They rode in silence all the way to Jeremy’s house, which was just off the Lake Road in one of the older subdivisions; his parents, who both worked at Vandervere Mills in managerial capacities, lived in a rambling mock-Tudor with stone chimneys and climbing roses, built in the mid-twenties, a really charming house that suited their very charming son.
When Oscar opened the door for Jeremy, Danny leaned over to give him a parting kiss, but Jeremy shied away from him with frantic glances at the elderly butler.
“Do you mind if I kiss Jeremy goodbye, Oscar?” Danny asked the old man, grabbing Jeremy by the arm so he couldn’t get away.
“It’s not my place to mind, Master Marcus,” Oscar said, but smiled warmly as he said it, letting Jeremy know that he approved of them. Jeremy looked at the servant warily, but allowed Danny to kiss him passionately yet briefly before he scooted out of the car and scampered up the fieldstone walk to his parents’ door.
Danny sat smiling in the back of the car for the rest of the drive, unaccountably pleased to have made a public display, however small and forgiving the audience, of his relationship with Jeremy. The thing he most missed about dating girls was the openness of it, the social acceptance of the couple, the ability to be affectionate with someone in front of others.
With boys, everything was clandestine and secretive, and while this allowed him a level of promiscuity that he wouldn’t be able to manage in a public sphere, he chafed at the restrictions on his actions — he wanted to hold Jeremy on his lap in the lunchroom as he’d been able to do with Sandra and Felicia the previous year, to kiss him in the hallways whenever he liked, to lay claim to the boy in front of the whole school.
“I hope I didn’t embarrass you earlier, Oscar,” Danny said as he slid out of the car in the high-school parking lot, where he would get in his own car and drive the rest of the way home, “With that display.”
“Not at all, Master Marcus,” the old butler smiled at him, his tiny black eyes dancing in their nests of wrinkles, “I am a Fellow Traveller, as we used to say in my day.”
“Well, wonders never cease!” Danny grinned at the old man; he wanted to hug him, but didn’t think that would be allowed, “Thank you, Oscar.”
“Good evening, Master Marcus,” the old man bowed and shuffled back to the front of the car.
It never ceased to amaze him, how many gay men there were in Vandervere; he had once thought himself alone in the world, the only gay boy in town. It’s one of the reasons he’d started dating girls, he’d been lonely and completely ignorant of the existence of others like himself.
It also amazed him that the instrument of introducing him to this hidden world was a girl, the young woman who took his virginity in June. Her name was Natalie, she was nineteen years old and a sophomore in college, visiting from Portland with her father; and since her father was gay, two of her high-school boyfriends had turned out to be gay, and a number of her best friends were gay, she pegged him pretty quickly — though he enjoyed sex with women, he vastly preferred males, and Natalie could tell that just by the way he looked at her. Afterward, she was an absolute fountain of information, ideas, slang, and code-words that opened up a whole new world right in his own backyard.
The most important thing Natalie taught him was how to identify The Look, that easy-to-miss variety of physical clues that let Danny know when someone desired him. That once piece of knowledge was the source of Danny’s greatest happiness: knowing that he was wanted by an awful lot of people. He no longer felt lonely, no longer a bird in a gilded cage: he could connect to people.
4
As cages go, the Lake House is fairly nicely gilded. It’s a long, massive structure, rustically elegant in the Arts & Crafts manner, with wide eaves and screened sleeping porches, small diamond-paned windows and fieldstone chimneys, vine-covered pergolas and portes-cochères, covered in old pine shingles and roofed with tin plating, in the joins of which grasses and wildflowers grew.
Danny’s bedroom was at the narrow end of the attic floor, as far from everyone else as one could get and still be indoors; but it was large and airy, with a south-facing sleeping porch and deep dormer windows on either side overlooking the woods and the lake, huge slope-roofed closets and its own large white-tiled bathroom; it was sparely furnished, little more than a spindle-turned oak suite with double bed, desk, chair, and bureau, but there were window-seats built into the dormers, where Danny liked to lounge and read, four built-in bookcases, and a tiny brick fireplace.
Danny paused in his bedroom to take off his boots and his belt, then emptied his pockets into the big shallow bowl on his chest of drawers before heading into the bathroom and turning on the water; while waiting for the hot water to make it to the attic from the cellar, Danny stripped out of his clothes, dropping the jeans and shirt into the colors’ hamper and thoughtfully rinsing out his white boxer-briefs before stuffing them and the white boot-socks into the whites’ hamper, so as to not let the ‘protein stains’ (as the housekeeper euphemised them) set into the fabric.
The moment he stepped out of his shorts, his freed cock rose swiftly to full mast, demanding the orgasm that had been teasing it since Danny had started making out with Jeremy that afternoon; Danny gazed down at it lovingly and gave it a couple of slow soft strokes, then stepped over to the full-length mirror behind the door to enjoy the sight of it from the front.
The cock filled him with wonder every time he saw it, he could spend hours just looking at it and petting it; and knowing that it was so much bigger than everyone else’s — indeed he had only seen one so far that was bigger — gave him a thrill of pride that custom could not stale. He turned sideways and leaned back from his pelvis to make it look even bigger in the mirror; staring intently at himself, he stroked himself to orgasm just as the steam from the shower began to obscure his reflection.
He didn’t need much washing, since he hadn’t done anything more strenuous than masturbate since his shower after gym class, so he was back out in his bedroom within a few minutes, toweling off and singing softly in Italian. He stepped into a fresh pair of boxer-briefs from the top drawer, then tan socks from the second drawer, a starched white dress-shirt from the third, and a pair of fresh tan khakis from the fourth: he was a very orderly boy and actually got a little thrill out of organizing things.
Then he stepped over to one of the closets, buttoning his cuffs as he went, and chose a cordovan leather belt and a pair of cordovan penny-loafers; next came a blue-and-red paisley necktie that he arranged in a half-Windsor under his button-down collar, finished off with a summerweight navy blazer.
Stepping back to the dresser, Danny picked up a pair of old-fashioned silver boar-bristle brushes and started taming his damp curls into a respectable cap of flat glossy waves, the ends curling about his ears and fluffing out at the nape. He went back into the bathroom to hang up his towel and check his outfit in the mirror on the door, deciding that he looked as boring and invisible as it was possible for him to look.
Running down the back stairs into the kitchen, Danny greeted the two maids, Rosa and Maria, who were busy carting serving dishes out of the cupboards, before stopping to get a hug from the housekeeper, Mrs. Espinosa.
“You look so handsome, mijo,” the squat little woman said fondly, reaching up to pinch his cheek and then his nose. She was a full foot shorter than Danny, but rather a bit wider; she wasn’t fat so much as she was thick and sturdy, like a totem figure carved from a tree-stump. Her face was square and strong-boned, her hair coarse and coal-black, arranged in a braided coronet on top of her head.
“What are you serving tonight, Tia?” Danny always called the housekeeper ‘Aunt’ in affection, which incensed his parents but paid due honor to one of the only people in the house who truly loved him; if it weren’t for Mrs. Espinosa and Mademoiselle Marnie, his nanny, Danny would probably not have survived his childhood with any sense self-worth intact.
“We have shrimp-stuffed avocadoes to start,” the housekeeper told him, tu
rning back to her stove and stirring one pot while sprinkling herbs into another, “coq au vin over wild rice with asparagus vinaigrette, and a lemon trifle with cashew cookies.”
“Ooh, I can’t wait!” Danny enthused; Mrs. Espinosa’s cooking was adventurous without being challenging, always delicious but within the bounds of a WASP palate. Danny’s mother thought black pepper was ‘spicy’ and his father wouldn’t touch anything he couldn’t recognize at first glance. When the elder Vanderveres were away from home, though, Mrs. Espinosa got really creative and tried out dishes on Danny and the other servants, crazy nouvelle cuisine combinations or imaginitive variations on her native Colombian fare.
“You will wait, mijo,” the housekeeper smiled up at him, crinkling her tiny black eyes with pleasure, “You’re such a good boy. Now go help the girls set the table, and there are some fresh flowers in the pantry, you can make a nice centerpiece, I know you like that.”
“Gracias, Tia!” Danny gave her a peck on the cheek and went into the pantry to find the flowers. He was delighted to discover a whole bucket full of alstromeira and miniature hydrangeas in shades of russet, gold, and pink. Danny ran into the dining-room to retrieve an antique hammered-silver bowl inset with cabochon agates from the sideboard, then filled it with water in the pantry and placed a chunk of green florist’s foam in the bottom; within minutes he had the blooms arranged in a professional-looking fountain effect — but not too tall, since his parents didn’t like their view of each-other obscured.
Settling the bowl of flowers in the very center of the table under the Tiffany floriform bronze and stained-glass chandelier, he started folding the napkins into fleurs-de-lys while chatting amiably with the maids in Spanish; they giggled delightedly at his American accent and sighed to each other over his beauty while they laid the plates, glasses, and silverware on the table, measuring the placements with little folding rulers as they’d been taught by Mrs. Espinosa.
With the table finished and twenty minutes left before dinner would be served at 7:30, Danny had no other option than to go face his parents in the living-room for a before-dinner drink. He knew that if he didn’t, they’d complain at dinner, but that if he did, they’d complain about something else. It was a no-win, and he dreaded it every evening.
When Danny entered the wide, beam-ceilinged living room, his parents were already seated by the low tiled fireplace in low-slung armchairs, reading neatly folded newspapers and sipping scotch on the rocks. Danny drifted slowly into the room, straightening his jacket and his tie as he went, before stooping down to gently plant a kiss without quite touching his mother’s powdered cheek.
“Good evening, Mother, good evening, Dad,” Danny murmured quietly.
“Don’t mumble, Marc-Daniel,” Taylor Whitney Vandervere III told his son without looking up from his newspaper.
“You need a haircut,” Beatrice Vandervere (née Parke of the Beacon Hill Parkes — Vanderveres were always educated on the East Coast and tended to bring home East Coast brides) said with a quick peevish glance at her son’s black hair.
“Yes, ma’am,” Danny replied, backing away from them and moving over to the drinks table to pour himself a glass of ginger ale. They didn’t speak to him again, so he just stood silently and watched them reading, sipping his ginger ale and wondering what they were thinking.
His mother was a beautiful ice-queen, immensely polished and poised, a square elegant face with a short straight nose and prim pink mouth, hooded gray eyes and gleaming blonde hair worn in a simple bob that curled to a point under her chin; she was stylishly dressed in a simple gray cashmere tunic and chiffon skirt, her usual double strand of pearls with a diamond clasp and matching diamond earclips, a diamond tennis-bracelet next to her everyday platinum Cartier watch.
His father was a perfect match, slim and blond and chiseled, impressive in an immaculate but not flashy dark gray suit, still young-looking at fifty, perfect Hollywood casting for a charismatic politician. The two of them were so devoted to each other, and so comfortable with each other; Danny watched them together, the way they fit so seamlessly into their shared life and seemed to know what the other was thinking without speech. He wanted that for himself someday, with someone — but in the meantime, their impenetrable togetherness made him feel desolately lonely.
The dinner bell went off at exactly 7:30, as it always did, and Danny meekly trailed after his parents as they trekked down the long broad corridor that connected the many rooms of the huge house to the dining room at the opposite end. Danny stood behind his chair as Taylor held Beatrice’s chair at one end of the long table and then seated himself at the other end, slipping silently into his place between them with his back to the drafty empty fireplace just as the shrimp-stuffed avocados were brought to the table and placed in front of them by the maids.
Danny’s parents spoke to each other about various things that had occurred during their day apart, but in an intimate shorthand of half-finished sentences and inside references that Danny couldn’t follow; instead, he focused on the food, which was amazing, and smiled at the little touches that he knew Mrs. Espinosa had added only to his portion: crushed mint and lemon in his water glass, an extra large helping of asparagus (his favorite vegetable), and a sprig of verbena garnishing his lemon trifle.
When the elder Vanderveres rose and took their coffee into the adjoining den to watch television for the evening, Danny politely excused himself from their company and headed back to the kitchen, stopping to shower Mrs. Espinosa with compliments on an amazing meal before going into the mudroom to peel off his dress jacket and tie, exchanging his penny-loafers for a pair of highly-polished English riding boots.
Exiting the house into the breezeway between the kitchen wing and the garages, Danny set off at a trot to the thick stand of imported cypresses and native pines that screened the house from the smells and noise of the stables; with an athletic spring, he leaped over the paddock fence and jogged across the vast oval expanse to where Kevin Ramirez, the groom, had Tenorino saddled up and waiting for him.
“There’s my beautiful boy!” Danny crooned to the horse, which nuzzled his shoulder impatiently, reproaching him for his tardiness. Danny had been spending less time with his horse in the last few months, and the tall dapple-gray Andalusian stallion resented taking a backseat to Danny’s newfound sex-life.
Tenorino had been a gift from his parents on his fourteenth birthday, chosen primarily by Aunt Mathilda, who browbeat Taylor into buying the expensive animal when Danny showed a good deal of talent for the sport of dressage on the school’s horses. Taylor gave in mostly because a horse of that caliber was always a good investment, and if Danny could train it to a dressage championship, the stud fees would make a lively return on that investment.
And Danny had trained the animal well, winning every juniors-division competition he entered; and aside from the training, he went riding every day, enjoying the wonderful feel of galloping along the lakeside on the beautiful horse, his hair bouncing in the wind, his thighs pressed tight against the animal’s heaving ribs.
But dressage was one of the first sacrifices Danny made to sex: though he continued training assiduously for the division championships over the summer, come the day he only placed third. This was partly due to his distraction from training; but the chief culprit was meeting the man with the dick bigger than his own, who fucked him hard in a secluded storage room just an hour before Danny and Tenorino were scheduled to perform. Sitting on a dancing horse after being rough-fucked by a giant cock was considerably more painful than he’d thought possible, and the horse reacted to his pain and the faint smell of blood — that he’d placed at all was a testament to very good training.
Losing the championship dampened Danny’s passion for dressage, and his training with Tenorino dwindled into a perfunctory hour in the evening after dinner and a long midday ride on the weekends; he was no longer so emotionally devoted to his time with the animal, and the horse felt neglected and didn’t perform as well
.
Nevertheless, Danny kept at it, thinking that he would be able to spend more time with Tenorino and get the horse back up to scratch before the next season of championships came along in the spring — like most young men, Danny believed he had all the time in the world, and there would always be plenty of opportunity to catch up on anything he missed, later on.
When night started coming down earlier in the autumn, he’d have to confine himself to exercising the horse in the well-lit paddock; but since it was still fairly light out in mid-September, Danny took off down the lake trail, galloping all the way, singing “Non più andrai” from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at top voice as they went (this was the song Danny was planning to use in his next dressage routine and he wanted to get the horse familiar with it and though Danny’s voice wasn’t quite trained to opera, he managed the aria fairly well as a ballad).
They reached the meadow that stood alongside the trail halfway between his house and the resort hotel, where he took Tenorino through a few steps of the old routine, then turned around and headed back to the stable at a comfortable canter so the horse could cool down before being curried and put into his stall.
He took his time brushing the horse down and talking to him, whispering the secrets of his day into the uncomprehending ears as he combed the animal’s silvery mane into a gleaming silky curtain, lulling him into a restful state so he could be left to sleep in his stall for the night.
The Math Teacher Is Dead Page 4