The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  “So now it’s blackmail, is it?”

  “Oh, no, God, darling, I don’t know what I’m saying. You know I’d never do anything bad to you. But you’ve got to stop doing this to us.”

  “It seems to me you’ve done all the doing.”

  “You need me, darling. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I know you so well. You need me as much as I need you.”

  “I need you. I need Hattie. I need C. B. I sound pretty helpless. Goddamn it, I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody. I’m fine by myself.”

  “Oh, darling, everybody needs somebody. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not saying anything against you. How could I? You’re perfect as far as I’m concerned. But please, darling, dearest, please make sense with me. You know I’m no good without you.”

  “What shit. When you say things like that it’s all the more obvious you have to go.”

  “But I can’t go, darling. Go where? This is the only place I belong. This is ours.”

  “Is it? I haven’t noticed you paying the rent.”

  “Oh, don’t.” He put his hands to his head as if he had been struck. “Don’t do it. Stop it. This is us. This is all I have. Charlie?” He stretched out his hands to him. Charlie moved away from them.

  “Let’s just cut out the theatrics, shall we?”

  “But you said it. We’re all one. That means forever. It has to.”

  “Forever! What’s that supposed to mean? People leave each other every day.”

  “Do you want another boy? Is that what this is all about? Has something been going on I haven’t known about?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You really do have a dirty mind. No, I don’t want another boy.”

  “You will, you know, if I leave. I can’t stand it, but you realize that you will, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t realize anything of the sort,” Charlie roared. His anger now was clear and steadying. “Just because that’s all you can think about doesn’t mean everyone’s the same way. I’ve had enough of it. I just can’t take it any more.”

  Peter studied him for a long moment, his eyes full of love and confidence, which slowly gave way to alarm. Charlie struggled to meet his open gaze without flinching. “You really almost think you mean that, don’t you?” Peter said finally.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. What more do you want to convince you? Shall I pick you up and throw you out in the street?”

  Peter spoke very quietly, as if he hadn’t heard him. “You’d let me go in there and pack my bags and go? Now?”

  Charlie felt himself consumed by the great eyes, but he could no longer meet them. “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why don’t you try it and find out?”

  Peter nodded as if in a trance and turned. Charlie watched him withdraw. Gripped by anger, he felt a flush of triumph pass through him. He had won. Peter moved slowly back through the alcove toward the closets. Halfway there, his body suddenly went rigid. A terrible cry was torn from him. He flung himself onto the bed, and his whole body was shaken by wild, animal sobs. He sounded as if he were surrendering hope, reason, life itself. Charlie’s scalp crawled. He fled the sound, careening through doors, into the kitchen. It was less agonizing there. He bowed his head on the refrigerator, trying to close his ears to it. He flung back his head and put his hands over his ears. He seized the bottle and his glass and poured himself another drink. By God, he would not give in. He would not go to him. Another drink would make it all right. It had to stop eventually.

  He was pouring himself another drink when it did. It took him a moment to become aware of the silence. He cocked his head in the direction of the bed and moved slyly toward the door. He staggered slightly and steadied himself against the jamb. Silence. Had he gone to sleep? After a moment, he heard a sound that he identified as the closet door opening. There was a thump. Packing at last. Still, there’d been a lot of wild talk this evening. Better keep an eye on him. He swirled his drink in his glass, swaying gently. Then, making a great effort to hold to a straight course, he walked rather stiffly into the room. He didn’t look into the alcove but sat where he could keep an eye on everything without appearing to do so. Peter was indeed packing. His movements were erratic, with long moments of total immobility. Charlie thought of the last time he had packed. He mustn’t let himself be tricked into interfering again. No matter what he said, no matter what he did, he must let him get on with it.

  The silence began to bother him. He allowed himself to take a more direct look, at the risk of meeting his eye. Peter was dropping things into the bag without seeming to know what he was doing. He looked totally withdrawn into himself, expressionless. The moments of immobility seemed to be moments of vacant reverie. What was he thinking? He almost wished he were still crying. That would be understandable. That would tell him what he was feeling.

  When the bag was full, Peter stood over it for a long minute, his body slack, not seeming to know what to do with it. He closed it finally and pulled it off the bed and came out and dropped it beside the hall door. Charlie felt his heart race wildly. Don’t say anything, he warned himself. Just one bag so far. Peter wasn’t ready to go yet. If there was some final point to make, he had time.

  Peter straightened and stood looking down at him. Charlie buried his face in his hands. He began to tremble. Suddenly Peter’s shoulders hunched forward, his mouth opened, and the terrible sobs came again as he doubled over and beat his forehead with his fists. “I don’t—I can’t—” Strangled, unintelligible words emerged in gasps. Charlie lunged up out of the chair with a kind of groan that seemed to be part of the movement and seized him. He staggered heavily and almost brought them both crashing to the floor. He recovered his footing somehow. Peter’s body went limp against his, shaken by sobs. He crushed it to him, wanting to crush the sobs from it. “Oh, God, Christ dammit. I love you. Is that what you want? As if you don’t know. I love you. It’s driving me crazy. I sit at the office and think about you, about all of you, yes, about having your cock in my mouth. Do you understand? You don’t know what it does to me when you come like that. As if you were giving me your life to swallow. I never liked it before. No, it’s you. It’s all you. All right, goddamn it, I have a big cock, but it would have to be twice as big for me to have all I want of you. When I’m inside of you, I want more and more. I know where to touch you to make you laugh. I know where to touch you so you moan with just sheer goddamn happiness. I know how to make you growl. And I want more. Always more. It drives me crazy. It’s been like that ever since I first looked at you in the car. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I measured you like a silly high-school kid, and you let me have you. You let me have you, all of you. All beauty. And ever since, you’ve turned me upside down. I don’t know what I am any more. I’ve fought it, I’ve tried to make sense. But it’s all just you. Always you. All summer long and here still. Watching you. Looking at you naked. Seeing the incredible things that go on in your eyes when you look at me. Oh, Christ. I love you, goddamn you.”

  Peter was motionless in his arms. “Come to bed, darling,” he murmured.

  Charlie pushed him from him and gripped his wrists hard and fell back into a chair and pulled him to his knees in front of him. He ran his fingers through his hair and jerked his head back roughly so that his mouth fell open. “There. Where is it? If I could find it, I’d smash it.” His whiskey-laden breath was hot in Peter’s face. His meticulously groomed fair hair was disheveled. His aloofly smiling mask was contorted by rage and rapture. His eyes looked almost glazed in their fury of concentration. He withdrew one hand from Peter’s hair and put his fingers on his face and began to model it as if it were clay. He drew thumb and forefinger, one at the hairline, the other along the eyebrows, across his forehead. “That plane.” He placed his palm flat on his brow. “That’s part of it. You have to have hair just that golden and growing the way it does.” He stroked it briefly. He worked his fingers around th
e sockets of the eyes. “Look at them. A mile apart and the lashes all furry on your cheeks.” He ran his forefinger down his nose and framed his partly open mouth, thumb on one side, fingers flattened on the other. “And that. Oh, Christ.” He fingered the lips, spreading and lifting them at the corners. “Here’s your smile, but I can’t make it work. It’s inside somewhere.” He shaped the chin with his thumb and gripped his neck and placed his thumb on the windpipe and pressed. “That would stop it. Where would it all go then?” He suddenly released his neck and brought the sides of his hands slicing down on his shoulders. Peter swayed, but recovered his balance and remained kneeling before his love, his eyes wide on the intent face. Charlie’s eyes moved from hand to hand, studying the space between them. Then he twisted the tie out of the way and began to pull at the buttons of the shirt, ripping it open. He thrust his hands within and tangled his fingers in the silken curls of the armpits. He placed the tips of his fingers at the point where muscle was joined to arms and traced the line of his breast. He took a deep shuddering breath and ran his hands down the ribs and thrust his fingers just inside the top of the trousers. “That’s where I stopped measuring. From here on was where it all happened.” He withdrew his hands from inside the shirt and circled his waist. He grappled with belt and buttons and cloth in an impossible striving for knowledge. He ran his hands down over the buttocks and held them. He rested his forehead on Peter’s shoulder. “And here. Oh, here. Praxiteles—all those flabby bottoms—he was thinking of girls. Michelangelo was kidding with those great hunks of shapeless flesh. I’ve known a boy. I’ve measured beauty. What more do I want?”

  Peter feared the brutality he felt in the searching hands, he feared to make a move of his own. “Please come to bed, my darling,” he begged.

  Charlie lifted his head. “Nothing,” he shouted into Peter’s face. “Not anything more from anybody. Beauty. Love. Fucking shit.” He flung Peter from him, and he toppled back against the hassock. Charlie slid off the chair onto his knees and lifted his arms as if he were being crucified. “See? Here I am groveling at your goddamn feet. Is this the way you want me? Let me go. For Christ’s sake, let me go.” He bent over and pounded his thighs with his fists. Then he sprang up and careened over to the wall and pushed himself off it and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Peter lay sprawled against the hassock, his head back, his hair on end, his tie over his shoulder, his shirt ripped, his belt undone, his fly open. He was utterly spent, incapable of thought, even less capable of feeling. In a little while, he heard Charlie return. He opened his eyes with an effort and saw him slumped against the wall, holding a glass, looking down at him. His face had changed shape with drink.

  “What the hell are you lying there for?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you up finishing your packing?”

  Peter didn’t move except to shift his gaze to the ceiling. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? If I’m queer, you are too. Why don’t we start with that and work something out from there?”

  “You want me to beat the shit out of you as a farewell present?”

  “It wouldn’t be farewell. I’m not going. I can’t. I just haven’t got the strength. Why don’t we go to bed? We can figure it out in the morning.”

  “Oh, no. You know damn well what would happen if we went to bed. I’m not taking any chances. That’s all over. Finished.”

  Peter shifted his eyes back to Charlie. “You said things just now I’d never dare say, even though I’ve thought them a thousand times. What are we supposed to make of that?”

  “I don’t know what I said. Who cares? You’d never understand anyway.”

  “What about what you’ve just done to me?”

  “What’ve I done to you?”

  “I don’t know. Raped me? Destroyed what little sanity I had left? I don’t know. All I know is that nothing will ever be the same again.”

  “What won’t be the same?”

  “Anything. Most of all my paying any attention to you when you tell me to leave.”

  “Goddamn it, you’re getting out of here. If you want to lie there, I’ll drag you out into the hall and leave you.”

  Peter rolled his head on the hassock. “I’ve thought I was losing my mind. Maybe you already have. You’re asking me to kill myself. I’ve been thinking about doing just that. I guess I’m not the type. It all seems all right up to the point where I pull the trigger or jump or whatever, and then I know I couldn’t do it. I certainly couldn’t do it as long as I know you want me.”

  “Want you! I want to kill you. Are you going to get up?”

  “If you’ll come to bed with me.”

  “Well, I won’t, goddamn it. Never again.”

  “Then I’ll stay here for a while.”

  Charlie lurched forward and grabbed his arm. For a moment, he teetered and almost fell but he managed to straighten himself and began to pull. From where it rested on the hassock, Peter’s head thumped onto the floor.

  “Stop it,” he commanded.

  Charlie obeyed, swaying over him. “Are you going to get up?”

  “Do you want another slugging match? You wouldn’t have much of a chance this time. You’re stinking drunk.”

  “I’m drunk, am I? We’ll see about that.” He began to pull on the arm again. Peter yanked it away, and he staggered back and banged against the wall.

  “Now just leave me alone.” Peter closed his eyes.

  “You’re getting out of here.” It was a wail of frustration. Peter heard him coming at him again. Charlie kicked him hard in the ribs. Peter struggled into a sitting position.

  “You’re really going to push this as far as it’ll go, aren’t you? I won’t hit you. I probably ought to. I probably ought to knock you cold and get it over with. I can’t stand hurting you.” There was silence, except for Charlie’s heavy breathing, as Peter slowly rearranged his clothes. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card and studied it. “All right. Let’s see how sad and disgusting we can make it. A bit more or less won’t make any difference in the morning.” He pulled himself to his feet and squared his shoulders and threw back his head and took a deep breath. He went to the telephone and, holding the card in front of him, dialed a number.

  “Mr. Whitethorne please. Oh, Tommy? Hi. This is Peter Martin … Yeah, the one and only. Can I come see you in a little while? … No, no trouble. You said to call you and—well, I’m calling you. I haven’t had a chance before … Oh, maybe a half an hour or so … Fine. If anything turns up, I’ll call you back.” He hung up thoughtfully.

  Charlie was leaning against the wall, a sneer on his face. “The Congressman’s boy? What’s wrong with the Congressman?”

  “He’s probably in Washington.”

  “You planning to go to bed with him?”

  “The way he’s been looking at me at C. B.’s for the last few months, I don’t see how I can avoid it. I’ll probably get laid by every man in New York. That’s one thing you’ve taught me how to do.”

  Charlie’s mouth clamped shut. The muscles of his neck swelled. He lifted his fists to his face. His control broke. A sob escaped through clenched teeth. He covered his face with his hands and repressed sobs shook him.

  Peter stared at him, appalled. “Oh, no. No, don’t, please don’t. You’ve never cried before. I swore I’d never let you.” He went to him and put his arms around him and led him to a chair and put him into it. He knelt beside him and smoothed his hair. “Please, my darling. Don’t cry. You can’t cry. It’s just not like you.”

  “I’ve—wanted to—often enough,” Charlie gasped between sobs.

  “Oh, my darling. My own love. I’ll go if you stop it. I’ll go if you want me to. I won’t see Tommy if that’s wrong. It just doesn’t seem to matter much what I do if I’m not here with you. Please, sweetheart. Please, my dearest. I guess I understand. There’re a lot of things you want to do in life. You can’t have me hanging around your neck all the time. I just want you. I guess I am a silly little queen. You’ll
be fine without me. You’ll probably get married and have lots of babies. I’ve never dared tell you how much I’ve wished I could do that—have your babies. Lots of little Charlies. God, what heaven. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be OK, I guess. It seems people get over everything. I won’t get over you because I don’t want to, but I’ll be OK. It must count for something to start life with what I’ve had. So much happiness. So goddamn much happiness. More than most people have in a whole lifetime, I’ll bet. Please don’t, darling. Everything’s going to be OK. You’re going to be a big star, and I’ll come see you and tell all my friends that I was yours and always will be. Or I won’t say anything, if you don’t want me to. But I’ll know. God, will I know. Please, darling. Please.”

  The sobs gradually subsided as Peter continued to stroke his hair. At last, Charlie rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hands and put an arm around Peter and hugged him close. He rested his head against the golden hair.

  “God, baby. You’re so good.” His body heaved with a long sigh. “Why does this happen if it’s so wrong? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Who says it’s wrong?”

  “It is. It must be. We can’t be the only two people in the world who’re right. OK, maybe I’m queer, too. At least, a lot of me is. But I’m not going to be. You’ll see. It could only have happened with you. You’re the only one. You always will be. My boy. My baby. I swear to that.”

  “I’m glad. But don’t say any more, please, or you’ll get me going again. I feel as if there isn’t a tear left in me. I probably will have stored up plenty by tomorrow.” He disengaged himself and stood abruptly and went into the alcove. Charlie found an unfinished drink beside him and drank it. He was aware of Peter moving about nearby, but he couldn’t look at him. He heaved himself out of the chair with difficulty and weaved his way into the kitchen and replenished his drink. It seemed to him that he had barely done so when Peter dropped both bags in the hall and was standing in the doorway. He had combed his hair and was wearing a fresh shirt. Even in his drunkenness, something happened in Charlie’s chest as the impact of his beauty struck him.