People in Trouble (5 page)

"Private sector," he said.
 
"That's the future.
 
The whole city should be run by businessmen.
 
I could do a much better job with the prison system than any government official.
 
I'd love to buy the prison system and show New York how to treat its criminals.

And my attorneys have assured me that having a monopoly on crime does not violate any antitrust laws.
 
It just has to do with your definition of trust."

Peter closed the magazine, replacing it neatly underneath the umbrella stand.
 
He looked through the coffee shop window at some goings-on at the church across the way.
 
It was a large crowd that morning, a somber one.
 
Many of the I men were wearing suits but some were more relaxed, in tasteful white slacks or light prints.
 
Even the pallbearers lifting the casket out of the hearse had something very casual about them.

I would never wear white to a funeral, Peter thought.
 
Some of the men had ponytails, others were more normal.
 
The women were somehow not as attractive as the men.
 
Not that, exactly, they just weren't as well dressed.

Something is not right here, he thought.
 
Only then did Peter realize that the men were arriving alone or with each other, in couples and groups.
 
The women came in couples or with men they couldn't possibly be involved with.

This is gay, he thought.
 
This is a homosexual church.

Then he realized that it was not a homosexual church, but a Catholic one, filled with homosexuals.
 
He watched them walking up the white marble staircase, preparing to mourn.

Ever since Kate had begun her gay affair Peter had been slapped in the face by homosexuality practically every day.
 
How ironic that her affair had coincided with this AIDS thing.
 
It was like running into someone he hadn't thought about for years and then seeing them coincidentally three times a week until the recognition became an embarrassment.
 
Peter had always been around gay men-being in the theater, how could he avoid it?

Not that he wanted to avoid it, of course.
 
Anyway, most technicians tended to be straight except for the women.
 
But he had to admit that his and Kate's inner circle were all heterosexual couples.
 
It had just turned out that way.
 
Some of the men he knew had been bisexual at one time, but those experiments were all over now, he noted with some relief.
 
Now things were more clearly defined.

Peter had once had a gay affair.
 
It was with a master electrician named Carl Jacobs.
 
Carl was twenty years older and had taken him on as an apprentice.
 
When Peter worked with someone closely he always fell in love.
 
It was part of being in theater.

When the show was over they would rarely see each other again, but that distance wasn't resented.
 
It was normal.
 
Carl's hair was completely white and his face was.
 
wrinkled.
 
He had a purely white beard, trimmed but full, and white hair poked out of the top of his shirt.

They had worked together like guys work; quietly, no gossip, just moving their bodies at the right times and understanding each other's rhythms.
 
They took very good care of each other, running errands, sharing cigarettes and barely talking.

When it was time to focus and they were finally down to the last light, Carl came and stood next to him.
 
Peter could feel the old man's body heat with his torso, and the heat of the light with his hands.

"Would you move that slightly upstage please, darling?"
 
Carl said with a quiet growl.

At the word darling, Peter took his hands from the electricity and put them on Carl's soft, soft face, kissing his mouth.
 
He was meaty and large compared to Kate or any woman.
 
There was something to hold on to.
 
They pressed their bodies against each other's and Peter felt his cock get hard against Carl's.
 
It was such a beautiful feeling; two men and two cocks, both scented and of the same mind.
 
When Peter tried to blow Carl, the old man's dick swelled in his mouth and Peter gagged on it, feeling a sour spit rising in his throat.

"That's all right," Carl said kindly.
 
"Use your hands."

Then they sat naked next to each other on the stage eating sandwiches, not talking.
 
Peter sat there smelling him, looking at his cock against his thigh, looking at the old man's eyes and the veins in his legs.

Then Carl turned to him and said, "You are not just lighting the action and the image.
 
You are lighting the voices.
 
You give them light to hear by.
 
What could be more subtly defined than differing dimensions of air?"

After paying the restaurant check, Peter decided that he wanted to be around gay people more.
 
Kate was probably spending more time with them and he wanted to, too.
 
It would bring them closer together.
 
That's what had been troubling him all week, actually.
 
Kate and that woman had clearly had a fight.
 
He could tell from the pained expression she tried to hide.
 
She was sour sometimes, with a particular distaste that only comes from longing for a lover.
 
He was honestly curious to hear the details, to know the scenario of their fight and separation, to comfort her.

But after having fully imagined Kate's tearful confidence about her lost girlfriend, he realized that such an event would reduce his stature in her eyes to that of friend or brother and not the husband he was determined to be.
 
It was better to wait patiently for Molly to simply disappear.
 
Then Peter decided to go into the church.

The huge marbled ceilings made it cooler inside.
 
It was cool but the air was still.
 
Peter stayed in the back because he was a tourist, and had learned from traveling in Mexico that when you are watching another culture in church it is best to stand in the back.
 
There was music coming from the balcony but it wasn't the organ he had expected.

Instead a harpsichord was being played.
 
Perhaps the dead man had been a harpsichord fan.
 
Peter guessed that homosexuals were probably as creative with their funerals as they were with everything else.
 
But after a while he found the instrument's tone annoying.
 
Pounding was half the sound and much too abrasive for a funeral.
 
He inhaled the incense and felt again how still the air was.
 
It barely circulated.

The smell was beginning to be overpowering, stifling actually.

Peter felt faint and sat down abruptly in the nearest pew.
 
Even though he tried repeatedly to relax, he just couldn't breathe.
 
His lungs would not fill with air, so he left as quietly and respectfully as he had come, stepping back into an almost oppressive heat, only able to take a full deep breath a few blocks away.

When he got back to the apartment late that afternoon, Kate had just returned from the studio and had brought home her coveralls to be washed.
 
They were laid out over the dresser next to a bag of groceries that hadn't been put away.
 
She had started changing into more attractive clothing but had gotten waylaid by something real or imagined and seemed halfway about everything.
 
As Peter watched her, he noticed with a quiet sadness how Kate could be euphoric or depressed for no visible reason.
 
All week she'd been irritable, waiting for something, or teary-eyed and deeply regretful.
 
He had actually caught her a few times staring out the window as she was doing at this moment.

He stood watching her.
 
The muted sunlight brought out only the surface texture of her face and so he saw every wrinkle and crack in the skin.

He saw how her hair would look when it turned white and her features, how they would fall.
 
Then, in one calm and graceful motion, she turned her eyes like the girl in the Vermeer painting being interrupted at her music lesson.
 
The slight twist of her neck and the engagement of her eyes presented themselves with a candor that was always flirtatious.

Now that her affair was over and had clearly ended badly, Peter knew that only he could make her happy again.

                       
 
Molly was glad her bed was warm and the night hot because she carried with her a faint but present desire to masturbate to Kate.

She thought to her as if it were a gift, but she actually meant to masturbate to a memory of making love with her like one moves She was in a hallucinatory state.
 
It was too hot and her body could not get cool.
 
Each part of her was sore and had a distinct odor.
 
When Kate said "I love you," its effects lingered on Molly's skin like radiation.

Molly could sail out the window on the strength of that alone.
 
She could fly out into the sky that was always between her apartment and Kate's like an ocean of buildings instead of barnacles.
 
When Molly sat on the bed and looked out the window she could just make out the shadow of terra cotta surrounding Kate's rooftop.

I"I want to be a good lover to you," Molly said to the grayred funnels and chimneys, the slanted collapsing mountains that formed the boundaries of their pleasureland.

"But I want you to be a good lover to me as well.
 
I want this to be reciprocal."

Molly lived with this conflict like an itch, like mites laying eggs under the skin that made her squirm with discomfort, especially at night, when she, without restraint, relived those moments of pure anger.
 
Like waiting for Kate.
 
She seemed to always be waiting, the afternoon getting longer and later until it disappeared into that other time.
 
Then a figure would appear, finally, on the stairs preceded by huge flowers.
 
Molly was immediately reduced to some businessman's daughter whose daddy tried to replace a forgotten birthday with a gift too large and obvious to have any meaning.

"I couldn't leave on time because Peter was hanging around.

I would have had to say where I was going."

"You should have told him you had an appointment with me and had to leave."

At the same time that she spoke, Molly thought about having to watch those flowers wilt and crumble all over the floor before Kate came back to her again.

Maybe someday she'll come while the last bunch is still fresh, Molly thought.
 
If she does that, I'll sprinkle the petals on her chest.

She dialed Kate's number.
 
The phone rang.
 
It rang again and Molly decided not to hang up because she liked knowing the room it was ringing in, having memories in that room.
 
But after a dream that lasted five rings she heard the click that announced the presence of an answering machine, to be followed one breath later by a greeting, perhaps accompanied by music.
 
That was new.
 
Kate had bought an answering machine for her studio.
 
Who wanted to come home to messages?

Molly had long ago decided that buying an answering machine would be a public admission of a private sin; waiting for women to call her.
 
It made her rush home from work to sit next to the phone, refusing even to go out for a newspaper.
 
Phone machines were an announcement to the world that a person wanted more calls than they were getting.

They thought there was actually more attention out there trying to get through.
 
Who wanted to confirm the nothing behind the fantasy?
 
She's not really calling you.
 
Besides, those machines changed the way people communicated.
 
It's so much less personal than a direct call.
 
There was something provocative and challenging about another person's voice entering, uninvited, into your home at any moment.

Then again, maybe Kate's machine was a personal message to her estranged lover, an open door saying "I want to know what you have to say."
 
Besides, some people gave up if they couldn't get in touch.

Molly hung up the receiver without saying a word.
 
She couldn't take the chance.
 
A minute later, regretting that decision, she dialed again.
 
But, having forgotten to practice a message, hung up one more time.
 
That was one of the dangers of those machines.
 
Once left, the message was out of your control and could never be taken back.