And Alla barely wrote. She would divorce him as soon as he got back to Moscow, and the prospect of living there without her, all alone, never mind all the problems they had, pressed on his chest like a paralyzing weight as he lay on the empty bed in his empty apartment. Sometimes when the nights were bad Gennady imagined Daniel holding him, and the tension in his chest relaxed, although it made him cry.
After all, it was silly for a man of forty to feel this way, for a relationship that had no future. In the end Gennady would go back to the Soviet Union, and Daniel would stay in America with his wife and his children in his beautiful house on the tree-lined street.
Gennady did not begrudge him that: Daniel deserved all the nice things in the world. But it created an asymmetry in their relationship that sometimes hurt him. Daniel had so many things in his life to make him happy, inevitably this affair must mean more to Gennady than it did to Daniel, and he was a little afraid that Daniel would notice.
But sometimes, none of this seemed to matter. Gennady had conceived a silly schoolboy infatuation for Daniel, so that even a stray thought of him gave Gennady a happy expansive feeling in his chest. Their weekly lunches were an exquisite torture, to sit so close to Daniel and talk to him and yet be unable to touch, except perhaps for a handshake at the beginning and end; their infrequent visits to the dacha, like a glimpse of paradise.
By their fourth visit, Gennady nearly vibrated with longing as they drove up to the dacha. The autumn leaves glowed orange and gold, and there was such a fire in Gennady’s blood that he wanted not only to rip off his clothes but even almost his skin itself, as if it was only another barrier between them and without it he and Daniel could melt together.
By the time they reached the cabin the desire to touch and be touched was so intense that it nearly paralyzed him. He sat on the kitchen table – this had become his habit somehow, to sit on the table as Daniel brought in the picnic lunch. Daniel touched a hand to the back of Gennady’s neck as he went back out to the car to fetch a blanket, and Gennady shivered all down his spine, and when Daniel finally came back and kissed him, Gennady nearly ripped the buttons off Daniel’s shirt.
“What do you want?” Daniel said, and Gennady replied, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” sitting on the kitchen table with his legs around Daniel’s waist and his arms around his neck and his hands tangled in his hair, kissing him with an open urgent mouth, wanting Daniel to fall to his knees and suck him off and yet somehow not stop kissing him, or drag off his pants and fuck him right there on the table, raw, even though he was not at all sure that would feel good, as a fantasy it sounded perfect but as a physical sensation it might just hurt.
The table legs scraped across the concrete floor as Daniel climbed on the table and pinned Gennady to the wooden surface. “Is the table strong enough for this?” Gennady panted.
“I sure hope so.” Daniel held Gennady’s face as he kissed him, and Gennady let go of Daniel’s neck and began to undo the buttons on Daniel’s shirt, running his hands over the bared skin, touching him and yet also holding Daniel a little bit away. He wanted him so much that he felt as if he might catch fire if they got any closer.
When Gennady undid the last button, Daniel tossed his shirt aside. Gennady made another noise, desire and frustration, and propelled Daniel off the table and across the room, till he had him pinned against the sink, kissing his mouth and running his hands over the long smooth muscles in his back. He thrust one leg between Daniel’s and banged his knee painfully on the pipes, and almost didn’t feel it.
“What do you want, Gennady?”
“Everything, I don’t know.”
“I want you to fuck me,” Daniel said roughly, and Gennady turned him around and bent him over the sink and pulled his trousers down. Gennady put his hand around Daniel’s cock and squeezed, and Daniel cried out; and then Gennady took off his own shirt and pressed his chest against Daniel’s back and kissed the sweat from his shoulders. “In my pocket,” Daniel told him, gasping, and Gennady slicked his fingers and thrust them inside Daniel. It felt good, Daniel clenching tight and hot around his fingers, “Come on, come on, fuck me, please,” and actually crying out with pleasure when Gennady pushed inside him. His gasps turned into greedy moans as Gennady rocked inside him, more, harder, faster.
“Am I going to hurt you?”
“No.”
Daniel came almost as soon as Gennady wrapped his hand around his cock.
Gennady fucked Daniel more slowly after that. Daniel’s breath came out in soft pants. Gennady ran his hands along Daniel’s thighs, which quivered with tension, and pressed inside him to that spot he particularly liked. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, kissing Daniel’s shoulders.
“No – no.” Daniel’s voice trembled on the cusp between pleasure and distress.
Gennady wrapped his arm around Daniel’s chest. He pressed his mouth against Daniel’s shoulder and pressed close inside him, and the pressure built in Gennady till he felt like a corked teakettle on the verge of boiling. “All right, all right,” Daniel said, and Gennady thrust inside him and came.
Gennady stayed inside Daniel for a little while after, his breath slowing to match Daniel’s, their hearts beating together. He felt hot and sleepy, and he slid out of Daniel and pulled his pants back into place and lay down on the cold concrete floor. It felt good on his sweaty skin.
Daniel slid to the floor too, and kissed Gennady’s collarbone repeatedly. He ran a hand over Gennady’s chest, his nipples, his ribs, his stomach, sliding into his pants to briefly cup his spent cock. “You are so good at that,” Daniel murmured.
Gennady rolled over on his stomach, blushing with pleasure, pressing his hot face to the floor. He pressed his cheek against the cool concrete, and smiled at Daniel, and Daniel put his arms around him and held him close.
***
If they had still been in their twenties, probably they could have fucked all day. But as it was they didn’t have the stamina, and throughout the summer and on into the fall Gennady dragged Daniel off into the woods to forage: late raspberries, blackberries, wild grapes, hickory nuts.
On that October trip, Gennady found a great haul of chanterelles. He gloated as he picked them, filling an entire basket as Daniel sat on a fallen log and watched. “Take these home to Elizabeth and fry them in butter,” Gennady instructed. “They are a prince among mushrooms, my friend.”
Daniel eyed the chanterelles dubiously, which Gennady found almost insulting even though he had read that all Americans were afraid of wild mushrooms. “We’ll never get through this many mushrooms, Gennady,” Daniel protested. “Why don’t you take some?”
“No. How could I explain where I found them? And all my colleagues would want to know. They will chase this as if it is the secret for a new nuclear bomb, only even more, because from this they stand to gain personally.”
Daniel’s mouth curved into an almost reluctant smile. “Well, at least let’s cook some for lunch, then.”
“Watch how I do it so you can show Elizabeth,” Gennady told him.
“Come back and show her yourself,” Daniel said. “She wants you to come to dinner again.”
Gennady doubted that very much, and it made him uneasy to hear Daniel say it. “Now that you know you have chanterelles on your property, you can pick them all season long, they will come up always after it rains. You can serve them at your cocktail parties, and your guests will buy a thousand pictures just so they will be invited again next year.”
Daniel laughed. “Elizabeth doesn’t need mushrooms for that,” he said fondly.
“Of course, of course,” said Gennady. “But still it’s nice to have good food.”
The fondness in Daniel’s voice puzzled him a little. Not that Daniel should love Elizabeth – that was understandable. But that he should love her, and yet nonetheless be here with Gennady. How Elizabeth felt about it all.
Of course, she was an artist, and everyone knew that artists had unusual love lives. But non
etheless it made Gennady uneasy, and so in the woods he gathered these propitiatory offerings. Perhaps it was odd that Gennady’s growing love for Daniel made him worry more about hurting Daniel’s marriage, but it was so, and as he gathered the mushrooms, that fear tightened around his chest like a metal band, till it hurt to breathe.
He breathed out slowly, and imagined the Hawthornes serving these chanterelles he had found for them at their cocktail parties for years to come, long after Gennady himself had gone back to Moscow. He liked to imagine Daniel biting into a piece of toast topped with buttery mushrooms, and the taste flooding his mouth with the memory of Gennady; and he liked too this vision of their marriage continuing on, not only uninjured by his brief intrusion but in this small way enriched by it.
Chapter 5
In early November, Daniel went to Copley University on the outskirts of DC to give a career talk. It was crowded – a big change from even a few years ago, when lots of students wouldn’t be caught dead at a talk about joining the FBI – and he spent some time afterward chatting with a young woman about the FBI’s recent initiative to recruit female agents.
After she left, laden with pamphlets, a paunchy middle-aged man ambled up to the lectern. “Yes?” Daniel said with a smile, straightening his leftover pamphlets to put them into his briefcase.
“Agent Hawthorne,” the man said. “You probably don’t remember me…”
The pamphlets tumbled to the floor. Daniel hadn’t recognized the face, but the voice he knew. “John.”
“I’m sorry for thrusting myself on your notice like this,” John said. “But I saw the flyers about your talk and I thought it must be you. You used to talk about joining the FBI, after all…”
Daniel was struggling to catch his breath. He felt as if a grizzly bear had sauntered up to the podium. “Excuse me,” he said, and snatched up his briefcase, never mind about the pamphlets on the floor. “I’m afraid I’m late for my train…”
“I came to apologize,” John said, all in a rush.
Daniel stared at him. John bent down, his knees creaking, and began to gather up the dropped pamphlets. He held them up to Daniel without getting to his feet again. “I signed up to fight in Korea because I never wanted to see you again,” Daniel said, and added, brutally, “My tour of duty fucked me up less than you did.”
John took the words with a bowed head. “I’m sorry.”
Daniel nearly walked out. To leave John kneeling on the floor, pamphlets still in hand, apology utterly rejected: that would be a good vengeance.
But that idea was the last flare of Daniel’s old anger. Almost as soon as he thought it, the old rage burned away into nothing. It was all so long ago. “Of course,” Daniel said, with a sigh, “I wasn’t on the front lines in Korea.”
John looked up. Daniel held out a hand, and helped heave the man back to his feet.
“Have a beer with me?” John said. “I’ll buy.”
“Yes,” Daniel said, a little amazed to hear himself say it. “Why not?”
***
They went to the campus bar. It was almost empty this early in the evening, and John selected a booth at the far end of the room, the wood scarred with generations of carved initials. Daniel settled his beer carefully on a heart bearing the legend E.L + D.G, 1953.
It felt surreal to sit in a bar with John, as if they were old friends catching up. “How are you doing these days?” John asked, his voice falsely hearty.
“I’m good,” Daniel told him. “I’m working at the FBI… Well, you probably heard all about that at my talk. And I’m married now,” he added. He got out his wallet to show the photograph. “That’s Elizabeth and Emily,” he said, indicating his wife and daughter, who were both giggling for the camera as they posed in the dappled sunlight beneath a maple tree. “And that’s David. I would have liked to get one where he’s laughing too, but he’s a serious little fellow. We were lucky to get the smile.”
“You always had a way with the ladies,” John said, and raised his eyes to Daniel, half-questioningly: Are you happy? Or did you just get married to appease the straights?
“Elizabeth’s a painter,” Daniel said. “She was one of my sister’s friends, actually – Anna invited me to see one of Elizabeth’s shows, practically had to drag me along, and then I met Elizabeth and… I don’t really believe in love at first sight,” he said. “But we went out to an all-night café after the show and we talked until dawn, and I knew by the end of the night that this was the girl I wanted to marry.”
John was smiling. Daniel had forgotten – well, everything about him, really, except for that horrible last night. He had forgotten the way that John listened with his whole attention, and entered into other people’s happiness as fully as if it were his own.
Daniel used to love that quality, but now it made him uneasy. “So how about you?” Daniel asked. “What have you been up to?”
“I’m a professor here. Art history,” John said, “focusing on the Italian Renaissance and Italian film. We’re working to start a film history department. Do you still like movies?”
“Everyone likes movies, John.”
John laughed. “Fair point. The film history classes are always popular – at least at intro level. A lot of people are disappointed when they realize the class isn’t just watching movies.”
“I’ll bet.”
“We’ve been trying to raise money for a campus cinema,” John said. “Some of the students are organizing to bring independent films to campus. French New Wave, Agnes Varda’s ‘Black Panthers.’ Queer films. I’m also,” he said, twisting his beer on its coaster, “the faculty sponsor for the Copley University Gay Club.”
He slipped the last sentence in so casually that it took a moment for Daniel to parse it. “Are you?” Daniel said. “That’s a thing that exists?”
“Do you want to see the yearbook picture?”
“An official club? In the yearbook?”
John got the Copley University yearbook out of his briefcase. He opened to a marked page with a photograph of a baker’s dozen of students smiled at the camera, long-haired boys and short-haired girls, all touchingly, terrifyingly young. They had even listed their names under the photo.
“Are they going to be all right?” Daniel asked. “A yearbook photo is… well, that’s pretty permanent.”
“The world’s changed a lot since we were young,” John said.
“Has it?” Daniel said. He paused, reflecting. Civil Rights, women’s lib. Vietnam War protests. Free love… But only for heterosexual couples. “No, it hasn’t. Not about this.”
“It’s beginning to change,” John corrected himself. “They want to be a part of it.”
“That’s… idealistic,” Daniel said, because it seemed more polite than saying it was irresponsible of John to let these poor sweet kids announce their sexual orientations to the world (in the yearbook! With their real names!) without warning them about all the doors it would slam shut.
He checked the photo again, just in case the girl he’d spoken to that evening was in it. She’d never get into the FBI with that kind of club on her record.
Daniel’s voice was cool when he spoke again. “How’d they rope you into it? Is this some form of atonement?”
“Well.” John hesitated. “Self-acceptance.”
“Oh.” This felt incredibly obvious now that John had said it. “So you did kiss me first,” Daniel blurted, and suddenly he felt angry again.
John drew away. “Yes.”
“I always thought that was unfair,” Daniel said. “You kissed me first, and then you smashed my face because – why exactly?”
“I felt so bad for kissing you – for wanting to kiss you…” John’s face scrunched up as if in physical pain. “I’m so sorry. I can’t say how sorry I am.”
“I – ” Daniel began, and then bit his lip. He was not going to say I nearly shot myself.
A painful silence ensued. Across the room, two young men set up the pool table.
“I’ve got a photo too,” John said. “Of me with my boyfriend.” His voice bobbled before the word boyfriend, and he finished almost apologetically, “If you’d like to see?”
“Sure.”
Daniel had never before seen a happy couple photograph of two men. At first it looked very strange to him, but as he looked at it a little longer it became almost painfully touching. Daniel knew, precisely because he had no intention of doing it, the kind of bravery it would require to be so publicly out of the closet.
Daniel felt a sudden horrible urge to tell John about Gennady. Oh, by the way, I’m seeing a Russian spy on the side. A male one. You’re right, every single part of that is 100% not allowed in the FBI handbook. Instead he said, “This is why you sponsored the club, isn’t it?”
It was a vague way of putting it, but John understood. “To help these kids feel comfortable with who they are,” he said.
“You’ve warned that things like the yearbook photo could have consequences, right? It might haunt them once they’re out of school,” Daniel said.
“Daniel,” John said. “They already know how tough the world is out there. I’m just trying to help them suffer a little less than we did.”
Daniel was so fascinated by the photograph that he actually missed that we. Who had taken it? It looked professionally done, like a wedding photo. Was there an underground gay photographer who took couples pictures?
Then John said, “A couple of the kids in the club are bisexual.”
That was too much. “Really?” Daniel said, his voice bright and hard and quelling.
John took the hint. They talked about movies until it was time for Daniel to go.
***
“That’s crazy,” Gennady said. “You always say Russians are crazy, but that’s crazy, Daniel.”
They were lying on the cabin floor by the lighted wood stove. The gray November rain splashed against the windows. “That’s what I thought too,” Daniel began, “but…”
Honeytrap Page 28
