Allan Stein (22 page)

     
It wasn't the kind of sex I had imagined. If he'd been a weapon he might have killed me. Obviously there was nothing to say. I don't think his impulse was violent, but rather the territory of our exchange was lawless and immoderate, unspeakable. Our bodies were dumb, irreversible. We lay there for a long time, folded over on each other, until I felt his erection stir again and move against my leg, and then he got out of the shower and went to his room. I don't know what connects anyone to anyone. My body felt like an accident, a wrong turn.

     
I lay in the dark for a while; then I turned the shower off. Music drifted from below, Per's jazz, muted by the walls. I dried myself, pulling on my dick a lot, which was still very hard. What was tonight? Denis's dinner? He might be here already. Anything could have happened while we showered. I dropped the towel and went to the boy's door and walked through the beads. Streetlights from outside showed his scattered clothes, his guitar and comic books, and then the boy himself, still wet, lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, watching me. His cock lay up against his belly and sometimes lifted from it. It breathed like some sea creature that draws great streams of ocean water through itself, heaving a sigh and dropping back down again. His torso was pale and luminous, marked by the slim divot of his navel and the twin blisters of his soft nipples. I got on the bed and knelt over him, then lowered myself down like a man doing push-ups. I slid back and forth over him. My cock felt ticklish, driving through his soft thatch of hair, and my chest and belly grazed his. Stéphane wrapped his hand around our paired erections and I spit there. While he played with this twin-headed dick, 
rolling it around in both hands and inspecting it, I ran my fingers over his chest, pinching his nipples and then soothing them with my thumbs. I traced his collarbone, cupped his shoulders in my palms, ran my fingers over his wet lips, and then dipped them in his mouth and traced spit along his throat. I pushed the head of my dick against each nipple, blessing them, and then the hollow in the middle of his chest, which fit nicely. I inched up and touched the head to his lips and then his eyes, so the shaft rolled over his face, pressing down first on one cheek, then the other, and he let his mouth open and licked me. He put his lips in a round, tentative O and took the head of my cock in so his teeth tickled along its underside. I pulled back and sat on his hips, and simply stared for a while at his beautiful puzzled face. Leaning down, I kissed him on the chin and left his room to dress.

♦14  
♦

                                                 
    D
enis wore a iet-black iacket of some thin elegant fabric, like rayon, only it had none of the brassy  sheen of rayon. lt drifted and lay limp on his racklike frame so that one might have taken photos of him lounging in the chrome chair  to advertise almost anything: cigarettes, automobiles, real estate, liquor, the new Europe, anything at all. His skin was luscious and smooth, like hard milk chocolate, and his mood was gay.  

     "The widow, Herbert," he exclaimed, grinning when I came  in. "The widow at last." Per was naked, retrieving a bowl of ice from  the freezer, and he rushed past me to the stairs with just a quick smile. 

     
"It’s very exciting, Denis." I'd chosen a soft white shirt and khaki  pants, very plain and undistinguished but redeemed, I thought, by the  peculiar gray-check jacket I wore with them.  

     "
We are due at eight, which is the time now, Herbert." Denis  was in no hurry. He slouched farther into the chair and sipped the  small glass of scotch Serge had poured him. I didn't want a drink.  My body was all undone, like a deboned hen under the
découpeur's
 knives. So much had been undone. I sat on the edge of the couch,  perched with my weight settled on the twin bones of my butt. I smiled weakly at Denis, and he smiled back. ‘You are looking  very smart."  

     
"Thank you, Denis."      

     
"Dinner is at the apartment of Harry Pym-Gardner, a very rich Englishman who collects nice things."

     
"Will there be many people?"

     
"George, of course, and Sir Harry. One or two others. Do not fear, Herbert, you and I will sit together, with the widow between us."

     
We caught a cab because there was no point trying to park on the Quai Bourbon where Sir Harry lived. The Ile St. Louis was an impossible place, its narrow streets clogged with tourists and taxis and the occasional car circling eternally, scouting for a place to park. There were none. The cars simply had to be abandoned, driven into the river, left in the street, given up to thieves, or taken to another district and parked there. Our cabby nosed across the crowded Pont Sully and traversed the island, depositing us at Sir Harry's door.

     
Denis performed a series of codes which got us through a battered wooden door into a great stone courtyard. "Harry will like you, Herbert. He's always hungry for new people."

     
"That's sweet of him."

     
"George is constantly supplying them, like a pusher of drugs." Denis pressed a button at the elevator's gate. "He finds young men at the clubs, I mean well-bred young men, and brings them to Harry's for dinner."

     
A butler arrived in a glass elevator as tight as a phone booth, shut us in, and launched it, then walked the stairs, spiraling around the box, keeping pace so that he seemed to be circling like some grim creature of the desert until he passed the elevator door a fifth time, as we stopped, and let us out.

     
Denis pointed and there was our host, some distance away, surrounded by his "nice things"—paintings, statuettes, antiquities, and a drinks cart. Sir Harry might have been a stage actor, with features as huge and exaggerated as his frame, so that one could read the slyness of his grin, a twitch of the mouth, even across the great 
distance of his living room. He was a little drunk and sat waiting for us, patting a small shampooed lapdog.

     
"Scotch? Pimm's?" Harry offered. "Bombay? Denis tells me you like gin." We had still not made it halfway to him. "You're looking fit, Denis, spending all your time in that gymnasium, aren't you? You must be strong as a colossus by now, with all that iron you keep pumping and pumping."

     
"I am weak with pleasure, Harry. It makes me dizzy just to walk so far."

     
"You didn't walk here, did you? It's a madhouse, you could've been killed." The dog started yapping when we arrived, and Harry swatted it on the head and it stopped.

     
"Harry Pym-Gardner. You can call me Harry."

     
"Herbert Widener." The name had gone a little sour in my mouth, so that I offered it in a mumble. I used it less and less now. At the park or in libraries, anywhere that Herbert's business didn't have to be mentioned, I simply went nameless rather than producing this token I'd prized so greedily. It was like a Christmas toy that falls apart before New Year's. I had used it cavalierly and for everything, banging it around on the airplane and the bus, in conversation with strangers, cabdrivers, clerks, and with every acquaintance I'd made, so that it finally just broke and became depressing.

     
"Herbert," Harry repeated, still holding my hand. "George has told me so much. Where is that awful man? He treats me like dirt."

     
"He treats everyone like dirt," Denis assured him. "That is why we're so fond of George."

     
Harry walked us around the room, giving the inventory of his nice things, while the dog yapped at our ankles. Small torsos and heads on metal rods were antiquities and I enjoyed them, but didn't appreciate their rarity as Herbert would have. The paintings were 
famous. I knew the names but could not have distinguished one from another. They were minor works by great painters, except for a broad swath of shriveled birds nailed to the wall in a sort of grid, each one sporting a tiny knit muff or sweater. "It's a Mensonger," Harry told us. "Pepper Mensonger. George had it installed today." He scooped up the dog. "They look like dried vomit to me, but George says she's very important." The view out was exquisite, looking out over the sluggish river and rooftops to the dirty walls of the Hotel de Ville, brilliantly carved from the night by the klieg lights of passing tour boats.

     
The dog sprang from Harry's lap as the elevator arrived again, replete with George, the widow, looking awfully young and spry, plus a very old man. "Ariel," Harry scolded, "No bite, no bite," even while the dog nipped at the new guests and the widow kicked him away without breaking stride. Who was the old man? "You're late, George. Obviously you know Denis and Herbert." The trio labored their way across the great expanse. Harry stared at the implacable woman on George's arm as if she were a mere appendage of this unfavored friend. "And who is this you've brought me?"

     
"Mrs. Stein." I stepped in. "It is my great pleasure to meet you at last. George has said so much—"

     
"Harry Pym-Gardner," George interrupted, "I'd like you to meet Pepper Mensonger. Pepper, this is Harry. I'm sure he won't mind in the least if you call him Harry."

     
"Charmed," our host whispered. Pepper cast her glance proudly, possessively, over the freshly nailed birds.

     
The silent old man was Le Géranium, scholar of the École Alsacienne, and he looked older than I had ever imagined, more frail and distracted, and with both feet already out of this world. He was well over eighty. "He was hell-bent on meeting you, Herb," George said. "Six is fine for dinner, right, Harry?" 

     
"George, I would give you anything. He speaks English, doesn't he?
L'anglais c'est la langue de la maison, non?

     
"Yes, of course."

     
Was he named for a flower? I caught George's elbow on the way to the dining room and scolded him. "I've stayed an extra week to meet the widow, George. Where is she?"

     
"The widow?" Harry asked. He had Ariel in his arms now and was kissing the dog on its exposed teeth. "Matchmaking again, George?"

     
"The Stein widow, Harry. It's business. She wants to meet us later at Boy."

     
"After dinner?"

     
"After dinner." George squeezed out a little turd of a smile. "Boy's a fabulous club, Herb, you'll love it. She has some Picassos Herbert wants."

     
"Why didn't you tell me this, George? You know I would just die to have some of her Picassos. Or were they all snapped up ages ago, I mean before you tried to pick me up at that horrible bar?"

     
"She's not selling, Harry. Herb's just having a little look-see. And I did not try to pick you up."

     
"I recall Picasso," Le Géranium whispered. "When my father and I called to visit in Montrouge." No one seemed to hear him.

     
Harry got us all seated except Pepper, who was unhappy about being placed next to me and hovered, going on about the widow. "Everyone wants her Picassos, but in fact she has none." In the attentive silence this bold claim triggered, Pepper gestured to George to give up his seat and she took it. She brushed some imaginary crumbs from the chair and settled beside Denis. "She sold them all, years ago."

     
"That's just a crock of shit, Pepper." George unfurled his napkin. "You were drunk, Harry, and tried to give me money.

     
You thought I was a trick, and we all had a good laugh about that."

     
"An innocent mistake."

     
"I know they are sold, George," Pepper continued. "I met an awful Swiss who owns twenty or thirty of them."

     
"You were in Switzerland?" Travel seemed a promising topic.

     
"Zurich. I hated it. The Swiss are barbarians. My dealer kept me there four months."

     
Harry proposed a toast to the missing widow, and we drank our wine.

     
"Are you a collector?" Pepper asked, fishing.

     
"Herbert is the curator of contemporary art at a very important museum," Denis explained. "His was the famous 'cut sleeves' show, you certainly read about it in the
Art Flash
magazine." Cut sleeves? "His opinion is sought after." I had no idea what Denis was talking about, but Pepper evidently knew and, 
voilà
! Cinderella was transformed into the queen of the ball.

     
"Herbert
Widener?
" She reached across the table to squeeze my hand (too bad she'd already switched seats) and relaxed into a grand smile that was like glorious summer after the spring monsoons. Le Géranium smiled too.

     
"I'm so hopelessly behind." Harry sighed. "I've never heard of this 'cut sleeves' show, though it is obviously a la mode, Herbert. Do fill me in." Pale string beans were laid on our plates by an astonishing young helper, fresh-faced, whiskerless, and nattily trussed in a short-waisted coat to indicate his inferior station. The butler followed with a roast.

     
"Denis explains it well," I demurred. "I mean, it's perhaps better described in French, don't you think, Denis?"

     
"No, I don't think so, Herbert. It is a show of garments, Harry, that have been damaged—not the literal garments, but garments of 
all kinds, metaphorical, conceptual, and also some clothing. This 'cut sleeves' was a piece by Jeffries, where the Beuys felt suit has been slashed with knives."

     
"He's brilliant," Pepper said. I smiled bashfully. "Jeffries is brilliant. He paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for that Beuys, and then when he slashed it the value more than doubled. I think he made back two or three times what he paid." Ariel took a slice of meat from Harry's plate and dragged it to the ground. She had it trapped between my chair leg and shoe, where she growled and mauled it before swallowing.

     
I smiled at Pepper, wanting to say something, anything, worthy of a true Herbert, but all of that had deflated, collapsed like an old balloon, and I could only murmur "delicious beans," to no one in particular, and watch my plate.

     
"I find Jeffries to be nihilistic and derivative," Le Géranium announced, putting a stress on every syllable. "He has done nothing but turn Duchamp into pornography." We all turned and stared, as if the window had blown open and no one knew who should get up and shut it.

    Pepper spoke into the silence. "Isn't that interesting. He has an opinion about Jeffries." Rather than engage that opinion, she was content to just point it out, as one might point out a child's constipation.

   
 
"He's absolutely right," George put in. "Jeffries is a dull opportunist. He hasn't had an original idea in his life."

   
 
"When Duchamp was a young man," Le Géranium went on, "he painted all of my clothes in a brilliant gold paint. He was Midas. He ruined all my clothes."

   
 
"Is he all right?" Pepper murmured. "George, you are simply bored by what is beyond you. You work in a glorified department store."

   
 
"I cringe to think what you'd say of the Carnavalet." Denis. Pepper only smiled and shrugged.

   
 
"Oh, Denis," Harry consoled, "we all know you've done marvelous things there. Have you seen it, Herbert? But of course you have. It's all Denis; everything good about that musty old building is his." I looked past Le Géranium to the dull passage from which the young bean server had once issued, but saw nothing. Only grim, static shadows.

   
 
"I'd like more beans," I whispered to Harry, and he rang his little bell. The butler again. I excused myself. Denis engaged Le Géranium while George and Pepper fought, to Harry's amusement. The dog took some meat from my plate as I left, and the butler quickly replaced it. The apartment went on and on for a great distance, with rooms opening up off a corridor hung with etchings and prints. Beyond the kitchen door was a bathroom and a toilet, and I went past these through a closed door into a huge dressing room. It was a mess, with little rawhide dog treats, all gnawed and soggy, scattered among an explosion of clothing (Sir Harry's experiments preparing for tonight's guests). A far door, propped partly open, invited me and I went through it. Here was Sir Harry's bed, a great canopied Louis XIV with a bolster and scattered shams, plus a small basket of toys beside it, clamps and collars and such; things that embarrassed me. I went through the drawers, which weren't very interesting.