Authors: Drew Ferguson

Remembering Christmas (6 page)

BOOK: Remembering Christmas

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“James! James! Over here. Over here!”

The sales clerk was suitably impressed that the customer with the terrible taste in ties was on a first-name basis with Archie Duncan.

“You're going to introduce us I hope?” he asked, a demand masquerading as a question.

“Sorry, I can't,” James said, wanting to slap down this presumptuous little ribbon clerk's hands. “I don't know your name.”

“Damn, I didn't expect to see you here,” Archie said, as James joined him at the bar. “I came looking for you, and they told me you'd left without saying good-bye.”

“I apologize. My mother didn't bring me up to be rude. I've got no excuse for running off like that,” James replied, feeling a bit childish for enjoying the envious glances he was receiving as a friend-of-Archie-Duncan.

“Why do I get this strange feeling you don't like me?”

James squirmed, wanting to be home in bed, sound asleep, the sheets pulled over his head.

“That's not true. I don't even know you. How could I not like you?”

“When you've been on television for, oh, a hundred years, people assume they know you.”

“I've never even seen your show.”

He regretted sounding incredibly snotty, like one of those culture snobs forever prattling on about high artâperformances at Lincoln Center, gallery exhibitions, the latest releases from small university pressesâwhile feigning complete and utter ignorance of the household names whose escapades are documented by
Entertainment Tonight
and
Us Weekly.
He felt a sudden urge to confess his addiction to
That '70s Show
to purge his conscience.

“Do you know Ashton Kutcher?” he blurted out.

Archie Duncan clearly had a sense of humor.

“It took you four hours to think of a celebrity to ask about, and that's who you could come up with?”

“Look,” James said. “It had to be awkward for you, Alex practically pushing me onto your lap. I think he expected us to fuck under the dining room table. I know how he is. Believe me. No one likes having someone shoved down their throat, and I didn't want you to get the impression I'd been begging him for an introduction.”

“That was sweet of you to be so considerate of my feelings.”

“Not really.”

“And funny.”

“Why was it funny?”

“Because I asked Alex to introduce us.”

James was stunned by the admission, it having been a long time since he had been an object of curiosity, let alone of desire.

“I invited them for a drink at the apartment I'm subletting after being introduced to them at a fundraiser. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure they invited themselves after they tricked me into offering to share a cab with them. Alex picked up a book I'm reading and asked if I liked it.”

James was pleasantly surprised Archie Duncan wasn't the type to volunteer the salacious details of the erotic conquest.

“I told him I loved it. It's a new American classic. He told me he knew the editor.”

The gem of a memoir that had won the former President the National Book Award and selection as one of the
New York Times
Ten Best Books of the Year continued to reap rewards, none as unexpected as the interest ofâyes, James would now concede under close, personal inspectionâan extremely good-looking and charming man.

“I know what you're going to say. You didn't think anyone in Los Angeles knew how to read.”

“No, I wasn't going to say that. I swear,” James protested.

“I know you weren't,” Archie Duncan teased, playfully squeezing James's arm.

“So what deep, dark secrets can I reveal about our beloved former Commander in Chief? What would you like to know?”

“Only what's in the book. Even a President is entitled to his privacy. Is he working on a second volume?”

James smiled cryptically, a look that could be interpreted as
can't talk about it yet.
The sad news was not yet public. In the first quarter of the New Year, the former First Lady would be announcing that the President's royalties had been donated to an Alzheimer's research foundation that would thereafter carry his name. James had never embraced the man's politics but had grown to love him and his careful precision with words and sentences; now the multi-volume epic they'd once envisioned, a work to stand beside the memoirs of Grant, would never be written.

Archie was far more erudite than James would have expected for a man who had earned a fortune by his impeccable comic timing and skillful delivery of punch lines. He'd read many of the popular biographies James had edited. His passion was American history, and he was particularly fascinated by the industrial titans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His dream project, an epic-length history of the Homestead strike, had been in development for almost ten years and gone through five screenwriters and seven scripts.

“Thank God, I won't be too old to play Andrew Carnegie until I'm seventy-five,” he laughed. “One more for the road?”

“I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow.”

“No excuse. So do I.”

“Where are you going?”

“Philadelphia.”

“Philadelphia! You can walk to Philadelphia from here!”

“Exactly. Which is why I'm in no rush.”

“Well, I have to be on the road by seven.”

“That's hours away. You can get into a lot of trouble between now and daybreak.”

“I know. That's why I'm going to call it a day.”

“I don't have to stay all night. You can kick me out after you've had your way with me.”

Archie Duncan's smile could be interpreted several ways: either the comment was all in jest, a harmless bit of fun, or it was a formal declaration of interest. James felt himself wavering, intrigued by the possibility of a night of lust and passion with a television star. It was flattering. Hell, it was more than flattering; it was downright amazing that a man like Archie Duncan was interested in him. Then again, if ever there was an occasion to not be impulsive, this was it. They were middle-aged men, after all, and years of experience had taught James the sweet rewards to be gained by taking things slowly and exercising patience.

“I told you I was a stickler for good manners. I would never throw a guest out on the streets in the middle of the night. And I'm out of milk and coffee, and I'd hate to send you on your way without breakfast.”

Archie laughed and grabbed a cocktail napkin off the bar and asked the bartender for a pen. He scribbled his number and shoved the rumpled paper in James's pocket.

“Let me give you mine,” James said.

“Not necessary. Alex already gave it to me. So, are you free New Year's Eve?”

“Yes,” he said, regretting his quick response, fearing it made him sound like a loser.

“I will pick you up at eight. And don't worry. I'll bring my own toothbrush so I taste all minty fresh when I kiss you good morning.”

The good-night kiss was friendly, chaste. James certainly wasn't going to compromise a Page Six celebrity by swapping spit in the face of his curious public.

It was significantly colder on the street, as the temperature had dropped sharply after midnight. James pulled his scarf around his neck and shoved his hands in his pockets, stamping his feet for warmth as he waited for an empty cab. He looked at his watch. It was only twelve-thirty, hardly the witching hour. He felt old beyond his years, a middle-aged stick in the mud who had just passed up an opportunity to sleep with a bona fide leading man who was interested enough to have gotten his number from Alex. Was he so goddamn ancient he wouldn't be able to survive on three or four hours sleep tomorrow, especially knowing he could practically hibernate in West Virginia the rest of the week? Alex would be ashamed of him. Christ, he was ashamed of himself. What self-respecting gay man turned down an opportunity to have sex with Archie Duncan to ensure he got his proper beauty rest? He turned on his heels and marched back to The Townhouse, his face flush with anticipation, actually feeling the stirring of an erection in his pants, only to stop dead in his tracks halfway across the crowded barroom, seeing that Archie Duncan was otherwise occupied, locked in a tongue-chewing embrace with one of his adoring fans.

Whoever wrote there's no place like home for the holidays never had to travel more than a mile to reach the family hearth by Christmas morning. Year after year, James had made the annual pilgrimage to LaGuardia, watching the meter run while he sat in stalled traffic, shuffling through security, and rushing to the gate only to be slapped with the announcement of a three-hour delay. He could always count on United Airlines to lose his luggage or overbook the plane or seat him beside a screaming baby. Never again, he swore, after last year when he missed his connection at National and had to pay a king's ransom to upgrade to the only available seat on the last flight to Charleston, West Virginia, still a one-hour drive in a rental car to his final destination. Why not put the snappy little BMW 3 Series he kept in the city for summer weekend jaunts to the Fire Island ferries to good use? He would drive west through Jersey, dip south through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and be at his mother's house on the western side of West Virginia for dinner.

Clouds were massing on the horizon, chasing the early morning sunshine by the time he headed south on Interstate 81. But the gloomy skies couldn't dampen his soaring mood. He had John Fahey and Joanie Baez's Christmas albums on disc, records he had loved since college, and, with each mile, Ernst and Alex and the fates of old boyfriends faded further from his thoughts. It was the perfect opportunity to compose his New Year's resolutions. He had a marvelous idea, encouraged by the agent from whom he'd just bought a revisionist biography of James K. Polk; he would keep a journal about his restoration of his country cottage, with an eye toward publishing it as a memoir. He would spend his summer recording the life cycles of the insects that nested in the eaves of his new home rather than studying the mating habits of privileged, narcissistic men on a barrier island in the Atlantic. He would learn to embrace the pleasures of solitude, retiring early to bed with a book and rising to appreciate the sunrise with his first coffee of the morning. His weekend guests would be intelligent if not intellectual, curious, with surprising interests, men like Archie Duncan. They would drink more tea than liquor. The drive was passing pleasantly. He was making great time, way ahead of schedule, already miles beyond Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was the easiest Christmas sojourn ever, and he was absolutely convinced it was the best idea he'd ever had, right up to the minute the engine died on the Interstate 76, his punishment for ignoring the little red light, M
AINTENANCE
R
EQUIRED
, that had been flashing on the dashboard since sometime after the Fourth of July.

Which is how James found himself in the passenger seat of a tow truck, sitting beside a three hundred pound ogre whose right earlobe looked like it had been chewed by a starving pit bull. His rescuer was wearing a filthy Steelers jersey, size sixteen boots, and a bright orange hunter's hat that provided some slight reassurance that small game, not human prey, had shed the blood that stained the floor of the truck.

“This goddamn weather is a fucking bitch,” the driver growled as he squinted into the driving rain pounding against the windshield.

The exit ramp off the turnpike announced they were approaching Breezewood, Pennsylvania, the self-proclaimed Town of Motels.

“Guess I'm lucky, breaking down here instead of somewhere else,” James said, trying to force a little holiday cheer into the gloom.

“Why's that?” the driver asked, fumbling in his shirt pocket for a pack of matches.

James decided it wouldn't be wise to ask him not to smoke. “Not much chance anyone is going to tell me there's no room in the inn in the Town of Motels,” he said.

The driver gave him a blank look, no wattage in his eyes, as if he'd never heard the tale of the Christ Child's birth.

“You know, like âAway in a manger, no crib for his bed,'” James said, fumbling, wishing he'd kept his damn mouth shut.

The beast in the black and gold jersey scowled at the lame attempt at seasonal humor, his eyes narrowing into threatening slits, wary of being patronized by some suspiciously soft stranger driving a luxury car with a price tag higher than his annual salary.

“Where you from?” he asked in an accusing voice.

“West Virginia. Parkersburg. On the Ohio River. An hour north of Charleston,” James answered truthfully, not lying about his place of birth.

“How come you have New York plates?” the driver demanded, determined to make his captive prisoner confess.

“When can someone look at the car?” James asked, trying to change the subject.

BOOK: Remembering Christmas

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