McKain's Dilemma

by Williamson, Chet

  For nearly eight years, no one except his lovers knew anything about Carlton Runnells's homosexuality. He was circumspect in his contacts, choosing anonymous partners when he went to New York or Philadelphia on weekends, and, locally, selecting men who had as much to lose if discovered as he did. Still, after a while, rumors began to spread, and the friendliness with which Runnells treated the boys who worked on his stage crew was viewed with suspicion.

  At last he resigned from his teaching job, but not before he had found a better position elsewhere. The place to buy furniture in Lancaster was from Leicht and Doherty. In the space of fifty years in the same location they had established a snob appeal that Ethan Allan and the other Johnny-come-latelies had been unable to equal, no matter how high they raised their prices. Anyone who was anyone bought their furniture there—the Colesons, who controlled the newspapers and broadcasting in the county; the Weidmans, who had run the paint company for nearly a century; and the Barneses, nouveau riche in contrast to the others, but riche nonetheless.

  Carlton Runnells entered the Leicht and Doherty emporium with just the right amount of élan. He was dressed impeccably, groomed luxuriously, and carried a large assortment of room designs that he had stolen from an ex-lover in Philadelphia, whose penciled name he removed and replaced with his own. Mr. Doherty, the seventy-four-year-old manager and co-owner, thought Mr. Runnells's work a delight, and the seventy-five-year-old Mr. Leicht (who had never married) thought the same of Mr. Runnells himself. The subterfuge worked, and was never discovered, for it turned out that Runnells's own work was equal, if not superior, to his old lover's. He was hired on the spot, as Mr. Leicht and Mr. Doherty's favorite room designer was retiring in three months, which, as luck would have it, was June, the month when Runnells's contract with the school would expire.

  Carlton Runnells found that he liked interior design and was good at it. He also found that the people he dealt with liked him. Mr. Leicht could be a nuisance, frequently putting an arm around him, and occasionally patting his ass, but it never went beyond that, and Runnells was willing to let an old faggot indulge in a few memories of gayer days. At any rate, the old man died a year after Runnells joined the firm, and he was mildly relieved to be rid of the irritant.

  Most of the customers with whom he came in contact were older women, and the very fact that they shopped at Leicht and Doherty was indicative of their wealth. Carlton Runnells got along with them swimmingly. He felt as though he had stepped back in time, and saw himself as a macho version of Franklin Pangborn, the fastidious and sissified actor who floorwalked through a hundred movie department stores in the forties. He even took to wearing a fresh boutonniere daily, and using a clear polish on his immaculately trimmed nails. If a rich matron made a suggestion about how Runnells could improve his appearance (and they often did, regally unaware of their impertinence), he acted upon it, and invariably was complimented by not only the woman who had made the suggestion, but others as well. It seemed, Runnells observed, that what appealed to one rich older woman appealed to them all. And Carlton Runnells quickly learned that what appealed to rich older women the most was him.

  The possibilities were endless. Invariably he would find himself alone with them in their houses, always in the morning or the afternoon when their husbands were away earning the money that allowed them to hire his services. Most of the time they simply teased, and he responded in kind, implying that though the temptation to leap into the lace-hung four-poster beds with them was great, he had far too much respect for them to ever attempt such a thing. Runnells was good at teasing, good at playing the games these women liked to play.

  And if it happened on occasion that it went beyond teasing, that a woman called Runnells's bluff, well, that was all right too. He bedded them and enjoyed it, not so much for the act itself as for the thrill of illicitness, the idea that he was screwing some of the wealthiest married women in Lancaster, who would never say a word to anyone about it, except maybe their friends, and that helped his reputation more than it hurt it. In fact, after he balled a client, he noticed a definite rise in business two weeks later.

  Runnells's life went on in this vein for seven years, and he loved it. He made a good salary, far more than he had as a teacher, and although he didn't have his summers free, he got three weeks paid vacation as soon as he began, and four weeks beginning in 1974. Vacation, however, was not a prime consideration with him. He liked his job, and liked playing the games. He had locally gathered a wide assortment of male lovers over the years, and on most weekends he took the train to New York, where he stayed with a variety of friends. It was the ideal life for him, or so he thought until Leona Coyle Barnes walked into it in the summer of 1976.

  Until then, he had never seen any future with the women he teased and made love to. He was a diversion, and he realized it, something for the aging, horny hags to play with, to assure themselves that the wrinkles weren't as deep as their untrustworthy mirrors indicated. He didn't mind. He enjoyed breaking the rules, and the extra jobs he got as a result. It didn't matter to him that he wasn't invited to dinner parties. He had his own parties that suited him far more than the stuffy conclaves of Lancaster's version of the Four Hundred. The women all seemed so self-conscious, yet aware of their own self-importance. When you got right down to it, as he told his male lovers, they were bores, with nothing to talk about but their own tiresome activities.

  Leona Coyle Barnes was different. She was older than most of the women who came into Leicht and Doherty's, but she was also brighter, more intelligent, more alert to the world around her. Runnells had been told about her before he met her. Mr. Doherty called him into his oak-paneled office, invited him to sit in the chair of worn and burnished red leather, and offered him a Nat Sherman cigarette, which Runnells took.

  "You've heard of Christian Barnes," Mr. Doherty began.

  "Sure. Didn't he die a year or two ago?"

  Mr. Doherty nodded. "We were never able to get any of the man's business, Carlton. He bought out of Philly, I think to spite us and our customers, as though local wasn't good enough for him." Mr. Doherty waved a bony hand. "But that's all water under the bridge now, let him rest in peace. I got a call this morning from Mrs. Barnes."

  "The widow?" Runnells blew the cigarette smoke out gently, crossed his legs, and rearranged the creases in his trousers.

  "Yes. She told me she wants to have the whole house redone. Said that her late husband's tastes were too Teutonic, that's the word she used, and that living alone out there—that's Ravenwood, you know—is becoming depressing, and that she's looking for a lighter touch. Of course, I recommended you immediately, Carlton. I think you should get along splendidly with her. A very nice woman, I met her once. As outgoing as her husband was reclusive. Shame she had to wait so long before the old . . . well, be that as it may. She'll be in tomorrow. Treat her well, as I know you will. She could mean a large commission check."

  "I'll do my best."

  "I'm sure you will," Mr. Doherty responded, with just the hint of a smirk on his dry, white lips.

  Leona and Runnells met the following day, introduced with old-world courtliness by Mr. Doherty. Runnells took her offered hand, and gave a slight bow. She smiled a bit reproachfully, as if she knew his game.

  Leona Coyle Barnes, Runnells thought, must have at one time been something to look at. Even now she was fairly well preserved. Her eyes were bright, and Runnells looked down only slightly at them from his own medium height. There was not an extra ounce of weight on her, and in spite of her age and stringiness, he found her rather attractive, a response that surprised him until he realized, a day or two later, that she reminded him of Katharine Hepburn, whose early movies he loved. Her teeth were particularly white and shining. He felt sure they were her own. He had seen enough dentures in the past few years to recognize the real things. Her hair was a lustrous brown streaked with gray, natural as well. The only trace of falseness about her was an unnatural tightness of the skin around the jawline, s
olid evidence of a facelift. Well, Runnells thought, why not? He was sure she could afford it.

  Leona was as well spoken as she was handsome, and invited Runnells out to her house the following day. When he arrived, he made no effort to conceal his reaction to the furnishings. "As I told you," Leona smiled, "Teutonic."

  He chuckled. "I would have said hardcore Gothic. My God, I can just expect to see the barons come through the door with a dead deer."

  "I often told Chris," she said with a smile of recollection, "you already have one amusement park, you don't need two. But he loved feeling like the lord of the manor."

  "And did you like being the lady?"

  When she looked at him there was challenge in her eyes. "Yes, Mr. Runnells, I have always liked being the lady."

  At that moment he thought that she saw straight into his soul and knew precisely what and who he was. No one had ever done that before. She frightened him. And she fascinated him.

  "I'll show you the rest of the house now."

  It was huge and awesome, like a castle, but a castle he felt sure he could soften and make livable. Stone could be warm if you dressed it properly. As Leona showed him through the house, Runnells felt strangely subdued, and displayed none of the usual wit and irony that had caused his previous clients to be so taken with him. He was polite and well-mannered, making thoughtful observations and suggestions as they passed through the many chambers, but his mind was engaged with more than decoration and room planning.

  It was Leona Coyle Barnes and Carlton Runnells and this house, on a future he had never before considered, on a step that could preserve him as well as money had preserved the woman who walked beside him.

  Oh, there would be obstacles, but none so great that they could not be overcome. Although he felt beyond a doubt that she knew him for what he was, he felt too that she was attracted to him, as a certain type of woman is to things she knows she can never fully own. For a rich woman, that is often the source of the attraction. But how far, he wondered, would she be willing to go to capture that which she could never have? At the very least, he knew he could find that out.

  They worked together closely for the next three weeks, during which time he was a perfect gentleman, treating her kindly and professionally. She treated him the same, and for the first time in Runnells's decorating career, there were no double entendres made in a bed-room. When, at the end of the three weeks, the furniture, wall coverings, carpeting, and accent pieces had all been selected, and they sat together on the massive Spanish sofa in the late Christian Barnes's den, Leona invited Runnells to dinner on the following Saturday night. Though surprised, he accepted, and asked how large the party would be.

  "Two," she replied.

  "Just the two of us?"

  "I really feel as though I should thank you properly, Carlton." They were on a first-name basis now. "And I'd like to do so when we don't have colors and fabrics to think about. You've done a wonderful job for me. So I thought a nice dinner might be a way to show how much I appreciate it. Along with your fee, of course." She smiled with those perfectly white teeth. "Paulette intends to go all out—you won't be disappointed."

  Paulette was Leona's cook. Runnells had already sampled her skill in several lunches he'd taken with Leona. "I'm sure I won't."

  He was a bit at loose ends. Although he and Leona had gotten along well, it had been very much an employer-employee relationship, quite the opposite of what he had hoped for. Well, he thought, perhaps this was how Leona Coyle Barnes showed largess to her lackeys, by giving them a taste of paradisal French cooking they'd never have in their own homes, nor in most of the restaurants in the area. Paulette's cuisine was a wonder.

  Runnells had planned to drive down to Philadelphia that weekend, but Philadelphia would still be there the following week, and he had no intention of rejecting any proposal made by Leona, especially after seeing the total bill and figuring roughly what his percentage would be.

  So the following Saturday he washed his car, groomed himself even more carefully than usual, and put on his dinner jacket, taking care to remove every bit of lint. When he saw Leona, he was glad he'd taken such pains. She was dressed in a long, high-necked gown of black silk, cut severely yet elegantly to show her trim, rangy figure. A diamond pendant rested on her chest, and two studs, each at least a carat, shone in her ears. She looked, Runnells thought, very good indeed, and if one used one's imagination, and a dim light, she could easily have passed for a woman in her late forties. Having seen her under other conditions, Runnells guessed that she was somewhere in her early sixties.

  She opened the door to greet him, and when he passed through, she leaned forward quickly and gave him a small peck on the cheek, something she had not done before, and he thought that perhaps he had underestimated himself, that he had indeed had the intended effect on her during the weeks they'd spent together, that she had only been testing him to make certain that he was a gentleman, and would make no cheap and clumsy grab at her ass in the parlor. He hadn't, and now here he was, alone with Leona Coyle Barnes in her big, expensive house, about to share in an exquisite dinner. Maybe, if he played his cards right, he could share in more.

  The meal was exquisite, as he'd known it would be, but Leona's conversation was less bright than before. She seemed preoccupied, and it took him until the dessert to realize that the preoccupation was actually embarrassment, the reason for which he could not guess.

  After dinner, they went into the west parlor for sherry, and there, on the inlaid teak table that they had selected together, lay a small, wrapped present. "A little something for you," Leona said, "with my gratitude for making this place livable again." She looked away immediately so that he could not see her eyes, and he thanked her, picked up the gift, and opened it.

  It was a Dunhill cigarette lighter of brushed gold, as slim and elegant as anything he owned. On it was the initial C, in a heavy script. "Gothic," he smiled.

  Leona nodded. "For Christian. Something Gothic should remain, I felt."

  A dark thought crossed his mind. "This was . . . his, then?"

  "Oh no!" she cried. "The C is for Carlton. I would never give you anything of his."

  The statement could have been taken in two ways, but her inflection told him that she meant it the way he preferred, that what Christian Barnes had owned was unworthy of the more highly refined tastes of Carlton Runnells. He ran his thumb over the cool gold. C. Not a more formal C.R., but simply C. For Carlton. He liked that. He liked the way things were going. He liked the way that Leona smiled when she watched him caress the lighter.

  She took a cigarette from the holder on the table. "Would you like to use it to light my cigarette for the first time?"

  "And not the last, I hope," he said, striking the wheel and seeing the flame leap up immediately, looking at her looking at him while she drew deeply on her cigarette until it ignited. The proximity of the flame cast her features in high relief, so that he could see the lines and the crow's feet, the unmistakable stamp of the years.

  The following day, at her invitation, he arrived at Ravenwood at four for tea, after which they went shooting doves. He had hunted years before with his father, but had started too early to appreciate the sexual thrill of handling the gun, a thrill that iced through him now every time a bird, flushed from its cover, rose straight up in front, of him with a ratcheting whir of wings. He surprised both Leona and himself with his speed and accuracy, and took an even dozen back to Pauline, which, with Leona's four, was enough for a good-sized pie, the promise of which drew a luncheon invitation for Tuesday, his day off.

  So the weeks passed, and Runnells saw Leona every few days. She bought him a shotgun, a Purdey .20 gauge side-by-side double, that made him feel as if he were carrying a king's scepter. They hunted together frequently, and on bright weekends they went down to the Chesapeake Bay to sail on Leona's eighteen-foot boat, the Dutchman. Christian Barnes had named it, of course.

  As time went by, they started to confide in
each other, Runnells telling of things that had never happened—an engagement that had broken up, another near marriage that ended in the tragic death of his lover, a female lover, naturally. Runnells learned of Leona's equally tragic life—her upbringing as a member of Philadelphia society; her coming-out party, the most memorable of the season; her infatuation with Christian Barnes, fifteen years her elder; her marriage to him over the protests of her parents; the building of Ravenwood, in which he walled her up as securely as Charles Foster Kane had walled up Susan in Xanadu; the string of miscarriages she'd suffered in her twenties; and the eventual birth of one son who moved away as soon as he was able, and now had an investment firm in L.A. And, finally, Barnes's death at the age of eighty-one, and Leona's resultant freedom. Runnells's quick figuring gave him Leona's age at last—sixty-eight. It was amazing, he thought, what money could do.

  The more she talked to him the closer she seemed to feel, and before long she was resting her head on his shoulder, taking his hand on walks back from the brushy fields where they hunted, putting her arms around him when it was time for him to go. It was only, Runnells knew, a matter of time before the subject of sex would arise, and he cautioned himself not to be the one to bring it up.

  He didn't have to. One evening after dinner they sat together on the deck behind the house. Paulette had prepared a pitcher of Tom Collinses, and they drank and looked at the woods. Summer had turned to fall, and the dark was coming in earlier and earlier.

  "Do you enjoy being with me, Carlton?" Leona asked, her eyes on the woods.

  "You know I do."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" he asked, as if he'd not heard her properly. "After all, I'm old enough to be your mother. I try to give you money, but you won't take it . . ."