Broken Rainbows

by Rager, Bob

  “We can give you some pretty interesting work,” said the recruiter.

  Was he offering him the job? If Nigel, Dr. Lawrence, hadn’t told him to write in his name on the list to interview with the strategic research agency, he would have just interviewed with the schools, maybe even teach English in Japan. He hadn’t expected much interest in a linguistics major; there was always graduate school, although he wasn’t sure what he would study. Indonesian, maybe, that sounded interesting. But he didn’t want to work for the government Federal Service. His father had a government job and you didn’t want to do the something that your father did.

  “We have to go through the usual paperwork to get started, you know, background checks, security clearance, that sort of thing. But I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you.”

  He was a little uneasy about the last remark. What did he mean exactly?! What if they found, oh, so what? He didn’t care what they found out! Jeepers, his brother had been arrested for stealing a tray of hors d’oeuvres from some consular officer’s party on July 4th and that didn’t seem such a big deal although mom and dad never talked about it or even brought it up, like it had never happened.

  He walked across campus, careful to avoid the steps and playa of the student union, McGuffee Hall and the portico of Taft, even if it meant crossing to the other side of the street. He felt conspicuous in his suit and red-striped tie and he didn’t want to risk running into a crowd of demonstrators or groups pleading for signatures for their petitions.

  At the end of the last year, he had spent the summer with his parents in Djakarta. That had been great, playing tennis, getting thrashed by his kid sister who amazed him and everyone with her super-fast serve, and hanging out at the pool at the club. He had even climbed a mountain range with some guys in the Peace Corps and a radical priest from Boston.

  He wasn’t sure what a radical priest actually was; he seemed like any other middle aged man; he didn’t wear a collar during the trek through jungles of orchids and screaming monkeys.

  But when he came back to school, there were all these people wearing placards that said “End the war now!”, “Stop the Secret War!”, “We won’t go, Hell No!”

  The words seemed a personal reprimand and he felt…embarrassed. Some of the demonstrators, when they stopped yelling and their mouths and faces came to rest, were familiar. He had been in class with some of them; linguistics attracted all kinds of people, but he felt little in common with them now; everyone dressed in Army field jackets and needed haircuts, and went barefoot.

  He breathed a sigh of relief when he closed the door of the fraternity house behind him. His head seemed quiet.

  “So,” said someone from deep within the upholstery of a sofa in the front lounge – “Professor Lawrence called; he said to call him back right away.”

  Again, the sound of Nigel’s name startled him. He looked around at the large, wide room, once the living and dining room of a great Edwardian Mansion across the street from campus.

  He was too old to live in the fraternity house, most everyone in his pledge class had already moved to their own apartments in town. Once they did, they seldom returned except maybe during home coming weekend or to show off a new girlfriend, and when they did, they seemed strangely remote, even embarrassed by the old house like prosperous relatives pretending tolerance of their poor cousins.

  He wouldn’t have to find roommates and he didn’t know anybody except the guys in the house. There was BJ, another classmate in his major classes, but he had grown a beard and mustache over the summer and was cutting classes to join demonstrators at the library.

  And really, he liked it here, although he kept this a secret and joined the other house residents in complaining about the snowy TV reception, joked about the food, although they never complained in from of Mrs. Patrick the cook, for fear of hurting her feelings or suffering her revenge. They never complained about Mrs. Lindstrom, their house-mother who lived in an apartment just off the foyer in what once had been the solarium. She was in her 70s, incredibly, and swam laps early in the mornings at the Natatorium.

  He was fond of these two old women, grateful for their small attentions, their greetings, their reminders not to be late for class, to brush his hair. Mrs. Lindstrom had fussed with his tie earlier before he left for his interview.

  She and the cook were the closest he had to parents while his own were out of the country.

  Upstairs in a room with four sets of bunk beds, he peered into a wardrobe at the foot of his bed. He was alone; everyone else was at classes, the library, at team practice.

  He decided not to change but to go directly to Nigel’s. He could walk there and still avoid all the commotion on campus.

  A few blocks away and after a few turns, he was walking along a street under leafy branches that arched over both sides of the street.

  He looked at the large frame houses, ‘who lived in them, how long they had lived there.’ Sunlight drifted down through a vast green canopy and bathed everything in a blanket of shimmering pailletes. Who were the lucky people who lived there, a sprawling frame house topped by a roof with dormers lined up one after the other?

  He imagined a family growing up in its rooms, little children growing year after year in the same bedrooms, growing up to become the boy and girl next door, their father the town doctor, their mother folding altar clothes at the church on Sundays.

  He didn’t want to think like that anymore and was relieved, though he didn’t quite know why, to find he was in front of Nigel’s house. He smiled crookedly at the flaking paint and the wisteria garlands, green and pale blue, hanging in sloppy loops from the eaves of the porch, the rebellion against the neighbor’s tidy and orderly facade.

  He came to an abrupt stop.

  Another student was just leaving, walking across the porch and down the steps. He sported a red beard splashed with gold locks; a face framed by gold and yellow ringlets across his forehead. He wore an Army field jacket, frayed jeans, and sandals. His feet and toes were a pale, fleshy pink.

  They eyed each other warily.

  Then they nodded curtly and continued walking in opposite directions.

  Nigel answered the door dressed in one of his “English Professor” get ups, a dressing robe splashed with thunder bolts and sun bursts in washed out blues and oranges and a floppy, round collar.

  “Ah, the Prodigal Son!” Nigel said. He was not quite six feet tall, his slim wrists shot out from the sleeves of his robe. His face was narrow, his nose fine and aristocratic, the mouth small and curving, his brow wide and high, and his eyes a gray blue.

  “Come in, come,” Nigel said, and he waved his narrow fingers over the threshold.

  “Who was that, Nigel?”

  “Who? Oh, a new graduate assistant.”

  “Oh,”

  Nigel smiled in a small way, his lips flickering with amusement and said, “He’s new and wanted to meet the great Professor Nigel Lawrence and make a good impression.”

  “Did he?”

  Nigel’s eyebrows popped up. “You still surprise me, my boy. The face of an angel, and the instincts of a fox.”

  Nigel stepped aside, but just before he closed the door, he stared out at the street. Then, satisfied by what he saw or didn’t see, he closed the door and locked it behind him.

  They walked through a foyer and entry hall. On the hooks on the wall hung raincoats and winter coats that were still waiting for Nigel to pack away until another winter. On the floor of the red clay tiles, a bouquet of umbrellas sprouted from a pottery stand. Next to it leaned a pair of dark olive wellies.

  He had entertained the suspicion that Nigel had arranged the foyer with its clutter of waxed-cloth field jackets and khaki rain coats, tweed overcoats, hiking oxfords, umbrellas and hats with floppy brims, the way a designer furnished a stage set, for atmosphere and not function.

  But Nigel was something of a clothes horse, a dandy with his dressing gowns and blazers, and now that it was warm, straw ha
ts.

  ”Look at you, splendid in your finery!” Nigel said between a drawl and a purr. He talked as they passed from one hall into a large room well-appointed with a fieldstone fireplace and wing chairs and a pair of upholstered sofas. None of the furniture matched, the upholstery heavy on chintz slipcovers and cracked leather.

  “We’re having sherry to celebrate! We do have something to celebrate, don’t we?” Nigel said. He cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head forward.

  “Well, I think so…well, yeah.” He felt light headed; everything seemed to be happening so fast. The school terms that he thought would take forever now were the past, the endless winters of eternal dark, gone. He had come here after his overseas school with a detour to a summer with his parents in the countryside outside of Washington. Thinking back, he figured he had been in a kind of shock, stunned and bewildered by the crowds of young men, their casual, even careless habits and ways, their easy familiarity with each other, with the faculty. But when he registered for Nigel’s Great Books class, he soon found his footing.

  But now everything was coming to an end; he felt something sucking the air out of him.

  Nigel was staring at him. “Well, how did it go?” he asked with a hint of impatience.

  “Well,” he began trying to clear his head, “they’re going to process my security clearance, he said it wouldn’t be a problem, just something the Agency has to do, and, and, I’m going to read a lot.” Who was they? And what was that man’s name?

  He sank back into a chair, fighting a surge of fear; ‘Everything was ending. The world such as he knew it for the past four years was vanishing,’ he thought. But Nigel was here. Except he wouldn’t be if, if…

  “You know, I could go to graduate school, study Indonesian and I could go on typing up your bibliographies!” He gulped at the sherry.

  Nigel tipped a cut glass decanter over the empty sherry glass. His fingers formed elegant angles around the decanter’s neck. Nigel’s hands and fingers were hypnotic; Nigel silently and carefully studied the decanter.

  “It’s like a prism,” Nigel said evenly. He held the decanter in a shaft of the late afternoon light that poured into the room. An aurora of rainbows glowed in the air. “Photons pulled by an energy invisible to the eye then poured through a simple device burst out again in a new brilliant form. But nothing really happened; nothing’s changed. What’s now visible has always been there.”

  Nigel put the decanter down. “What are your graduation plans, your commencement? Remember, it’s called a beginning, not an end.”

  “I’m not going; what’s the point, my parents can’t come.” His cheeks felt hot and he tasted a salty rivulet in the corner of his mouth. ‘Please Nigel, please, please, please,’ he pleaded wordlessly.

  “Dear boy,” Nigel whispered. He drew close until his lips barely touched the damp cheeks. Then Nigel pressed his warm, moist mouth against the bare neck.

  He felt Nigel dig his fingers into his shoulders as Nigel pushed him slowly back. He stared up at Nigel, wanting to take his jacket, vest, and shirt off, but Nigel undid the neck tie and slowly unbuttoned the shirt, pausing now and then to scrape his chin of stubble against his cheek.

  His face was dry now, heat pouring out of him, chasing away sadness. Nigel lifted the shirt up and over him and away. He had not worn an undershirt; his shirt was all cotton, the way he liked them, and he knew that Nigel liked the glimpse of his chest and nipples outlined by the soft pliant cloth.

  Now Nigel was unbuckling his belt and opening the zipper. Then came a pause, Nigel still, the room empty of noise, then he felt himself, his groin and midsection heave out, naked to the air.

  Nigel stood up. He walked to the windows facing out to the street. He looked first up the street, and then down before he pulled the thick curtains together.

  Nigel was again at his side. When Nigel scooped him up in his thick arms, he held his breath with excitement. Nigel lay him down on the Persian rug for a moment before laying down. Nigel’s chest and groin pressed against his back. They lay this way; Nigel’s cock pressing, slipping in between his glutes.

  His whole body from his neck down to the small of his back and the backs of his thighs felt hot with fire.

  The first time Nigel took him, he hadn’t understood what was happening. He was surprised for Nigel’s urgency, but he had ground his teeth and clamped his eyes shut because he didn’t want Nigel to be angry, or worse, disappointed in him; so he toughed it out the first couple of times, until Nigel brought a tube of lotion that he rubbed into his butt and slathered all over the hardness of his cock.

  The gooey stuff was cold at first touch, but Nigel’s hands stroked and explored him until he relaxed and could feel that Nigel inside him, was only for him at least for a little while; all his, without having to share him; in him and a part of him.

  Nigel was a thoughtful lover; even as his hips thrust deep into him and brought him closer, his hands stroked his young lover’s cock until they both exploded in moans together.

  This night Nigel was even stronger than before and clasped him with an almost suffocating strength that only increased the pleasure that came with such force, such power; he was battered by pleasure.

  Nigel pressed against him for one long moment, his breath coming in low moans against his neck. He felt pleasure pouring into him; he felt the power of control for Nigel was now sinking, collapsing around him while drawing him to him as if he were dying in his release.

  The first time had happened with a force of its own; between classes Nigel jumping up and dressing, and quickly running off to class. The he told him, “I’m a wreck…pull yourself together and help yourself to whatever you want in the kitchen, just go out the back door and leave the front door shut.”

  Tonight, they lay motionless breathless in each other’s arms. He was too tired to feel sad, his muscles worked to near exhaustion. He didn’t feel terror; he didn’t feel unhappy; if anything, he felt a numbness that really wasn’t bad at all, the kind of peace that the dentist’s shots brought on. There was the scary hypodermic, a terror that was more anticipation than the actual reality of the needle – and then there was the entrance of the sharp point breaking through skin, the fingers strong and hard in his mouth for a moment longer than he’d expected. He could if he wanted to suck these fingers and this would seem only a natural part of quenching the pain, even a necessary part of healing him.

  His thoughts floated gently on a slow, lazy currents and his breathing came in long, deep droughts until with a shudder, his muscles quivered as knots and tightness fled his body; he pushed deeper into Nigel’s arms and stomach. The he fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 41

  When he awoke, he blinked and looked around him. He didn’t recognize anything, his tongue sticking in his throat. He looked around the room, now dark and shapeless. In these last seconds of twilight, he thought he might be back at his parents’, in one of the bland rooms of whatever house the Federal government had assigned to his father.

  He tried getting to his feet, forgetting his pants were bunched around his knees. He stumbled and then everything came into focus.

  He looked around for Nigel, but no one else was here in the house. He wasn’t surprised; Nigel disappeared afterwards, always having a reason to leave, a criminal fleeing the scene.

  There was a sound of footsteps at the door, then the knob rattling in its casing. The hall light came on, a lantern of beaten copper and stained glass glowed orange. “The pumpkin light,” he called it, and Nigel had laughed.

  “Ah,” Nigel purred in a cashmere baritone. He wore a shapeless blazer and worn khakis, something that was thought on campus to be very English in its carelessness.

  “You’re still here,” he said, not a question, a statement.

  “I fell asleep,” he explained, and rose up on his bent knees to pull up his pants and tuck in most of his shirt tails.

  Nigel lay down his book bag on a side table already occupied by a stack of student p
apers and books. Then, as he had done earlier, he went to the door again and looked up and down the street and pulled the door firmly to its frame and briskly turned the lock. When he turned around, he had a little knot between his eye brows.

  Afraid to speak, but fearing desperation if he didn’t, he looked into Nigel’s eyes and said, “I wanted to know when I would see you again.”

  “Ah, I see,” Nigel said, bit his lower lips, then said, “Let’s have something to drink, why don’t we? Not sherry…something more grown up for our young man, soon to be doing important work for his nation.”

  Nigel went to a side table beside the fireplace and picked up a bottle of scotch. With a wave of the bottle in the air, he splashed long streams into two tumblers and held one out.

  The stuff tasted thick, and smoky, and raw to almost burning before fading to a warming glow in his chest and stomach. Holding the highball glass, he sank back down again into the chair and felt a cartwheel in his stomach. He pretended that this was just a night as it had always been before; just him and Nigel, flopping around, being an English professor, telling stories of his youth in boarding school, of oral exams and other “flaming hoops” at university, of trans-Atlantic crossings on the France because “she had better food than the Queen Elizabeth and better looking stewards too.”

  And on special nights, Nigel would bring out a travelling trunk plastered with names of hotels in Paris, Rome, Berlin; places that he had never seen before because his father’s postings had been to minor cities and obscure offices known only by acronyms.

  Nigel would pull manuscripts from the trunk’s built-in shelves and reading aloud, speak from letters and yellowed pages the words of writers known to the rest of the world only from the colorless pages of textbooks. But Nigel brought their words and sentences if not to life, then to animation, for Nigel possessed a histrionic gift. And together with his pliant and luxurious voice, Nigel was given to full blown performances, striding about, clenching a fist in anger at the gods, falling to his knees in misery, filling the air with praises of a true love.