“How about the son your father wanted?” I ask.
“You think that thing in there even cares?” he asks back, laughing, pointing a thumb back at the corridor, sniffing hard.
“He would be pleased to know that you’re taking, let’s call it, a leave of absence’ from that place,” I say. I consider other options, harsher tactics. “You know he was always upset about all the football scholarships you threw away,” I say.
He stares at me sternly, unforgiving. “Right.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Where are you going to go?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Utah,” he shouts. “I’m going to Utah! Utah or Europe.” He stands up, pushes himself away from the table. “I’m not answering any more of your frigging questions.”
“Sit down, Sean,” I say.
“You make me sick,” he says.
“You’re not getting out of this,” I tell him. “Now sit down.”
He ignores me and walks down the corridor, past his father’s room, past other rooms.
“I’m taking the limo back to Dad’s place,” he says, jabbing at the button for the elevator. There’s a sudden ping and the doors slide open. He steps in without looking back.
I pick up the swizzle stick he was bending. I get up from the cafeteria and walk down the hallway, past the aides who don’t even bother to look up at me. At the pay phone in the hall I call Evelyn. She tells me to call her back later, mentions that it’s the middle of the night. She hangs up and I stay there holding the phone, afraid to hang it up. The two men sitting by the door now interested, now watching.
PAUL At The Carousel I’ve started a conversation with a townie who, for a townie, is actually pretty good-looking. He works for Holmes Moving Storage in town and thinks that Fassbinder is a beer from France. In other words, he’s perfect. But Victor Johnson, who I’ve never much liked and who’s back in town for some reason, in the same condition — alcoholic — as he left, and he keeps pestering me about where everyone is, and I have to keep pushing him away. He eventually stands by the video machines in back with that obnoxious poet who used to be cute before he shaved his head, making faces at me. I ask the townie what he’s going to do after he quits Holmes (“labor problems,” he confides).
“Go to L.A.,” he says.
“Really?” I light his cigarette and order another Seabreeze. “Double,” I mouth to the bartender. I also buy the townie another shot of J.D. and a Rolling Rock. He actually calls me “Sir” as in “Thank you, sir.”
Lizzie, some awful girl from the Drama Division, comes over right when I’m telling the townie how great L.A. is (I’ve never been) and says, “Hi, Paul.”
“Hi, Elizabeth,” I say, noticing how the dumb townie looks Liz over; relieved when he turns back to his drink. Liz has been trying to get me into bed for a long time. If it happens it’s not going to be tonight. She directed the Shepard play this term and she’s not exactly ugly; in fact she’s fairly pretty for the fag-hag she is but still no thank you. Besides I’ve made it my prerogative to never sleep with Drama majors.
“You want to meet my friend Gerald?” she asks.
“What does that mean?” I say.
“We have some Ecstasy,” she says.
“Is that supposed to entice me?” I look back at the townie and then tell Liz, “Later.”
“Okay,” she squeals and skips off.
I look back at the townie, at his expression — there isn’t one — at the greasy T-shirt, and the ripped jeans, the long uncombed hair and the beautiful face, the strong tight body and the roman nose, unsure. Then I turn away and put on my sunglasses, scope the room; it’s late and snowing out, and there’s no one else available. When I look back at the townie he gives me what I think is a shrug. But am I imagining something, did I make the shrug up? Was I taking each drunken gesture and molding it into what I wanted? Just because the guy is wearing an Ohio T-shirt doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s from Ohio State.
Yet, I make the decision to go home with the townie. I excuse myself and go to the restroom first. Someone’s written “Pink Floyd Rules” on the wall and I write underneath it. “Oh come on, grow up.” When I come out, waiting in line are Lizzie and Gerald, an actor who I’ve met a couple of times before. We were in a Strindberg play together two terms ago. Gerald: okay-looking, blond curly hair, a little too thin, nice suit.
“I see you’ve got a devastating townie over there,” Gerald says. “Wanna share him with us?”
“Gerald,” I say, looking him over; he waits expectantly. “No.”
“Do you know him?” he asks.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know,” I mumble, craning my neck to make sure the townie’s still where I left him. “Do you?”
“No,” Gerald says, “I know his girlfriend though,” and now he smiles.
There’s a long silence. Someone cuts in front of us and closes the door of the bathroom. New song on the jukebox. A toilet flushes. I stare at Gerald and then back at the townie. I lean up against the wall and mutter “Shit.” A girl townie has already taken my stool at the bar. So I join Gerald and the delightful Lizzie for drinks at their booth. Gerald winks at me when the townie leaves with the girl who sat next to him.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Gerald wants to go to the weight room,” Lizzie says. “But just to watch, of course.”
“Of course,” I say.
“What’s ‘racecar’ backward, Paul?” Gerald asks.
I stare at the floor as I try to figure it out. “Rakacar? Raka — I don’t know. I give up.”
“It’s ‘racecar,’” Lizzie squeals, excited.
“How clever,” I murmur.
Gerald winks at me again.
SEAN After dinner at Jams, me and Robert go to Trader Vic’s. I’m wearing a paisley smoking jacket and a bowtie I found in my father’s closet at The Carlyle. Robert, who has just gotten back from Monte Carlo, is wearing a blue Fifties sports jacket and a green cummerbund given to him by his near-perfect girlfriend, Holly. He’s also wearing a bowtie he bought today when we went shopping but I don’t remember where it was he bought it. It could have been Paul Stewart or Brooks Brothers or Barney’s or Charivari or Armani — somewhere. Holly’s not back in town yet and we’re both horny and on the prowl. I fucked Holly once, while she was seeing Robert. I don’t think he knows. That, and both of us fucking Cornelia, are really the only things Robert and I have in common.
I went by the house in Larchmont late last night. It was for sale. Harold still lives in back. My MG was still mercifully kept in one of the garages, but my room upstairs was empty, and most of the furniture from the house had been removed and taken someplace I forgot to ask about. The house itself was locked up and I had to break in through one of the French windows in back. The house still seems enormous, even larger to me now than when I was growing up in it. But there hadn’t been much time spent in the house. School was at Andover, holidays were usually spent elsewhere. The house brought back few, almost no memories to me, the ones I had weirdly enough included Patrick. Playing in the snow with him on the front lawn, which seemed to stretch out for miles. Getting high and playing Ping-Pong with him in the rec room. There was the pool no one was allowed to swim in, and the rules about no noise. That was all I could dredge up, since that place was a transient’s home for me. I found the keys to the MG in a panel in one of the garages, and I started the car hoping Harold wouldn’t hear me. But he was standing there at the end of the drive, in the middle of a cold, snowy November night, and he opened the gate for me, dutiful to the end. I put a finger to my lips — sshhh — as I drove past him.