“Sugar,” Vicente said, “if you got it. You guys don’t work? You’re like Mohammed — he sleeps till noon, though Pilar is usually up early,” Vicente said. It was the longest sentence he’d ventured yet, and Guy, still at the window, was tempted to turn around and smile approvingly, but he was afraid of jinxing the moment. He thought Kevin had established a beachhead and should be encouraged to press on. When the bitter coffee was ready, Guy tossed a boiling cup down his throat but without sitting down. Sitting down was fatal; it might lead him to eat something, a green, seedless grape, say. He needed to jog, to head for the gym and do his crunches and lunges, but he felt light-headed. He needed to do a line.
“I’m a student,” Kevin said. “School starts next week. Guy is a model.”
When Vicente looked blank, Kevin said, “Fotomodello,” in what he hoped might be Spanish, but the kid still looked quizzical. Meanwhile, Kevin had finally found the packet of sugar he’d stolen from a diner for just such an emergency.
“Got another one?” Vicente asked. “I like a little coffee with my sugar,” and he smiled at his own witticism.
“I’m going for a run,” Guy announced impulsively, and scurried off to the bedroom for a little “blush-on,” as he called his lines of cocaine. Kevin’s heart sank, thinking the hamster was about to start on the treadmill. I’m living with a hamster and a zombie, Kevin said to himself. Guy will be running all day and well into the night. Somewhere, a fly, caught between window and screen, was shaking its autumn death rattle. Kevin could hear it only because the room was so silent, though the fridge was humming and the house was creaking, as old houses will.
“You found everything? The guest bathroom? The air conditioner? The shower?” Kevin asked with a suspicion of emphasis on “shower.” “By the way, if you ever want to wash your clothes, we’ve got a washer and a dryer.”
“Here? Inside? Inside the house?”
Kevin nodded. “Let’s go out and get some lunch.” He wasn’t sure he liked being saddled with the responsibility of squiring this kid around, and the kid looked fearful at the prospect of a sortie.
He took him to the restaurant downstairs from the gym, thinking that a cheeseburger and fries would be less intimidating than goat cheese on focaccia and a beetroot and pear salad, the sort of thing you’d get in most of the neighborhood restaurants.
“Where’s Uncle Guy?” Vicente said, pronouncing the name as in Guys and Dolls. They were seated in a booth and Vicente had already slumped forward across the Formica table, exhausted, and was monotonously rearranging the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar dispenser, salt pepper sugar ketchup.
“Oh, he’s trying to make weight.”
“Is he a wrestler?”
“Like that. A model. He’s up for a big jeans commercial and needs to come in at a hundred and forty pounds. How much do you weigh?”
“Fifty-five kilos. I only know kilos. You?”
“I’m not sure,” Kevin said. Suddenly he had an idea. “Maybe you could teach me Spanish.” He thought that might also be a way of improving Vicente’s English. Kevin was always improving himself, more so than his twin. Each time he’d sat on the toilet back in Ely he’d read an entry in The Oxford Companion to English Literature. He’d never read novels. Too frivolous. But he was always deep into the history of ancient Rome or a pop science account of the giant molecule. He was determined to make his airhead boyfriend, Guy, teach him French. These days he was reading a secondhand volume of Edmund Burke, which on the spine read On the Sublime French Revolution, and it took him a while to realize that these were two different titles. He read labels for the contents and calorie counts and he comparison-shopped. Because of his family background, he had strong ecological views, and if he’d owned a car, the bumper sticker would have read “Save the Wilderness.”
He admired Ralph Nader. He was appalled by capitalism. In class, he wrote down all the names of the books and authors the professor mentioned in passing and checked them out of Butler Library. His twin was much more of a goof-off and Kevin would have attributed his insouciance to his lack of a “gay gene,” but they had identical genes and their differences must be due to nurture, not nature, although it was hard to pinpoint any differences there. They’d been raised together, dressed identically, and had exactly the same health history. Their grandmother couldn’t tell them apart, though their mother could. It was obvious, she insisted. Chris was meaner and ran in circles.
Even with several attempts, Kevin couldn’t get Vicente to teach him any Spanish. (“What’s ‘table’ in Spanish? Tavola?” But the boy looked confused and bored).
Upstairs in the gym, Guy was doing lunges and sit-ups fueled by cocaine, gabbling and laughing to himself — until he fainted. He was only out for a second; when he came to, the gym instructor was kneeling over him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“How come you passed out?”
“I guess I forgot to eat this morning.”
The instructor frowned. “Man, you’re too skinny! Better just go home now and rest.”
“Good idea.”
“Take your shower at home. Do you need anyone to go with you? Scoot. Get outta here!” Guy thought he’d take some Ex-lax and shed the pounds that way if he couldn’t exercise any more today. When he got home, he called the nearest Chinese restaurant and ordered four bowls of soup to be delivered. Soup was not very fattening. He’d do another line and another espresso before he tackled the soup. That way he might only drink half a bowl.
Pierre-Georges dropped by and was very pleased. “You’ve never looked more ethereal. Just another five pounds and you’ll be perfect. The go-see is Friday — if you’re named the Cavalier flagship it’s a million-dollar campaign.”
“What’s Cavalier?”
“Oh, come on. Earth calling Planet Guy.”
“I thought it was Guess.”
“Guess was decided a month ago. Frederick Ross got that. Hello-o-o.”
By Friday, Guy could barely cross the room, and if he went for a walk, he had to lean on Kevin, or Vicente, who didn’t like the contact with another man. But Guy did seem to have landed the job and to have beaten out some of his seventeen- or eighteen-year-old rivals — that’s what counted to him. As a Buddhist, he didn’t think of himself as competitive, that was all samsara, but he did like to win. He hated the idea that some of these guys, just mere kids, with no experience in the business, could beat him out. They were just skinny beaufres (clods) and didn’t know how to give angles. They brought nothing to the creative process, no input, no sense of style! They didn’t know how to work with photographers. They just drooped around. One night after another horrible dinner in El Faro, a Spanish restaurant where Vicente didn’t talk except to the waiter in Spanish and Guy babbled and played with his food, Kevin was smoldering, and when he was alone in the apartment with Guy, he said, “This has got to stop. Today I was with him all day! He’s your boyfriend’s nephew, not mine. We spent three hours looking at track shoes and he still couldn’t make up his mind which ones to buy. New York is horrible in August. Everything smells like sauerkraut and garbage. And look at you. You’re a bag of bones! Where’d that nice ass go, the one I liked to fuck?”
“I’ll grow you a big fat new one,” Guy said, smiling. “Can I help it if Vicente’s bonded with you and not with me? You’re nicer than me.”
Kevin slapped his hand in playful reproach.
“You never want to have sex now. I can see why monks fast — it keeps them celibate. You whimper in your sleep — must be the body protesting. You spend a lot of time in the bathroom at dinner. Were you throwing up your meal?” Guy hung his head. “Anyway, you’re my boyfriend.”