Object of Desire (38 page)

“Oh, many times,” I assured him.

“Then you're being even more foolish.” Donovan got up close in my face. “Every morning, Danny, you wake up and look into the eyes of a man who loves you. A man with whom you have spent
twenty years of your life.
Whose eyes do I look into? My wife's? A woman who, when I married her, understood this was going to be a union of convenience, but who has nonetheless come to hate me, more and more each day, with every fiber of her being.” He paused. “Maybe, you say, I could look into the eyes of my revolving series of boyfriends? Boys who come to me not for who I am, but for what I can
give
them. The truth is, Danny, I look into no one's eyes.
No one's!
Imagine for a moment what it's like to go through life without ever being able to look someone in the eyes and know those eyes are looking back at you.”

I didn't know how to respond. I just let out a sigh and leaned back against Donovan's desk, the empty snifter in my hand.

“Hang on a second, Danny,” Donovan said, moving toward the door. “Just wait here a moment, okay?”

I nodded. He went out, back into the party, probably to check on the wife who hated him or the boy who was hoping to get something from him. I set the snifter down on the desk and covered my face with my hands.

In a few moments I heard the door open again. I uncovered my face, intending to apologize to Donovan, and I saw Kelly standing there instead.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Donovan said you wanted to see me.”

I stared at him. He was so beautiful, he took my breath away.

“No,” I managed to say. “I didn't say that.”

“Then I'll leave.”

“No!” I moved forward, my arm outstretched. “Don't go.”

Kelly's black eyes burned into my own. “He also said that we needed to figure out what was going on between us.”

“Would that I could,” I said.

“Well, if you have nothing to say, then I'm heading back to the party.”

“Wait.” I looked at him. “I know I've been unfair, asking you to love me. I had no right, being married and all.”

He just gave me those eyes.

“It's just that—I can't be sure if you resist me because of Frank, or because you simply don't feel for me what I feel for you.”

Kelly sneered. “You're too much, you know that? You're crazy.”

“Why am I crazy?”

He took a step toward me. “You go through life letting people love you but you don't see it. You just don't see it!”

He was angry. I reached out to touch him but he pulled away.

“What's wrong with you, Danny? Why are you so fucking blind? Did Mommy not love you enough?”

“Okay,” I said. “Stop there.”

“No, I won't! You asked me when we first met if I'd ever been in love. I didn't know. You said I would have known if I had been.” His eyes shone over at me. “Well, now I know! Now I know I have been.”

Whether he made the first move or it came from me, I didn't know. But somehow, we came together. Our arms encircled each other. We kissed. It was a good kiss, like the one on the mountain. We could have been anywhere, been anyone. It was only with tremendous effort that I forced myself to remember where we were, and that Donovan could come striding back through the door at any time.

“We shouldn't,” I murmured. “Not here.”

“I think he wanted this to happen,” Kelly said.

I looked at him. “Do you?”

He hesitated, then nodded slowly.

I gripped his hand and led him through the door at the back of the room. Donovan's bedroom. A California king–size bed sat on a pedestal, the only major piece of furniture in the stark, spare white room. Kicking the door shut with my foot, I maneuvered Kelly toward the bed, where we fell down on our sides, kissing all the time. My erection threatened to pierce my underwear as my world tumbled over itself. Everything I had longed for was coming true. Nothing would ever be the same again.

I peeled off his shirt, kissing his neck. Unbuckling his belt, I slid off his pants, kissing his inner thigh as I did so. I was determined to make love to him the way I'd always wanted to, slowly and affectionately at first, building to a crescendo. I would banish all his fears, penetrate his heart and his soul. I straddled him now, still dressed in my silly gypsy costume, my one earring dangling above his face as I pinned his hands down with my own. The rings on my fingers sparkled in the light.

“You are so beautiful,” I told him.

His black eyes reflected my face.

I lowered my lips to his chest. Hundreds of tiny kisses rained down on his torso, sprinkling his stomach and ending at his belly button, which I filled up with my tongue.

“There is so little time,” I said. “It's running out. So little time.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Let's go away,” I said. “You and me. Go away.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. Somewhere.”

“You'd leave Frank? For me?”

“Yes,” I said.

I kissed his side, fluttering my lips into his pit, over his shoulder, down his inner arm….

And then I stopped.

I saw it.

I saw what the sparseness of our previous intimacy had prevented me from seeing before.

The birthmark.

The birthmark shaped like a crescent moon.

Like…

Becky's.

No.

More like Mom's.

The birthmark that had linked Mom to her daughter forever, and forever excluded me from their special bond.

For several seconds, I just sat there, unmoving, straddling Kelly's chest, my erection shriveling in my pants.

“Danny?”

I got off the bed in a quick, jerky movement.

“Danny, what's wrong?”

I stood at the far side of the room, not looking at him.

What was I thinking?

“Danny, what's wrong?”

There is so little time.

An avalanche of images. That girl dancing in the bar in Yonkers, New York. Sitting on Troy's bed, smoking weed. Riding on the back of Lenny's motorcycle. Mom pulling me into her and telling me she would love me if only I could find Becky. And finally Becky and Chipper swimming in the pond.

“Your mother,” I managed to say in a low, slow voice, still unable to look at him. “Your birth mother…”

“What?”

“Your birth mother!” I shouted, turning now to face him at last. “You said you remembered her a little!”

He sat up on the bed, looking like a frightened little child in his underpants. “What are you
talking
about?”

“Just answer me! What do you remember about your birth mother?”

“You're freaking me out,” Kelly said, swinging his legs off the bed and pulling on his pants. “I knew we shouldn't have tried this. I knew it would ruin everything.”

“Kelly, listen to me! Trust me! Just for a minute! What do you remember about your birth mother? Please tell me! And no jokes this time.”

He was buckling his belt. “I hardly remember anything about her!” he shouted back at me. “I was five years old the last time I saw her.”

“But you said she tried to get you back a number of times.”

“Yes, but I never saw her again.” He clearly resented talking about this. “She was a drug addict. They were never going to let me go back to her. Why are you asking me all this shit?”

“What did she look like?”

“I don't know…She had dark hair…”

“Would you recognize a picture of her?”

“No! I was five years old!”

“What was her name?”

He didn't want to answer, but he did. “Ann,” he said.

“Dear God.”

“Danny, what the
fuck
is going on?”

“Where was she from?”

“I told you. I was born in San Francisco.”

“I mean
originally.
Where was your mother from
originally?
”

“I don't know.” There was just the slightest pause. “Back East somewhere. That's all I know.”

Back East somewhere.

“And your father?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“I don't know. My mother wasn't married to him when she had me.”

The information was rushing at me like lava from a volcano, and it was all I could do to keep from falling under. “And your birthday…” I was struggling to do the math in my head. “You were born in April, right? And you're twenty-six now?”

“I'm getting out of here,” Kelly said. “Did you and Donovan do some coke or something? Because you are acting
so
weird, Danny, and it's freaking me out!”

The math figured perfectly.

I couldn't speak. I just stood there, staring at Kelly.

And I realized the dark eyes looking back at me weren't his.

They belonged to Chipper Paguni.

M
y old friend Katie was applying the gray whiskers to my face for the dress rehearsal for
Oliver!
With so much time having passed, we hardly knew what to talk about. If we weren't both in the same play—I as Mr. Brownlow and she as part of the makeup crew—we'd probably have sat there in silence. We talked about Brother Connolly and the lighting crew and the costumes. Anything but the old days, those ancient times at St. John's. That would have been childish and silly. We were different people now, practically adults, sophomores in our prestigious school play. There was only one reference made to what used to be as Katie carefully applied the whiskers to the epoxy on my cheeks. She asked softly, “Did you ever find any clue to what happened to Becky?”

“No,” I told her.

All those escapades, all those explorations of motorcycle bars and strip clubs, and it boiled down to one word.

No.

I didn't know if Mom and Dad would come to the see the play. Dad had made vague assurances that he would, and promised he'd convince Mom to come along, too. But Dad had a tendency to get drunk on Saturday nights and be hung over through the next afternoon, which severely dimmed the chances that he'd show up for either the Saturday night presentation or the Sunday matinee. So I didn't feel I could hold him to it. Mom, of course, I'd never even asked. I knew better than to bother Mom with stuff as trivial as school plays. So I just left a flyer for the show secured to the refrigerator with a magnet—one of the Becky magnets, with her photo and a number to call. On the flyer for the play, I'd highlighted my name in yellow among the cast. I hoped Mom or Dad would see it, take the hint, and come.

But all that really mattered was that Chipper would be there.

“I went to every one of your games,” I reminded him. “You owe me this.”

Chipper had grunted. “I can't believe I have to go see a faggot-ass play,” he'd said, but I could tell he was really glad to do it. We had been sitting in his room, on his shag carpet, leaning against opposite walls, the soles of our bare feet pressed together. I must have grown in the past year, because when we'd first started sitting this way, my legs hadn't reached far enough to touch his. Now I'd watched as Chipper's black eyes danced and his face lit up with a smile. “I'm gonna stand up when you come out on the stage,” he said, “and yell, ‘Go Fortunato!' the way you used to yell for me at my games.”

It was good to see Chipper smile when he mentioned his games. The season had ended with him barely having played, and his team not winning a single game. His dreams of being a big senior-class hero had evaporated. He'd never got Mary Kay Suwicki or anybody else to be his girlfriend, either, so he rode out his last, anticlimactic months in high school hanging out with me, smoking pot in his room, listening to Aerosmith, playing footsie, and sometimes letting me walk on his back. I was content. I knew Chipper wasn't bisexual like I was. So this was the best deal I was going to get.

Sometimes I'd glance over at our old house across the street and watch the family that had moved in there. A mother, a father, a girl, and a boy. Just like we had been. The girl was younger and the boy was older, but otherwise, it was the same setup. The boy was a towhead like me; the girl dark like Becky. The mother even had big tits like Mom. I didn't hate those people for taking our house. They seemed to belong there, better than we had, at least at the end. When I watched the boy shoot basketballs into the net they'd installed over the garage door, I felt nothing, really. It was a place I didn't recognize anymore. I couldn't even remember living there—at least not before Becky disappeared. That part of my life, all those years leading up to my fourteenth birthday, seemed gone, almost as if they had never really happened at all.

But, of course, they had. Because here I was, fifteen, almost sixteen. You don't just get to be that age without going through everything that had come before. It was hard to believe I was almost at the end of my second year in high school. In some ways, it felt as if I had always been in exactly this same spot, been exactly this age, and always would be.

My life had fallen into a kind of pattern. Every day after school, except on days when I had play practice, Chipper would drop me off at the convalescent home, and I would read to Nana. I'd read
Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath,
even
The Catcher in the Rye,
blushing as I'd utter the swear words in front of her. This semester it had been British lit, so Nana got to hear
Wuthering Heights
and
Jane Eyre
and
Great Expectations.
I'd enjoyed them all, especially
Jane Eyre,
with that creepy lady running around in the walls. Nana always seemed so content when I read to her, the only time she wasn't agitated, the nurses said. They called my father and told him I was such a good grandson to Nana. One night Dad came in and sat down on the edge of my bed and thanked me for spending so much time with his mother, since he rarely did. He was drunk, so his words were slurred, and he was a little more teary than usual. But still, I appreciated his effort.

I was doing so well in literature that Brother Pop thought I should become a teacher or a writer—but I had my heart set on something else. I wanted to be an actor. The dress rehearsal for
Oliver!
had only confirmed that ambition for me. It was so cool to act with upperclassmen: except for mine, all the parts were played by juniors and seniors, and I'd been accepted by them as if I were one of their own. No more spitballs tossed at the back of my head. Danny Fortunato finally had his clique. For the first time since leaving St. John's, I was enjoying school. Rehearsing for the play filled me up with an energy I hadn't known for more than two years. I loved being there in the auditorium: the smell of the wax and polish on the shiny wooden stage, the heaviness of the red velvet curtains, which creaked when they went up and down, the heat of the spotlights, the echo of our voices in the empty hall. I'm not sure I'd have described my life as happy, but it wasn't bad. Not bad at all.

“All right now, Danny!” Brother Connolly was clapping his hands. “Take your place onstage, next to Jane Marie.”

I hurried up to stand beside Jane Marie Schuster, who was playing the part of Nancy. Jane Marie was a senior and absolutely the coolest girl at St. Clare's. “I got you the brochure,” she whispered. “I'll give it to you later.”

“What brochure?”

“The UConn theater program brochure.” Jane Marie was planning to major in theater at the University of Connecticut next year. “If you want to study theater, Danny, you should really start planning now.”

“Oh, I do!” I replied. “Thank you so much!”

“No problem.” Jane Marie's green eyes twinkled. “Maybe we'll act in more plays together in college.”

“And then on Broadway!”

She laughed. “And then in movies!”

I let out a whoop.

“What was that?” Brother Connolly asked, spinning around.

“Sorry, Brother,” I told him. “I just burped.”

All my friends laughed.

My eyes caught those of Troy in the wings. Troy was in the chorus. He was in costume, too, that of a beggar boy. He gave me the thumbs-up sign, and I flashed it back to him. Then Brother Connolly called for Jane Marie and me to act out the scene.

If I'd thought play practice had been fun, dress rehearsal was amazing. The costumes, the lighting, the sound effects. This was how it was going to be on opening night—except that the auditorium would be filled with people. People who would applaud for us, for
me.
I'd look out into the empty seats and imagine the crowd that would come. They'd sit there, with their programs in their laps, their faces raised to the stage. I couldn't wait. All my dreams were coming true. From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to sleep at night, my heart was constantly racing in my chest in anticipation of opening night. I sensed nothing would be the same after that moment. Everything in my life would be different.

After Jane Marie and I had finished our scene, Brother called out, “Perfecto!” I raced off backstage, beaming. Troy caught up with me and slapped me five.

“You never mess up your lines,
ever!
” he exclaimed.

“Well, I've had them memorized for over a year.”

Troy drew close to me. “You know, you look kind of sexy with those whiskers.”

I laughed. “Oh, right.”

“You do.”

I smiled. Troy had forgiven me. He always did. He blamed my cruel words on Chipper. He said he understood that I needed to act tough around Chipper so that he wouldn't suspect what was going on between us. I felt like a schmuck. But at least it meant that Troy and I could continue our secret little trysts, which had become as much a part of my life as play practice and reading to Nana. But it was a fact that, when I kissed Troy, I would close my eyes and visualize Chipper. I knew Troy would feel bad if he knew this. But as much as I felt guilty about it, I couldn't help it. Every time Troy touched me, I imagined it was Chipper's hand. Every time he kissed me, I imagined it was Chipper's lips. It just happened automatically. I couldn't have stopped it if I'd tried.

I'd somehow managed to keep Chipper in my life, too. What a balancing act. One couldn't know about the other. But today Chipper was picking me up after dress rehearsal. I planned to sneak away at the last moment and meet him in the back parking lot. Part of me was torn: the cast had plans to go to Giovanni's Pizza afterward, where we'd all hang out together for the last time before the show. I really wanted to hang out with Jane Marie and Paul, who played the Artful Dodger; and Lance, who played Bill Sikes; and Greg, who played the nasty old Fagin; and especially Eddie, who was our impish Oliver Twist. And, of course, with Troy, too, and all the chorus and crew members. We were like one big family. I'd never had so many friends at one time before.

But Chipper had been insistent. “I had a
huge
fight with my father last night,” he'd told me in the corridor earlier that day. “I need to go out tonight and just get totally wasted. And I need you to come with me. There's nobody else I trust enough.”

Words like that always had the power to sway me. “Okay,” I'd replied.

I figured I'd just slip out when dress rehearsal was over, not saying anything to anybody. I'd meet Chipper at his car, and we'd take off. Nobody would know. I'd give explanations the next day.

But Troy seemed to suspect something. “You
are
coming out with us tonight, aren't you?” he asked a couple of times.

“Yeah, why wouldn't I be?”

He just watched me with wary eyes.

Mr. Brownlow didn't have another scene for a while. So I sat backstage, cross-legged, watching the action onstage through a space in the dusty red velvet curtains. Troy was sitting beside me. He kept nudging his knee into mine.

“Stop it,” I whispered. “You're gonna distract Lance and Jane Marie.”

“I'd like to distract
you
,” he said in a low voice.

“Stop it.”

But my dick was getting hard nonetheless.

What was it with my dick? Sometimes all it took was a look, or a single word, to make it go all hard and raging. And at that moment, Troy's word
distract
was enough to fire me up and completely take my mind off the play.

“We could go into the men's room in the back,” Troy was whispering. “Nobody goes in there.”

“No,” I said, but my voice betrayed my ambivalence.

“I want to clamp my mouth around your cock,” Troy told me. “Suck it so hard for you. I'll even swallow.”

I started breathing heavily. A minute and a half before, sex had been the furthest thing from my mind. Now I was panting for it, my cock threatening to pierce my underwear. “Okay,” I said, and we both stood.

Tiptoeing out the side door and into the corridor, we broke into a run, our footsteps echoing against the brick walls.

Troy was right. The men's room at the far end of the school was never used during play practice. We'd be safe there. “But we have to be fast,” I insisted as we came inside and Troy flipped on the fluorescent overhead lights. “I need to go back onstage in twenty minutes or less.”

Troy looked at his watch and nodded. “I promise we'll be done by then.”

The janitor had already been through here today; the place smelled strongly of bleach and cleaning fluids. A line of five ceramic sinks sparkled against one wall; opposite stood five brown metal stalls, each with its door latched. Troy opened the last stall and practically pushed me inside. I closed the lid on the toilet and sat down. Dropping quickly to his knees, Troy began pulling down my pants—Mr. Brownlow's felt trousers with the satin lining. His fingers slipped under the waistband of my Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear.

“Oh yeah,” I moaned, closing my eyes and leaning my head back.

Troy's warm, wet lips slid over my erection. It felt good. Awesomely good.

For about thirty seconds.

That was when the chaos began. I heard a shout: “What the fuck?” I felt Troy's lips leave my cock. I heard the bang of the stall door opening and closing, and the thud of a body being thrown against the sinks. Above the stall, I caught a glimpse of an enraged face.

It was Chipper.

“What the fuck? What the fuck?” he kept repeating “What the
fuuuuuck?
”

I yanked up my pants and burst out of the stall. Chipper had pulled Troy off me and tossed him against the sinks. Troy had come down hard on his butt. He was struggling to stand up.

“Faggots!” Chipper was screaming now. “I should've known! You really are a couple of faggots!”

“Shut up,” I said to Chipper. “Please, shut up! They'll hear you!”