Nightswimmer (19 page)

“Greg,” I resumed, “does it at all matter to you that Sebastian has it in for me?”

“He’s never said anything bad about you to me.”

“Yet.”

“Look, if I’m having a great time, why should I worry about what’s motivating him?”

“Even if it’s to make a fool out of me?”

“I honestly don’t see how it’s doing that. Try not to be so egocentric. Not everything is about
you,
is it? And you’re not my boyfriend. Anymore.”

With the briefest goodbye, I slammed the phone down.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been to Peter’s apartment since the night I met you. With barely a hello, he answered his door. He was looking for a key, he explained, and rushed back into the apartment, treading every which way as he continued scouring desk and cabinet drawers and in between chintz-covered sofa cushions. Peter had acquired a lavish stockpile of household goods. His domestic opulence included complete sets of Wedgwood dinner plates, fluted champagne glasses and silverware of a tastefully scrolled Italianate pattern. There were many polished furniture surfaces. If I hadn’t known he was a gay man I would have assumed his wedding registry had already been substantially cashed in. Here was the downtown alter ego of an Upper East Side young corporate couple, dressed not in an Armani suit, but in typical skintight fashion, sporting each and every body bulge. Today he had on one of his favorite police department T-shirts, the kind that he routinely collected from precincts all over the United States. This particular one was a gray number from Reno, Nevada. Even though his closets were packed with wool-and-linen trousers and shirts made of the finest jersey, when he wasn’t working he’d repeatedly wear cutoffs and the same two or three police T-shirts until they shredded apart in the kitchen’s washer-dryer that seemed to be in constant use every time I visited.

I couldn’t help saying, “Is Bloomingdale’s going bankrupt?”

He turned to me, frowning.

“Where did you get all these … things? Get a load of the dinner plates,” I said, picking up one that had a gold rim of at least a half inch. “Who gave them to you?”

“I bought them, okay?”

Peter made a couple hundred thousand a year as a phobia psychiatrist and no doubt felt compelled to drop the weight of a few grand here and there on trifles like dishes he’d never use. The guy could barely fry an egg.

I said pleasantly, “All you need is a dining room table.”

“Shaddup.” Peter laughed. “You can see that I’m in a mood tonight.”

“I’m not in such a good mood either. Although it’s no wonder you’re in a bad mood. I’ve never seen the place so messy. Must really swell up your anal glands.”

“I told you I’m looking for a key. Now don’t be a smart-ass.”

It was, to be exact, a spare house key that Sebastian claimed to possess but which Peter suspected was a lie. Peter had given it to him a couple of weeks ago when Sebastian came over to borrow his bicycle. “But then I got it back.”

“Even if you
did
get it back, knowing Sebastian, he probably made a copy of it.”

This made Peter stop his search and turn to look at me, disconcerted.

“But he still can’t get by the doorman,” I pointed out.

Peter scoffed. “Like hell … he’s already done it.”

“Well then, you’ve got to tell them not to let him in unless you authorize it. Put it in writing, for Christ’s sake!”

Peter waved me away. “Come on. The doormen have all been on notice for some time now. He simply forges a note from me, or arrives with a piece of equipment like a Cuisinart that he says he has to return.”

“Then they’re stupider than
he
is.” If that’s possible, I thought to myself.

“Look, this is not just Sebastian’s stupidity,” Peter said, making reference to our phone conversation concerning Greg and Sebastian’s affair.

I suggested that Peter simply change the locks.

“That’s a hundred fifty bucks I’ll be out.”

“You can afford it.” I gestured at the surroundings.

“That’s not the point.”

“Hock a few dinner plates?”

“If you make one more reference to my fucking dinner plates—”

“What, you’ll slug me?”

“No…I’ll force-feed you my cock.”

“You think I’d let you do that, huh?”

Peter’s eyes were boring into me. “Will, I can’t believe you’re fucking with me like this!” he roared.

“Take it easy, okay?”

“Take it easy? I can’t believe this whole incestuous situation.”

“Pretty tacky, isn’t it? Although Greg claims he didn’t put two and two together until after they started screwing.”

Peter finally sat down on his sofa and crossed his legs. “I must say, you don’t sound too upset about this.”

“I’m plenty upset.” Actually I was glad to let Peter be upset enough for us both. “But, they’ll soon get tired of each other.”

“Meanwhile you’ve got somebody to occupy yourself with.”

“And you’ve got a million guys who’d love to date you if company is what you’re after.”

“I’d like to wring that fucker’s neck!”

“Whose neck?” I asked defensively, instinctively protective of Greg.

“Sebastian’s.”

“Look, the more upset you get, the more you give Sebastian the satisfaction he’s obviously after.”

Peter had already exasperated me by ignoring the news of my shredded book. But now, at least, he was willing to address the issue of the affair philosophically.

Sebastian had done this kind of thing before, Peter explained. Whenever they had broken up and Peter was dating somebody in the interim, Sebastian always found out about it and then went after the person, in Peter’s words, “like a fucking piranha.” In this case, knowing I was occupied, Sebastian had set his sights on the next best prey, Greg.

“Well, all I can say is the guy’s a schmuck. And you’re a schmuck to stay with him. End of story.”

“Thanks for being so compassionate.”

“Look, I’ve got my own problems.” And then I quickly described again what it had felt like to receive a shredded totem of oneself in the mail. Peter finally seemed to register what had happened. His dumbfounded look let something disturbing dawn on me. “Do you think Sebastian could have done something like that? Would he shred my book and send it to me in the mail?”

Peter scrunched his features and shook his head. “Doubtful … seriously, he’s too unsophisticated to think of something as, pardon me, interesting as that.”

Then it must be the person I first suspected, José Ayala, Bobby Garzino’s ex-lover.

Looking anxious, Peter sprang off the sofa, crossed the room and, anchoring his red, freckled hands on the windowframe, stared out at the looming Empire State Building, whose lights were distantly winking in the haze of summer night heat. “Look, Will,” he said softly, still facing the great spike of an edifice, “I don’t want to stay with Sebastian. I know he’s not right for me. He’s vindictive. He’s possessive. He insults my friends.”

“And don’t forget that he’s a gold digger,” I added, glancing at all the exquisite, unused dishes and glassware.

Peter continued as though he hadn’t heard me, “I can’t bring him anywhere without being embarrassed by his lack of culture, or by his general ignorance of politics, or manners, or anything else. And yet … I love him.” He suddenly pivoted around, tears making his eyes sparkle. “Frankly, I just can’t tear myself away from him. The only way out would be by meeting somebody else.”

“You of all people should realize that approach is too messy. The only way out is quit.”

“I just can’t stand being alone.”

“There’re worse things.”

“Like what?”

“Believe it or not, like having a lover like Sebastian who’s a constant pain in the ass. Try a life without him. You’ll see.” (I was aware of having given myself this same good advice many times.)

Peter went quiet for a while. He came to sit down opposite me on the sofa again, crossing his legs at the ankle, seesawing his knee nervously up and down. “Don’t you think I know that?” he murmured. He made a move to get up again, but then, seeming to realize he was acting jumpy, collapsed against the sofa. There was something endearing about the way he reined himself in.

“You know,” he finally resumed, “I never regarded your and my relationship as … well, extracurricular to my relationship with Sebastian. I mean, in all my fucked-up ambivalence, I was actually hoping it would go somewhere.” He now ventured to glance at me sideways.

“Weren’t you just hoping that I’d pull you away from him?”

“Maybe. But look, I admire your mind. I can communicate with you. We have great sex. We’re intellectually matched. Even so, I’m emotionally chained to Sebastian. And now, because you’re with Sean Paris, I’ve lost the inside track.”

I told him I was certain that he would have kept going back to Sebastian. I had never expected anything different.

Peter sighed. “I wish he would leave town. He keeps threatening to move to Florida.” Suddenly the phone rang. “Now he’ll keep rubbing it in my face, just watch. He knows just how to get to me. That fuck!”

“How do you know it’s him?”

Peter sighed again. “Because I know his ring.” Then he got up quickly to answer the phone.

T
HE MARKINGS AROUND YOUR
door’s keyhole—deep scratches carved into the painted wood—resembled whiskers drawn on a faceless cat, a half-assed attempt at furious art. But it was actually vandalism. A very sad, desperate kind of person did this, I thought, as I studied the scratches. You sat at your dining table, staring at me vacantly, awaiting my reaction. Your green duffel bag was dumped in the middle of the floor, and the clothes you’d brought back from Vermont the day before had yet to be put away and were lying there like entrails dangling from the felled beast of our vacation. With one finger you worried the withered stalks in the vase of flowers that were once freshly cut and thriving around your breakfast table that first morning we’d made love a few weeks ago.

“Why did José bother?” I said. After all, you’d talked to him right before our leaving. You’d told him that you were removing all the “loomed things” from the apartment.

Explaining what had happened to my book in a bit more detail than I had on the phone the day before, I couldn’t help but relate that act to the gouges on your door.

“Do they have to be related incidents?” You sounded irritated.

“Come on, Sean.”

I asked for José’s phone number, half expecting you not to have it.

“Why do you want it?”

I was surprised you’d resist. “To find out if he was the one who shredded my book.”

“Come on, you think he’s going to admit it to you?”

“At least I can hear him deny it. I’m pretty good at sniffing out lies.”

“Oh, really? Even in somebody you don’t know?”

“In my view, he’s the only likely candidate.”

Your hands slammed down on the table. “His beef is with me, Will, not with you. So just leave it
alone.
Okay?”

Frankly, I was puzzled and not just by your anger and by the fact that you had routinely accepted the damage to your door, but that you seemed to defend José.

“You feel guilty?” I said. “Or somehow to blame?”

No response. Stretching back in the chair until its front legs left the floor, you nodded toward the door and said dreamily, “I’ve decided not to paint over the scratches. I’m going to leave them just like that.”

“Why?”

“To remind myself what normally sane people can be driven to.”

“As if you’d forget.”

You raised your arms over your head, until your shirt hiked up a few inches to reveal the thin dark border of hair between your navel and your crotch.

When it was time for me to go and walk Casey, we decided to take a walk through the East Village and then loop west again back to Greg’s apartment on Carmine Street. While we’d been up in Vermont, there had been a terrible hurricane down in Louisiana, and the remnants of the storm, which had mostly broken up in the Gulf of Mexico, were just beginning to advance over Manhattan. A humid wind gusted down Grove Street, scattering refuse and imparting to the city air a lingering thrill of its former power. A phalanx of tropical-looking clouds streaked across the sky at such a fast pace that the buildings seemed to be tilting and tumbling toward them.

The moment we ventured outside the squeaky iron gate of the apartment building, you made a point of taking my hand. We began strolling along Grove Street. I’d never held hands with a guy for any length of time in public. Greg and I had done it on a few occasions for a block or two. But this particular attitude lasted longer, and every time I tried gingerly to extricate my fingers from yours, you gripped harder and leered at me. I felt as though I were being tested.

It was difficult to tell whether or not I imagined it, but I thought I saw male/female couples gaping at us explicitly, then glancing away. Were they disapproving or were they trying to adjust to what was quickly becoming a more commonplace occurrence? Two men walking hand in hand was now, in the 1990s, just a minor disturbance in the fiercely urban environment. A gang of teenagers floated along the streets with up-and-down tough-boy strides, swinging a metallic boom box that trumpeted the latest in hip-hop music. “Faggots,” one of them sneered. The moment the remark ripped past my ears, you turned to me with a mellow smile that eased the discomfort of being heckled.

“They do it in Europe,” you said finally. “Guys walk hand in hand. There it’s completely innocent.”

“But it’s all about camaraderie. Not sexual politics.”

And I’ll never forget how, suddenly, you stopped and looked at me in sudden bewilderment. “Well, I think it’s—” You hesitated.

“What—what are you trying to say?”

“That finally it’s beginning to happen, Will,” you said barely audibly. “Our relationship.”

“I’m already there,” I murmured.

But we stumbled into silence after that and strolled along without touching. What had been as yet unspeakable between us when spoken curdled any sense of ease. Did we dread intimacy as much as or even more than death? Had the threat of dying been forged into our shield of self-protection? We walked along Tenth Street until we passed from the genteel respectability of the West Village and Fifth Avenue to the anything-goes funk of the East Village, where pierced body parts, sepulchral makeup, elaborately nihilistic hairstyles were far more cutting-edge than just a couple of guys holding hands.