by Allan, S. H.
“You are feeling trapped.”
“Yes.” Of course Soren would have the word for it, where Bobby failed.
“I am knowing something about this feeling.”
“Of course you would. I don’t mean to—”
Soren reached out and laid a finger across Bobby’s lips. “I am feeling trapped for years. ‘You look like an Italian’, they are saying to me, ‘so you are acting like an Italian’. Always, always, always. And then”—he shrugged—“they are saying to me, ‘You are not sounding like an Italian. Or like an American. So we are finished with you.’ They are putting me in the trap; they are opening the trap. But you know who is having the last chuckle?”
“The last laugh,” Bobby corrected absently.
“Yes. It is me. Because while I am in the trap, I am having the fun sometimes, but also I am making more money than I am ever seeing in my life. And when they are letting me out of the trap, I am still having this money.” That was true. Soren had been wise with his money, as Bobby was trying to be. The last thing he wanted was to end up back in Orange Tree, after all. “And I am finding you.” Soren took Bobby’s hand in his, squeezing it. “And I am having a life I never would have been living if not for my time in the trap.”
“So you think I should just use them for as long as they’ll have me.” It wasn’t a bad idea. It had worked for Soren, clearly. He’d never seemed upset about what had happened to him, not once. But Soren was very different than Bobby in a lot of ways.
Soren brought Bobby’s hand to his lips and kissed it gently. It was how they’d parted, that first night at the big studio party. Outside in the dark, hidden behind an orange tree, Soren had kissed Bobby’s hand. Bobby, emboldened by that and the wine and the hours of conversation they’d had, grabbed the lapels of Soren’s dinner jacket and kissed his lips. The guilt and humiliation began even before Bobby withdrew his tongue from Soren’s mouth. They might have had this forbidden thing in common, but clearly Soren was a gentleman, and Bobby was an animal. It was embarrassing; it was inexcusable. Bobby pulled back, ready to apologize, only to see Soren smiling.
“I am coming to your house tomorrow night,” he whispered. “Ya?”
“Ya—I mean, yes.” Bobby had never been so nervous for a date. He’s just a man, Bobby told himself over and over. He changed outfits four times. He made sure Lupe had the place spotlessly clean. When Soren finally arrived, bottle of wine in hand, Bobby was ready to throw up. Instead, he said, “Welcome, Soren,” and Soren said, “Where is the bedroom?” Now, together in the home they’d shared almost since that night, Soren let go of Bobby’s hand and stood up. “Get up.” Bobby hesitated. He was supposed to read over the ranch hand script, and he’d been putting it off. “Come on,” Soren insisted. He nudged Bobby with his foot. When Bobby still didn’t move, he took both hands and hauled Bobby to his feet. “I am having a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?”
“I am thinking I am waiting until Monday, but now I am thinking you are needing it now.”
“Why Monday?”
“It will be two years since we are meeting,” Soren said, as if Bobby should have known that. He had known that. He just hadn’t realized it was this Monday.
Soren took his hand, interlacing their fingers, and urged Bobby through the living room to the stairs. They went down, past the billiard room to the lowest level of the house, barring the basement: the cinema.
It wasn’t exactly a cinema, but a projection screen with two large red velvet sofas set up facing it, side by side. A projector sat in the back of the room. Bobby glanced over and saw it was threaded with a reel of film. “Who did that?” It was tricky. Bobby could do it, but it always took many tries and a lot of cursing.
“Lupe.”
“Lupe?”
“She is telling me she is running the projector sometimes in her village in Mexico.” Of course she was, Bobby thought. He’d known Lupe for an entire year before he’d met Soren, but she was Soren’s friend. He knew far more about her than Bobby ever would.
“What film is it?”
“Just sit and watch.”
Bobby sat. Soren stood beside the projector for a long moment, considering; then he set it into motion. It flickered to life, and he turned off the lights before joining Bobby on the sofa. “I am sorry I am not being able to play the piano along with it,” Soren said as the countdown disappeared from the screen. “We are just having to use our imagination.”
Bobby didn’t need much of one. The title card appeared, letting everyone know this was “Mary Hopewell and Silvestro Sardini in: The Italian Gentleman.” The card lingered for a moment. Soren put an arm around Bobby, and the title card was replaced by a wealthy woman in an enormous dress, making herself up in a mirror.
The woman dropped a powder puff as a young girl ran in, waving a piece of paper. “Mama,” the next title card read. “Mama! We have a telegram from Italy.”
The girl’s mother reacted, grabbing the paper from her hand. Her eyebrows went up, and her painted mouth opened wide. “Oh. Oh. It is from my cousin, Signora Fortunata. She is coming to visit with her brother-in-law, the Duke of Codibardi.” Another title card. “She says he is looking for a wife.” The woman and the girl grasped arms and jumped about maniacally.
“She is being a devil to work with,” Soren murmured.
“Signora Fortunata?”
“No, her.” He nodded at the screen. The mother had picked up her powder puff and was bashing it against her daughter’s face. “Mary Hopewell. She is always calling me a ‘dirty wop’ even when I am telling her I am Swedish. The girl is very nice, though. Irene Allen. I am thinking she is still making pictures.”
Bobby rested his head on Soren’s shoulder. It was surreal. The more he watched of the picture, the more he remembered sitting in the Orange Tree Odeon, refusing to look at his sister Gertie and her boyfriend kissing beside him. He’d been bored silly—there was very little in the picture to appeal to a ten-year-old boy—until Silvestro Sardini came on-screen.
Then, as now, Soren’s presence was immediate. There were other actors in the scene, Mary Hopewell and her cousin and the Duke of Codibardi’s retinue, but next to him, they were all invisible. Soren was handsome, with swept-back dark hair and broad shoulders, but he was also beautiful, his lips painted dark in the way actors were made up in those movies, his skin ghostly pale. Similar to how Soren looked normally, Bobby thought, but more so, made larger than life for the movies, like everything was. The duke kissed Mary Hopewell’s hand.
“Greetings, madame,” the title card read. “I am very pleased to be in America.”
Mary Hopewell fanned herself, as if she were about to faint. Bobby could sympathize.
Seeing the Duke of Codibardi, or Silvestro Sardini, or Soren Sjovold, for the first time had changed Bobby’s life. He’d always been aware there was something different about him, something not quite the same as the other boys, but he’d never been able to place exactly what it was. He liked baseball; he liked swimming in the watering hole; he liked getting dirty and catching frogs and keeping lightning bugs in jars. He also liked men. He liked this man.
Bobby had no idea what that meant, or what it might encompass. It was years before he learned the answers to those questions. At the time, all he could do was sit in the dark, staring at Silvestro Sardini and wondering what it might be like to meet him, to know him, to be his friend. Fourteen years later, he got his wish.
Bobby looked over. Light from the screen flickered across Soren’s face. He grimaced without taking his eyes off the movie. “I am having no—what is the word?”
“Trouble watching yourself?”
Soren smiled, but then he shook his head. “I am not being of the subtle. I am doing everything like I am acting for the blind people. I am getting better in my other pictures, I am promising you.” Bobby knew that. He’d seen them all and loved them. At the moment, however, he wasn't interested in watching another moment of The Italian Gentleman. The
re was something much more important he wanted to do.
Bobby began slowly, leaning over and planting a kiss on the side of Soren’s face. Soren smiled but didn’t take his eyes off the screen. Bobby glanced up. Silvestro Sardini had taken Mary Hopewell’s hand, kissing up her arm while Miss Hopewell leaned back, her other hand on her heaving bosom. Bobby took Soren’s hand in his, planting kisses first on his fingers, then on the back of his hand. He unfastened Soren’s shirt cuff and moved upward, kissing Soren’s wrist and along his forearm, lightly dusted with dark hairs. On-screen, the title card read, “I have never seen a more perfect specimen of womanhood.”
“You’re the handsomest man I’ve ever met,” Bobby said. This sort of thing didn’t come naturally to him. Bedroom talk, dirty talk, love talk had all seemed hopelessly embarrassing at first. He hadn’t thought himself capable of it. With Soren, though, the words came naturally. It was easy to tell Soren he was attractive, or that he was wonderful, or even that Bobby longed to feel his cock inside him. All these things were true; when they were alone, there was no reason to hide them.
“Hmm,” Soren replied, still facing forward. A smile played on his lips. “I am not thinking this is a very original script, Bobby.”
Bobby laughed. Soren was always good; when he was playful, it was even better. “I love it when you fuck me,” he went on. Mary Hopewell fell into a swoon. Silvestro Sardini caught her, wafting a handkerchief over her face as her daughter ran up with smelling salts. “I love that best of all. I love it when I can feel you afterward, when I sit down on set the next day and remember what we were doing.” Soren swallowed, but still, he didn’t turn around. “I wish I could tell everyone about it,” Bobby went on. “I wish everyone could know. But if they did, all of them would want you. I wouldn’t be able to get near you, and that would kill me, because I love you so much.”
“Scandal!” said the title card. “The Duke of Codibardi has fallen in love with Violet’s mother!”
Now Soren turned, pressing his mouth against Bobby’s and yanking Bobby into his arms.
The projector flickered on, the movie forgotten, as Soren took over, pushing Bobby back onto the sofa without breaking their kiss. His tongue brushed against Bobby’s, battling deliciously. Bobby reached for Soren’s buttons, but Soren caught his wrists, moving them above Bobby’s head. He lay on top of Bobby, his arousal evident. Bobby shifted, pressing his growing erection against Soren’s, and Soren groaned in response. “Let me get my pants down,” Bobby murmured.
“No,” Soren said, ridiculously, but he let go of Bobby’s wrists. “This is being your present, yes?”
“I don’t need a….” Soren shook his head. “Okay.” Bobby kept his hands over his head, resting on the arm of the sofa. Bypassing his shirt entirely, Soren went directly for Bobby’s pants. Bobby bit his lip to keep from coming the instant Soren’s hand brushed over his cock. He restrained himself, thankfully, and Soren pushed down his pants and his undershorts, moving them to his knees. Bobby surged upward, hoping Soren would take the hint. Instead, Soren held down his hips and came up for another kiss on the mouth.
Bobby groaned into Soren’s mouth, his eyes squeezed shut. He felt a hand in his hair and then on his cheek, stroking with a gentleness Bobby often appreciated, but not when his cock was exposed to the air and straining for attention. “Soren,” he gasped.
“You are not having the patience, my darling.” There was a laugh in his voice.
“No.” Pointless to deny it. The evidence was right there, leaking onto the front of Soren’s pants.
Soren sighed, a man with many difficulties, and slid back down. He kissed Bobby’s thigh, then his hip, and then he pressed his lips to the head of Bobby’s cock.
There had been other men before Soren. Not many, and never more than once each. None of them had meant anything. Not the way Soren meant something. When he at last took Bobby’s cock into his mouth, Bobby had to stifle a sob, borne not only out of pure, unadulterated lust, but also out of love. He felt so much love for Soren, now and always, that sometimes Bobby worried it was too much. It was wrong, a little voice said, to put so much onto one man, to tie up his hopes and his future with one other person. What if he leaves you? the voice said. What then?
Soren’s mouth came off his cock, leaving Bobby at once cold and bereft. “You are opening your eyes, my darling,” Soren said. “And you are looking at the movie.”
Bobby obeyed, turning his head to face the screen. Soren, twenty-one years old and phenomenally gorgeous, was there in all his glory, staring at the camera. Staring at Bobby. It wasn’t what Bobby wanted to see. He looked down, instead, at the real Soren crouched over him, a smile on his face. He watched that Soren, the thirty-seven-year-old one, the one who’d lost his career for no good reason. The one who’d suffered the whims of Hollywood and was still happy. The one who loved Bobby the way Bobby loved him and was never shy about saying it. That man took Bobby’s cock in hand, the barest of touches, and Bobby came.
Soren lay down on top of him, carefully avoiding his sensitive, spent cock. Bobby brought up his arms and hugged him, holding him tightly. “Du är underbar. Du är den viktigaste personen i mitt liv.” Bedroom Swedish, Bobby called it. Or, in this case, sofa Swedish. Assorted compliments he couldn’t understand, exactly, but it didn’t matter. He got the idea. That was all he needed. Soren pulled back, far enough that he could look Bobby in the eye. The movie played on, the lights flickering over Soren’s face. “But you are still being melancholy?”
“No.” Bobby shook his head and said, again, more firmly, “No, I’m not. Truly.” He smiled. Soren smiled back and kissed him, a peck on the lips. Soren shifted a little, and Bobby was immediately reminded that Soren needed tending to.
“Fuck me,” he said without preamble. That always excited Soren; sure enough, Bobby saw him blush, even in the dim light.
“Here?”
“Or in bed, if you want.” Bobby slid a hand down between them, running it the length of Soren’s body until he arrived at his cock. “But do you want to travel?”
“No.” Soren sat up suddenly. He began work on his own shirt, quicker than Bobby had ever seen him undress. Bobby did the same, tossing his clothes onto the floor until he was naked on his back. When Soren was naked, he reached over, fumbling beneath the sofa for a moment. When he came up again, he had a little jar of Vaseline in his hand.
The implications of this made Bobby’s eyes widen. “You put that there?”
Soren shrugged, but he didn’t meet Bobby’s gaze. “I am thinking that maybe, for our anniversary….”
“You’d better be careful Freya doesn’t get it.” She’d embarrassed them before that way. She’d got into Soren’s bedside drawer and left a trail of goop across the bedroom carpet and halfway down the hall, culminating in a jar with a chewed lid abandoned outside the door to the guest bedroom. Lupe had had a terrible mess to clean up.
“I am telling her you are getting the very chapped hands,” Soren had explained to Bobby later. “She is laughing. Very much.” Bobby had nearly died of embarrassment.
Now, embarrassment was the least of his concerns. He shifted, getting comfortable on the soft velvet of the sofa as Soren took a scoop of Vaseline from the jar. He kissed Bobby on the calf and moved his legs up.
The pain never lasted long with Soren. It never had, even in the early days. Part of Bobby saw that as unlikely, a romanticized rose-colored memory, but Soren knew what he was doing. He’d had others before as well. Bobby had never asked for numbers or names or situations. He didn’t want to know.
“And what is it mattering anyway,” Soren said once, pressed against Bobby as they lay in bed, “when all my eyes are for you now?”
It didn’t matter. What mattered was this closeness, the way Soren moved inside him, the way sweat stuck Soren’s normally perfect hair to his forehead, as if he’d just stepped out of the pool. Soren talked, a stream of bedroom Swedish tapering into wordless groans. Bobby tightened his legs around So
ren’s body. Soren leaned forward, clumsily kissing Bobby’s cheek and then the corner of his mouth. His thrusts grew harder, his hands digging into Bobby’s shoulders so tightly, Bobby was glad he didn’t have any bathing suit scenes in this new picture. Soren buried his face in Bobby’s neck and surged forward once more. Bobby wound his arms around Soren’s back, holding him tightly as he came.
They lay together for a long moment afterward, Soren’s head resting on his chest as their breathing slowed to normal. Bobby turned a little, his nose buried in Soren’s hair, and saw a title card on the screen in front of him. “Happiness at last. The Duke and his Bride return to Italy.” Soren stood on a boat in some studio backlot somewhere, his arm around Irene Allen in a wedding dress. Irene Allen threw a bouquet off the side of the boat, and Soren peeled himself off Bobby.
Bobby sat up, his back sweaty from lying on the velvet. He felt sore, in the best of ways, and he kissed Soren once more on the cheek, just because he could.
Then he remembered. “Oh.”
“What?” Soren glanced over, alarmed. He’d bent over and picked up his pants, fumbling through his pockets for his cigarettes. He brought them out. “What is the matter?”
“I just remembered, a photographer is coming to the house tomorrow. You’ll have to skedaddle. Sorry.”
Soren lit two cigarettes and handed one to Bobby. “There is no needing for sorry. I will take Freya to the beach. She is loving to chase the crabs.” Soren took a drag on his cigarette. “I am not knowing what she will do if she is ever catching one.”
Bobby smiled. He reached out, resting a hand on Soren’s bare, sweat-slicked thigh as the film stopped, the reels spinning to a halt behind them. “Jag älskar dig.” Bobby spoke Swedish about as well as anyone else from Orange Tree, but he’d learned that phrase, and he knew Soren loved to hear it in any language. I love you. He meant it. He meant it more every day. “Happy anniversary.”