The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  Peter’s longing to strike out at him was nearly irresistible but he warned himself that he might only make matters worse. “For God’s sake,” he said roughly. “You know perfectly well we both want it the other way around. But what the hell—if you want to experiment—well, we’ll see. That’s enough of this now. Leave it for tomorrow. I’ve got to go back to the party.”

  With a quick movement, Jeannot seized Peter’s shirt at the collar and yanked. Buttons flew and the shirt ripped down the middle. “There. Go on back to the party now,” he shouted.

  Peter stepped back and his fist lifted. In the split-second it took him to direct the blow, he envisioned the consequences. He didn’t think Jeannot would put up much of a fight, but he couldn’t be sure. If they really slugged it out, neither of them would be able to put in an appearance. He needed time to figure out how to get out of this predicament. He had to make Jeannot go back so that at least Charlie would know they weren’t together. His hand dropped to his side, but his fists remained clenched. “You really are a shit,” he said out of the depths of his anger.

  “I don’t care,” Jeannot cried wildly. “It is better for you to hate me than to go on like this.” He grabbed the top of Peter’s trousers with both hands and yanked again. More buttons popped and there was another sound of tearing fabric. The brief silken thing, even flimsier than his swimming trunks, that he wore as underpants was gone with one quick painful rip. The trousers fell down around his ankles. He was trembling with rage, but all he could think of was to make Jeannot go back to the party. The forbidden memory nudged his brain, less memory after the years of scrupulous obliteration than a series of reflexes triggered by involuntary physical exposure, all commanding violence. He almost wished for somebody to find them like this: it would free him to attack. His fists ached with longing to smash into flesh. This was part of the memory, too, along with the enforced shaming frustration of his impulse to fight back.

  Jeannot’s voice sounded appeased when he spoke again. “There. Now you are naked the way I want you,” he said softly. “I’ve never seen you naked before without your being hard. You’re so beautiful.”

  “I doubt if you’ll ever see me hard again.” Peter was surprised he could speak through his choking rage. “Please, Jeannot. There’s nothing more you can do here. Please go back to the others.”

  “No.” He fumbled with the ruined shirt and got it off and threw it on the ground. His hands were everywhere, touching all the places he had discovered where Peter was sensitive. Peter’s body felt dead except for the blazing anger that shook it from head to foot. Jean unfastened his own trousers and released his sex and pressed it against Peter. “Now. We are together. Now you will get hard.”

  “Please, Jeannot. We’ve been here too long already.” His voice broke with desperation. “I’m begging you. Go back. Let everybody see you.”

  Jean-Claude’s hands continued to roam over him and hold him as he moved around behind him. He slid his hands down to his thighs and pulled him in tight against him. Peter felt the hard, naked flesh pressed up flat between his buttocks. Christ. Did the disgusting shit think he could compete with Charlie? “You see?” Jean murmured. “I will fuck you. You will be happy.”

  “All right. Tomorrow. I’ll let you do anything you like tomorrow. Just go now.”

  “No. I want to make you hard.”

  “Then we’ll be here all night. Do you think I’m enjoying this? I’ve never been so angry in my life. If you ever want me to speak to you again, go, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You mustn’t be angry. Everything I do is because I love you. I’ll suck your cock. You like that.”

  “What’ll it take to convince you that I can’t do anything now? The only reason you’re still alive is because I want you to go back.”

  “I want to see you hard with me.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Forget about that. I’m too angry now. Listen. Maybe we don’t have to wait till tomorrow. I’ll try to come tonight.”

  “Yes. Tonight. Now.” He turned Peter in his arms and took his mouth in his. His tongue probed deep. Peter suddenly felt it as a violation of some sacred, private area of himself. His hands grew insistent again. Peter waited long enough not to appear too obviously repelled and then drew his head away.

  “All right. Now go.”

  “You promise you will come tonight?”

  “I’ll come if it’s humanly possible. I’ll have to wait for Charlie to go to sleep. Otherwise, I swear I’ll be there in the morning.”

  “No. Tonight. Promise.”

  “All right. I promise.” The appalling possibility that Jeannot might come to the rented villa crossed his mind but he had to deal with the immediate peril. “It may be very late. Just wait for me.”

  “Yes, I will wait. Anne says I must think of you first.”

  “Button yourself up,” Peter ordered brusquely. “Now listen. Go right back there. Make sure Charlie sees you. Find him and ask him if he’s seen me. Make it clear that you’ve been looking for me. You understand?”

  Jean tucked himself in and fastened his trousers. His hair was no more disordered than it had been before. “Of course, my lover. What will you do?”

  “That’s my problem. Just get going.”

  “I can count on you?”

  “Yes, definitely,” he said to speed Jean on his way. He would go as soon as possible to prove to him that nothing he could do would ever stir his body again. That should settle it once and for all.

  Jeannot hesitated and then gave his sex a final caress and turned and went back up the path. Peter pulled up his trousers and retrieved the tattered shirt and put it on as best as he could. He had to hold everything closed. The little undergarment was beyond salvaging. He left it where it lay. He continued to be shaken by waves of anger, but he hadn’t time to give in to them now. He would settle with Jean-Claude tomorrow.

  Although it had seemed an endless nightmare while it was going on, he realized that the incident hadn’t taken much more than five minutes. Something to the good. He would have to try to get away from here without anybody seeing him, rush home to change and get back as fast as he could. The drive would give him time to make up a story for Charlie. He didn’t know what he would say if anybody saw him now. A fall? Not very convincing. With his fly ripped open and his shirt in rags, he looked quite simply as if he’d been raped.

  Clutching his clothes together, he started off cautiously after Jean-Claude. When he saw the dressing pavillion looming up in front of him, he turned off the path away from the pool. It was rough going. The ground sloped away and rose again. There was a good deal of undergrowth to slow him. Every root that tripped him, every spikey branch that tore at his trousers added to the anger that burned in him. When he thought of Jean-Claude, unscathed, enjoying himself at the party, while he stumbled around in the dark with his clothes torn off, he wanted to shout with frustrated rage. At least he should have found Charlie by now. Seeing Jean-Claude should keep him from imagining things for a while. If he could make it home and back in under an hour, if Jean-Claude did as he was told without wasting any time, Charlie might not even notice that he was gone. He would notice that he’d changed his clothes. How in the world was he going to explain that? Even as he tried to fabricate some plausible tale, he knew he was going to have to tell the truth, the truth arranged slightly, perhaps, but still the truth. He was going to have to admit going off into the dark with Jean-Claude. If he could think of some mitigating excuse for doing that, he could pose as an innocent victim. Which was what he had been, goddamn it. Charlie would be furious with Jean-Claude. There was the danger of confrontations, of angry words, of the whole truth coming out. Could he invent some other culprit, an unknown stranger, and keep Jean-Claude out of it? No, not with Charlie. He stumbled over a rock and swore violently.

  He had reached the last rise leading up to the great house. He broke out of the trees and stood watchfully for a few seconds on the edge of a large clearing. Through lighted windows ahea
d, he could see people working in the kitchen. He was safe from guests here. He ran up the last steep ground and made a dash around the side of the house and across the parking area to the car. It occurred to him with a lurch of his heart that Charlie might have taken the keys, although he usually didn’t when they were together so the car would be available to both of them. His breath caught as he pulled open the door. The keys were dangling from the dashboard. He leaped in and was away.

  The road was mercifully free of traffic. As far as he remembered, there was no risk of taking a wrong turning. He drove as fast as he dared. He hadn’t really noticed how long the trip had taken earlier. He calculated that he’d been driving about twenty minutes when he turned into the drive through the vineyard in which the rented villa was set. He raced upstairs and let the clothes fall off him and left them on the floor. He was washed and dressed again in minutes and back in the car. At this rate, he wouldn’t be gone much more than three-quarters of an hour. He was panicky all the way back as he encountered turnings and forks in the road he hadn’t remembered. He had the feeling that the return trip was taking much longer. He came at last to the left turn he knew now and triumphantly gunned the car up the hill through the cork trees.

  When he was once more under the bright lights of the terrace, he felt as if he’d been gone for days. As he stepped out, he wondered whether he should blend into a group and let Charlie find him as if nothing had happened or go to him directly. He was spared the choice. Charlie had obviously been watching for him and was immediately standing in front of him.

  “Well. You decided to come back.” His voice was ominously calm and his face set and his eyes steely as he surveyed the fresh costume. “You’ve changed your clothes? What’s the story?”

  “I had to go home. It’s all right. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “I think we’d better go now.”

  “I’ve just got back. Isn’t it too early?”

  “Some people have left already. We won’t be the first. I know you weren’t with Jean-Claude. He’s been here. Who did you go off with?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody. I just had to go home to change.”

  “Just like that. I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “Shall we say good night to Madame Graumont?”

  “You couldn’t have let me know what you were up to, could you? It didn’t occur to you that I might have been worried.”

  “I’m sorry, Champ. There was nothing I could do about it. You’ll understand when I tell you.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  The atmosphere was tense between them as they left their hostess and went out to the car. Peter couldn’t think how to begin without immediately adding substance to Charlie’s displeasure.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he said when Charlie had the car in motion. “I don’t either, as far as that goes. I beg of you not to make more of it than it’s worth.”

  “You really have me guessing. You go home in the middle of a party to put on a new outfit. Go ahead and tell me about it.”

  “I want to. It all has to do with Jean-Claude, of course.”

  “I see.” Charlie felt as if he had been hit in the stomach but he didn’t show it. “Then I think you’d better be very careful to tell me the truth. I’ll find out if you’re lying.”

  “You don’t have to use that tone, but never mind. After what you’d said, I decided just to ignore him this evening. He cornered me eventually and said he wanted to talk to me. I refused but he began insisting, and I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him to lay off, to stop running after me. Besides, he was drunk and sort of wild and I was afraid of what he might say in front of others. We were beside the pool so I went with him a little beyond it where there’re trees and a sort of clearing and steps going down to the sea. That’s were it happened.”

  Charlie’s grip tightened on the wheel as Peter went on. He was intent on every word, weighing it, subjecting it to lightning scrutiny for hidden implications, waiting to pounce on a discrepancy. His chest and stomach were aching with the conflict of doubt and outrage, trust and despair. The thought of anybody handling Peter, above all of harming him, aroused in him a passion of protest. If Peter were telling it as it really happened, he would gladly kill Jean-Claude. Could he believe it? Was it really convincing?

  “All I could think of was to go on reasoning with him so he would leave me.” Peter quickly concluded his account, suggesting that Jean-Claude had only looked at him rather than touched him after ripping his clothes. “I had to get away and change. There was no way of letting you know:”

  “And you expect me to believe that he did this without your having encouraged him in any way?”

  “How could I encourage anybody to do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t mean tonight. I mean the last few weeks. You’ve let him hold hands with you. What else have you let him do? Have you let him kiss you, for instance?”

  Peter’s instinct for truth made him hesitate for a fatal instant. Would it be so bad to admit to a kiss? “You know I don’t go around letting people kiss me,” he protested a beat too late.

  “Is that supposed to be a straight answer? I think all the rest of it might be a bit more believable if you’d said yes.”

  “I agree it’s unbelievable. I was stunned. Wait till you see my clothes.”

  “Clothes are apt to look a bit the worse for wear if you’ve been out fucking under the trees. Why did he look so tidy? Had he taken his clothes off, perhaps?”

  “He was ripping and tearing at me, I tell you. I didn’t touch him.”

  “That’s odd, too. If anybody tried to rip open my fly, I’d really bash him. Unless I wanted him to, of course.” His breath caught in something like a sob as he said it. He was turning the knife in his own wound. He couldn’t believe the worst, but he had caught Peter’s hesitation and he was sure now that he had led Jean-Claude on in some way. If Peter were really lying, he would have made up a better story, but he was surely editing the facts in some way. That such a thing could have happened, even seeing Peter’s part in it in its most innocent light, made him sick.

  “I wanted to hit him, God knows,” Peter asserted with persuasive passion. “I was afraid once might not be enough. He’s stronger than you’d expect. If it had turned into a free-for-all, I was afraid everybody would find out. You’d have hated that as much as I would.”

  “Yes. Well, let’s restudy the whole scene. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Guy asks me to leave a party and go for a little stroll with him. I know perfectly well what he has in mind, so I say no. We’ll have to assume that I temporarily lose my mind and agree.” That he was actually having this conversation with Peter was inconceivable, but he went on implacably. “So there we are in the dark and if I let him move in close enough to tear off my shirt, I must know the moment is coming. He makes a grab and I’m ready to move fast. If I don’t want to hit him for some reason, I run and there I am back at the party, a little out of breath but intact.”

  “It’s not going to help for you to make some sort of lousy joke of it.”

  “Oh, no. That wasn’t a joke. It was a perfectly reasonable reconstruction of a perfectly familiar situation.”

  “All right. That’s the way it would be with you and Guy. But can’t you understand how I was thinking? You’d just spoken to me about Jean-Claude. If I got in some sort of a mess with him, it would’ve seemed as if I hadn’t paid any attention to you. I just wanted to keep it quiet and get it over with as quickly as possible until I could speak to you.”

  “I still have the feeling that you’re leaving something out,” Charlie said coldly.

  “What? I’ve told you I found him sort of appealing. I admit I’ve known he thinks he’s in love with me. I guess I was touched by it. I wanted to help him get over it. Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I swear to God I never dreamed he’d be capable of anything like tonight.”

  “Well, that sounds a bit mo
re honest. Maybe you’re ready to admit to a few more things.” He didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted to stop the car and jump out and run, run anywhere to get away from this. But he knew how to exploit Peter’s basic honesty and he was blindly determined to get the truth. He felt as if their whole future depended on it. He took an iron grip on himself and said quite lightly, “You might as well admit you’ve let him kiss you.”

  “Well, yes. I—”

  “I don’t think I want to make a catalogue of all the things you might have done. He’s had a good look at your cock. I can’t imagine his bothering to pull your pants off without playing with it a bit. Are you sure he didn’t show you his?”

  “All right, if you want all the sordid details. Yes, he opened his pants. He had a hard-on. I didn’t. That’s the difference.”

  “Really lovely. I suppose you know I’m going to beat the shit out of him myself tomorrow. Tell me this. Under different circumstances, can you imagine going to bed with him?”

  “Not after—” He checked himself. The question had been phrased so that it was easy to evade but he realized that an attempt at honesty in answering it might achieve more understanding between them. Charlie’s unyielding manner was making him begin to pray for understanding. He began again, “Oh, Christ, how do you expect me to answer that? You know you’re the only person I’ve ever cared about. But—hell, things happen sometimes. Damn rarely. Practically never, really. Two or three times in ten years. It’s just a kind of chemical reaction. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s hard to control when it’s going on. I admit I got pretty worked up about him for a little while, but it’s all over. I don’t mean just because of tonight. What happened before lunch today—that was real. You know that. That’s all I want, you, you doing the things we do together.”

  Charlie’s jaws were clamped shut. He felt as if he could break the wheel in his hands. This wasn’t going to end here. “Well, I suppose I ought to thank you for telling the truth,” he said evenly, “but I can’t pretend I like it. I feel as if I don’t even know you. Things happen! Is that your way of saying you’ve been to bed with two or three other guys?”