The Millionaire of Love

by David Leddick

“The one that looked like you?” Nevis asked. “Is that the one that you told me that if you didn’t get lucky in the bars picking up girls you went home and screwed each other?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “We did a lot of crazy stuff. We’d go to gay bars and pick up some guys and really get them hot to trot and then run out on them. We called it ‘wrecking ‘em.’

  “We both used to help out this woman who handed out the winner’s cup in Indianapolis when they had the races there. We used to wash her car and hang out with her. She always said she loved having cute guys in their bathing suits around the place. She would have loved making it with both of us at the same time I’m sure, but we never did. We were sort of into letting people eat their hearts out over us.”

  “Like me,” Nevis said.

  “Like you,” I said. “Once we went to a party where a girl was getting engaged and we got the bride-to-be out in a car and got her real hot and tried to get her to go away with us and get it on. She almost did. I was doing a lot of drugs in those days, and I think that maybe made me do all those wild things.”

  “What happened?” Nevis wanted to know. “Why’d you stop?”

  “I almost died,” I said. I told him about my having a mouth infection, which was gonorrhea of course, although I didn’t want to admit it. When I went to the doctor they gave me a shot of penicillin and I went into shock. I didn’t know I was allergic to it. I went right down on the floor and my heart almost stopped. I remember lying there almost completely out and praying to God and promising I’d straighten myself out if I didn’t die. When I got home I looked at myself in the mirror as I was getting ready to take a shower and I was thin and terrible looking and from that day on I quit drugs and got myself in shape.

  This little story did stop Nevis a bit. “That’s kind of impressive,” he said. “I’ve had lots of friends go all to hell with themselves with drugs but I don’t think any of them pulled themselves together without help. And some of them didn’t pull themselves together at all. They’re dead. I never did drugs because I was afraid they’d ruin my looks. You know that awful gray look addicts have. As if you just push their skin a little they’ll just crumble and collapse.” Then he added, “What happened to your cute friend?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He was from Arizona and he went back there to live with his sister. He was sick,” I said.

  “Did he have AIDS?” Nevis asked.

  I didn’t answer him. I said, “Do you know what that shithead Larry wrote me the other day from Germany? Today actually. He wrote me that Dan Danforth tested positive for AIDS. Just sort of casually in the middle of the letter. Like it was nothing. As though both he and I haven’t both slept with Dan a lot. He really is a prime bitch.”

  “Is Dan Danforth the man you left behind in California who had been a lover of Larry’s?” Nevis asked. I explained that Dan had ditched Larry just before I met him, then I ditched him. Larry told me that one reason he was so hot for me was that I had given Dan the gate. Dan wasn’t all that great.

  “I didn’t quite get it myself when you showed me his picture,” Nevis said.

  “Oh, he was a very good fuck. So was Larry. But I never really cared about either of them,” I said.

  “You told me that you were in love with Larry,” Nevis said.

  “Who said anything about love?” I said. “He could tuck those ankles right up beside his ears and he really loved having it stoked to him.”

  “Of course that is a very attractive quality,” Nevis said. I looked at him to see if he was kidding. Or making fun of me. You never could tell with Nevis.

  He immediately became his reassuring Nevisian self. “You can go get a test tomorrow. If you were always a top, AIDS isn’t all that easy to catch. It isn’t communicated by kissing very often. It seems highly unlikely that you can get it by giving or getting a blow job. Since it has to get into your bloodstream, only those people who take it up the bum and have some kind of cut or opening are going to catch it. Which means people who take it up the bum a lot.”

  “Whew.” I said no more. Nevis went on.

  “You ought to get in touch with that girlfriend you left behind in California, too. She should get a test.”

  “I will,” I said, but didn’t tell Nevis that I had no plans to tell Esther that she had been at risk for AIDS. He didn’t put it together that the girlfriend in California was the same girl that was in the threesome and I wasn’t about to tell him.

  “Why did you break off with that girl?” Nevis asked.

  I told him, “I don’t know exactly.” But of course I did know. Once we did the threesome I knew I could never trust her again. “It wasn’t love; it was lust,” I said. “I just thought seriously about Esther one day and decided that I could do better.” I realized I had said too much from the look that Nevis gave me.

  I said no more. I didn’t tell him that I not only had no intention of telling Esther that she should have an AIDS test, but I wasn’t so sure that I was going to go get one myself.

  ~13~

  Minerva Minot

  Dozing in his room on the way to sleep, Nevis’s brain snagged on Minerva Minot. Would he have the courage to ask Radomir more about her? Was it even a good idea to ask? Did he even care to find out what had been going on with Minerva Minot?

  Shortly before leaving for Crete he had had a call from Minerva. She was a friend of Radomir’s from the Alliance Francaise and Nevis thought it was very possible Radomir was sleeping with her before he left Paris.

  Nevis remembered well the first time Minerva’s name had come up. Radomir had invited some friends from the language school to go out to the country. Nevis had decided not to go because he thought the friends would see Radomir and him together, draw their conclusions and—zut—there went Radomir’s image at the school. He told Radsomir why he wasn’t going and the reply was, “Oh, I don’t care about that.”

  When the weekend was over Radomir complained because the young girl from Guatemala he’d invited hadn’t been able to get away from her au pair job, and she had asked if the American girl, Minerva, could come in her place. Radomir thought Minerva had pushed her way in, and had kept on being pushy all weekend.

  Later Nevis had come home to find Minerva visiting and had listened to her long story of pursuing a career in singing in Europe. Her air of an earnest rabbit from Texas wasn’t going to serve her very well on the cabaret circuit, he thought, but he’d seen stranger careers come into being.

  Now Minerva wanted to know when she called if he’d heard from Radomir.

  He told her Radomir was in Crete and if he heard more he’d let her know. Minerva had received a postcard, but without an address. She added, “Radomir said I could come join them if I came back from the United States early enough, and now I’m here and I don’t know where they are!” Nevis wondered which of Radomir’s lists she was on. Since he knew she called his parents from time to time, evidently she was on the “Address Unknown” one.

  Nevis suggested, to cheer her up, that they were probably in some dreary youth hostel somewhere with sand in their sleeping bags. “I hear there’s a lot of wild sex at those beaches in Greece,” Minerva said, a note of jealousy flickering in her voice. Nevis immediately registered that she most certainly must have been sleeping with Radomir. He decided to hate her but then relented. Just another member of the Radomir Pulkanovic Walking Wounded Club, he thought, and felt a bit sorry for the Texas rabbit.

  “I’m alone here now that he’s gone,” Minerva went on, “but I’m going to try to keep reaching out to people all the same.” Now Nevis did feel sorry for her, and he said they should have dinner together sometime.

  Poor Minerva hung over his head during the week. He also wondered what she knew about Radomir that he would like to know and could worm out of her. He called her and they made a date for dinner.

  The evening of their dinner Minerva came by to pick him up as the restaurant was near his flat. When he came down the stairs she was wedged betwe
en the mailboxes and the door in the entranceway. He thought, You have been granted a stay of execution, Minerva, I’m not going to strangle you for having slept with the man I love. Not tonight at least. Although I may feel like it before this dinner is over.

  Nevis remembered Radomir telling him he felt sorry for Minerva because her parents sent her the money she needed for her studies and to live on, but they didn’t want her around. Nevis thought Minerva had a pretty good deal. Sleeping around Europe, all expenses paid.

  At dinner he found Minerva rather restful as she enjoyed doing most of the talking. The previous year she had spent in the Italian countryside with some man who was now history. She conceded that he was Italian and that he was not her vocal coach.

  When Nevis brought up Radomir and said as cheerfully as he could, “I’m sure he’ll be back,” Minerva took her paw-like hands out of her salad and said firmly, “I don’t think so. He felt he was too dependent upon you.” After this Minerva felt she had said too much perhaps and Nevis sensed her guard was up. Nevis felt quite inadequate at leading her into revelatory admissions and changed the subject.

  He asked her if she still saw the girl from Guatemala whose place she had taken on the fatal weekend in the country. “No, she’s really not so interesting, you know. I call her and she never wants to do any of the things I’m planning to do. She’s really too young.” Nevis guessed that both girls had been interested in Radomir. Certainly he had spoken far oftener of the Guatemalan girl. And Minerva, being older, stronger, and more aggressive, had won out. Nevis stopped feeling any pity for her. He hoped the Guatemalan would revenge herself well on Miss Quiver-Nose.

  He did learn that at the present time Minerva was having an affair with a French musician whose apartment she had gone to look at. She hadn’t liked the apartment, but she had liked the musician. As for Radomir, “He was my best friend in Paris. And he left town on the spur of the moment without writing. Just a postcard. I’m going to forget him. Just forget he ever existed.”

  You can say those kinds of things when you’re young, Nevis thought. You can revenge yourself on those who desert your love by forgetting their existence. Or you can try. Later you know it’s not so easy. They keep turning up. And much later you know your love’s all used up. They got the last of it and made off, leaving you with just the hole where the transfusion used to be. And the love for them that’s left just keeps leaking out, dripping on the sidewalk behind you when you walk, useful to no one. Nevis felt as though he was several pints short on his love level and that it was very unlikely he was ever going to get them back from anyone else. He wanted to go home.

  Nevis allowed Minerva to drop him off at his apartment. Not very gentlemanly, but he wasn’t feeling very gentlemanly. As they crossed on the rue La Bruyère she walked uphill slightly ahead of him. He saw her less-than-slender buttocks bobbling in her slacks. I know exactly what her body’s like, he thought. Already flaccid. Poor muscle tone. Not very large breasts, already drooping. And this is who Radomir prefers to clamber upon. My ass is much nicer, much firmer. Pound for pound I’m more beautiful now than she ever was or ever will be. And I’m sure I’m a ten-times better fuck. This little burst of hatred out of the way, and it really wasn’t directed so much at Minerva as at the whole way that most people got their sex lives together, Nevis said good night pleasantly and wished her well.

  When he got inside the message button was blinking on his answering machine. When he played it back it was the voice of Radomir’s female friend from Arizona. “Nevis,” the voice said, “I’ve got an address for Radomir. It’s Number Twenty-Four, Hydranthos Beach Hotel, Plakias, Crete, Greece.” She spelled “Hydranthos” and “Plakias” and then said, “Mirthios is where they mail letters. It’s nearby. But he’s in Plakias. Good luck.”

  Nevis stared at the address in his hand. “This is it” ran over and over again in his brain, as though the tape machine had transferred itself to his head. He turned to his desk and started a letter.

  ~14~

  The Last Night on Crete

  The few days left on Crete followed the same routine. Nevis appeared in the dining room for Radomir to bring him some breakfast and then strolled the town. He found the Herald Tribune in the general store, only one day late. He returned to the taverna terrace and read the paper until Radomir could leave. They lunched in the town and then went to the beach in the afternoons. The friends drifted on and off the beach. They talked about a more isolated nude beach where the Greek boys walked up and down along the water’s edge with erections. “Nothing beats advertising,” Nevis said.

  The night before Nevis was to leave he had two kirs before dinner and smoked even more than usual. The preceding evenings both Radomir and he had retired relatively early to their separate rooms. Radomir talked about how much rowdy partying they did and Nevis was determined to not leave Radomir and his friends to party on by themselves if the evening were to develop in that direction.

  He also had a small bottle of Greek wine with his meal and they ordered more in the village. It was chilly and no one was on the terrace except three or four of Radomir’s gang, who joined their table. As the restaurant closed there was talk of going to the disco but the girls in the party, Sacha and Carla, begged off and left for the youth hostel where they lived. Radomir, Nevis, and the blond Canadian boy, Tony, went to the same disco where Nevis had searched for Radomir the night he had arrived. Nevis was feeling dazed by this point but took a seat at the bar between the two younger men and ordered an ouzo along with them. A young Greek who played the records at the disco joined them. The Greek man rubbed his hands over Nevis at frequent intervals as they talked. He fancies me, thought Nevis. This is bizarre.

  As they left the disco an hour later a small open truck was passing. “Let’s go to the other disco,” shouted Radomir and what was apparently every pedestrian in the street piled into the back of the truck. Nevis scrambled over the back board with the rest of them, and they bobbled off into the night. The other disco turned out to be a barnlike structure along the beach road that they had passed every afternoon walking back and forth to lie in the sun on the nude beach.

  The large black room was empty except for three or four couples lurking in the shadows. Their party advanced to the bar and ordered more ouzo. The disco music blared and Nevis flung himself onto the dance floor with the others. He wasn’t sure how much longer he would be standing. When the music stopped they went back to the bar for more ouzo. Nevis was so drunk he knew he wouldn’t get any drunker. Radomir was sitting on his left. Nevis crossed his arms and grabbed the under side of Radomir’s nearby arm to steady himself. Radomir was talking to a small, pretty German girl all in red. Then he was kissing her. Very long. With a lot of tongue, Nevis guessed. He felt he was not only drunk but that something was collapsing within himself. Then Radomir was kissing the German girl again. “That was nice,” he said as he pulled away. The German girl frolicked off onto the dance floor. “You stay right here,” Radomir said to Nevis. “Stay right here and don’t go anywhere.”

  Nevis would have liked to run out one of the side doors that stood open on the black Cretan night, but he thought it just as well to not finish the evening passing out in the nearby grain fields. He wasn’t sure that anyone would bother to look for him. Radomir floated into view just as the disco music changed. “We have to dance this one,” he said. “This is the one we requested.” Nevis could see him on the dance floor. He had a kind of floaty, ice-skating style that covered a lot of ground.

  Then they were leaving. There was no one left in the disco except Radomir and Nevis and the Canadian boy, who struck off in the opposite direction toward the hillside hotel. Nevis took Radomir’s hand in his and pushed them both into his pocket to give him support as he walked. He had that stiff-kneed gait that told him he was very, very drunk. At this point he wasn’t at all sure he was going to make it all the way back to the hotel.

  They passed the taverna, which had the same ghostly off-season look it had
the night Nevis arrived. They turned into the alley behind the hotel and paused in front of Radomir’s door. Nevis was not at all sure he could negotiate the stairs to his room all by himself. Then he flung his arms about Radomir, sobbing into his neck. “Let me just come into your room. Just to lie beside you, that’s all. I just can’t make it without you.” He sobbed harder and harder. The falling away that had begun in the disco collapsed and the pain and sadness of being alone during the past months roared through him. “I just can’t make it without you.” He continued to sob and then realized that he had to sit down or he wouldn’t be conscious. He groped his way to the step in front of Radomir’s door and continued sobbing. Radomir stood beside him with one arm over his shoulder. Nevis clung to Radomir’s legs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. A man passed in the darkness of the alley and looked at them curiously. But not too curiously. The sky was beginning to lighten over the ocean.

  “You’re going to have to help me up to my room,” Nevis muttered. Radomir had not said a word. As they dragged through the alley toward the stairway to Nevis’s room he said repeatedly, “I can’t. I just can’t. I just can’t.” Out of the depths roaring and rushing through him Nevis felt admiration for him.

  In his room Nevis clawed his clothes off and fell on the bed. “I hate myself for what I’m doing to your life. I’m shit. I’m just shit. This is awful what’s happening. Oh, God. Oh, God.” While he sobbed and mumbled and pounded on the mattress with his fists, Radomir stood in the doorway and looked at him. Nevis was aware of the look of disdain on his face. Radomir said, “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll make sure you’re up in time to get your taxi for the airport.” As he left, Nevis fell asleep. It was six o’clock.

  At eight Nevis woke up. He did not feel too terrible, although a little floaty. He shaved, dressed, packed, and carried his suitcase down the stairs and through the alley toward the taverna. As he passed Radomir’s room Radomir was in the hall locking his door. He looked surprised to see Nevis up and presentable. “Did you sleep?” Nevis asked him.