“Oh, yeah? A little punk like you’s Guy’s man? Guy’s your bitch?”
Vicente piped up. “I’m hungry. Anyone else? C’mon, Andy, you must be ready to chow down.”
“We don’t think about sex like that,” Kevin said primly.
“Why don’t you chow down, Vicente?” Andrés asked angrily.
“Vince.”
“Your fuckin’ name is Vicente. Te llamas Vicente,” and he said his name with a Castilian lisp.
“Get out of here!” Andrés shouted. “Let the grown-ups, the men, talk.”
Looking down, side-swiping them with uneasy glances, Vicente shuffled out but hesitated at the door in case it was all a joke.
“Salir de acqui!” Andrés shouted and the boy flew out of the door.
“Great work you’re doing with him,” Andrés said bitterly.
“That’s not fair,” Guy said. “I’ve done my best. He’s a bad seed, won’t work, always gets high.”
“Bad seed? Bad seed, huh? Like his uncle?”
“That’s not what I meant, it’s just—”
“That’s what you said.”
A grim silence set in.
“You’ve gotten so big. So strong and muscular,” Guy said in a matter-of-fact and, he hoped, not-too-oily way.
“Scare you, huh? I could fuck you both so you couldn’t walk for a week.”
Then some evil thought dawned in Andrés’s mind — you could tell from his sardonic smile. He looked at Kevin and said, “Don’t count on Monsieur Guy stickin’ with you through sickness and health, good times and bad. He ain’t got a very good record.”
“He loves me,” Kevin said.
“Oh, yeah? How can you be sure?”
Kevin stood beside Guy and bent his earlobe forward to reveal the infinity tattoo.
Then he revealed his own. And then Andrés revealed his. Kevin looked with confusion at Guy. And then his eyes gleamed with tears and he began to shake his head in denial.
“Trust me, buddy,” Andrés said, “he’s no good. He’s a fuckin’ som-bitch.”
Oh, merde, Guy thought. Putain! And for a second he thought he might end up alone — he’d always been alone, that was his natural habitat, loneliness, he could deal with it better than disappointing everyone. He’d lived so much of his life for sexual love, which was a filthy thing, really, all that saliva and semen and anal smears, filthy! Much better to live alone and watch TV in bed or talk to Pierre-Georges as he was in his bed and watching the same movie. Both of them spotlessly clean. Guy felt it was unfair that his fate was being decided in a language not his own.
They talked and talked all afternoon and both Kevin and Andrés cried, though Guy remained dry-eyed (I’m a monster, he thought). Guy ordered in two pizzas, one with black olives and anchovies (Andrés’s favorite) and one of quattro formaggi (Kevin’s), and Guy sampled each one impartially.
At a certain point Andrés slammed the side table so hard that it caved in and fell apart. When Guy brought him another cup of coffee, he wrapped his hand around Guy’s leg. Kevin stared accusingly. Guy just stood there though the hot cup was burning his hand. He felt so awkward. He was used to being admired by more than one man at a time; on Fire Island different drunk men would grab at him on the dance floor and he would just laugh and walk away and join his friends on the deck.
But these guys? He knew them. He loved them. He owed them something. He’d nurtured their love for him. In Andrés’s case, he’d ruined his life, if inadvertently. Andrés had committed crimes for him and served years in prison, which had brutalized him; he’d gone from a sweet, willowy art historian to a tank with a buzz cut and a foul mouth. He’d learned English in prison but the worst kind. He’d sunk a dozen social classes — what would his poor parents think? They sent off a gentleman scholar to America and got back a gangster brute.
Sexy, though, he thought. Very sexy.
And Kevin? For once Guy had had a good influence on someone. He’d pushed him all the way through university. He was more confident, more polished, but still Minnesota-pure, if no longer Minnesota-naïf. And yet, the young man was fearfully in love with him. That’s why he’d cried. His love (which he believed Guy betrayed) was hurting him.
Guy suddenly wanted to scald his face, gain fifty pounds, shear his hair. He was sick of his beauty, his “eternal” beauty. People thought he was purer, more intelligent, kinder, nobler than he was because they ascribed all these virtues to him. What if he were stripped of his looks, if he stabbed the grotesque painting in the attic? If they saw him for what he really was — empty-headed, vicieux (how did you translate that? “Riddled with vices?”), narcisse? Used to being indulged and pursued, terrified he’d outlive his fatal appeal and yet longing to be free of it?
Finally Kevin went out to meet a school friend for dinner. Andrés, with his face branded with Guy’s name, took his faithless lover in his arms (he smelled of ammonia from the prison). Guy’s body remembered, awakened, though they did new things; Andrés had changed, not the urgency to get the very last millimeter inside him but their practices, those were all new and for a second Guy was jealous of that black guard. Andrés came a lot and quickly, but he kept searching Guy’s face and for a second even mimed strangling him, then reached up and closed Guy’s eyelids and placed his hand over his eyes.
Andrés couldn’t stay in America; he was a criminal alien without papers. Nor could he leave Vicente in this idle, decadent state. Guy bought them both a ticket to Barcelona, with a transfer to Valencia and then a bus ride to Murcia. Andrés was convinced that his nephew would find a job in Murcia. The idea of returning to Spain and working (didn’t they have a twenty percent unemployment rate?) didn’t appeal to Vicente, though he was mildly curious about what Spain held in store for him. He could remember the glassy, smooth marble pavement around the historic center in Valencia, so polished you could see your reflection in it.
When Kevin understood that in less than a week Andrés and Vicente would be leaving New York, he surprised himself by how gracious he became, couch-surfing at the apartment of a grad student friend way uptown and leaving Guy, with his legibly guilty conscience, to lavish Andrés with love. Yes, Kevin was jealous, but he knew Guy belonged to him. And besides, jealousy wasn’t a manly feeling. Men were better than that. They thought of their lovers as their best friends and wanted them to be happy, whatever it took.
They agreed to meet in Miami. For a long time Kevin had wanted to stay on South Beach. He’d seen so many TV specials about it, and it had always looked so glamorous, with its palm trees, art deco hotels, wide beaches, and European bathing beauties. Two nights there were Guy’s graduation present for Kevin. The room was decorated in serigraphs by Georgia O’Keeffe — like vulvas or cacti.
But Guy didn’t come. That was so unlike him. He lived by the clock and was always perfectly on time. Kevin’s mind raced. He talked to his brother three times in a day expressing his fears. He went for long walks where the hotels bordered the beach. Evening was just washing in and the vacationers’ cars were already lined up along the little road in front of the hotels. People were spilling out of convertibles and parading past the pedestrians with their slicked-back black hair, flashing white teeth, tans so old they looked like rammed earth dried and watered a dozen times, everyone thick and dressed in neon-blue Lycra, everyone vulgar and chattering and oiled. He thought this was the ideal, Miami Beach, for all the Latins. This was their paradise, these salsa-emitting vehicles and these oil-stained bikinis. That everything was at night made it all the more grotesque, the quality of a bruise, a tanned bruise.