The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  Their companion slowly reached into his coat breast pocket, extracted a handkerchief, and touched it to his nose. “A rather interesting smell, isn’t it?” he observed dryly in a low voice. “Quite ... evocative, one might say.”

  Sean shot him an amused glance. The driver gave them a flat, uninterested stare in the rearview mirror as he signaled a turn.

  “These Egyptian cabdrivers are hardly ever conversational,” the other rider remarked, sotto voce. Sean and Elias exchanged a look as he pulled a wicker basket out of the shopping bag at his feet. “Let’s see if these survived the trip—ah yes.” He drew out and opened a container of strawberries, and, after due consideration, extracted one from the pile and popped it into his mouth. At the taste his eyes closed in utter bliss. “Excellent.” He opened his eyes again and proffered the basket. “Won’t you try some?

  They’re really exquisite, the last of the season.”

  Sean shook his head, but Elias, suddenly aware he was hungry, took a few. “Thanks,” he said. The berries indeed tasted very good, with a flavor both sweet and tart. Elias rolled them on his tongue slowly, watching the man rearrange the contents of his shopping bag in order to place the basket back inside. Elias caught glimpses of a feather boa and something sewn with royal blue sequins. After organizing the bag to his satisfaction, the other man settled back into his seat. “So, have you two been over to the Island much this summer?”

  “Just once or twice,” said Sean.

  “This is my first visit,” Elias said.

  “Indeed!” The man raised an eyebrow. “You have only just come out, perhaps?”

  Elias blinked, taken aback. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, a special occasion, then! I’ve been going to the Island for over forty years now myself.”

  “Really?” Elias said. “Wow.”

  “I’ve made many dear friends there over the years. My family, really.” The man thought for a minute and smiled faintly. “We actually used to call each other ‘sister,’ you know. Odd how the language changes, isn’t it? You young people today speak of being in the ‘gay community’; we never thought of it that way. We came to the Island because it was one place where we could be what we knew we really were.”

  “And what was that?” Elias asked, fascinated.

  “Well, I’ve always known what I am,” the man said simply. “I’m a fairy.” He looked out the window.

  “Ah, good, there’s the landing.”

  The cab jolted to a stop with a suddenness that made them all lurch in their seats. Sean opened the door and they all got out. The cabdriver had already hopped out and was opening the trunk. Soon they all had their bags and were walking toward the water.

  “We want that one over to the right, Elias,” Sean said, pointing. “It goes to the Pines. The other one’s headed for Cherry Grove.”

  “That’s mine,” said their companion. “Good to meet you, gentlemen. Have a splendid weekend. And you, young man,” he said to Elias, “I hope you find your family here.” He gave a thin smile and strode off toward the other ferry, the tail of the feather boa bobbing like a beckoning finger over the edge of his shopping bag.

  Elias stared after him until Sean finally recalled his attention with a touch to his elbow. “Hey, Elias. We need to go stand in line for our tickets.” He glanced in the direction Elias was still looking. “What is it?”

  “That guy ...” Elias’s voice trailed off.

  “What about him?”

  Elias decided to screw up his courage and ask. “Are most of the guys who go to the Island like that?”

  “Like what?” Sean asked patiently.

  “Uh, you know ...”

  “You mean, kind of swishy?”

  “Well... yeah.”

  “Do queens bother you?”

  “They make me sort of nervous,” Elias admitted. “They just seem so ... out there, like they don’t give a damn what anybody thinks ... and I always do. Give a damn, that is.”

  “I felt the same way for a long time,” Sean said unexpectedly. “Finally, I figured out I was just resenting them for being braver than me, which is pretty stupid when you get right down to it.” He shrugged. “As for the answer to your question”—he gestured toward the crowd— “what do you think?”

  For the first time, Elias took a good look around. The crowd fairly pulsed with weekend party spirit. Men in denim cutoffs lounged on coolers, chatting, sliding their seats and bags forward as the line inched along. Heads turned, eyes inscrutable behind sunglasses, watching others watch them. Many had taken off their shirts, displaying the results of hours spent at the gym and on the beach catching the rays. To one side, a group of half a dozen men played Frisbee, cheered on by whoops and clapping and the barking of an overexcited golden retriever. The light of the setting sun glanced off shoulders, biceps, and rippling abdominals, turning sculpted flesh to warm glowing bronze. “Oh, my,” Elias breathed.

  “It’s really something, isn’t it?” Sean said, grinning.

  Elias nodded. “You know, I think I could get used to this.”

  By the time the ferry chugged into the harbor at Fire Island Pines the sun was more than halfway below the horizon. It finally disappeared, extinguished like the last spark in a piece of burned paper, as they disembarked at the wooden-plank town square. The sounds of parties in full swing drifted over the water from the various expensive pleasure craft docked on both sides of the harbor; the reflections of swaying Chinese lanterns bobbed on the water like dancing fireflies.

  “Jerry’s place is on Driftwood Walk. Let’s get a wagon for toting the groceries.”

  “A wagon?”

  Sure enough, little red wagons were available for rent at dockside. “I can’t believe it,” Elias laughed.

  “I haven’t pulled one of those things behind me since I was a kid.”

  “There aren’t any cars or roads on Fire Island, you know, just wooden boardwalks. Come on, Jerry’s expecting us. I’ll bet the fatted calf should be just about ready to come off the spit by now.”

  Dinner was not, in fact, roast beef, but fresh tuna steaks with artichokes and mushrooms. When dinner was over, they all leaned back in the Adirondack chairs on the outside deck, finishing their last sips of wine and sighing with repletion.

  “That tasted great, Jerry,” Sean said. “Thanks.”

  “Too much Madeira in the sauce, though,” said Rafe, putting his feet up on the cooler. Jerry, a tall man with salt-and-pepper curls clustered around a bald spot, laughed as he got up to clear the table. “What? Oh, come on, Rafe, that dinner was a work of art!”

  “Yeah, sure, sure,” Rafe grumbled into his beer. “That’s exactly what it was. Art. Jer, I’m telling you that when I come home from work after an intense day in the trenches of corporate America, I need to be able to sink my fangs into a big haunch of something that once had red blood in it.” He took a swig of beer. “I sometimes have visions of inviting all my old tricks from my Harley days over for dinner, just to see the looks on their faces when Jerry brings out a big platter of Chicken Grand Marnier au Peche.”

  “You did empty your plate, you hypocrite.” Jerry elbowed the sliding door open and headed for the kitchen with a stack of plates.

  “Why can’t you cook us something more butch?” Rafe shouted after him. “Like ... shark, say. That would be appropriate for a lawyer to serve.”

  “Jerry’s not a lawyer,” Sean said. “He’s a teddy bear.”

  “Cooked in something calculated to sear the tongue off,” Rafe went on without noticing the interruption. “Like chili, maybe.”

  “Chili! With shark?” Jerry, back from the kitchen, shuddered and then looked thoughtful. “Maybe some Cajun spices, now. I remember a restaurant I tried once in New Orleans. .. .”

  “I thought dinner was good,” said Elias uncertainly, not wanting to get into the middle of an argument between the pair but still feeling that it was only polite to stick up for his host’s cooking.

  “Good?�
�� said Jerry. “It was superb. Elias, you have excellent taste. Who wants coffee?”

  “I can get the cups, or the cream and sugar or something,” Elias volunteered. He followed Jerry out to the kitchen.

  “Cups are in that cupboard next to the sink,” Jerry said, pointing. Elias opened the cupboard door and carefully pulled them out. They were a Danish pattern—the same one his sister-in-law used, he thought—and looked expensive, like everything else in Jerry’s kitchen. He reached for the sugar bowl on the counter and saw Jerry eyeing him curiously as he scooped coffee into the filter basket.

  “So ... have you known Sean long?”

  “He’s ... um, kind of a new acquaintance.” Elias looked down at the blue-rimmed cup in his hand, suddenly struck by the truth of it. My god. Two nights ago I was eating out of Dumpsters and sleeping on a warehouse floor, and tonight I’m at a dinner party. Jerry fit the filter basket into the coffee machine and went to the sink to fill the carafe with water. “Oh, by the way, I put your bag by the stairs. You and Sean can sleep wherever you like. There’s the room at the top of the stairs, or the smaller one by the bathroom ... ?”

  His voice trailed off into a question mark, and it took Elias a moment to catch on. He’s fishing around to find out if we’re sleeping together. Anxious to clarify matters, Elias said hastily, “Well, I don’t know what Sean wants to do, but uh, I guess I’d like to go to bed pretty soon. I suppose Sean can have whichever room he usually stays in and I’ll take the other one, if that’s all right.” Feeling a blush coming on, he went toward the refrigerator to fetch the half-and-half.

  “You want to go to bed right away?” Jerry said, sounding startled. “You’re sure? I mean, Rafe and I were talking about heading out to the Ice Palace. And there’ll be parties going on all over the Island.”

  Elias hesitated. It certainly did seem stupid to go to bed early just in order to stake out a separate bedroom for himself.

  “Sean will certainly stay out late,” Jerry added.

  Elias looked down at the half-and-half in his hand. Yeah, and maybe if he’s out for a good time tonight he doesn ‘t really want a kid like me tagging along.

  Just then, Sean came into the kitchen with more dishes. Jerry appealed to him. “Hey, talk him out of it, Sean.”

  “Talk him out of what?”

  “Elias here is talking about turning in early.”

  Sean turned to Elias with a look of surprise as he put the salad plates on the counter. Was he disappointed, too? “No kidding? Why?”

  “It’s okay, really,” Elias said nervously. “I’m just kind of tired. I had the job interview, after all, besides the trip here. I’ll have all weekend to party.”

  “But—” Sean began, but then seemed to remember something and let it drop. Perversely, Elias felt a stab of disappointment at how easy he was to convince.

  Jerry headed back out to the deck. When he was out of earshot, Sean said softly, “I’m sorry.”

  Elias looked at him in surprise.

  “Don’t let me push you too fast,” Sean went on. “I know it’s tough to get started.”

  “It’s okay,” Elias said as he turned away, his heart beating hard. “It’s really okay.”

  Elias padded downstairs the next morning, following his nose toward the smell of coffee and bacon. Just before he reached the archway, he heard Rafe’s voice in the kitchen say, “So, Sean ... where’d you pick up that young blond god, anyway? Terrific tush, if you ask me.”

  Elias froze. What kind of a night had Sean had last night?

  “Funny, Rafe,” Sean said mildly. “I don’t recall any young blond gods flitting across my path recently, and I’m sure I would have noticed. Although lately I’ve been specializing more in the Rudy Valentino type. You know, tall and dark, flaring nostrils, that sort of thing.”

  Rafe laughed. “I meant Elias, of course.”

  Elias felt as if he’d been gut-punched.

  “Are you letting your eye rove, Rafe? Jerry’d be so disappointed.”

  “Isn’t he a bit younger than the type you usually toy with?”

  “Who says I’m toying with him?”

  “Ohhh.” There was a pause. “You never struck me as the marrying kind, honey.”

  “Elias is a kid who needs a friend, Rafe. That’s all.”

  “So far, eh?” Rafe said with heavy insinuation.

  The pause this time lasted even longer. “What you don’t know about me would fill the New York Public Library, Rafe. Pass the cornflakes, would ya?”

  Carefully, Elias backed away from the kitchen doorway. Maybe a walk along the beach before breakfast would be a good idea.

  By the time he walked back a half hour later, Sean was in the shower, Rafe was deeply engrossed in a copy of Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet, and Jerry was out on the deck, eating his breakfast.

  “Come on out here, Elias, and help me finish all these pancakes. I’m afraid I got carried away making them. There’s a plate here for you.”

  Elias joined him at the table and shifted a stack of papers to one side. “Sorry, let me move those,”

  Jerry said. “I thought I’d squeeze in some work over breakfast and then I could forget about it all weekend.” He took the stack over to the briefcase by the railing.

  “Here’s something else,” Elias said, twitching another page out from underneath a place mat.

  “Thanks—oh, no,” Jerry said. “That’s not from my office. Someone put it under the door. They said down at the Ice Palace last night that someone stuck it on every doorstep on the Island.”

  Elias looked at the paper. It was a reprint of an article from the New York Native by a Dr. Larry Mass. He scanned the first few paragraphs. “Something about... sarcoma. That’s cancer, isn’t it? In ... gay men?”

  “Yeah. Apparently it’s been going around.”

  “What—like the cancer’s contagious?”

  Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have it. Here, put that over on the drink cart, there, by the hot tub. How many pancakes do you want?”

  By the time Elias finished his third stack of pancakes, Sean was out of the shower. He came out to the deck, barefoot and dressed in cutoffs, to towel dry his hair. Elias wondered if he was doing it on purpose. He strolled around the table to look over Jerry’s shoulder as Jerry wrote in his daybook.

  “So, what’s on Mr. Gerald Simms, Esquire’s ‘to do’ list for the day?” Sean asked. He gave Elias a wink.

  “Nothing in particular,” Jerry said, closing the daybook firmly and pushing it forward. “Just relaxing.”

  “My plans are vague, but will undoubtedly involve plenty of beer,” Rafe called out from the living room. “Lots of sun. Maybe peeled grapes.”

  “I’m going to start with the beach,” Sean said. “Coming, Elias?”

  “Sure.”

  The weekend passed in a golden haze that occasionally felt a little surreal to Elias. Sometimes, as he ran down the beach into the waves with Sean splashing right behind him, or strolled along the boardwalks toward the next party, or lounged in the hot tub, head back, sipping something cool and tropical out of a blender, he found it hard to believe that it wasn’t all a dream, that he wouldn’t wake up again any moment in a dark, rat-infested warehouse. Jerry threw a party on Sunday night, and Elias stood out on the deck late, eating stuffed mushroom caps and marinated shrimp and listening to complaints about the rise in prices of rental shares, the incursions of young straight toughs looking for gays to bash, the mediocre food and poor service at the Island restaurants. Someone turned to him and said, “Jerry said it’s your first time out here, isn’t that right? What do you think of the Island?”

  For one moment, Elias forgot all about the need to act cool. “I think it’s the most wonderful place in the world,” he said fervently. The men standing around who heard him laughed. Elias felt his face heat up. “What was that?” Rafe said loudly, rather drunk. “What was that he said?

  The most... wonderful place
in the world?” Rafe blinked and appeared to be attempting to concentrate.

  “Tha’s it. Bingo. Put his finger right on it. You said it, ‘lias. You said it. Get this man a beer.” He held a popper up to his nose and took a long sniff.

  “I’ll get it,” Elias said quickly. “Um ... I think I’d like to go for a walk, anyway.” He turned and edged away from the knot of men, snagging a soft drink from the cooler on his way to the steps leading down to the beach.

  “Elias!” someone called out behind him. “Hey, Elias!”

  Elias didn’t stop to answer, but instead went down the deck stairs and started toward the nearest boardwalk. He heard footsteps rattling down the wooden stairs after him.

  “Hey!”

  Elias turned.

  It was Sean. “You big goof,” he said and laughed. “Did you leave just because Rafe embarrassed you? Rafe thinks it’s his job to embarrass everybody.”

  Elias stared at him hard and then looked up at the sky and laughed. “No. I guess I embarrassed myself.”

  “Why? Because you said you like the Island? Nothing wrong with that.” He took a step closer.

  “Where’re you heading?”

  “Nowhere in particular, really. Along the beach. Maybe up to the ferry dock.”

  “Do you mind if I come with you?”

  “I’d like that,” Elias said, averting his eyes. They fell into step together and walked for several moments in silence. “It’s just that ... I’ve never felt so safe as I do here,” Elias said suddenly. “All my life, I had this big secret. And then when my father kicked me out, I felt as if...” he groped for words, “as if I’d been cut adrift at sea.”

  “At the mercy of the storm,” Sean murmured. “And now?”

  “Secure. Feeling... the ground under my feet.” Elias looked up at the sky over his head and laughed.

  “In the middle of the sea, I’ve found an island.” And maybe, he added mentally, thinking of what the man in the taxi had said, I’ve found my family.

  They had been walking east along the main boulevard and now came to a wooden square adjoining the harbor where the ferry docked. A card table had been set up to one side, with a banner hung over it.