Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (11 page)

“But that’s not important, honest it isn’t. The important thing is, I met Emil, he’s absolutely wonderful, he’s invited me to dinner next weekend at his uncle’s house, which is where he’s staying, and I think he might even be gay.”

She stood bolt upright. “You
think
?” she cried. “Lionel, you let yourself fall in
love
with someone for the first time since I have known you, and you are not even certain whether he can love you back?”

“I couldn’t help it! And besides, I’m reasonably sure he is. He told me he’s been to five AIDS rallies since he got here.
Five,
Yolanda. I’m gay and I’ve only been to one.”

“How on earth did
that
come up?”

“We shared a cab when we left the police station, so I had to talk with him about
something
besides how horny he was making me. So I asked him what he did for a living, and he said he was a medical student and I asked what made him choose medicine and he said it was AIDS. He said nothing in his life was more important than defeating AIDS.”

She shook her head. “Lionel, forgive me, but the fact that someone is concerned about AIDS does not make him gay. I should not have to remind you of this, but AIDS is not a gay disease.”

“Oh, to hell with that … it’s gay enough. How many of
your
straight friends have had it?”

“That is beside the poin—”

At that moment, just when the tension between them was threatening to sharpen, Bob Smartt threw open the door and swept grandly into the store, somehow contriving to sail past the starship mobile without displacing a single hair. He carried a paper shopping bag and wore a sparkling white collarless trench coat that Lionel thought made him look like an unusually hip lab technician from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. “Hello hello
hello
,” he sang, and then he leaned over the counter (extending his left leg behind him) and gave Yolanda a big smooch. “
Great
blouse,” he said as he appraised her outfit. “
Love
the apricot piping!”

Then he turned to Lionel, raised his eyebrows as if surprised by the sight of him, and stuck out his impeccably manicured hand.
“Lionel,”
he said in an exact imitation of real pleasure.

Lionel shook his hand with an imperceptible tremor of distaste.

“I just stopped by the Century Mall on my way here,” he said in a bright, chirpy voice. “I suddenly figured that maybe since I was going on this ‘manly man’s retreat’ —” He turned to Lionel. “She tell you about that?”

“She did,” said Lionel.

He rolled his eyes, as if to say, Can you
believe
what they’re making me go through? Then he continued, “Anyway, I thought, since I’ll basically be at a campsite all weekend, I ought to get new underwear, ‘cause all I have are silk briefs and let’s face it, those are just
not
gonna cut it in the Great Outdoors.
So
,” he said opening his shopping bag with the practiced flair of someone accustomed to showing off his purchases, “I stopped by the Century and got these. They oughtta cut it, huh?” He pulled out several pairs of tartan flannel boxer shorts that must have set him back forty bucks each. Yolanda cooed in enthusiastic agreement while Lionel just smiled and nodded and thought to himself,
They’re going to eat him alive.

“So anyway,” Bob said, slipping the boxers back into the bag, “what say you close up this flytrap and join me for dinner, honey? Thought we could hop down to Oo-La-La for a quick plate of butternut-squash ravioli.” He placed the bag under his arm. “I could murder a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé, let me tell ya. Been a
bitch
of a day.”

Yolanda, as usual, dribbled out some insipid agreement and began closing up, even though it was only 8:47 and the store didn’t close till nine. Lionel knew the owner had adopted a hands-off attitude towards his staff — after all, the business depended on a core group of regular customers who wouldn’t abandon it for anything — but this seemed a little irresponsible, even so.

They all left the store together (Lionel again bonking his forehead against a starship), and while Yolanda busied herself with locking the door, Bob finished refastening the belt of his trench coat, then turned to Lionel and said, “Hey, care to join us?” with such theatrical falseness that it almost carried its own threat not to accept. Lionel toyed with the notion of saying, “Sure, Bob, love to,” and then watching the contortions his long, unlined face underwent, but decided against it, for Yolanda’s sake. It was her last night with him for a week, and she’d want to have him all to herself.

So Lionel graciously declined; and as he stood outside Live Love and Prosper, watching Bob stride down the street, his gait long-legged and swift, while poor, petite Yolanda scurried a few paces behind like the lonely little wife of an Ottoman Turk, he wondered why on earth she allowed herself to be so completely a slave to the whims and tyrannies of so flaky a cake as Bob Smartt, to the point of actually making herself ill worrying about him camping out in the woods with a bunch of other middle-class middle managers in bandanas and hunting socks.

And it wasn’t until he was in his car and halfway home that he realized maybe Yolanda loved Bob
because
of his effeminacy, not in spite of it. After all, boyfriends who love football are a dime a dozen; boyfriends who love Donna Karan are rare as ermine.

The next morning, before Lionel could even slip off his suit jacket, Julius Deming stepped into his office and shut the door behind him. He was so flushed — apparently with anger — that he didn’t so much resemble a cue ball as a six ball.

“Lionel, can I have a word with you?” he said tersely.

Lionel was about to say, I don’t know, Julie, can you? — but thought better of it and instead said, “Sure.”

At this invitation, Deming hauled his great bulk over to Lionel’s desk and lowered himself into the chair with the kind of grunting deliberation that would’ve made an observer bet cash money he wouldn’t be lifting himself back out again. Once he was settled, he pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the desktop.

Lionel tried to act as though he weren’t at all anxious or concerned about his boss’s demeanor, so he took his own chair, propped his briefcase on his lap, and opened it, then began casually flipping through the papers inside. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, taking a folder from the briefcase and tossing it onto his blotter.

Deming shifted in his seat a little; Lionel thought the armrest would surely give way and send him sprawling. “Certain kinds of behavior are no excuse for skipping out on office hours, Lionel,” he said in clipped, precise tones. “We give our executives a lot of latitude, because, after all, they
are
executives; but we have to draw the line somewhere.”

Lionel felt the blood creep into his face like a swarm of spiders up scurrying a wall.
Well,
he thought,
I might’ve expected something like this.
“I see,” he said, and he snapped shut his briefcase.

“Two year ago, I had to reprimand Harlan Spiegelman. I had to say, Harlan, the fact that your neighbor’s cat got stuck up a tree is no excuse for an assistant creative director to miss an entire morning’s work.”

“Right,” said Lionel meekly. He placed his briefcase on the floor.

“More recently, I had to reprove Dave Burbey. I had to say, Dave, I don’t care how beautiful the girl you met at that printer’s luncheon was, it’s inexcusable for a production manager to leave his department unattended while he runs off for a nooner during office hours.”

Lionel folded his hands and examined them as though he’d never seen them before. “Uh-huh.”

“And now I have to reprimand you.” He leaned across the desktop. “All-Pro is our biggest biller, and you’re solely responsible for keeping them happy. Now I don’t care what weird principles you may espouse on your own time. The fact remains, leaping into a fray beside Transylvanian freedom fighters is no excuse for missing a budget meeting.”

Lionel released a deep sigh. “I know, Julie. You’re right.” He shrugged and lifted his palms in the air. “What can I say? Something came over me. It won’t happen again. Word of honor.”

Deming propelled a little burst of air through his nostrils, like a punctuation mark, and said, “Okay, I guess that’s what I needed to hear.” With a great effort he managed to extricate himself from the grip of the chair (Lionel fought back the impulse to reach over and pull his fragile desk lamp out of harm’s way), then stood slightly panting and said, “We’ll forget this happened, Lionel. Tracy tells me you were arrested. I presume that whatever you have to do to square yourself with the law isn’t going to interfere with you doing your job.”

“Oh, no, Julie,
Christ
 — not at all,” he said emphatically. “Slap on the wrist and a fine, and it’ll be done. My word of honor.”

Deming had his hand on the doorknob and was looking at his feet. “Because — I mean if there
were
a problem, if you were in some kind of
genuine
trouble — well, you could certainly come to me. That’s all.” He scuffed the toe of one shoe across the carpet.

Lionel’s jaw went slack. Imagine Julius Deming actually extending a helping hand! Of course, he waited to extend it till after Lionel had assured him it wouldn’t be necessary. Still, the fact that he cared enough to make the gesture at all, was revealing. Had he judged his boss too harshly? Maybe he shouldn’t look on all his superiors as adversaries just because they were strident homophobes. Maybe they really did
like
him. Maybe it wouldn’t even matter if he came out to them. Maybe … maybe…

Maybe I’m losing my marbles,
he thought all at once. He looked up at Deming and said, “Thanks, Julie, I appreciate it. I’ll let you know if that ever happens.” He paused. “And I mean it. I won’t let you down again.”

Deming nodded, then opened the door, winked at Lionel, and plodded on out into the hall.

Got to watch myself,
Lionel thought, balling his fists and shaking them as though he could threaten himself into being more careful.
Can’t let myself get any weird ideas about being loved here, or anything.

Immediately Carlton Wenck stuck his head through the door, like an impish character from a bad Depression-era comedy. “Knock, knock.”

“What? Oh. Hi, Carlton.”

“Get balled out?” he asked, his head still protruding past the doorframe so that he looked disconcertingly disembodied. He obviously wasn’t going to risk entering until he determined whether Lionel was out of favor.

“Just a warning,” Lionel replied, hating him.

At this, he deemed it safe to enter Lionel’s domain. “So, what’s this business with Transylvania? Isn’t that where Dracula lives?”

“It’s complicated. I’d rather not go into it.” He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, enjoying the fact that he’d done something his rival couldn’t make head or tail of.

Carlton shrugged. “Okay. But, you know, if you ever want to talk …”

Lionel smiled. “Thanks, guy. Maybe some other time.” Say, around the turn of the millennium?

Carlton ambled out of the office, giving him a thumb’s-up just before disappearing into the hallway again. And not six seconds later, Tracy scooted in, as though afraid she might be seen.

Lionel rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said witheringly, “no one’s going to hold it against you if you’re seen talking to me.”

She blushed and mumbled, “Sorry.” Then she sat on his desk, exactly as she’d sat on his desk a thousand times before; only now it seemed to have meaning attached to it. That provocatively revealed thigh of hers now seemed to be thrust at him, almost like an offering. “Are you okay?” she asked sweetly. “I didn’t know what to think when I saw you hauled away like that. I was going to call last night, but — well — I was just … um …”

Unsure,
Lionel thought, completing the sentence for her, and he felt a little flurry of jubilation. His foray into Eastern European politics had left Tracy less certain of him than before, less secure in her knowledge of who he was, and where he stood in the limited scheme of things she acknowledged and recognized and understood. She couldn’t know too many people who engaged in riots on Michigan Avenue, much less for ideological reasons, and the fact that he was apparently such a person had caused her to back away from him a bit. Good, good. But he cautioned himself not to be too exultant; it might also have made him more intriguing and attractive to her, given him an element of danger that she might find thoroughly irresistible.

“I’m okay,” he said lightly, deliberately trying to play down the unusualness of his experience. “Sometimes I get a little riled up by injustice, that’s all. It happens now and then. I mean, usually I don’t end up in a paddy wagon, but sometimes …” He shrugged dismissively.

“Really?”
she said, narrowing her eyes and knitting her brow. “
Lionel!
You’re going to make me worry about you!”

And with any luck,
he thought,
I’ll also make you consider what a terrible father I’d be to our children.
“Don’t,” he told her. “It’s a very rare thing. Sometimes a man’s just got to take a stand, that’s all.” Oh,
that
was a stupid, romantic thing to say; just look at how her eyes sparked on hearing it!

She smiled and thrust her thigh even closer to him. He quietly rolled his chair back to make up the difference. “My big hero helping the underdog,” she said with unbearable affection. Then she slipped off his desk and pulled her skirt back into place. “Gotta run. Julie wants me to take care of some junk. See you later, hero?”

He shrugged again. “Probably.”

And a moment after she’d gone, it was Gloria Gimbek’s turn to crane her neck into his office and say, “Transylvania … like where Dracula lives?”

And so it went for the rest of the morning, until Alice buzzed his office at a quarter to noon and said, “Lionel, a Ramona Frank is here to see you.”

“Aunt Ramona?” he said, astounded. “
Here?
Tell her I’ll be right out.”

On his way to the reception area, he passed a tall, blond, extraordinarily beautiful youth turning in circles in the hallway, as though lost. He looked like Michelangelo’s David with a day-old beard and surf tattoos. He tentatively raised a finger to catch Lionel’s attention, then said, in a husky, bedroom voice, “Hey, man, where can I find Jacob Grey’s office?”

Lionel nodded his head in the appropriate direction, and the boy headed off without even offering his thanks. When he got to reception Lionel asked Alice, “Who’s the blond kid wandering around?”

She looked at him perplexedly for a moment, then whispered back, “Oh, you mean that gorgeous hunk of teenager?”

Lionel blushed and said, “I guess so, yeah.”

“That’s Tim Shelton, Carlton’s student intern. Here for the summer. Weren’t you introduced?” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh — wait. That’s right. You were
out
yesterday afternoon.” She pronounced the word
out
as though it were some kind of ridiculous euphemism.

Embarrassed, Lionel mumbled his thanks, then left her desk.
Christ,
he thought,
that’s all I need — some slab of U.S.D.A. prime beefcake parading outside my office for the next two months. Be lucky if I get
any
work done.

On the far side of Alice’s desk he found his father’s sister seated primly, reading a copy of
Advertising Age
as though she actually had an interest in anything it might tell her. “Aunt Ramona,” he said, smiling brilliantly. “What a surprise!”

She got to her feet and dipped in to give him a hug. He had to duck, because she was wearing a sun hat so big that he was sure with a little modification it could be made to pick up signals from Jupiter.

She smiled her appallingly toothy smile. “I had to come in, I had to come
in
to the city to peddle my new line of cards,” she said, “so I though I’d stop and see if you’re free for lunch.”

He cocked his head as if considering his schedule, but in actuality he was wondering if he dared be seen anywhere in town accompanied by That Hat. In the end, family loyalty won out over any concern for his reputation, and he brightly said, “Sure! Give me a moment to grab my jacket.” He dashed back to his office, deliberately not offering her a tour, nor giving her time to request one. It just made sense; he didn’t want any of his bitchier coworkers getting a good look at her astonishing headgear, nor did he want that headgear knocking any of the artworks off the walls; and most of all, he didn’t want anyone mischievously mentioning the whole Transylvanian imbroglio within her hearing, which was by far the likeliest danger.

Fifteen minutes later they were seated at Star of Siam, which was the only restaurant in the vicinity spacious enough to accommodate the brimspan of Aunt Ramona’s chapeau, which she was proving perversely determined to keep on her head under all circumstances. (It was probably just as well. If she took it off, they’d have to tether it on the street and feed a parking meter with quarters.) They’d just ordered a satay appetizer, and Aunt Ramona, who seldom left the suburbs, was actively engaged in studying the people around her as though they were exotic and alien, like visitors from China, or the moon.

When her curiosity was sated she reached out and grabbed Lionel’s wrist. “Honey,” she said, “I have to tell, I have to
tell
you, I’m so excited about my
gay
line, that’s why I’m here in the big city, to go to all the
gay
shops and try to get some orders. You don’t mind if I talk about that, do you?”

The satay arrived, and Lionel tucked in his napkin with practiced nonchalance. “Course I don’t,” he said warily. Although he wouldn’t have minded if she stopped speaking the work as though it were spelled in all caps.

Ramona had no idea how to eat satay, and was about to spear herself in the throat with the kabob when Lionel stopped her and showed her how to remove the impaled meat with her fork and dip it in the peanut sauce. She hunched her shoulders in glee. “So exciting, so
exciting
to be in the big city,” she said, apparently awed and amazed by the wondrous foodstuffs consumed by urbanites.

Despite having permission to discuss her
gay
greeting cards, Ramona chatted largely about family matters for the first part of the lunch. The colonel was an intransigent mule, as always, but Greta, who had been feeling despondent over the lack of interest in her band, was now in high spirits. Just this week the girls had managed to book their first real gig, as the opening act at an outdoor neighborhood festival in Elmhurst.

“Is it a Christian event?” Lionel asked.

“No, but Greta says, but Greta
says
it’s a family type of thing, so she’s sure the band’s message will be well received. She’s hoping, she’s
hoping
a lot of youngsters who are being swayed by satanic rock music will hear them and come over to the Lord instead.” There was a note of affectionate mockery in her tone.

He shrugged. “She and I don’t talk much anymore.”

“Well, you’re not saved yet. She prays for you, you know.”

He lowered his head. “Aunt Ramona,” he said, in a don’t-get-me-started tone.

“I know, I know. Awfully proud, isn’t she? Sometimes I have to,
sometimes
I have to think to myself, if
that
girl’s saved, I’m the queen of Romania.” At the mention of Romania, Lionel flinched, then tried to hide it by pretending he had an itch on his cheek.