“What kind of movies did he make?”
Guy stumbled over the unfamiliar word: “Blaxploitation.”
“Oh, dear.”
“What? I think it was kind of him to make movies for Africans. Well, let’s not argue. So you want to be a diplomat?”
“My adviser at Colombia thinks I’d make a good one.”
“But wouldn’t that take you far away — to Peru?”
“It’ll be years from now,” Kevin said, smiling, “if ever. Maybe you’ll be … tired of modeling and can come with me.”
“Tired or fired or retired.”
“I want to support you, for once. It’ll be my turn. I’ll try to get us a French-speaking country.”
“The Côte d’Ivoire? They have nice beaches. I was there once for a swimsuit commercial.”
“I want to see your reel sometime!”
“We’ll get it from Pierre-Georges. He keeps it up-to-date.”
And so the charms of their lives, their futures, were changed in a casual conversation led by a third person. Would he and Kevin stay together? How many years? Guy felt he should provide for his old age, but he was hooked on the present. With any luck he’d die ten years from now or twenty and leave a beautiful corpse. He had his two houses and his apartment in Paris. Some models were making exercise films or even getting into the business as agents. Others were buying real estate unless all their money was going up their noses. Guy had heard of one Bruce Weber star who’d bought a prewar apartment near Borough Hall and rented it out to visiting models, male and female, four units, cheaper than a midtown hotel, and they could share the kitchen, and no ordinary person was around to complain about the sound of hair dryers blowing all day or the sound of the phone ringing off the hook. Not too convenient for Manhattan clubbing, but usually there was a limo someone had sent for one of the girls.
Guy didn’t like the idea of moving to Peru. That sounded lonely. Bad for the skin. And by then he’d be too old to learn another language. Everyone said Spanish was easy if you knew French. But “fear” was miedo in Spanish and peur in French, a wave was ola not vague—nothing like! And what would they make of two adult men living together in South America, one of them the American cultural attaché?
“All we have is the present,” Guy said, settling into one of his favorite themes, one he’d worked out already back in Clermont-Ferrand. “There is no past and no future, only the present.” He’d argued that position with one of the priests at school, who was torn because he was besotted with Guy but of course wanted him to think of his ultimate reward in heaven.
“That’s interesting.” Kevin said, bored.
Guy was sorry that Kevin didn’t argue with him. Most people did, at least other models did. “No future? You’ve got to be kidding! What about my next job in Saint-Tropez?” they’d say indignantly, and then he’d take them to a higher if paradoxical level. But Kevin didn’t like to philosophize. All he wanted to do when they were together was chitchat or have sex. He wasn’t very intellectual. Or maybe it was just American practicality, whereas the French like to soar on the wings of speculation.
Guy loved the feeling he got when he was tiptoeing into the cobwebs of the stratosphere. He’d smile benignly at his own familiarity with these difficult subjects, his calm, mature mastery of these paradoxes. He didn’t want to be down-to-earth all the time. Being earthbound didn’t do much for him.
Kevin turned off the minute Guy got that contented smile on his face and launched into one of his idiotic rants, what he considered philosophizing. Kevin had studied real philosophy at Columbia and had received an A on his term paper about the difference between ideology and ideas. (Ideology was a false view promoted by the ruling class in order to hoodwink the proletariat.) He was sickened by Guy’s rambling on about time, and wondered how much longer he’d be able to stomach it.
Three days later Guy took the bus to see Andrés. This time he told Kevin where he was going and Kevin said, “I admire you for that. You’re a very loyal person.”
Guy agreed. He was very loyal. He still sent his mother a thousand dollars a month, which wasn’t so much, given the downgrading of the dollar, but it was something. It allowed her to live correctly, now that she had a car in good running order and all paid for. She owned her home. And she got a welfare check from the government. She’d had to hide the allowance she got from Guy in order to qualify for the government stipend. He mailed a money order to his brother, who handed her the cash. So far they hadn’t been caught. From time to time Lucie helped Guy fill a big box of shawls, sweaters, dresses — everything she could pick up in his mother’s size after a collection was shown. His mother complained that the clothes were too stylish or flashy or daring for their neighborhood, and he was certain she was still shopping in her old raincoat and paisley scarf she’d bought from the Arabs in the market in the shadow of the cathedral.
Guy had been loyal to Fred, more than anyone else had, and he would have stayed on good terms with the baron if he hadn’t been exiled. He was fidel to Andrés and took the long, boring bus ride out there every week. He’d even become friendly with one of the other “wives,” a delicate young black woman who bathed herself in a sweet candied perfume she said was invented by Elizabeth Taylor. She really smelled like cotton candy. Yes, he was a loyal friend — he’d stuck with Pierre-Georges even though bigger agents had tried to lure him away. Of course, he knew Pierre-Georges was watching out for him 24/7, and he doubted another agent could wrangle him bigger contracts. Guy had been around too long; everyone knew what he was worth.
“What if Andrés notices the tattoo? Won’t you have some explaining to do?” Kevin asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Oh, he won’t. He’s pretty — how do you say? Narcisse?”
“Narcissistic. That’s a tough one.” Kevin thought it advisable to comment on the word rather than the character flaw.
“He never notices anything,” Guy said.
Of course, he did, and to make sure he did, as soon as they were seated opposite each other in the visiting room, Guy pushed his hair back and flipped his earlobe forward. “See what I did for you? Just as I promised.”
Andrés, rather than being delighted, looked around nervously at the guard, the same handsome thick one as before, who was studying them carefully. He strode over to them and pulled back his ear; the tattoo of the number eight was bigger than Guy’s and harder to distinguish on black skin. And then he grabbed Andrés, wrenched his head around, and revealed his tattoo, the same number eight. At that point he grunted and walked away, back to the other guard he’d been chatting with.
“That wasn’t cool,” Andrés said to Guy.
“You got the tattoo to please your new love or master or whatever he is, and to cover yourself around me you convinced me to do it, too — for you. You pretended—” And Guy couldn’t help but laugh when he realized he’d played the same trick on Kevin. Guy thought that he and Andrés were both wily, always plotting, and Kevin and the black man were typical Yankee dopes. “What’s your lover’s name, anyway?”
“Lester,” Andrés said in a surly tone. “He’s not my lover.” He lowered his eyes and said in a small voice, “He’s my protector. You’re my lover.”
“Did you choose him to be your protector? Or did he choose you as his protégé?”
Andrés exploded, “You don’t know what it’s like to live in here all day, every day. I need someone to protect me.”