Everybody Loves You (20 page)

“I didn't know we were going to auction him off like a slave of olden times,” he said, dragging after me into the lobby. As we rode up to Dennis Savage's, he was silent, almost sulky. It isn't easy to have to yield up a disciple.

“Look at you in a suit,” said Dennis Savage to me as we came in.

Little Kiwi handed him Bauhaus's leash and marched without a word into the bedroom.

Dennis Savage shrugged.

“So who's on tap for the gala?” I asked.

As he recited names and eligibility credentials, I thought back to similar dinners he and I and others have given over the years. And yes, sometimes they do take, not unlike a bitter medicine: because sometimes somebody gets the idea that this year it's Love or Die. But, as I say, you can't arrange these things. Chemistry observes its own schedule.

“You're still determined not to tell Cosgrove?” I asked.

“I didn't tell you when I gave
your
setup dinner, did I?”

I was startled speechless.

“When was that?” I got out, at length.

“The summer of 1977.” He was smiling, enjoying my surprise. “You don't remember, do you?”

Bauhaus, haunted by a vision, ran snapping at Dennis Savage's home entertainment center, jumped at the television, fell backwards, and slunk off to the kitchen with a resounding fart.

“While you're getting rid of Cosgrove,” I suggested, “why don't you throw in Bauhaus for a package deal? A boy and his dog.”

“It was at Lionel's house. When he was still in the Grove.”

“No wonder I don't remember it. I usually block out Grove dinners.”

“The median income was one hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “They were all witty, spry, and nice. A very contempo crowd.” He was virtually reciting; he might have been saving this up for years.

“You did this for me?”

Bauhaus stole back into the living room, panting.

“You got drunk,” said Dennis Savage, “and started fights with everyone. Lionel was beside himself. You pushed Bill Swanson into a cake.”

“Probably for some very good reason.”

“He said he didn't like
A Little Night Music.
”

“See?”

Bauhaus stared at the television screen.

“Nothing's on,” I told him.

“Such fine men, too,” Dennis Savage went on. I was not going to brisk my way through this one. “Fine young stalwarts of Stonewall, even if it was in the Grove.”

Little Kiwi came out of the bedroom, his attire changed from dog-walking pullover and chinos to go-everywhere shorts and a
Me and My Girl
sweat-shirt.

“It's cold in here,” he said.

“No, it isn't,” said Dennis Savage.

“Thank you for giving me that dinner,” I said.

“You're welcome, ten years later.”

“How come no one around here calls me Virgil, when I ask so nice?” Little Kiwi cried. “Why doesn't anyone listen to me ever?”

Cosgrove arrived, and Little Kiwi sat him down before the television, where the two of them and Bauhaus screened
Alien,
Little Kiwi morose, Cosgrove, obeying his chief, carefully subdued, and Bauhaus whining during all the alien's raids.

“Everywhere you go,” I noted, “some monster's coming to get you.”

Little Kiwi, his face a mask drawn too tightly around the mouth, put an arm around Cosgrove; it was not an affectionate but a defensive gesture. No one, it said, is taking this treasure away from me.

I went into the kitchen, where Dennis Savage was sprucing up an old beef stew with last-minute infusions of coriander and plum jam. This is what I call “Bloomingdale's cooking.”

“Little Kiwi's in a really sour mood,” I said.

“He'll get over it.”

“I'm not sure he will.”

“Don't give me grief.”

He poured a bit of red wine into the stew pot.

“I smell bay leaves and lima beans,” I said.

“You smell the rapture of the visuals and the tremor of the stories, and the holly and the ivy and the running of the deer. But can I tell you?”

“Why not, after such a poetic outburst?”

“I'm handling this operation. Okay?”

“Okay, captain.”

“So do me a favor—
help
us land this kid somewhere. Don't hinder. Please?”

“You talk about him as if he were a subversive you're trying to deport.”

At one of those “something's happening” shifts in the atmosphere, he and I turned. Little Kiwi stood in the doorway. “Can I take Cosgrove to buy a new bathing suit?” he asked.

“It's almost dinnertime,” said Dennis Savage.

“Yes, but this is
very
important.”

Dennis Savage contemplated his lover for a bit. “It's not that important,” he said finally.

Little Kiwi stamped back into the living room.

Dennis Savage poured a bit more wine into the stew. He put the wine down. He waited. He corked the wine. He started to put it away, dropped it on the counter, retrieved it, and put it in the fridge.

“What's the matter?” I asked. Something in the room again. Some feeling, some idea.

“Here,” he said, offering me a spoon of stew gravy. I tasted it. “Nifty,” I told him. “I love lima beans in stew.”

“Cooking is one of my virtues,” he said. “Big, simple meals.”

“Little, simple kids.”

He covered the stewpot.

“What was all that with the wine bottle?” I asked him. “What's going on?”

He didn't say anything for a while. Then: “On top of all this, I have to give a banquet and feel guilty, and that kid will still be around unless we set him up with a Tibetan monk.”

Now it was Cosgrove in the doorway, staring at us for who knows how long before.

“I'm hungry,” he said, oh so quietly, to us.

*   *   *

Kern Loften threw the utmost in Pines glamour at our disposal for the Cosgrove husband-hunting dinner, and between him and Dennis Savage a
carte des invités
was assembled to rival the elite at Catherine the Great's coming out ball. One odd note in all this: Little Kiwi brightened up suddenly, without explanation, as if he had decided to walk along with us. Cosgrove, as always, seemed to have no opinion. As long as he was among friends, he was happy.

The natural condition of gay. All friends. So, good; fine. The day of the dinner approached without incident, though we celebrated the avid intention of the feast by riding the hydroplane out to the beach, at my insistence. (The train is filled with straights, and the bus has become unreliable.) Dennis Savage doesn't like spending the money, but I like saving the time. Then, too, Cosgrove couldn't afford his ferry fare, much less a ride on the wind. We compromised: Dennis Savage paid for Cosgrove, and I paid for Little Kiwi. That's what I call an un-copious compromise.

But that's family life; even when you're in the process of cutting loose an excrescent relation. Dennis Savage had promised to supply dessert and salad—unnecessary, for Kern Loften is virtually made of parties—and he spent all the Saturday of the Cosgrove dinner working up to the dressing of the Caesar and the baking of the pies, fastidious, imperious, and audacious.

“Will there be hand-baked croutons,” I asked, watching him at work, “or cheesy consumer-ready boxed croutons for this restorative yet divisive banquet?”

“There will be a cheesy author, and in about three seconds I'm going to—”

Footsteps on the deck dissuaded him, and a friend, grade six, materialized. On a scale of one to ten, grade nine is “I always wanted him,” grade seven is “I feel better when he's around,” grade four is “Intolerable after an hour,” and grade two is “May he be refused admission to a disco in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on grounds of looks, style, and happiness quotient.” Grade six is “I don't particularly care, but he's too nice to snub,” so Dennis Savage and I gave him refreshment and fielded his questions till a clamor of giggles out on the deck warned us of the official closing of the beach for that day: Little Kiwi and Cosgrove had come home. By house rules, they were supposed to wash the sand off their bodies with the usual Pines hose, leave their beach toys on the deck, and come into the living quarters like gentlemen of quality. But by habit their return usually comprised a hose war, playing bullfight with Bauhaus, the knocking over of all the deck furniture, and the sneaking of various scrofulous beach toys into the house. This day, we got an extra: a chorus of one of Little Kiwi's new songs, “The Ballad of Fauntleroy.” It's one of his weakest compositions, but Cosgrove loves it. Conversation in the house faltered as the two of them, wearing swimming trunks and canteens, paraded in in full chorus:

Fauntleroy was a funny clown,

Went to school with his panties down;

Out of luck in an old dump truck,

So they call him Fauntleroy!

“Little Kiwi,” said Dennis Savage patiently, “the pails stay outside.”

“Yes, but this time it's our unparalleled shell collection,” Little Kiwi replied, mounting the stairs. He gestured: “Cosgrove, if you please.”

Cosgrove, who apparently had been rehearsed, solemnly held up a shell for us to admire.

“Yes,” I said. “That's a shell, all right.”

Our guest, grade six, entranced by Cosgrove, asked, “Do you … do you know the names of all your shells?”

Cosgrove said, “This one's Herbert.”

“Come now, Cosgrove,” said Little Kiwi, moving on, “we really ought to change for dinner.”

“Can I wear your dark blue sweater?” Cosgrove asked him. “With my khakis?”

“That's an important combination,” said Little Kiwi, leading Cosgrove along the second-floor walkway. “But only if you'll be a good boy at the dinner.”

“I'll be very good,” Cosgrove promised as the two of them went into the bedroom.

“Tell me,” said our guest, with the oddest smile on his face. “Is someone around here married?”

*   *   *

Someone was going to be, as the local intelligence ran. But I couldn't help noticing how enthusiastically Little Kiwi pressed his Kazootie Koolers upon us at cocktail hour. Dennis Savage, intent on his pies, missed a nuance here; I thought the usually abstemious Cosgrove was imbibing rather resolutely, a questionable act for a young man on the verge of his engagement party, even if he supposedly didn't know that's what it was. Questionable, too, was Cosgrove's intake of wine at the dinner itself. At the slightest provocation, Little Kiwi would suggest, “Let's drink to that, Cosgrove!” and Cosgrove drank.

What about the flowers? you ask. The decor, the tone, the stirrings of the place. Well, it was the usual Kern Loften A-list do; I'll let him identify the flowers. I'd call the decor late-middle beachfront attitude palazzo soothed by a pride of bodybuilders who act as if helping get you through the night is their essential deed. I don't know where Kern finds them. Anyway, there we were: four lawyers and doctors or so, three physiques of death, a writer, a schoolteacher, two little kids, Carlo, and Kern Loften; and Cosgrove got blitzed from all of Little Kiwi's “Let's drink to that” toasts and began to chortle, waver, and fade. He was leaning on Carlo's shoulder, calling him Mr. Smith in a dreamy manner, and Carlo, who does not comprehend such behavior but thinks it's probably hot if you like little kids, patted his head as if he were a poodle. Finally, Cosgrove's eyes closed and he went slack in his chair, so Carlo picked him up and laid him on the couch.

“So much for the
jeune premier,
” said Kern with a merry shrug.

“He had a very heavy day,” said Little Kiwi.

“Of what?” Dennis Savage asked.

“Of being asked to go away,” said Little Kiwi. “Of everybody doesn't like him enough.”

“What delicious pie,” said a lawyer.

“Sweet,” said a doctor, “yet I seem to taste no sugar.”

“As sweet as sweet can be,” said Little Kiwi, furious. “As very sweet as they make them. If only certain people knew that at the table.”

Cosgrove was asleep, and the party went on without him. It was a fine party. The intellectuals poured forth, the sensualists listened well, and the friends did a little emotional squeezing. Then it was over, and everyone went his way. Cosgrove had not been connected. In fact, Cosgrove had totally passed out. I thought he'd have to stay over at Kern's till Carlo offered to take the boy home.

“That's fine with me,” said Dennis Savage.

Little Kiwi was sitting at the table, the last diner, holding his arms around his chest defiantly.

“That's fine with you, too, isn't it?” I asked Little Kiwi.

His eyes tightened aggressively, but his face tried to stay impassive. This is like Joan of Arc trying to stay peaceful. I wanted to tell him what I knew, and how much I sympathized with him; but that sympathy was disloyal to Dennis Savage. Cosgrove had to go.

Kern, Dennis Savage, and I went on cleaning up, and still Little Kiwi held his post. I believe he was on strike of a certain kind, telling us in his immobility that he hated us, at least for tonight. I busied myself with the tape deck, sifting through Kern's old party reels, some of which I, in my penniless youth, had effected. Dennis Savage and Kern were clearing the table.

“I,” said Little Kiwi, “am not moving from this peculiar spot.”

Dennis Savage's eyes tensed, but Kern, sponging up the bits, laughed and said, “Well, you're such a nice-looking youth that you can do whatever you want around here.”

Dennis Savage gave Little Kiwi a searching look but went on with the cleaning up, helped here and there by one of the bodybuilders. Finally the dinner was over and everyone was long gone, and nothing had been accomplished. This sometimes happens, even with the dearest intentions. Little Kiwi left the table and we all went home, where Dennis Savage fiddled with the pie tins and I made a drink and Little Kiwi scoured the house. Then he announced, “Cosgrove isn't here.”