Allan Stein (23 page)

   
 
The door swung open behind me and there was Sir Harry. He might have been annoyed or perhaps so drunk that his face went out of focus, as if he couldn't calibrate the right degree of severity for my crime and so his expression wavered. What was I doing here? He snorted, or maybe sighed, and walked toward me while I pushed the drawer back in.

   
 
"I thought I'd find you here," he finally said.

   
 
"I wasn't taking anything, you know. I'd never take anything."

Allan Stein

   
 
"Oh, Herbert, I know that. Don't be so defensive." He reached me and ran his fingers up my buttons. "I knew you'd be in here. That's why I dragged myself away from that lively table as fast as I could."

   
 
"Yes."

   
 
"We could barely keep our hands to ourselves, could we?" He planted his great beef-tinged mouth on mine and dragged my shirt-tails out while we fell back on the bed. He was really very big, and I got kind of crushed beneath him for a while as he humped and thrusted at my crotch. A little breather came when Harry propped himself up to pull our paired pants down and turn me over. With his left hand up to muzzle my cock, he reached in the drawer with the right, unleashed a condom, and rolled it on himself in a gesture as practiced and swift as the butler's pour, and then he buggered me for a few riveting minutes. He made noises like the boy, pig and dog noises, but was really very gentle for a man of such size.

   
 
"Thank you," I said, rather pathetically, when Harry was finished. "I mean that was very nice, Harry, very well done." He lay beside me like an abandoned mattress, red-faced and exhausted. I kissed him chastely and put my clothes back together.

   
 
"You go first," he exhaled. "They'll be wondering where you've gotten to. I think you can say that I showed you the Renoir. It always takes me a little while to put the Renoir back and set all the alarms."

   
 
The dining room was empty when I returned. There was only the bean boy, trussless, wiping down the table's glossy top. His circumspect pucker and pert motions were enchanting and I asked for a glass of water, which he fetched from the kitchen. The boy gestured politely toward the living room and I went there.

   
 
The French doors had been thrown open so that cold air rushed in. Le Géranium sat on the couch with his coat pulled up around his throat. The others were on the balcony, smoking and 
arguing. Ariel had pulled the bottom row of nailed birds from the wall and they lay scattered around the room, stripped of their muffs and slightly chewed. She sat on Harry's chair holding an especially fat one between her paws and growling at anyone who approached. I sat beside the old man and offered him my glass of water, which he refused.

   
 
"You were curious about
La grande epoque de l'École Alsa-cienne,
" he whispered, a little rosy from the wine. "I would like to tell you about it." Here he took a deep breath and glanced past me toward the empty dining room. "Our host has retired, so I am certain it would not be rude to speak French now that he is sleeping." I smiled, saying nothing, and rolled the drinks cart near.
"Et il est vrai que le
v
ingtième siècle
 
s'est ouvert sous le signe de l'optimisme."
There was port on the lower rack, and I took a glass of that.
"Certes, les catastrophes naturelles et accidentelles ne pratiquent pas de parenthèses dans Vhistoire de la misère humaine. La violence des hommes, les agitations, les conflits, les scandales ne s'éteignent pas d'un coup, et particuli
è
rement l'anticl
é
ricalisme en France va attendre son apog
é
e d
é
g
é
n
é
rant en affrontements irr
é
parables, mais le progr
è
s technologique semble promettre pour tous des lendemains meilleurs."
The argument on the balcony was much louder than Le Géranium, but distance kept it quiet so the two blended evenly, like crossed conversations on a telephone wire, and I couldn't make sense of either one. The sounds were pleasant though, especially Le Géranium, who spoke in a mellifluous rumble and formed his words carefully and slowly, like a river polishing stones (without thereby making them any more meaningful to me).
"D
é
jlà l'am
é
lioration de certains aspects du mode de vie, l'
é
clairage, l'eau courante, la rapidit
é
 des transports, 
é
galement la multiplication des distractions offertes à eux qui ont les moyens d'en b
é
n
é
ficier, 
paraît
 
 devoir balayer le pessimisme de la fin du
 
siècle
 pr
é
c
é
dent, pessimisme qu'un 
é
crivain hongrois, Max Nordau, qualifiait de
degeneration."

     "Mmm," I pondered. "Degeneration.
Exactement.
"

     
He was delighted.
"C'est le mot juste, nest-ce pas?"

     
"Oui, certainement."

     
"Doce. Paris, le Paris de l'Exposition est devenu le centre du monde. Cette 
dernière
 
 spécialité va profiter de la mort opportune d
è
s le d
é
but du nouveau si
è
cle, de la reine Victoria, monumental arch
é
type d'une morale castratrice —"

     "Castratrice?"

     
"Oui, castratrice. Je ne sais pas en anglais. Mais son successeur, Édouard VII, se charge de faire
 
connaître
 
qu'il est d
é
sormais permis de s'amuser."

     
George and Pepper had returned and now scavenged the room on their hands and knees, gathering birds, which Ariel took as a game and joined, barking. Denis smiled from the balcony and walked toward me.

     
"Denis." I sighed as he sat down on the couch. "What is c
astratrice?
"

     
"Where is Harry?" he asked.

     
"Locking up the Renoir. What is English for c
astratrice?
"

     
"Castratrice, peu importe, "
Le Géranium objected.
"Done. C'est à l'int
é
rieur de l'image d'
É
pinal d'une vie Parisienne, le style 
même 
du second Empire, ressuscit
é
 ..."

     
"The Renoir?" Denis seemed to know something about this Renoir. "Don't mention the Renoir, Herbert."

     
"— sensibles aux apostolats path
é
tiques en faveur d'une paix universelle, va 
goûter
 la s
é
duction des sir
è
nes de Villusion."

     
The birds were fixed back to the wall with the small rusty spikes. Only the chewed muffs and one missing bird posed any difficulties, and Pepper and George pawed blindly beneath the couch, searching for the bird.

     
"Already starting the party games? " Harry bellowed from the doorway. He was in pajamas and a robe, an exquisite silk robe with 
dragons and a velvet belt that wasn't tied but whose ends hung from cloth buttons at either hip so that it looked like a great draped swag across his front. "Getting into the port, are you, Herbert?"

     
"It's terrific, Harry."

     
Pepper freed her arm from the couch springs and now looked up. "He's got a Renoir locked up in the bedroom? How boring." She took my glass of port and sniffed it, then handed it back distastefully. "Is there any cognac, Harry?"

     
"Is there any cognac, she asks. What are these greasy feathers doing on my chair?"

     
"The port is excellent, Harry. I've only ever had the cheap stuff before and it tastes like floor cleanser."

     
"Ariel!" He called for the missing dog but she was out of sight, yapping ineffectually on the balcony, beyond the closed curtains and the closed French doors, beyond hearing, where George had placed her.

     
"Maybe in the kitchen," Denis speculated. "Dining on scraps."

     
George butted in. "We're late for Boy, Harry. I'm sorry, but I've got to take Herbert and Denis immediately, or the widow will have my scalp."

     
"I want a cognac," Pepper whimpered. All the bending and scrambling for the birds had taken its toll.

     
"The lady would enjoy a cognac, George. Surely you have time for a cognac."

     
We enjoyed the cognac. Le Géranium went to his satchel and retrieved a photograph of Allan boxing, 1909, a gift he'd brought for me. Allan was handsome and very chunky, a big boy with a round chest and biceps like great flabby cod. His opponent was tall and wiry, so that the weight evened out. Le Géranium's generosity touched me, and I was both sad and gratified when he left.

 * * *

T
he entrance to Boy looked awful, an armored doorway in the flat black face of a wall. Grim applicants crowded around the door, huddling like junkies. George's sour mood brightened as we approached the barrier. Denis was already dancing, a sinuous little walk that was at odds with my melancholy. The burly guard was kind. He kissed Denis on both cheeks and lifted the velvet rope from its stanchion, letting us slip past the knot of disappointed men. It had been a long day, and this step through the portal, rather than energizing me, felt like a last punch in the gut. Inside was an affliction, a wall of heat and darkness pierced by strobing lights, plus a mass of shirtless souls who must have been eternal residents of the place. In bursts of light, two hundred men strobed freeze-frame for a split second, then got swallowed by darkness.

     
At home the actual boy lay upon his bier, attended by a virgin silence, dumb and rustling in his sleep—his nipples, soft as goose-down, occasionally pressed beneath a pulsing thumb, the thrum of blood through his neck and wrists, hips akimbo, boxers pushed down in front for a hand that holds his cock while he dreams. I was very tired. Denis took my hands and sort of waltzed us through the crowd until he saw by my sad face that I wanted to sit down and meet the widow and just be done with it. No widow in sight. We sashayed on and on until we reached the bar and—a small miracle—two stools.

     
"Please!" I shouted inches from his ear. "I'd just like to sit and rest for a moment if we could." We could. Pepper and George were gone. Somewhere in the strobing darkness, in this sea of men, they laughed or argued. A cloud of mist snaked from grates in the floors, swallowing dancers. It stank of chemicals. I fell asleep in a VIP room. George chatted on one of the slim telephones the club left scattered at the tables. It was the widow. She was still at dinner with, as George put it, "some rich wanker chemical tycoon" who'd swept into town looking for Picassos. "She sounds delighted with him. She'd like 
us to stay put until this cowboy finishes his steak and they can join us."

     
It was hours. I fell asleep, as I've said, on a leather chesterfield that left marks on my cheek. Denis danced while George and Pepper bickered at a table. Denis kept returning at intervals with less and less clothing. He woke me up and pulled me from the recliner. "It is our last evening, Herbert, you should have a little fun." I was an awful dancer, but there was no room to make that obvious. We simply churned around in place like some stubborn wad of dough being pulled and processed in the narrow spinning bowl of a Hobart mixer. The song never ended or changed tempo. My shirt was soaked with sweat and Denis glistened, radiating contentment. I wiped the drops from my brow and looked through the mass of dancers and there, freeze-framing toward me through the strobes, came Hank, Hank Richard, with an elegant old woman, flanked by twin bodyguards trailing behind. I jerked my hand up, as if it held some TV control, to erase this charging rhino of the Discovery network and return us to French Disco-TV-3, but Hank had seen me and grinned as he cha-cha-cha'd toward us a step faster. Denis looked up too, past Hank at the old woman, and shouted, "Herbert, the widow!" top volume into my ear. I turned to flee, but there was nowhere to go.

     
I could simply return home. With Herbert's credit card and passport I could be in my apartment within fifteen or twenty hours. There was a long lost moment then, hidden in the crowd, when time fell apart and—was it regret?—something bitter and delicious like regret blossomed inside me. It had a pleasant texture like laughter and a generous amplitude that grew to encompass everything—me, Denis, the sweating men, all of Boy. The room quieted and became light. The dancers were still for a moment, kind enough to pause for me while I thought about Hank and Denis and Herbert and the inevitability of my unmasking. Denis wouldn't mind. He might have 
guessed it already; he would think I had been amusing. Denis stood now, a few feet away, arrested in his dance, observing me, concerned but really unconcerned, because a bedrock of pleasure had been laid down in him so long ago that something as trivial as this masquerade could hardly be a reason for distress. We'd take a cab to La Coupole and drink to my real name. At dawn we'd wake up Serge and Miriam to announce it like a christening or a birth. I feared the widow unreasonably. Having never met, I imagined her beating me into the ground with disdain or, worse, pity and then burning the Picasso scraps Herbert had wanted, as an object lesson to me. She looked like she already knew the truth and had come back from the grave to tell it. Her face was hard as teak or stone, and she had it aimed purposefully toward the VIP door. It was clear Denis would have to scramble after her to catch up when the bright loud night resumed. The walls and roof of the building dissolved to let the night in, and with that the boy, floating from his bed, appeared. He worried the border of the sky, and then he spread like dawn. The boy encompassed Paris, he blossomed like a shroud or a mask, like a book or a face or a cluster of names. By what accident had he arrived in my life? I wanted only to get home to the boy and be gone with him, but just then hell resumed. The widow strobed away and Denis turned and went after her. Hank had lost her but not me, and a path opened up, so that in a flash his neat collar and suit were upon me.