Turning Idolater (28 page)

“Young. I know, young and fulfilled.”

“No. You made me feel . . . alive.”

Thomas tugged at Philip’s shoulders.

“Bastard,” Philip murmured. He clenched Tee’s neck,
burying his face in his breast.

“I was dead for so long,” Thomas said. “You
resurrected whatever life still lurked in this heap of old
platitudes. Don’t you understand? I love you.”

Philip grasped this, but did not understand it. How
could love be based on a lie? He had been taken into Thomas’ charge
on a false premise — a lab rat for study. How many scientists grew
fond of their subjects as time went on, but in the end, the cage
must be opened and the rat goes free.

“Love,” Philip murmured. “I think you’re confused
there. People like us can never love. You’re an artist and live for
inspiration. I’m a whore and live for the next meal ticket. I’m a
little richer now and can graduate to an easier way of living,
perhaps. I owe you much.”

“Don’t say that, Philip. It sounds so final. A
cashing in of your chips after a successful run.”

Philip pushed Tee away gently. “If you had told me
what you were about, I could have accepted it for what it was. I
could have followed the usual precautions and would not be hurt by
it. But you chose to lie.”

“Florian should not have said anything to
Sprakie.”

Sprakie
. Philip was no fool. He knew that
Sprakie was digging for something. He knew that Florian still held
Thomas as his own. Philip was done with Sprakie. Anything owed to
that cat, Philip considered paid-in-full.

“Flo’s your agent, as you say, but he certainly has
played loose with your trust.”

“He is not my agent.”

Philip slipped Thomas’ embrace. “What do you
mean?”

“As of this minute, Florian Townsend is not my
agent. He shall learn in the morning that he cannot play loose with
my trust. Mrs. Hogarth will serve me just as well here as she does
in London.”

“Drastic, Tee, but it’s no compensation to me.”

Philip stood trying to decide his course. He saw it
before him — the moon on the balcony, beckoning him out so the
breeze might dry his tears.

Philip wasn’t angry. He actually understood Thomas’
reasoning. Authors research, and if you’re writing a novel based on
an on-going police investigation, you dig and clip and Google. If
you need to set a scene, you must experience it. Philip admired Tee
for his thoroughness. What he couldn’t forgive was the deception.
He didn’t doubt Tee’s feelings, but Philip cleaved to a notion that
Thomas was confusing security and a last-ditch romance with love.
There could be no real commitment. Yet Philip had never been a man
to commit. That was the rub. He was ready for it now. He was
prepared to give his heart and soul in trust to this man — to turn
idolater and worship at a new altar. Anger? No. Disappointment?
Indeed. Utter and wretched sadness? Never doubt it.
Oh, my
Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why
should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
fly these deadly waters! let us home!

Philip knew Thomas stood behind him on the balcony —
two naked souls under the gull’s sleeping eyes.

“So what now?” Thomas asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think I should . . .”

“Move on?”

“I don’t want to, but the longer I . . . I linger,
the worse it will be.”

Thomas gasped. Philip saw a man distraught —
desperate, and yet ready to salvage his dignity. Thomas wouldn’t
fight it. Philip knew this. Perhaps they could remain friends. But
they needed to part. Philip was surer now. He would keep his job at
Cardoza’s and pay off his loan to Tee. He might even put
the
first edition
up on eBay after all. He could find a place to
stay. Not Sprakie’s. Never Sprakie’s again.

“You will always linger,” Thomas said. He clasped
his heart. “Here. Here, you shall always be. Here, I swear, is
where you belong and here I will never give you up.”

“I would expect no less,” Philip said. Thomas’ head
bowed. Philip ran his hands through Tee’s hair. “I shall live in
your book. What’s it called? Sprakie told me, but I can’t
remember.”

“You remembered everything else,” Tee sniffed, and
then hiccuped a compensatory laugh. “
Bright Darkness
.”

“It’s a good title,” Philip said. “I hope it is more
bright than dark . . . for our sakes.”

Thomas heaved a sigh. “Will you come to bed?”

“I’ve already been to bed tonight, remember?”

Thomas choked. Philip thought he’d fall. “It’s hard,
dear lamb,” Tee said. “It’s so very hard.”

“Well, O’Neill is O’Neill, and I’ll not fight
it.”

Thomas rallied, dimly. “No rush.”

“No rush,” Philip said. “A few weeks.”

Thomas sighed, perhaps thinking this a concession
that could lead to permanence, but Philip knew better. Thomas
retreated through the doors. Philip would join him. They would ease
their sorrows together, as they had no other course but in each
other’s arms.

Philip gazed at the moon. It was full, but tinged
red. It would rain tomorrow, a curtain down for this great escape.
Away! let us away!
He spied the gull cropped on the jetties,
asleep, yet awake to the clam beds. He heard Old Charlotte snort
from his kennel, dreaming of sunshine and head rubs. He sensed the
eyes of the Maine Coon stalking mice in the bright darkness.
Suddenly, the waves were alive to the sirens of the sea. Whale
song. Philip heard them singing, piercing the night air with their
love calls. Love calls in this town abounded, but none were as
precious as these. They tickled his ears and his heart. He was sad
it was over, but the world was still alive for him.
Away! let us
away!

Philip looked to sea.

Philip looked to sea, but over the rooftops of New
York it was nothing more than a morning hint. He liked to come up
to the roof and gaze at the sky and Brooklyn beyond. He had his cup
of coffee.
Never touch the stuff.
He thought of that first
encounter with Tee every time he sipped his morning brew, but now,
with summer gone and autumn closing fast, the sadness had become a
bittersweet memory. Philip stretched. He was dressed for work,
unlike two nights ago on this rooftop, when Dennis and he were
naked and fooled around — nothing but God and pigeons as witnesses.
It was a cool place to romp, because Dennis’ apartment was cramped
and, even in this season, hot. Philip rarely got a good night’s
sleep here. Now, he watched the sunrise and felt the coffee heat in
his hand. He would be late for work — he knew it, but it was to be
expected. Still, he didn’t hasten.

Peace
. He felt more at peace now. Not because
Dennis was a better fit than Thomas. Dennis was a physical match —
hot passion that began and ended with climax — one slide down the
hill, and then silence and snores. No companionable conversation
through the night to the wee morning hours. No fine language or
recitations on the sea. Dennis didn’t even speak in equations.
Perhaps he felt that Philip would be lost in anything academic.
Little did he know. It was all sex, but it was good sex, so Philip
stayed, paid his way and existed with this phallic roommate.
Friends? Yes, in a way. Lovers? In a sexual sense, perhaps.
Companions? As close as Pluto is to Mars. Still, there was peace
and it was what it was.
O’Neill is O’Neill
, and all
that.

Philip had lingered with Thomas for six weeks. They
were cordial and still slept together for the first two weeks.
Then, Philip took up residence in his own bed, with no one but Ahab
as company. When he arose each day, Tee was already secluded in his
office, probably extracting whatever remorse he had on this broken
relationship in the pages of
Bright Darkness
, or so Philip
thought. After four weeks, Philip began nightly visits across town
to Dennis Hatcher’s. At first, these were early trysts, Philip
returning to
The Papillon Arms
by midnight. A part of him
wanted, or needed, to see Thomas daily, but when the flat became an
empty warren, Philip returned less, and finally, he moved his kit
out. They didn’t even say goodbye. He regretted that.

Thomas had retreated from the world. There was no
more Florian Townsend either, because Thomas kept his word and
fired the agent before they had left Provincetown. Flo, furious and
crazed, frightened Philip with his reaction. Philip thought Mr.
Townsend would jump off the jetties into the crashing rocks. When
they returned to the flat, Flo stayed away, but Philip knew that he
stalked them, or at least he stalked Thomas. Now that Thomas was
locked away and Philip gone, Flo had little recourse but to fade.
The only fear Philip had was a possible appearance Florian could
make at his Uncle’s bookstore, where Philip still worked.

Peace.
The air was clean and fresh — no city
odors to trump the Java aromas. Philip watched the sky bleed purple
and cream as her majesty, the sun, gained the welkin. He sighed. He
felt adrift now, but at peace. He liked his work, having become
adept at gutting the innards of old books. Soon, he would undertake
the business of rebinding, but first things first. He spent his
evenings quiet and alone — Dennis having night classes four days a
week. Philip read, although he was loathe to open his Penguin
edition of
the book
. Whenever his eyes cast past the docks
of Nantucket, across the silvery tide to the killing fields, where
the boilers turned grist into liquid gold, his mind went to fond
memories of Tee. He knew it was a false time, predicated on a lie,
but fantasy comforts the desperate, and he guessed that he had been
desperate.

Philip was wiser now. At peace, and away from
Sprakie too. Not that Robert Sprague didn’t try to renew the
acquaintance. Sprakie felt the frost that next morning and Philip
wouldn’t explain. Sprakie knew why. He had played his hand too
dirty and fast. Philip held to the notion that if Sprakie truly
wanted to help him, he would have given his council in daylight and
better coached than a whisper in a bordello. No. Sprakie
disappeared from Philip’s life as surely as Flo did from Thomas’.
No rewards given to interlopers. Deadeyes only have one purpose,
and when that fails, they are cast upon the slagheap.

Philip sucked up the last of the coffee. Dennis
would be up by now, so Philip sauntered over the tar papered roof,
past the satellite dish and the cooling rotors to the ugly shack
door that protruded from the shingling. It was one of three access
doors to the roof, but it was the only one that Philip had ever
used. If the door closed, he’d be locked out up here. Therefore, a
misshapen paving stone was shoved on the threshold to hold it open.
Once he had forgotten to set it in place and the door slammed
closed. Fortunately, Dennis was directly behind him and opened it,
laughing — admonishing him for the lapse.
The only way down, if
you forget about old scrappy, is over the side and it’s a
twelve-story drop. Land on your feet, if you can.
Every time
Philip worked
old scrappy
, he thought of that time he nearly
locked himself out.

The apartment was five flights down — 8D. Philip
took two steps at a time, pushing his way through the steel case
door on the landing. The hallway was clean, but old — walls
shit-brown, the floor a honeycomb of octagonal tiles that were once
white, but now dimmed to tan, broken in places, but clean. This was
not Avenue A. No piss smells in the hall. The aroma was usually
curry or gefilte fish. There was no elevator either, so every
tenant above the third floor had powerful legs and oxygen to spare.
Philip might take the stairs down two steps at a time, but he
certainly would huff and puff on the return trip.

8D.

“Shit,” he said. He had forgotten his keys. When
would he learn to put them in his pocket instead of on the dresser?
He rang the buzzer, and then knocked. “Denny. I’m locked out.”

The door opened. The phone rang simultaneously.
Dennis was in his jock strap. “Some day you’re going to be shit out
of luck. Get a key chain or . . .”

Philip ignored him. Dennis had disappeared into
their living room. Philip heard him on the phone.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “What? You need . . . Oh.
That’s correct. Hatcher. 1270 East 108
^th
Street. Yes.
Okay.”

“Who was that?”

“Phone company.”

“They want to sell you a phone?”

“No. Strange.” Dennis winced, and then shrugged.
“They’re delivering my phone books and wanted to confirm the
address.”

“That’s customer service. Good for them.”

“I guess.” Dennis gave Philip a kiss — a peck on the
nose. “You were wonderful last night.”

“That’s customer service,” Philip said.

“No, that’s quality control. Aren’t you late for
work? Duh. When are you ever early, or even on time. I’m surprised
they don’t can your ass.”

Philip smiled. He hooked his arms around Dennis’
shoulders, dragging him into the kitchen. “Can you imagine my ass
canned. It would fly off the shelves like hot cakes.”

Dennis gave him another peck on the nose, but Philip
clasped him close and planted a wet, coffee tasting kiss on the
gob. He then disengaged and went about the business of leaving. His
backpack was ready, but he needed to retrieve his keys and
wallet.

“I guess I won’t see you until late tonight,” Philip
said as he checked the backpack.

“No class tonight.”

“Really?” Philip said. “Maybe we can eat together at
least.”

“Rain check on that. I’m meeting Terry.”

Philip was disappointed. Dennis and he seldom did
anything beyond the bedroom. A nice meal in a bistro on Madison or
Park would be a nice change — with the evening breezes and the
sights of men and beasts. “Well, at least you’ll be home early
enough to have dessert.”