“If you say so, sir.” But I remained unconvinced of his sobriety or his innocence. He’d known I was gay from the first day we met, which gave him the upper hand. Yet I wondered how much of the blame belonged to me.
He sighed. “You have every right to be upset. What I’ve done is inexcusable, and I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
In retrospect, all the sudden passion, the eruption between us, seemed so overwhelmingly wrong. I should have nipped the bud before it flowered, however much I may have yearned for the bloom. I knew better, I told myself, yet I let it happen. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I found myself saying, “I should ask you to forgive me.”
“None of that,” he said, stern. “This isn’t something we can fix tonight. Let’s get some sleep, and we’ll sort it out in the morning.”
He sounded very sure of himself, but I didn’t believe him for a second. “How?”
He had the perfect response to counter my personal chastisement. “I’m a general,” he said, as if that would solve the whole problem. This time, however, rank was the problem.
“That’s fine for you, but I’m a second lieutenant,” I said.
“It doesn’t have the same ring of authority, does it?”
“It doesn’t have any ring of authority!”
“Then you’re overruled because I outrank you,” he said. “You’ll stay. Understood?”
“Is that an order, sir?”
He sighed again. “No. It’s not an order. It’s my humble request. Please?”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and he crawled from under the covers and sat next to me. And damn him for being so attractive. When he placed a hand on my shoulder, the touch made me recoil, tense, defensive. “Easy, there,” he whispered. “Easy,” as if he were soothing a skittish horse. “Believe this,” he said, his deep growl surprisingly gentle. “I would never hurt you. I couldn’t.”
We stood up and faced each other, two lean figures, naked, in the middle of a room, in the warm shaded light of the single bulb of the lamp on his bedside table. His furry chest rose and fell with his breathing, and time might have stopped again.
“But—” I started.
He put a finger to my lips. “Let me show you something better you can do with your mouth than talk,” he said. He demonstrated, pressing his own against mine, and we could have swallowed each other whole. I felt myself going under, down for the third time, and I never knew drowning could be so easy. He stood back from me a minute later, and his eminence front seemed to have retreated. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m out of my league,” he said. “I have no right to insist—”
“Sir, don’t you think it would be best for me to go?”
He shook his head. “No. It would not be the best thing.”
I wanted him to reach for me, to take hold and never let go. How could I ask? But maybe he read my mind, because he moved. He moved toward me, and I reached out and took hold of the fuzz on his belly. He engulfed me in his arms, and any reservations I had melted against his warmth.
He whispered to me. “You’re staying put, Buckshot. Understood?”
I nodded. “Thank you, sir. For insisting.” That caught him off guard. I was startled to see his eyes well up, but out of habit or a triumph of will, he never spilled over. He kept himself under control, at least until we climbed into the tangled sheets again and put out the light. He folded himself around me, soft and comfortable as a flannel blanket. The fearful violence in my heart stilled, and I felt as content and safe as I ever had in my whole life.
Once I was settled against him, breathing in tandem with him, and he realized I was content to stay there, he let his tears wash my neck. Why he should sob perhaps I was too young to understand. When he tried to apologize, I pressed my hand over his mouth and told him “Shhh.” There was nothing to be sorry for, and he held on even more tightly.
Anything that could happen the next day—his wrath or his diffidence, I didn’t care—would have been worth the dark of that night as we fell asleep, as he held me against him and I lost myself in his intoxicating warmth. There might be other nights when the tick of his watch would lull me to sleep with its insistence, its tireless attention to detail, keeping time for us in one-second increments, each with its own name spoken aloud and thus marked.
But I would always remember this first night.
Chapter Ten
Several hours later, I found myself wide-awake. We had separated at some point as we slept, and I didn’t want to move for fear the general would awaken also. But my mind raced, and I just couldn’t close my eyes again. Finally, I climbed out of bed as carefully as I could. He didn’t even stir.
I turned on the bedside lamp and surveyed the room, finding evidence of our urgency everywhere. I found hangers in the closet and hung his clothes up. His closet was neat, not overfilled, his uniforms arranged in some order—trousers first, then short-and long-sleeved blue shirts, then flight suits, then several sets of the dusty-colored airman’s camouflage uniform, and, finally, the desert-brown battle dress uniforms, proof that he’d served in Afghanistan in the early days of the war. Half a dozen civilian suits, sport coats, elegant dress shirts in muted colors. A rack full of ties, a whole paintbox of shades. Button-down sport shirts. Blue jeans and sweatshirts folded neatly on the shelf. I couldn’t picture him wearing denim, but I knew so little about his private life.
How or where could I possibly fit?
What could there ever be between a brigadier general and his second-lieutenant aide? I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t push it away. I collected his socks and undershirt and deposited them into the laundry hamper I’d seen in the hallway. I folded my own clothes as neatly as I could.
I found his wallet on the dresser. There wasn’t much in it, apart from some folding money and a couple of credit cards. No photos except for the pictures on his driver’s license and military ID. I examined his dog tags, too, stamped with his full name, Social Security number, blood type and, on the last line, reserved for religious preference, one word: “infidel.” That almost made me laugh out loud. So he was the last of the old reprobates after all.
While I had the opportunity, and since the chance might never present itself again, I started scouting. I don’t know what I was looking for. Clues, perhaps, even the most mundane evidence that would expose the secrets of his personal life. I started with the big bathroom, white and spotless. The fixtures gleamed. The medicine cabinet held nothing more extraordinary than aspirin, shaving cream, razor blades, toothpaste, and some first-aid basics. White, luxurious towels were neatly folded on the rack, as if he were living in a four-star hotel.
One of the other bedrooms was furnished as a guest room, with a double bed and chest of drawers, the closet empty except for hangers. He’d fixed up a third bedroom as a den or office, with a laptop computer on the desk, a filing cabinet, shelves filled with old textbooks and reference manuals, and an ancient manual typewriter. A framed photo of a beautiful young woman, black-and-white but painstakingly hand-tinted, had a place of honor on one wall, with a dried red rose positioned behind it. The picture might have been taken in the fifties. From the family resemblance, I assumed she was his mother. It was the only solid evidence I’d found of his family, of a life lived outside the Air Force.
A fourth bedroom held nothing but large cardboard moving boxes, twenty-five or thirty of them, taped shut, stacked and cryptically labeled with his scrawl and packed full of—what? His past or his future? What would I learn if I were to dig through the stuff?
I examined the large rooms, impressed by their curious impersonality and neat sparseness. Everything was in order. I had thought myself perhaps overly tidy, but this man took it to an extreme, by expedience or habit or compulsion. Appearances, however, can deceive. Sometimes order on the outside reflects inner order as well, but sometimes a neat façade masks chaos. Up until this night, I would have sworn every aspect of the general’s life was as straightened underneath as it appeared on the s
urface.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I rinsed our champagne glasses and left them to drain on the rack in the sink. I even peered into his pantry to see what kind of groceries he kept on hand. The most startling artifact I found inside was a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal, which I couldn’t even stomach as a kid for its cloying sweetness. That made me laugh out loud. We are most human when measured by our idiosyncrasies.
And no bran flakes in sight. Good for him.
A small bathroom adjoined the kitchen and a laundry room. An ironing board, steam iron, and can of spray starch suggested he pressed his own shirts. It dawned on me that the general’s life between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. was probably much like that of any single man, myself included. He washed dishes and scrubbed the toilet and fixed supper for himself and mowed the yard. Rank aside, the distance between us suddenly seemed minimal. Certainly no insurmountable obstacle.
Thus cheered, I continued my tour. I wandered through the impressive dining room, its oval table roomy enough for ten and its cabinet with glass doors containing a beautiful, austere set of white china and crystal glassware. I wondered how often he used such things. Did he throw dinner parties? Host important military or civic leaders?
Only in the living room could I find any real sense of what he considered important. The phonograph and all those records certainly took up the most space. I opened several of the cabinets and glanced at the albums, neatly alphabetical, mostly classical music, boxed sets of operas and symphonies and string quartets. And a couple shelves of jazz and swing, from Louis Armstrong and Chet Baker to Weather Report and Lester Young.
Imagine having the patience to listen to records in the twenty-first century. I knew no one else who did. My parents had scrapped their LPs in favor of the less labor-intensive compact discs years ago. Although the general opted for the convenience of CDs at the office, I was not surprised he’d refused to surrender his records at home.
I picked up the sleeve of the album we’d been dancing to only hours before, a collection from the late 1950s entitled Arthur Murray Favorites, its stylish artwork depicting men coupled with women. Mr. Murray would no doubt have been scandalized by the use to which we had put his favorites that night.
The living room even had a fireplace. I assumed it would hold a fake log with a propane jet flame underneath, but the log in the grate was real, and the ashes underneath it were evidence enough that he liked his fire, at least in season. The ornate wood box was not merely decorative; it was full, ready for a change in the weather.
Bookshelves, built into the wall on either side of the fireplace, had been systematically arranged with dozens of volumes. The military history and biography didn’t surprise me, but I was pleased to discover a handsomely bound set of Shakespeare’s complete works and novels by Twain and Hemingway, two favorites of mine. I found an old Cub Scout manual, a stack of popular espionage thrillers, Civil War histories and photo books, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and an Oxford English Dictionary. I counted nearly three dozen volumes about opera, classical music and jazz, and the arts.
I realized after a minute that the room was missing a television. The TV was the centerpiece of most family living rooms, my own parents included. He might have had a set hidden somewhere, but maybe not. Perhaps he watched programs online—or not at all. Could he possibly spend his evenings reading books and listening to records?
We would get along famously, if he would let me spend some of those evenings with him.
Apart from the photo of his mother hanging in his upstairs office, I found no other pictures and no personal memorabilia, which struck me as odd and a little sad. In fact, little about the house made it seem truly lived in. The furniture was solid, plain, functional, obviously of the highest quality, but not warmly inviting, however comfortable the cushions on the couch and chairs might be. The framed art and other decorative objects were smart but impersonal. For all its stylishness, it was a sad, lonely house, and after my hour’s exploration, I felt a little guilty, as if I were spying on its ghosts. I went back upstairs to his bedroom.
A clock somewhere downstairs struck five in solemn tones. For a minute, I watched the general sleep, unaware. He stretched, turned, restless, his mustache quivering. What dreams were his companions? I noticed the streamlined angles and lines under the crop of fuzz that patterned his belly so invitingly. I was unaccustomed to seeing him so still. He was possibly the most attractive man I’d ever known, and he’d endeared himself to me completely, however fragile or shaky this encounter might render our future. I was not a little overwhelmed by this newfound awareness. I’d gotten to know him better in the last six hours than I had in the previous six months.
I was suddenly exhausted, and I turned out the bedside lamp and crawled carefully back under the covers. As I let out a deep breath and settled down as close to the edge of the bed as I could, he stirred again. He reached out and found me.
“I wondered where you got off to, Locksmith,” he murmured, matter-of-fact. His voice startled me, coming as it did from the pitch-blackness before my eyes had adjusted to the dark. After a second he said, “I missed you.” As if he had been waiting for me his whole life, he pulled me in close, and before I knew it, I was nestled against his chest, drowning in him again, and off to some deep and pleasant sleep.
*
“Hey, you.”
My eyes popped open, and I sat bolt upright, disoriented and a little fearful in those first seconds of waking up in an unfamiliar room to a voice I couldn’t immediately place. But it was my own general, sitting on the edge of the bed, unself-consciously naked, holding out a cup of steaming coffee.
“You planning to sleep all day, Jackknife?” he said.
“Sorry, sir.” I wondered if I should be embarrassed. “What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven. I’ve been prowling about for a couple hours already.”
Wow. “Good morning, sir.” I wondered what had he been doing since rising. And how long he had been sitting there, watching me?
He offered the cup and saucer.
“Thank you, sir.”
He left the bedroom abruptly and returned a moment later with his own cup and sat down next to me. In silence, we blew on the hot liquid to cool it down and sipped cautiously. I waited for him to say something, but perhaps he was waiting for me to speak, so we were silent. I was far from comfortable, though relieved that today was Saturday. I could get home, somehow, and still have Sunday to sort things out. I half expected him to throw me out, as if our coffee was the calm before some storm. I, if not we, might have to face a world of trouble and hurt as a result of last night’s turn of events.
I emptied my cup and carefully set it down on the nightstand.
“A refill?” he said.
“Not just now. Thank you, sir.” He set his empty cup next to mine and then turned his attention back to me.
“You mind if I sit here?”
“It’s your bed, sir. You can sit where you like. Um…should I mind?”
“I wouldn’t like to wake up with a naked old guy in my bed,” he said, gruff.
“I would,” I said. “Every single day.” He seemed surprised, but he was as attractive a sight as I am ever likely to see upon waking. “Your scenery is truly magnificent. Certainly worthy of a national monument.”
When he laughed, it came from somewhere deep within him. It surged up from his bedrock and took hold of his whole self. I could hear it and feel it, and it was contagious. What else was there to do? He stood up and made an exaggerated turn, three hundred and sixty degrees.
“Get your eyes full,” he said. “Although at my age, I should think twice about parading naked in front of someone I want to impress.”
“Well, don’t think twice,” I said. “I’m already impressed, but thanks for the tour. Where can I buy the postcards?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand you. But I’m not immune to flattery.” He sat down on the edge of the bed next to me and just let me look. I could see a t
race of a grin under the mustache. In close-up, I found him even more handsome than from a distance: his thin face deeply etched and tan, his mustache ramshackle and black, the sandpaper of beard clearly evident since yesterday’s morning shave, the strong and lean limbs, the flat, carpeted belly. He’d fully grown into himself, like the monument he said he didn’t want to be, but alive. A testament to all that is masculine.
I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. Next to him, I felt inadequate, too pale and smooth and fair of complexion, too young and uncertain, like a lump of clay awaiting the expert hands of a potter. A lieutenant didn’t deserve a general, hadn’t earned the privilege yet, as if this whole situation weren’t already too patently absurd. But he abruptly short-circuited my maze of thought by plumbing my mouth with his.
He pulled back a second later, as if he’d burnt himself, but he continued searching me, quizzical, unsure, as if fighting his own impulses, shaking his head and muttering, half to himself, “I’m a goddamned old fool.” But we remained apart only long enough to gulp in air, and then we dived in again and swam straight down.
He tasted like sweet coffee and promise, as morning should. He rummaged in the bedside table drawer for pipe, tobacco, and matches. He tamped the rum-and-maple into the bowl—self-consciously, I might add, as I watched so closely you’d have thought I’d never seen him do it before—and lit it. After a moment, he slid between the sheets next to me and puffed contentedly. I rested my head on his chest, and he wrapped his free arm around me. From time to time, he chuckled, looking exceptionally pleased with himself. All I could do was look up and ask, “What’s so funny?” but he only grinned and shook his head.
“Not a damn thing worth mentioning,” he said.
He kept the pipe lit for a good half hour, a fragrant cloud above the bed. Memories associated with scents are some of the strongest I have, and the general’s tobacco and his aftershave are forever lodged in that part of my head. When he finished, he set down the pipe and reached into the drawer again for one of his pinwheel red-and-white peppermints. He offered one to me, and I accepted. As we lay together, he nuzzled me like a puppy exploring a new home, and I responded in kind and at great length.
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