“Gross. I had my elbows sanded. My teeth are all new.” He smiled to show his new teeth.
“Is it worth it?” Guy asked.
“I want to be an A-list gay. I want people to say, ‘Who’s that young stud?’”
Guy didn’t know what to say, so he just smiled. The campy waiter stopped by to chat for a few minutes; they were the last lunch customers. Talking as two masculine men with one who was so flamboyant formed a kind of bond, and after the waiter tripped off, Fred said, “I feel really good with you. You know how to make a guy feel good. I don’t know why I trust you.”
Guy looked at his own beautiful Beaume & Mercier watch, which he’d bought at duty-free at Charles de Gaulle, and exclaimed, “I’ve got to be running.” He was trying to head Fred off from making an embarrassing avowal.
“Run, run,” Fred said in a friendly way, though the color drained from his face and his eyes went extinct.
When Guy called Pierre-Georges to relate all his recent news, Pierre-Georges said to him, “You see, Americans aren’t realistic like us, even the old: They want to be loved for themselves. They want to be young. They don’t recognize they have to have something to offer — money or power or a title.”
“Would you check this guy out — Fred Hampton — and see if he’s legitimate?”
The next night Fred invited Guy out to a musical (Guy despised musicals, but didn’t say anything) and to dinner in a Russian restaurant complete with blinis and caviar, lamb shashlik on skewers, and a caterwauling baritone who accompanied himself approximately on the piano. (“Memories light the corners of my mind …”) Fred drank quite a bit of one of the twenty-three kinds of vodkas on offer. (He chose bison grass, whatever that was.) “So tell me — gosh, you’re handsome! What’s the secret of being a successful male model, other than being fabulously good-looking?”
Guy decided to ignore the compliment and to answer the question seriously. “It’s like acting — knowing how you look to other people.” He’d thought about this and talked about it with Lucie. “Most people can’t see themselves from the camera’s — or the audience’s — point of view. They just do what feels natural. They don’t know how they look, how they’re coming across.”
“For example?” Anglo-Saxons, Guy thought, always want examples. So lowering. They’re incapable of thinking abstractly.
“Bad actors, if they want to look anxious, wave their arms a lot, which feels right but looks absurd.”
“And models?”
“You might hold up your hand to suggest protest or resistance, but an open hand thrust forward is the size of a head — it feels right but it looks wrong. A hand should never be seen except in profile.”
“How interesting,” Fred said, looking uninterested. He wants to talk only about his love for me. “Go on.”
“A model selling a new typewriter might look directly at the camera, especially if he’s been told he has beautiful eyes.”
“You have beautiful eyes,” Fred said sadly, possibly anticipating Guy’s indifference.
“But a model, if he’s selling a product, should look at it, never the camera.” Suddenly Guy felt shocked by the childish insistence in his voice and disheartened by how trivial the knowledge of his “craft” sounded. For different reasons both men were sad, and they lapsed into silence.
Suddenly Fred brightened and said, “You know, that house on Fire Island you keep mentioning?”
“That I’m chanting for,” Guy corrected, smiling.
“I think we should go out there this Sunday now that it’s getting warmer. I’ve lined up a real estate agent who could show us some houses.” Fred smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to chant in vain. We can stay over Sunday night.”
When Guy told Pierre-Georges that night his news over the phone, Pierre-Georges exclaimed, “You see! I’ve always claimed you get more if you’re a man by not putting out. Women succeed by sleeping with men, but men do better by not sleeping with them.”
“Have you always said that?” Guy said, teasing him. “I’ve never done anything through calculation. I just chant.”
“She just chants — Little Miss Innocent.”
“It would be nice to have a house right on the beach. Wake up at noon, pull back the blackout curtains, open the glass doors, cross the dunes … just wear a smile and a Jantzen.”
“That dates you!”
“You’re right. I wish we could just wash our brains clean of everything from the past. What are you eating?”
“White beans and sardines and chervil.”
“I love that! But it’s better with red peppercorns.”
Lucie came by to show off her new burnt-orange sweater, which stretched attractively across her tits and looked like a radiant mango against her light brown skin. She twirled around to show it off but she was so little an exhibitionist that she ran out of steam after a half turn and deflated self-consciously onto the couch.
“Look, I’ve only got ten minutes,” Guy said, “before I go off for a Banana Republic go-see way uptown, but I want to talk about something with you. Then I have a Bacardi rum shoot midtown.”
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me.” He was never this serious and she felt flattered and hoped to be worthy of his confidence.
“This chanting thing is sort of creepy.”
“How so?” She chanted, too, and always defended Buddhism.
“Just for fun, I was chanting for a beach house in the Pines, and now this old guy seems to want to offer me one.”
“Bravo!”
“Do you think I’m just a big whore?”
“None of us is getting any younger.” She reoriented herself and said, “Americans are always so cheap. They always want to split the bill. Of course, the younger girl models never pay for anything, but they have to go out with horrible Russian gangsters. You’re the only one who gets an apartment”—she looked around—“or a house out of the deal. How do you do it?”
“Chanting.”
“I’ve been chanting for a Cadillac convertible and I’m still taking the IRT.”
They laughed. Guy took her hand between both of his. She was surprised by the gesture. “Do you think I’ve become a gold digger? I’ve already got plenty of money saved up. But I can’t stop myself.”
“Look, it’s nothing you’re doing. You’re gorgeous — that’s your only fault.”
Guy decided to believe her. It was simpler.
But what was he going to do Sunday night when Fred would want to share his bed? He could always say he had a big job Monday early, that he was doing a whole shoot for Perry Ellis.
It was a cool March day in the Pines as they crossed the bay in a powerboat Fred had hired in advance. (The ferry wasn’t running yet.) Big gray clouds chased one another like fat, playful puppies in a pet store window, except the enclosure was immense, all of outdoors. It was fairly cool and there was a stinging hint of rain in the air, what the French call “spit” (crachin). Fred squinted at the wind and rain reproachfully, as if it were conspiring to ruin their day, but Guy said, “I love it. It reminds me of Brittany.”
They were shown a gray-shingled house from the 1950s a block from the beach with a rotting wood staircase. Inside, the house smelled of kerosene and septic tank. “Did some old couple just live here and die?” Guy asked.
“How much does this cost?” Fred asked, raising and lowering his jacket zipper nervously.
The agent — a prematurely tanned middle-aged man — smiled and held out his hands jokily, miming as if he were trying to juggle several balls or answer both questions at once. “Yes! An old couple lived here. They haven’t died but they need the cash. Their winter house is in Sayville. This is a fixer-upper; that’s why it’s only a million and a half.”