room doing black comic dialect and hoots of laughter rising around him. The taciturn athlete was parodying the stuffy manner of a neighbor’s daughter by repeating it as a black stand-up comedy routine. Who do we have there under those football shoulders? Nevis had wondered. But he never found out before the holiday was over.
Now the plane was boarding. The intercom had announced storms, but landing was considered possible. The stewardess at the door had long blonde hair and made Nevis remember Melina Mercouri again. What is it about blondes? Nevis wondered. Even the Congo and Tokyo prefer them. As a blond, he had gotten a lot of mileage out of it, without ever finding an answer to the question.
The plane quickly fled over the rain and the cloud of gray nimbus below. The pilot spoke Americanese and pointed out an island to the left. Was it Lesbos? At the time they
were to land the pilot cheerily announced that in fact gale winds would make it impossible to land at Heraklion after all. They were turning back to Athens.
The American couple next to Nevis were controlling their concern. “What’s going to happen?” they asked.
“Either they’ll put us up for the night or they’ll try later,” Nevis said. “I’d guess they’ll try later. It’s a lot cheaper than paying hotel bills for this mob.”
Babies cried. Greek widows tightened their black babushkas and their seat belts. The plane landed and the blonde stewardess said on the intercom in what was possibly the only English she knew, “We have arrived at the airport of Athens. Thank you for flying Olympic Airlines. We hope you enjoyed your flight and will fly with us again.” Christ, thought Nevis. The passengers were not polite to the blonde stewardess as they filed out and down to the buses standing in the rain.
As soon as he was back in the terminal Nevis found a telephone exchange and told the clerk he wanted to call Mythios in Crete. The clerk claimed there was no such place, obviously hoping this would be enough to discourage further effort. Nevis said, “That’s okay. I’ve got the number. Can you give me a line?” The call went through quickly, and when the hotel in Mythios answered they recognized Nevis’s voice and put him through to the dining room. Radomir was called to the phone and Nevis shouted through the buzz and rattle of the line that he was held up by storms but if he didn’t call again he’d be there in the night. Radomir’s voice seemed to sound both concerned and unconcerned.
In the airport the passengers wandered aimlessly and knotted and untied in clusters, trying to find out if anyone had any information. Nevis went to the ticket window and bought an additional ticket for the 5:45 flight the following morning just in case he needed it.
Shortly before ten o’clock the intercom squawked and the Heraklion flight assembled again. The passengers bolted for the ground transport as though once they were aboard the bus they had as good as left the ground. The flight unfolded itself once again. The Melina Mercouri stewardess greeted them once again, the American-voiced pilot once more pointed out Lesbos, this time the lights only. And this time the plane came down in a wet, dark place called Heraklion.
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