"All right, then, you'll get no dinner."
He thought of that as he pushed the veal to the side subtly and ate the vegetables. He noticed that Tam ate little and drank less, while Mal ate whatever was set down in front of him, presumably without coming up for air. He was like a shark—an efficient eating, sleeping, fucking machine.
Dessert offered no respite. It was silver-frosted yellow cake shaped like an amulet that was one of the arts clubs' signature treasures. Quinn didn't mind looking at silver amulets. He just didn't want to eat something that looked like one.
Thoroughly at sea, he excused himself to say hello to Mort, who looked no happier wedged between his wife and Vienne. He was if not two sheets to the wind then at least two napkins.
"I've been watching you tonight, my boy, and I like the way you handle yourself. You've got to stand up to these people in a nice way. It's all about attitude—well, that and a case of single malt Scotch. Yes, you'll do very well in the Van Doozie world."
Quinn wondered why Brenna hadn't told him they weren't a couple as he wandered off for a men's room break only to encounter Tam outside the door.
"Loitering outside the men's room?" Quinn asked. "That could get you arrested."
"It might be worth it if I could eat you with a spoon. You're just about the only delicious thing here. What say we blow this place, go to my hotel, order some real food and have our own little gala?"
In Tam’s suite later that night, they shared a sausage pizza and a bottle of wine.
"Now for the real eating," Tam said, "the taking and being taken."
It was funny, Quinn thought. In the museum, he himself had been shy about the erotic works. He barely looked at the bloodied couple, their expressions caught somewhere between orgasmic ecstasy and howling pain. He didn't want to invade their privacy, as it were.
"They're not real, you know," Tam had said to him. "They're just art."
But here in the real, private world, Quinn had no trouble watching himself in a mirror as Tam took him from behind, stroking his throbbing cock as he panted in lust, his come arcing like a fountain spray.
"Be your own work of art," Tam whispered thickly as he nibbled his neck.
Fourteen
Quinn longed to go on holiday—not the brief, bittersweet Roman Holiday of the Gregory Peck-Audrey Hepburn movie—but a month-long vacation to Indonesia where he could show off the country to Tam and Tam off to the country. He knew it was impossible with summer training camp looming. But then Tam called with the next best thing:
"Listen, a friend of my family has a house in Lyndwood on the Jersey shore—very secluded, with a private beach. What say we escape for a couple of days?"
"I'm already packed," Quinn said, heart singing.
He toyed with the idea of leaving his cell at home, the better not to receive Mal's constant ‘Where are you and why aren’t you at my beck and call?’ texts. But what if something happened to Great-aunt Josie and Great-uncle Artur or—God forbid and more likely—Aunt Sarah? He had to have that constant, instant lifeline to Patience, their appropriately named aide, who looked out for Aunt Sarah as well. Otherwise, he might've ditched the cell. There were few he needed to respond to urgently—certainly not his parents, who rarely contacted him, and certainly not Smalley.
It irked him, though, not to have parents for whom he was the sun that rose and set. Maybe that's why he gave Tam's hand an extra squeeze as they drove down I-95 and headed for the Garden State Parkway—counting the water towers as their official car game and singing along to The Mamas & the Papas.
They were careful to wear sunglasses as well as baseball caps that had nothing to do with San Francisco and New York when they stopped along the way. And they made sure to pay cash. How nutty was that—to be on your guard, no, to feel like a criminal—for loving? That was no way to live, Quinn thought. He longed to break free and to live a life that required no self-consciousness. He could see that Tam was ready for it now. But Quinn wasn't. Not really. Not yet.
The house in which they could be free would probably have never measured up to the Hamptons standards of the Jennifer Seaberts of the world. But to Quinn, it was heaven on earth.
Built by a sea captain, it was a ramshackle, eggplant-colored clapboard and cinder-block affair with three porches the length of bowling lanes, including a screened-in porch that fronted onto the street and a screened-in back porch that opened onto a deck and the ocean.
It was on the gray and white deck that they sat mornings, enjoying the paper, their coffee and fresh, powdery rolls from the Lyndwood Bakery. They'd spend the day walking the beach, or chasing each other there as they played touch football, wearing each other's jerseys—a tribute not only to their mutual love and admiration but to the privacy in which they could express them. When they were brave enough, they took a dip in the Atlantic, which was still cool at that time of year.
Afternoons, they read and dozed on the deck until Tam invariably woke and said, "Why don't we go in for a bit?"
In the light-dappled bedroom that opened onto the gingham back porch, Tam would kiss Quinn deeply, slipping his shirt from his shoulders or pulling his T-shirt overhead to fasten his arms momentarily. He relished the leisurely pace of Tam's lovemaking, the way his large hands with their long, exquisite fingers ranged over every inch of him; the way he looked directly into his eyes, smiling, talking to him, ensuring his comfort; the way he stroked him, bringing him to the edge but not over it until he could enter him and they could come together. Tam's lovemaking was like his quarterbacking—measured and commanding. What must it be like to have such a rock-solid, unruffled sense of yourself? Quinn sometimes hurried in the pocket, anticipating the sack.
"That's 'cause you're still a rookie," Tam purred. "You need a little seasoning under a vet."
He'd trace Quinn's nipples with his thumbs as he lightly held the rib cage that buoyed his high breasts then worked his hands down to the inside of Quinn's briefs, cupping his tight, well-rounded butt.
"You have the most beautiful skin," Tam murmured as he stroked the small of his back and kissed his quivering eyelids slowly.
Where were you, Quinn thought, all those years to shield that skin from hate-filled eyes?
He remembered standing in line with Aunt Sarah at the old Bijou in Misalliance, glancing around and tapping his hand against his thigh, waiting for the movie and one of her loser boyfriends.
"Hey, boy, what are you doing sniffing around here," or words to that effect, Kevin, Darrin, Steven—pick an "en-in” name—would say.
"Devon (Marvin, Arlen), " Aunt Sarah would respond, giggling, "you know this is my nephew."
"Ain't he a little dark to be your nephew?"
"Don't be like that. You know he's from Indonesia."
But they didn't know, the Aunt Sarah beaus, Quinn thought. Nor were his bosses any less ignorant.
"Just turn around and lift your hair off your neck," the team physician had directed him, almost embarrassed.
He stood with Quinn in the trainer's room, while Smalley, team owner Jimmy Jones Jefferson and former GM Mark Seidelberg watched with varying degrees of interest nearby. Quinn felt the color rise in his cheeks and his heart beat faster as it did when he knew something was terribly wrong. Yet he felt powerless to do anything but comply. He had signed a contract—not great star-quarterback money but more than he had ever seen. He wanted this job. He needed this job. And, more important, he aspired to Lance's starting QB job. So if he had to prove that their backup quarterback was as perfect a specimen as every other Temps' quarterback had been, well…
He turned around in one graceful gesture, gathered his chin-length hair in one hand and lifted it, like a woman waiting to be nuzzled by a lover, to reveal a pristine neck.
"Take off your shirt," Smalley said.
"It's OK, son," the doctor said.
Quinn didn't turn around but slipped it off his shoulders. How I loathe you, he thought.
"What's this?" Smalley barked at the do
c. "Is this skin cancer?"
"It's just a mole," the doctor said, sighing, "a beauty mark."
"A beauty mark?" Smalley said. "Well, what have we got ourselves here, a beauty queen? Are you a girl, boy?"
"No sir."
"Turn around."
Quinn turned around for Smalley to consider him skeptically.
“A little lightweight for a quarterback. I’m surprised you don’t have tats. I thought all your people did.”
Your people? Quinn fumed. Would that be the Indonesian people? It was all he could do to keep himself from grabbing Smalley by the throat and shoving him into a wall.
"Well, I've seen enough," Jefferson said, "a healthy young man in excellent condition. Doctor, you can continue your evaluation in private."
Afterward, he sat in front of his locker, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the other, hot tears stinging his eyes. Jeremiah Dupré came by, shook his head and simply put a hand on Quinn's right shoulder in a gesture he had never experienced before. It was fatherly.
Tam touched that shoulder now in a gesture that was anything but—massaging it as they lay facing each other—tracing a line down Quinn's right hip and buttock as he lifted his leg to enter him. Theirs was the most egalitarian of relationships, Quinn thought, two equals mirroring the struggle to fulfill the other's desire and their own need to come. After, Quinn nestled happily in Tam's arms as his lover dozed, caressing the lighter, caramel-colored skin of his biceps and comparing it to his own tawnier canvas.
"Tam," he whispered.
"Mmm," Tam murmured dreamily. "What do you want, my heart, my love, my own? Ask me anything."
"I was just wondering, when you joined the Miners, did they, you know, inspect you?"
"Inspect me?"
"You know, look you over."
"Well, I had to pass the physical. And God knows I jumped through enough hoops on the field to satisfy them. But inspect me beyond that, no, although I've been probed and plumbed enough by the media and the fans over the years. Sometimes I feel as if my skull has been cracked open and my brains laid bare for everyone to pick over. Why do you ask?"
"No reason, I just wondered."
"It's an odd thing to wonder. Why, what did those geniuses do to you?"
"Nothing, I just, I don't know what made me think of it. But, you know, they checked me out."
Tam hugged him tightly. "Oh, I'll bet they did. Jeez, we live in such a cruel, stupid world."
"Well, they have to protect their investment. "
"God, you are so forgiving of others but never of yourself, I think.” Tam turned to face him. “Let me ask you: Why is it that you can’t love yourself the way you love others, the way others love you?”
Quinn had no answer but the tears that began rolling down his cheeks. Tam cupped Quinn’s face, brushing the tears aside gently with his thumbs. "Let me love you as you deserve to be loved. Hmm?"
Quinn nodded, too overcome to speak.
"Good. Now that that's settled, what say we hit the shower, dress and head for the boardwalk?"
Tam's idea of vacation was not only to stay in a house like the summer place his parents had had but to eat at the restaurants or the kind of restaurants they ate in and go on the rides he had loved as a kid. Quinn was all for it. He had never seen a place like the Jersey shore with its garishly colored amusements, swirling vanilla-and-chocolate soft-serve ice cream cones, fudge shops and crinolined dolls on sticks.
He loved every minute of it, especially Delmar's, the elegant restaurant at the end of the strip with its walnut, red and brass lobby, over which Mr. and Mrs. Delmar themselves presided. He was short, white-haired and vaguely Euro. She was a tall Texas blonde twenty years his junior. And yet, she seemed happy fussing over him as he fussed over everything in the restaurant. As they prepared a table for two—the place was packed—Quinn admired the lobby portrait of a flapper in a moss green swimsuit that clung to her lithe limbs as she rose Aphrodite-like from the gray-green seafoam. Quinn thought her the quintessence of womanhood.
The dinner was scrumptious—lobster dripping in butter and baked potatoes laden with sour cream and chives. Still, something nagged Quinn.
"Hey, you can go back to your healthy diet after our holiday," Tam said. "Eat up."
"No, it's not that."
"Then what?"
"It's just, don't you worry about someone seeing us together?"
Already they had drawn a few double takes.
"So, two NFL QBs having dinner. We ran into each other. You know what? Who cares? I mean it. What business is it of anyone's? Jesus Christ, I'm tired of the whole damn thing—the models as beards, the ready excuses, the looking over the shoulder. Aren't you tired of it, Quinnie?"
"Yes, but what choice do we have? Think about it. If word got out, the press and our families' reactions would be just the beginning. You and I would be marked men on the field, and our teammates would be forced to defend us, regardless of how they felt about it. And don't even get me started on Smalley, that bigot, who has no love for me anyway. Is that what you want for our teammates, our families, and us?"
Tam, who had been eating with relish, suddenly looked dejected. "No, I guess not."
Perhaps Tam was still mulling that as they stared out at a ride that was mounted on the beach. He gazed somewhat moodily, Quinn thought, as girl after girl flew down a labyrinthine slide only to be caught by a guy at the end. The girls' hair stood on end, their voices echoing with shrieks and laughter.
Quinn bumped him, trying to lighten the mood.
"What was your best time at the shore?"
"Oh, that would have been the nights my parents would bring us kids to the boardwalk. We'd stop at the fudge shop to watch the workers make different kinds of fudge in these huge copper bowls. There was always a little blonde girl outside handing out samples. I thought she looked like Alice in Wonderland, with her curls, blue dress and white lace apron. After we bought the fudge, we'd have hot dogs, then cotton candy, then soft-freeze ice cream and then we'd go on all the rides.
"At the merry-go-round, my dad would hand the ride operator a roll of tickets this thick." Tam indicated the thickness with his thumb and forefinger two inches apart. "And say to the operator, 'Let them ride until they're tired of it.' But he and my mother wouldn't go off then. They'd just stand there, watching me, Bev, Kim, Bill and Petey go 'round and 'round, waving at us.
"Afterward, we'd go home and sit on the front porch—looking at our treasures, eating fudge and pistachios and talking until the truck came to spray for mosquitos and it was time to go to bed."
"Wait. Bev, Kim, Bill, and Petey: How did a Tamarind get into the bunch?"
"I was the last of the litter, and it was my mother's maiden name. My middle name's Michael." Tam added, smiling, "Those were great times."
He looked off to the pilings that buttressed a pier jutting out into the water. Quinn had never seen such an expression on Tam's face. It was a look of fear mixed with sadness.
"Hey," Quinn said, "what say we grab a couple of those cones I've heard so much about, head home, and stage our own amusement ride?"
As they made their way to the ice cream stand, Tam's hand brushed his, sending a jolt through Quinn, who looked around quickly—still uncomfortable in the skin Tam so loved to touch.
fifteen
Quinn would savor and nurture the memory of the Jersey shore just as he kept Indonesia like a tiny but steady flame in his heart. He would have to, he figured, with Tam set to leave for the West Coast and training camp. It would be months—not until the two teams played each other in an August preseason game—that they would be together again.
Or so he thought. But two unexpected opportunities would reunite the lovers sooner than later—though they would come at a steep price.
Vienne Le Wood was having a fundraiser at her house in Bedford, New York to support the rainforest, and once again, Quinn, Tam, and Mal were on the short list. Did she intuit something? Quinn wondered. She seemed deter
mined to throw the three together. For an upcoming issue of Rumours, she had Elliott Gardener shoot the three on a bed in a provocative motel-room setting.
Tam, clad in an open, pink, floral-print shirt and black leather pants, was posed on the phone while Mal, in an open, blue, abstract-print shirt and midnight-blue jeans, sat next to him, absorbed in an iPad. That left Quinn sprawled across the bottom of the bed—in an open, green-striped shirt and forest-green ultrasuede pants—looking up at the camera. The three barely spoke during the shoot. Quinn thought you'd need a hacksaw to cut the tension. Even the ever-commanding Elliott was on edge. "OK, here we go," he said, sighing.
But it was a measure of how much power Vienne wielded that no one uttered a peep about the scenario she, not Elliott, had conjured for the photo shoot nor the hours the three subjects spent under the hot lights in close proximity, unaware of just how much they had in common, Quinn thought. Now she had again rounded up the usual suspects, as it were—including Elliott, Tiffany, Brenna, and her parents, among others—for a soirée at one of her half-dozen homes.
Like many women who were extolled—and extolled themselves—for their climb to the top, Vienne owed much of her success to a man. Ferdinand Le Wood, nicknamed Freddy, had built his media empire in his native England. When he bought the Rumours publications, he installed his French-Vietnamese wife, whom he met in Hanoi, as the editor of the New York edition. Shortly after, Brenna left it to join The Wreck. Quinn wasn't surprised by this backstory, nor was he unhappy that Aunt Lena was no longer around to see what Vienne had done with the magazine she had edited. He was quite sure the two would not have gotten along. But he would like to see Great-aunt Josie or his mother take on Vienne. Now there were two matchups for the main card.
Though he had loved Gaucho, the family's Black Lab in Jakarta—and cried when he left him behind and when he learned much later, rather matter-of-factly from Sydney, that he had died—Quinn had always been deeply suspicious of people who preferred animals to their own kind. Vienne was one of those people. In addition to the snapping Papillon Steve McQueen, who was mercifully under house arrest for the evening, there were Miu Miu, Prada, and Gucci—a trio of Persian cats who temporarily scattered whenever the front door opened.
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