“Only!” Fred shouted. “It’s run-down, it’s off the beach; even fixed up, the rooms are too small. And you can’t get flood or hurricane insurance out here, you told me that yourself.” The agent shrugged and Fred zipped his blue windbreaker shut so it held his stomach as in a sling. He walked out on the stairs and flicked open his chrome lighter, cupped the flame, and lit a Camel, squinting into the blowback. His jaw muscles were working; maybe he hadn’t expected such high prices.
Next they saw an architect’s house right on the dunes with glass doors and turrets and a great room two stories high, but a screen door was banging in the wind, the rubber insulation around the kitchen windows was rotting, and the parquet floor was buckling. “How much is this one?” Fred asked.
“Just three million. You’d pay that much for an empty lot in this location.”
“We’ll take it,” Guy called out, then looked at Fred and said, “Right, Daddy?” Then he bent over laughing at his little joke.
Fred smiled a sour little smile.
As they walked along Atlantic, they battled a cold wind, which raised goose bumps on their legs. They were both in shorts. “I know some of these kids get into calling their older boyfriends ‘Daddy,’ but I think that’s sick.” Fred was holding on to Guy as if to keep him warm and grounded in the wind. He had a strong arm across Guy’s back and was whispering into his ear, “I don’t want to be anyone’s daddy. I already have three kids and two grandchildren — you’d never guess it, would you?”
“No, you don’t seem the type.” But then Guy realized Fred was referring to his youthfulness, not his paternal image. “You look too young.”
Fred brightened. “I do? Honest?”
“Honest,” Guy echoed, feeling depressed.
Because he’d inadvertently cooperated with Fred’s sense that he was an A-list gay, Guy went to bed with him that night in the suite he’d rented in some Potemkin-village “palace” an old queen had pieced together according to her fantasies of luxury and history. It was all falling apart, but at first glance it did seem baronial-Liberace, especially compared to the humble dwellings that surrounded it, with names like “Lickety Split” and “Atta Gurl.” It was all gray and white like some comic-book version of a stately home, except inside it smelled of Kools and roach spray and the potted ferns were turning brown. The “velvet” bedspread was some flimsy synthetic that clung to their bodies and didn’t breathe.
They sat down to a big porterhouse steak, creamed spinach, and a quart of sour red wine, all topped off with a brandy alexander pie in a graham cracker crust. Their “romantic table” was positioned under a dusty chandelier missing lusters. The whole place felt dirty, greasy. Guy had swilled three Rusty Nails over shaved ice and then willingly, drunkenly presented Fred with his asshole, with a full-sized replica of the David in the corner, apparently carved out of soap, its penis no more erect than Fred’s. But what Fred lacked in turgidity he made up for in passionate utterance. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he mumbled into Guy’s crotch.
It was all over in five minutes and Guy was drunk enough to sleep through Fred’s scary-sounding roller-coaster snores — his chain-saw breathing, then his disturbingly long silences and his sudden, panicked gasps.
They woke up early and Guy hurried to take his shower and dress before Fred began with another blowjob, this one with halitosis. In fact, Guy hurried off to the breakfast nook with its goblin-and-leprechaun motif for a first cup of coffee and a squishy croissant. Fred looked reproachful and slightly uncertain.
They saw three more houses before heading back to New York; Fred decided to rent a new house right on the beach — a cool $60,000 for the four-month season. Guy said, “I’m sure you could buy a house somewhere for that sum.”
“But it wouldn’t be the Pines,” Fred pointed out, “and no one would visit. Not even you.”
Guy was impressed by his take-charge attitude; he hadn’t seen that side before.
3
Fred bought the house after they’d road-tested it for the summer. Guy, following Pierre-Georges’s advice, hadn’t put out to Fred once after that one drunken night, and Guy’s indifference or coldness, though he was always scrupulously polite, had brought Fred to his knees. Maybe Fred was so much in love because he was used to women caving before his assaults, in particular starlets and cute unpaid interns, but Guy was a man, French, well paid, not striving to get into the movies. Guy was an A-list gay, young, buffed, a head-turner, everything Fred wanted to be. Although Guy didn’t do drugs very often, most of the youngsters hanging around their pool did, and when stoned they weren’t exactly interesting but strangely tender and considerate. It was as if these beautiful, fit boys, usually so wary and disdainful, suddenly shed a constricting shell when they were stoned and became both vulnerable and expansive, capable of looking with humanity and genuine curiosity at a much older man, normally a pariah. A couple of times some A-listers, who were high, had even started making out with Fred, but he didn’t dare go all the way with them in case that would suggest to Guy that he, Fred, wasn’t single-minded in his devotion.
Pierre-Georges had researched Fred and called up with a full report: “First of all, Hampton isn’t his real last name. It’s Gershowitz. Before he became a movie producer he owned a chain of shoe stores in malls up and down the East Coast. His wife is the daughter of the smoked salmon king of the Bronx. He’s made forty-seven movies. He’s declared bankruptcy twice. That’s all I could find.”
In the morning Fred would get up early, shave, and shower, and slip into bed beside Guy; the young man would permit that much. Fred would then force himself to go on long walks to Water Island with his red setter, Sandy. Anything rather than to lie with a hard-on wide awake beside Guy. A gay friend of Fred’s from college days, someone he’d never known well but now confided in when they re-met on Fire Island, asked him after he recounted the whole saga with Guy, “But what do you love about him? What’s so great about him except he’s handsome, and French, and sought after?”
They walked in silence for a minute along the beach, both of them sort of boxy and chunky in their loose trunks, but handsome, with worn, seasoned faces. “You know what I think?” the guy, who was named Vito, said. “I think you’re having problems coming out. I’ve seen that before.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve left Ceil, the kids are furious with me—”
“Yeah, but a lot of guys, when they’re coming out, keep clinging to the first man in their lives, the more unavailable the better. That way they can say to themselves two things—’It’s not that I’m gay, it’s just that I love Guy,’ and the other thing, ‘Oh, if only Guy loved me I’d be gay, but he doesn’t.’”
“That’s a low blow,” Fred said, scuffing his feet in the sand, hoping the abrasion might wear away the calluses on his heels. He wasn’t really paying attention, but he didn’t like the sound of Guy not being in love with him. Guy was so “binding,” to use a word his shrink had introduced only last week, precisely because he was so mysterious. Maybe that was just the famous French discretion, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell of those fellows. (Guy had mentioned that.)
Fred looked over at Vito. He didn’t like to be seen with an old guy — okay, someone his own age, but Fred had just lost twenty years with all his surgery, yet if he hung out with Vito people might start noticing his leathery elbows and his too-perfect replacement teeth. No one was up yet, however, at this hour. They had the beach to themselves and Fred felt safe.