The Millionaire of Love

by David Leddick

  There was an aunt who wore muumuus in her winter flat in Acapulco and drank a lot of tequila. There was another aunt married into the dreariest depths of dull normalcy in a small town in Indiana. The very antithesis of her sister, Radomir’s mother, who in her sixties enjoyed wearing short shorts and high heels, and dueling with sticks with her husband in the forest when they took walks.

  There was the father, always a stern martinet, who on one of Radomir’s returns home from Europe, had told him that during the war he had worked with the CIA and now felt deeply unhappy about the dishonesty and disloyalty he had seen there. There was the older brother who had been almost completely unmanned by drugs, and who had been held back from the brink by Radomir’s parents. Nevis thought, We have all been through horrible things. But horrible things are very different when you’re single and in the fast lane from horrible things when you’re married and in the farmlands. But they are all horrible.

  There was another brother who had devoted himself to being the “good son.” He had the college degree, the pretty wife, the nearby home with the neat lawn. And the brother closest to Radomir in age. Radomir had returned to the U.S. to serve as best man for his wedding. The brother had insisted several times that Radomir return for the wedding to be the best man. When Radomir returned to Paris he said that the brother had waited until the wedding rehearsal to tell him that someone else was to be the best man. Nevis was angrier about this than Radomir seemed to be. It was at that wedding, also, that Radomir’s father distinguished himself by refusing to wear one of the silly chorus-boy outfits favored for American weddings and insisted upon wearing a simple tuxedo. Nevis thought perhaps he had fallen in love with the wrong member of Radomir’s family.

  It was during a massage while Nevis was rubbing his swimmer’s body that Radomir told about being missing from the family swimming pool as a very little boy. After much diving, searching, calling, and general hysteria, his mother had found him in his own little bed, where he had crawled, tiny wet trunks and all, because he was exhausted from his infatuation with swimming. Nevis thought about this. He had not been very young in this same time period. At that time he had been very much in love with a rising Broadway actor who looked like Tyrone Power and who was now a fairly unattractive antique store owner. It made him feel very old.

  Radomir also told Nevis that when he was small he was fascinated by the miniature paper umbrellas stuck in summer drinks and ice cream treats, and used to unroll the paper forming the knob of the umbrella. Made of bits of oriental newspapers, they were covered with oriental characters, which he used to study and wonder about the foreign land from which they came.

  They also discussed fears during one of those muscle-probing sessions, and Radomir admitted that he had a deep fear of spiders, which Nevis already knew about. But he added that he had a horror of needles, and also chickens. Nevis wished he had paid more attention when studying psychology. Certainly these pointy, prickly, crawly things added up to something meaningful. He also remembered having seen Radomir burning flies with a cigarette as they crawled across a windowpane stunned with heat. When he mentioned this as needless cruelty, Radomir had told him that he also pulled the wings from flies and put them in spiders’ nests. Nevis hoarded all these stories to think about later.

  The sun over the sea was still high, but Radomir had to return to the hotel to shower and prepare for work at the taverna at six o’clock. Nevis stood up and brushed the sand from his buttocks and pulled on his black bikini. Radomir pulled on his faded blue Speedo swimming trunks. They trudged through the sand toward the tamarind trees in the distance. A woman with somewhat pendulous breasts who had carefully watched them getting up continued to watch them walk away. Nevis noticed quite a few nude and nonnude voyeurs on the fringe of the nude beach. At the tamarind trees they stopped and Nevis put down his beach mat to brush the sand off his feet and put on his espadrilles. Radomir was wearing sweat socks and high Reeboks that he’d put on with his shorts and an oversized tank top.

  The long, sandy road that ran along the beach back toward the hotel passed a sweep of grain fields on the landward side, running back to the descending hills. Nevis could imagine the Minoans, long before the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, trudging this same sandy strip beside their little clutch of grain fields. No wonder they are dark red in the frescoes, he thought. They probably had great tans.

  Halfway back to the hotel Nevis realized he had left his beach mat wedged into the cleft of a tamarind. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll go back and get it.”

  “Are you sure?” Radomir asked.

  “No, no, you go ahead. You’ve got to get ready for work. I’ll be right along,” Nevis told him and turned around.

  He started walking back quickly. After a few hundred yards he turned to watch Radomir walking away. In his shorts and loose top and lace-up shoes he had the air of a very small boy, walking alone down an empty road. Nevis felt that awful hand grabbing at his heart. It felt like he was watching his child walking away alone on the first day of school. He put his hand on his heart to clutch it and forced himself to run down the road toward the tree that held the mat.

  When he got to Radomir’s room at the hotel, Radomir was coming out of the shower. There was something in the manner in which he wrapped his towel around his hips sarong style that always made Nevis think he had just been admiring himself in the mirror. With his all-over tan he was something to admire. Nevis wondered if sometimes he took the towel away and admired himself in the mirror, and if sometimes he masturbated in front of the mirror, excited by the physical beauty that confronted him.

  Nevis had known a dancer who told him that his reflection in the classroom mirror had often given him an erection. Well, beauty is beauty, I guess, thought Nevis, even if it’s your own.

  “Before you get dressed show me what you look like in that green bikini I bought you,” demanded Nevis. Passing through Galeries Lafayette one day he had seen a Brazilian bikini in turquoise on a mannequin in the men’s department. He had bought it for Radomir, who tried it on in the privacy of his bedroom and said he would never wear it. “It does cover my pubic hair, but that’s about all,” he had said. Nevis had noticed that it was among his effects in his room, even so.

  Radomir disappeared into the bathroom and returned in the bikini. Cut high on the leg, it gave him the length of leg he needed, and his narrow waist rising to the broad shoulders and built-up biceps was relatively dizzying for Nevis. “It looks wonderful on you, but I do understand why you don’t want to wear it,” he said. “It’s too provocative.”

  “That’s right,” Radomir said and went back into the bathroom to take it off.

  When Radomir went on duty, Nevis went back to his room. He lay down on his bed for an hour, then showered and dressed carefully. Knowing he would be in Crete only three days, he had packed lightly but preplanned so he would not have to appear at dinner in the same thing twice. Years of moving from Helsinki to Paris to Guadeloupe to Los Angles to New York made it possible for him to program what he would wear days in advance. He had often explained to people who wondered that he could leave for such jaunts with one suitcase: “If the same people aren’t going to see you, you can keep wearing the same thing. It’s just your underwear that’s a problem.” The day when he dressed to amuse himself was lost back in a time he barely remembered.

  This evening he wore the white T-shirt he’d bought in Madrid with white pants and put on the extremely tight black espadrilles he’d bought in the village. He tied a black sweater with Matisse color blobs he had bought at the store Corolla in London over his shoulders. He looked quite tan when he passed a mirror. He had not been liking the way he looked for several years now, but he was still thin enough and blond enough to meet his own standards.

  He took a walk through the village again before returning to the taverna terrace. Radomir came out and brought him a kir. The Greek wine with which it was made got him a little woozy immediately, but he thought,
What the hell. If I’m going to get out of control, it might as well be here. He smoked several cigarettes, too, while he drank his kir. An infrequent smoker, he found he was smoking fairly incessantly on this trip. It was smoke or scream, he decided.

  He could see Radomir moving around inside the taverna. Every time Radomir disappeared from sight he felt panic rising inside himself. Having found him and followed him this far, he was living with a dreamlike feeling that none of it was happening at all. For some reason he had come to this obscure resort and fantasized that Radomir was here. Every time Radomir reappeared from behind a pillar he felt a surge of relief. This is really crazy, he thought. He’s here. He’s not going to disappear. Now calm down. But he couldn’t.

  At 10:30, having long finished his dinner and having smoked many cigarettes, he saw Radomir emerge from the inner dining room. He came to the table and said, “Let’s get out of here. He’ll find something more for me to do if I don’t split.” “He” was the taverna owner, the dazed man who had given a room key to Nevis the night of his arrival.

  They walked back into the village and found a table on a terrace by the water. They ordered drinks. “I was surprised that you had dinner with Minerva,” Radomir said.

  “She called me and she sounded so lonely I thought I should,” Nevis answered.

  “I guess you figured out that she and I were seeing each other,” Radomir told him.

  “Minerva told me you were her best friend in Paris. And that when you never wrote her she decided to just forget all about you.”

  “She probably told you that to keep you from thinking anything was going on,” Radomir said.

  “I remember when you first met her,” Nevis went on. “When she forced her way into that weekend in the country. You came back and talked about her. You didn’t even like her.”

  “Yeah,” Radomir said, “but then I got to know her better.” Nevis wondered what really had gone on. Nevis dropped it. At least he had made it to Plakias, and Minerva hadn’t.

  They left soon, as Radomir was tired. At Radomir’s door in the alley behind the hotel they hugged briefly and Nevis climbed the stairs to his room. He was tired, too.

  ~12~

  Radomir’s Perversions

  “I’m perverted,” I told Nevis one evening in Paris. He said he’d never heard anyone say that before. “I’ve known hundreds of perverts in my lifetime, but I never heard anyone actually say it. They all thought they were perfectly normal,” he told me.

  Then I told him about the threesome I had with Esther and her boyfriend in California. I didn’t tell him the truth, actually. I told him that I went out with my boss and boss’s girlfriend and that we all went home together. Somehow I didn’t want him to know that it was my girlfriend and her boyfriend. And in fact I did work for her boyfriend. Kind of fucked up situation, that.

  When I think of it, Nevis and I had a sexual relationship. A kind of one. I enjoyed talking about sex: the things I’ve done sexually. And he enjoyed hearing about them. I guess he realized that that was all the sex life he was going to have with me.

  “As far as perversion is concerned, I think that depends on what you do in bed when you get there,” Nevis said.

  “She got hers that night, that’s for sure,” I said. I didn’t say anything about thinking about screwing the other guy, too, but I told Nevis he was a health nut and a marathon runner and had a great body.

  “He was probably hoping that in the heat of the night he’d cop a little action with you, too. I’ve known a lot of those physical fitness freaks. Finally they all want some guy to sock it to them.”

  Damn, I thought. And I blew it. Actually I don’t think Esther would have been very happy seeing one of her boyfriends shoving it up the ass of the other one, no matter how it would have turned out. Or maybe that was exactly what she wanted to see. What a weird, weird world.

  “I don’t think that really comes under the heading of perversions. Two guys sleeping with one girl. More under the heading of experimentation,” Nevis said. “You should read Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. There’s a threesome in there. His girlfriend eggs him on to have a go with a whore they pick up in Rome. He claims that when he was slipping it into things, he didn’t even know what they were or whom they belonged to. I think most men see sleeping with two women as an exciting achievement. Of course, he blames his girlfriend the next day and she gets mad because she thinks he’s suggesting she is a lesbian.”

  I told him that it sounded interesting and he said he’d get it for me. He was always getting me things to read. He got me Lolita twice and I never read it just to spite him. I’m sure it was to sort of explain his huge old crush on me.

  “How about when I used to take phone calls for that call girl in Denver?” I said. I had already told Nevis about when I lived with Beverly in Denver, He knew that I had wanted to go to school in Colorado and that my father refused to pay for an out-of-state college, so I had just set off by myself. I finally moved in with this call girl I met in a bar. Beverly always wanted to make it with me, but we never did. Well, once if you can call it that. She wanted to demonstrate her blow-job technique and I let her—in the kitchen, me sitting in a straight-back chair and her kneeling on the linoleum. I really am perverted in ways I’d never tell Nevis about or he’d think he had a chance. I’m not all that interested in women, but if it’s doing something kinky I can get excited and it doesn’t matter if it’s a woman or a man. That was so strange with my blue jeans down and old Beverly’s blonde head bobbing up and down that I really got into it. It was exciting kind of waiting for a neighbor to knock on the back door at any second.

  Beverly wasn’t really good-looking at all, overweight, not a pretty face. She had nothing going for her, but I always admired her just going out there and making money and getting all these guys on the telephone all the time.

  “I saw my first porn video at Beverly’s,” I told Nevis. “It was about some young woman who doesn’t want to sleep with this older guy. And so he shows her what he plans to do with her with an older woman first so she can watch.”

  “That kind of sounds like a scenario from the Marquis de Sade,” Nevis said. “An older man wants to deflower a young girl. Lets her watch while he boffs an older woman who expresses a great deal of pleasure, making the young girl jealous.”

  “That was sort of it,” I said. “Beverly was playing the video for some guy, probably to get him excited. I just wandered in by chance and they asked me to stay and watch it.” I always acted a little naive with Nevis. Of course, I got the picture right away. Beverly thought that the guy might like a threesome and she might get to score with me. I kind of get a kick out of letting people think I don’t know what they’re up to.

  “Beverly sounds like an okay kind of dame,” Nevis said. “You showed me those pictures when she took you up into the mountains for your birthday.” It had been fun playing in the snow. How old was Beverly then? Thirty? Maybe not even. With me she was kind of acting like the girl with a cute boyfriend having fun. Something she really never had, I suppose. “Of course, Beverly fucked a number of guys to pay for the trip,” Nevis said.

  “That was her business,” I told him.

  “Of course, that was her business,” he said and laughed.

  “Didn’t you ever feel bad about Beverly working as a hooker?” Nevis asked me.

  “No, that really was her business. It wasn’t mine. I worked as a hooker once myself,” I said, just to sort of shock him thoroughly. “Yeah, Beverly had this male friend who was a prostitute. He was the first guy I had sex with, to tell you the truth. Herbert was his name. Funny name for such a handsome, sexy guy. I think Beverly sort of set it up when I told her I had never really gotten it on with another man. Herbert set me up with one of his clients.”

  I didn’t tell Nevis that I had fallen in love with Herbert. He had a gorgeous body, not too muscular but with great stomach muscles. And a really perfect cock. He was tan all over. He went to the tanning parlor eve
ry week. And he was very professional. When we slept together he fucked me, but very carefully so it hardly hurt at all—plenty of K-Y and he used a rubber. He was a great kisser, too. I fell in love with him, but Herbert wasn’t having any. We slept together a couple more times, but I guess he felt he was giving away what he could be making money from.

  “I thought I’d give it a try. Everybody I knew was doing it. It was awful. The guy sent a limousine for me. His limousine. He was fat and really disgusting. All I could do was let him give me a blow job. I didn’t even take my clothes off. Afterward his driver took me home and on the way stopped and bought me a cup of coffee. He told me I wasn’t cut out for that kind of work and I shouldn’t do it anymore. He was so right.” I told all this to Nevis, who didn’t seem particularly surprised.

  “All of us have sold it in one way or another,” Nevis said. “Think of all those women who marry for money who have to lie down under some disgusting guy just because that’s part of the deal.

  “I never slept with anyone because there was something in it for me, but I have slept with men from time to time when I didn’t feel like it just because they wanted to so much. Always a mistake, it’s always a mistake. For me that’s the worst thing in the world, sleeping with someone when you don’t feel like it. They are having a wonderful time and you feel like it’s a bad day at the gym. Talk about inhabiting two different worlds. I guess I’m lucky that I have had very few experiences like that. For some people it’s a way of life.

  “When I pass whores on the street I always think they are going to go straight to heaven when they die. Imagine sleeping with four or five different guys a day. A lifetime of unattractive men banging your box all day long every day. You’ve already been in hell.”

  Nevis had a point there.

  “I almost had a threesome a couple of times in California with my best pal,” I said.