by M. E. Kerr
For a moment neither of us said anything. Then he rubbed his forehead with his hand and sighed. “I don’t know how to say this,” he said.
I had the idea he was going to tell me that I worked for him, and that this would be part of my job.
“Just say it,” I told him.
“All right. I think I know why you’re reluctant to do this, Lang.”
Plato was on his feet, rubbing his nose against Nevada’s pant leg.
I said, “Why?”
“I saw you with your friend down on the beach that day.”
I thought Alex was the blusher, but I felt my own face get red.
Nevada said, “It looked to me like more than a friendship. And those books you had with you—Truman Capote—he was homosexual.” He held his hand up before I could say anything. “I don’t give a damn about that sort of thing! That’s your business…. In fact, Lang, I think in this situation it’s all to the good! I don’t want some young kid getting ideas about Huguette. She’s got enough baggage without that! All I want is for you to show her a good time. I’ll pay for it!”
I kept shaking my head.
“Remember our first meeting, when you described yourself as ‘torn’?”
“I’m not, though.”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
“What I meant was I get tired of the masquerade.”
“It’s all right to have ambivalence.”
“I don’t have ambivalence about that. I have ambivalence about keeping it to myself.”
“Oh, I know at your age you know everything there is to know about yourself. It’s only when you’re my age that you look back and see a stranger, and it was you! …I look back and see a stranger who was a fool! Always trying to impress a man who hated him!”
“Your father?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
We sat there in silence.
Then he said, “He was an accompanist. Beware of understudies, accompanists, and ghostwriters! Their own dreams are put aside while someone else is featured!”
More silence as he sucked on his cigarette.
“In my case,” he said, “those dreams were foisted off on me! I had to be the star he never would be. And I was never good enough, because he was never good enough!”
“I guess I was lucky,” I said. “I don’t know my father. I don’t even know where he is.”
But Nevada was not interested in my story.
He said, “I think you’re lucky that I just made you this offer. Why not agree to it? Can’t you enjoy yourself with a girl?”
“It isn’t that.”
“Drive her around—”
I cut him off. “I don’t have a car!” I said.
“I have six!”
That spring I’d taken driver ed and gotten my license, but I hadn’t had much practice driving.
“I’d like to help you out, sir,” I said, “but I can’t spend my summer in another masquerade.”
“What do you mean another one?”
“That’s all I’ve been doing all my life!”
He looked annoyed. My life wasn’t the point. His was.
So I said, “If someone asked you to take out a gay man and show him a good time, how eager would you be to do it?”
“That’s different!” he barked.
“Why is it?”
“It just is, Lang…. No one would ask someone to do that. What I’m asking you to do is put yourself in a perfectly normal situation.”
“It wouldn’t be a normal situation for me.”
“It wouldn’t be something you haven’t done before, though.”
“I’ve done it too many times.”
“Once more won’t kill you.”
I said, “Thanks for lunch,” and stood up.
Plato got up and ran over to jump against my legs.
“Down, Plato!” he shouted.
But he was right about Plato; Plato didn’t follow orders.
“Think it over, Lang!” he called after me.
Plato trotted along with me until Nevada’s tone became ominous.
“PLATO! PLATO! PLA-TO!”
The Beatles sang me out as I went down the walk at the side of the house. “Love Me Do.”
I thought of Alex and of the three months ahead of us.
TEN
THERE WAS PLASTER OF Paris all over everything: my shirt, jeans, arms, and legs—Brittany’s bikini, her body, even some on her face.
But we had these hardened chunks of sand and plaster to show for it, and we’d managed to get through the afternoon without an argument.
Then, on the way home, in her mother’s BMW, while WBEA was playing Deep Blue Something, Brittany said, “I always loved their old hit ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’”
“Yeah. It was a good song.”
“This pair who didn’t have anything in common but that movie they both liked.”
“I liked the movie too. What was her name? Audrey Hepburn. Sitting on the fire escape, playing her guitar, singing ‘Moon River.’”
“If it was really her singing.”
“I think it was.”
“Sometimes in movies they dub those singing voices.”
“I think it was her.”
“I forgot what a movie buff you are, Lang.”
“I’m going to miss that out here. All they have is U.A. crap. No revivals. No foreign stuff.”
“But you go into New York some weekends, don’t you?”
“Some,” I said.
“Isn’t your friend Alex in a play?”
“He’s in Hamlet.”
“Gawd, is he a hunk!”
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t mind meeting him.”
“You met him that day we ran into you at Saks.”
“I mean really meet him.”
I didn’t say anything. We’d stopped at The Red Horse so she could pick up some groceries, and we were crossing the Montauk Highway, headed south, where the houses got bigger and you could smell the ocean.
Brittany said, “With you out here this summer, and me in the city, it would be nice to have someone I could hang out with.”
“We wouldn’t hang out together if I was there, anyway.”
“You’ve made that clear.”
“Then what’s this ‘with you out here this summer and me in the city’ crap?”
“Lang, what is it with you? You don’t want me but you get mad if I hint that I’d like to meet Alex.”
“I’m not mad!”
“You’re mad.”
“You’ve met Alex. Call him up if you’re so hot to see him!”
“You see? You’d hate it if I called him up!”
“Call him up and see how much I’d hate it!”
“I might.”
“He’s the one who’d hate it.”
“Why would he hate it?”
“He wouldn’t be interested.”
“We’ll see.”
We were coming toward The Maidstone Club, which was the big-deal social snob scene, a block from Roundelay. Franklin had told my mother they’d turned Nevada down when he’d wanted to join so he could play golf there. They didn’t like rock stars. They didn’t like Jews or blacks, either. They didn’t like more people than they did like.
“I will call him up,” Brittany said. I thought she’d dropped it.
She said, “Just because you think I’m unattractive, that doesn’t mean others don’t find me attractive.”
“I never said you were unattractive, Brittany.”
“You said Alex wouldn’t find me interesting.”
“No. I said he wouldn’t be interested.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Why isn’t it the same thing?”
“Would you let me out here? I can walk from here.”
I’d had it.
It was what always happened between us: bantering until it began boiling, then boiling over.
“T
ell me the difference between not being interested and not finding someone interesting,” she said.
I said, “Someone could be interesting, but if someone was gay, they might not be interested.”
I could see the property marker for Roundelay, which was four acres away from where we were.
“Oh, Gawd, Lang, you’ll really stoop to anything!” said Brittany
I was thinking just a minute or two more and I’d be out of there.
Brittany said, “Are you trying to tell me Alex is gay?”
“Alex is. I am.” My voice was very calm and suddenly so was I. Very calm.
I could feel her eyes on me. I kept looking straight ahead. Someone had to watch the road.
“You’re gay?”
“I’m gay.”
She said, “Then you and Alex are…?”
She didn’t finish.
“A couple.” I helped her out.
We were right at that point near Roundelay where I had to get out, down by the oak trees, away from the gate.
She stopped the BMW.
I said, “That was what was wrong. Not you.”
“Now you tell me.”
“I should have told you before. I didn’t know how.”
“Damn right you should have told me before!”
“Well, I told you.” I opened the door.
“Yes. Get out!” she said.
It was then that I saw Nevada’s Ford heading out of the gate, turning in our direction.
I got out.
I shut the door.
“Lang?”
I turned around. The window on the passenger side was open.
Through it came one of the sand casts.
I jumped out of the way and it crashed on the pavement.
Then Brittany took off, the wheels squealing as she made a right turn too fast.
The Ford stopped in front of me.
Behind the wheel was a girl with short black hair and green eyes, grinning.
She leaned over and called out, “Hey! Who threw the brick at you?”
I’d picked up the two pieces of the sand cast I’d made.
I held them up. “It’s not a brick.”
“Rocks?” She laughed. “Someone threw rocks at you?”
I laughed too. “It’s a long story.”
“Get in!” she said. “Show me the way to town, hmmm?”
I leaned against the door. The window was rolled down. “I’m Huguette Haun,” she said.
“I heard you were coming.”
“So who are you?”
“Lang Penner.” I thought of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She looked like her, like that actress Audrey Hepburn. Only she spoke with a French accent. “Glad to meet you, Huguette.”
“Eu, Eu, Eugette,” she said. “If you say my name Yougette, you get nothing!”
She opened the car door for me.
“Get in!”
ELEVEN
MAIN STREET IN EAST Hampton was filled with places where you could pick up a pair of old bookends for $1,000, or a pair of jeans for $300.
My mother would come back to Roundelay with her eyes rolling in her head, quoting prices to me. She never bought anything.
Huguette parked in front of Polo, flashing a charge card she said “Uncle Ben” gave her. That was what she called Nevada. They weren’t related, but she said he’d been in her life as long as she could remember, and he was like an uncle to her. “A rich one,” she’d said.
Everyone did double takes when they saw us. The old Ford was part of it; the rest of it was her.
She was this beautiful girl with a sort of boisterous style and that foreign accent. She was wearing this sleeveless black shift, with a long slit in the back, tan sandals attached to these long legs, a huge, gold watch on her wrist, with gold bracelets dangling in front of it, gold hoop earrings, and this big, white smile.
When we’d go in any place, the clerks would look past me with plaster of Paris still spotting my jeans and my arms, and they’d head from behind their counters with open arms, ready to show her the Polos and the Guccis and the DKNYs.
She was looking for a white, heavy man’s or woman’s terrycloth robe, which she couldn’t find anywhere. She said Uncle Ben had black ones and there was nothing more depressing than getting out of a hot shower and slipping into a big, black robe.
I told her there was a shopping center about five miles away, but she said she wanted to look around, anyway. She said she’d never had her own charge card, and money burrowed a hole in her pocket.
“Burns,” I said.
“What?”
“Money burns a hole in your pocket.”
“I never had any,” she said.
“I still don’t.”
“You live here and you’re poor?”
“My mother works for your uncle.”
“Oh, you’re the one.”
“The one what?”
“The one who’s supposed to show me the sights. Uncle Ben told me about you.”
“When was that?”
“The other night when he called. Just before I left to come here.”
We’d wandered around the corner to Newtown Lane. Into some clothing shop, the kind I never went into, filled with leather jackets, silk scarves and dresses, and CKone eau de toilette.
I let her remark about my showing her around go without comment. Let Nevada correct it. She’d only just arrived at Roundelay that morning.
I wanted to call Alex before he left for the theater. I looked at my watch (five P.M.) and she saw me do it.
“Do you have a date?”
“No. My mother might wonder where I am. I went down to the beach about noon, that’s all.”
“With that girl who threw rocks at you?”
“Yeah.”
“Pffft! Is she your girlfriend?”
“No. Just a friend.”
“Some friend.”
Then she pulled this blue man’s shirt off a hanger and held it up to me. It had yellow and white flowers stitched across the front.
She said, “This would fit you. No?”
“It would, but I wouldn’t wear it.”
“Sure you would. Wouldn’t you?”
“No…. Don’t buy me anything.”
“You think I would buy this for you?”
“I don’t know what you’d do.”
“I don’t even know you.” She laughed. “I like you, but I don’t go around buying shirts for someone I don’t even know.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“You thought I was going to buy it for you. I know you did.”
She was right about that.
I felt like an ass, but I shrugged and said, “You wouldn’t be paying for it, anyway. Uncle Ben would.”
“Do you like him, Lang?” She hailed a clerk, handed him the shirt and the Visa card.
“He’s my mother’s boss.”
“So you don’t.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Do you like his music?”
“A lot.”
She said to the clerk, “You can mail this for me?”
He said he could.
She wrote down an address while she talked to me. “What about Cali?”
“I don’t know much about her. Do you?”
“There’s a portrait of them together in the guest room. It’s the only picture of her at Roundelay. It’s a very formal pose, but the odd thing is she has a nosebleed.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No…. And I can’t imagine Uncle Ben loving someone so passionately. He’s so stern…. And that Franklin—he looks like something out of a wax museum.”
She pushed the address across the counter, and the clerk said it would be extra to mail anything overseas.
“Okay!” she said brightly.
I figured the grape picker was going to have a new shirt. A $320 one. A Yohji Yamamoto.
TWELVE
“WHAT’S HER NAME?” ALEX asked.
“Huguette Haun…. That’s why I didn’t call sooner. Are you on your way out the door?”
“Almost. Huguette what?”
“Haun.”
“H-a-u-n?”
“I guess.”
“Huguette Haun?”
“Yes. What’s the big deal?”
“Do you know who she is, Lang?”
“She’s the daughter of a friend of Nevada’s. She calls Nevada ‘Uncle Ben.’”
“Lang, dear, she’s Cali’s daughter.”
“I didn’t even know she had a daughter.”
“Cali married a man named Leonard Haun. They had one child. You just spent the afternoon with her.”
“She’s the one I told you about: the one Nevada wanted me to entertain this summer.”
“My Gawd! And you refused.”
“You said good for me last night.”
“I didn’t know it was Cali Coss’s daughter!”
“What difference does it make?”
“Aren’t you curious? What’s she like?”
“I thought you were rushing out the door.”
“I am. But what’s she like?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t believe you. Don’t you have any curiosity?”
“I’m not starstruck, Alex.”
“Okay. Skip it!”
“You can meet her this weekend.”
“I can?”
“I guess you can.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Why don’t we take her to a movie? I have to run, Lang. I love you.”
“Love you too,” I said, but I was teed off.
I hung up wondering how I was going to backtrack, how I was going to tell Nevada that both Alex and I would entertain her this weekend. I wondered if he’d agree to it…just this one time.
THIRTEEN
A SCHWINN TEMPO WENT with the caretaker’s cottage. Mom was in a tizzy because she was nearly out of the homemade bread Nevada liked, and what if he wanted sandwiches for lunch that day?
I knew the farm where she got the bread, so I headed out around seven A.M. to get some for her.
The Range Rover was parked down by the gate. The rottweilers were diving into their food. Huguette was standing there in white shorts and a yellow T-shirt, watching with a frown on her face.
“Lang! Come here, please!”
“Are you feeding them now?”
“I’m trying to. That one won’t eat, though.”