“Not really,” said Jonathan. “Parting with the paintings and the real estate was a cinch. They’re only things. Now someone else will get to love them. Same with the furniture. I was only in a line of people meant to own and love and protect these things. And, God knows, the things themselves will continue to demand the protection they need—right? That’s what price tags are for. But ya know what I worry about? Things like the rocks I found on the beach at Fire Island. I have one that looks like an emerald when it’s wet; and a perfectly round black one, like a big black pearl; and one that’s shaped like the head of a Cycladic statue, that I brought back to Roberto when we were dating. I still have that rock upstairs, next to a real Cycladic head. What happens to that, after I’m gone? Does it go back to just being a rock again? After all the meaning it’s accrued, the privilege it’s enjoyed—it gets forgotten or overlooked when the so-called important stuff gets divided up? There’s no museum for cute rocks.”
Neither Peter nor Will could think of anything to say.
“Don’t worry,” said Jonathan. “The rock is in the will, too. My leaving it to someone will probably keep it special for another thirty, forty years.”
More silence.
“Sunsets always make me feel unworthy,” said Peter. “Like, can I enjoy this enough? Can I be present for this sublime thing enough?”
Will giggled, and Peter went on.
“Harold and I timed our trip to India—this was during the eighties—so we’d be at the Taj Mahal during the full moon. People do that. And we must have visited the place, oh, five or six times over the course of, whatever, four days and three nights in Agra. Trying to drink it in. One night, we even made love in the garden there—well, we jerked off, kissing, on one of the marble benches.”
Jonathan snorted.
“No one was around,” said Peter. “You could do that then. It was just this big public garden, barely well kept, and there were maybe six other people in these acres and acres of garden, and this glorious mirage of a Taj Mahal, floating right over there. . . .”
“So sweet,” said Will.
“He wrote about it for the Times—well, except for the jerking off. We used to call it ‘our night in the garden of love.’ ”
“Have you gone back?” asked Jonathan.
“No,” said Peter.
“Oh, darling, you must! Going back to places like that is the point.”
“Well . . . I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so.”
“We used to joke about Venice that way, remember? You only went the first time so you could start returning there, and returning and returning. . . .”
Will was about to ask Jonathan if he had ever been to the Taj Mahal, then thought better of it.
The bottom third of the sun’s disc was now melting into the horizon. There was no sinking motion to see, even if you stared at it constantly. Yet second after second, at the moment you became aware of registering no motion, you saw the result of motion and the disc was lower! Soon it was gone, and from below the horizon the sun now fueled a further explosion of color: clouds of molten copper edged in iridescent mauve, shot with radioactive purples and pinks.
They talked for another hour or so, as the sky faded, about Indian Point and nuclear power and the sustainability of civilization. Aldebar lighted lanterns and poured another round of cognac. And then it began to feel cold.
“It’s gotta be an early night for me,” said Peter.
“Oh, me too,” said Will.
“Poor boys,” said Jonathan. “You must have been up at dawn. Well, to bed, then. Tomorrow we’ll take you antiquing.”
“Yay,” said Will.
“Can we go to the new kitchenware place you mentioned?” said Peter.
“Yes, yes,” said Jonathan. “It’s right there.”
“Kitchen stuff is like porn to me,” said Peter.
Inside, at the bottom of the stairs, Jonathan bid Peter and Will good night.
“We alarm but there are no motion detectors,” he said, “so feel free to go padding around during the night. Leftovers in the fridge are up for grabs.”
“I couldn’t eat another thing,” said Will.
“Neither could I,” said Peter.
“There’s water in the little fridge in your room,” continued Jonathan, “inside the closet.”
“I found it,” said Will.
“Aldebar makes a pot of coffee around nine, in the kitchen, yeah? l have mine in my room, but we can all have some breakfast together around ten-thirty. The shops open at noon. How does that sound?”
Peter and Will said good night and went upstairs together. As they entered the room, Peter again felt a pang of excitement mixed with terror.
“Did you have a preference of bed?” said Will. “I didn’t mean to preempt a discussion. I just threw my stuff down.”
“No, this is fine,” said Peter.
“Tout le confort moderne,” said Will, as he plopped down on his bed, undid his sneakers, and placed them carefully near his bag. His feet were, what, size eleven?
“It’s even splendider than when I saw it last,” said Peter.
“Could you ever live here?”
“Well . . . it’s not exactly my style, but yeah, sure, of course.” Peter poked his head in the large closet on the wall opposite the windows, to take stock. The closet was huge, fitted with a built-in stack of drawers, a cabinet for the refrigerator, and a long rack on which Will had already hung some things—a flannel shirt, a pair of khaki pants, his jacket.
“Well, I love it,” said Will, unbuttoning his shirt. Underneath was a crisp white T-shirt, somewhat tight, which emphasized his perfectly proportioned torso. “To me, it’s like magic. It’s like what my parents’ place on Pine Mountain—this place we go near Santa Barbara—wants to be.”
“Where you used to go camping?” said Peter, sitting down on his bed and removing his sneakers, trying not to stare. He was acutely aware of being in a room for the first time with the man who meant everything to him, for the purposes of taking off clothes and going to bed. He wanted to savor the moment but also to give Will the freedom to remain comfortable, in case he wasn’t necessarily thinking about ravishing his older friend suddenly with the kind of passion and tenderness that was certainly on Peter’s mind.
“Yeah, though it wasn’t really camping,” said Will. “I mean, there was running water and heat and everything. But I loved it. I was so happy there. I like mountains.”
“Me too,” said Peter, putting his sneakers and a few of the rest of his things in the closet, including his shirt, which he slipped off unceremoniously. “You wanna hear something funny? There was a bird singing when we got out of the car in the driveway. I don’t know if you noticed.”
“Uh-uh,” said Will.
“It was a bird I remembered from growing up in these parts. I hadn’t heard it for decades, but there it was again: doodle-oo-doo-dweet. Doodle-oo-doo-dweet-doo dwink.” Peter’s gray athletic T-shirt was emblazoned with an orange P for Princeton, where he’d guest lectured once on branding.
“Very impressive,” said Will.
“Thank you—thank you very much. I may be known for other things, but I do speak a little bird. But really, the way that sound echoed in the trees—among the leaves, I guess—I dunno, it just brought me back.”
Will stood.
“I’m just gonna have one last look online—do you mind?” he said, ambling over to the desk and opening his laptop. “Though I suppose everything is pretty much over for today.”
“I’ll hit the bathroom,” said Peter.
Inside, the door closed, Peter flossed and brushed his teeth, washed his face, peed, and gave his hands another little wash. He looked at himself in the mirror and quietly whispered “Coraggio!” Then he stepped out of his jeans and brought them out of the bathroom to the closet, where he hung them on a hook.
“Poor Jon,” said Will, quietly, absorbed in his laptop. “He’s lost so much weight.”
“I know,” s
aid Peter. “It’s sad.” He found himself looking through the papers in a file folder he’d laid next to his computer, on a table near the window, though he wasn’t really looking for anything. He was nervous.
“He’s such a hero,” said Will. “He told me the work was exhausting but that he was worried about letting down Connor Frankel.”
“I gather the treatments are pretty intense.”
“Chemical castration—that’s what he told me it was called. Can you imagine? Testosterone is like fuel for this kind of cancer, so they dose him with the other stuff.”
“Ecch.”
“And still it progresses. Jesus.”
“It’s no picnic.”
“He said an interesting thing. He said he can’t claim that his body betrayed him, because he got through AIDS. But now here he is, old enough to, you know. . . .”
Peter sighed.
“We lived through a war, Will,” he said, “and now we get to face the really tough stuff.”
Will shut down his laptop and closed it, and swiveled in his seat.
“Are you saying that you’re made of tough stuff, mister?” he said, with a funny-serious face.
“The toughest,” said Peter. “I’m the toughest piece of fluff you’re likely to find.”
“O-kay,” said Will, with a triumphant chuckle. He rose and turned toward the bathroom. “Are you finished with the . . . ?”
“Please,” said Peter.
While Will was in the bathroom, Peter arranged the rest of his things and adjusted the room’s lighting, switching on the lamp between the beds and switching off the other lamps that were wired to the switch near the door. He jumped into bed and grabbed a book from the night table and started leafing through it: Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses. He listened to the water running and imagined Will brushing his teeth, washing his face. And when Will emerged he, too, was in boxers—blue-and-white stripes—and his T-shirt.
Will walked over to the closet to stow his jeans, then draped his socks over his sneakers. He was barefoot. Peter remained cool but felt guilty for stealing even infinitesimally short looks at Will’s muscular legs and beautifully formed feet and strong-looking upper arms and thick neck, while pretending to go on casually with the conversation.
“So . . . bedtime, yes?” said Will.
Peter nodded. “I’m bushed,” he said. “You know, I think all the books in this room are about décor.”
“Oh, nice, cool,” said Will, as he jumped into bed. “Alarm?”
“Hmmh—maybe. Just in case.”
“Nine?”
“Perfect.”
Will programmed his phone.
“I can’t wait to go antiquing,” he said.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked Peter. And Will began describing some of the things he might be looking for, for his apartment—a table, a lamp—though Peter was too caught up in his own thoughts to concentrate on what Will was saying. His feet are so fucking gorgeous, Peter thought. And his butt is amazing—solid and round and really up there. I can’t believe how narrow that waist is. He continued to flip through the Wharton, but at the same time was mapping all the new bits of physiological information he had gained in the previous few minutes about Will’s body onto his old mental picture of it—a picture that had formed over the previous months, when winter clothing had revealed only dribbles of the information about this sacred territory. Now here was a flood!
“Luz said I should be spontaneous, so I’m going to be spontaneous,” Will was saying.
Peter closed the book and put it aside. He rolled onto one side, propping himself up on one arm.
“Wait till you see, Will—there’s a whole street of shops,” he said. “And it’s like they come in three densities. There’s the junk shop, which is packed with crap that you have to paw through, although there can be some real treasures. There’s the nicely arranged shop where everything is clean and nicely displayed, and there are no funny smells or back rooms with old clothes. And then, of course, the highfalutin shop, which is extremely select and set up like a salon in somebody’s gracious home, and the owner is a gracious lady or gentleman with whom you have to make gracious small talk. . . .”
“Oooh, I can’t wait,” said Will, fluttering his legs in boyish excitement, under the covers. Then he slid down in bed and propped himself up on one arm, too.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” he asked.
“I dunno,” said Peter. “I suppose I’m always on the lookout for a head of Alexander, like the guy in Egypt I told you about.”
“OK,” said Will.
“Or maybe a vintage etiquette book.”
“For your collection. Same way I’m always on the lookout for beach art.”
“That’s right—you collect seascapes.”
“Sunday painter stuff, mostly—primitives, folk art. I have a few watercolors of the Pacific coast and some little oils I found when I was a teenager.”
“But I didn’t see them at your place.”
Will laughed.
“They’re in the bedroom,” he said. “And as I recall, you didn’t get to spend any time in there.”
“There’s always next time.”
“Yes, there is. Anyway, we have a van, so we can drag back the fucking Lincoln Memorial, if we need to.”
“Great.”
Did it aid the romantic escalation he longed for, Peter wondered, to be in bed, in the same room together, without even mentioning how absolutely thrilling this was? Or did the very impulse or ability to endure such a thing without mentioning it—let alone without someone making a rashly passionate move, damn the consequences—doom the possibility of romance? Peter tried to quiet his confusion by taking pleasure in the unmistakable domesticity of the situation. Maybe they were like an old married couple. That would actually work for Peter, who had, in the previous half century, enjoyed what he often termed “all the sex there was.” And if, in some odd scenario, Will were the sexy young guy who happened to want some kind of mariage blanc with the right older guy, that included a few discreet fiddlings on the side, well, Peter could deal with that perfectly well. Though signaling the latter to someone under a certain age could come across as pathetic, monstrous, insulting, or worse.
“Lights out?” said Will.
“I guess,” said Peter, pushing his pillows into place.
As Will switched off the lamp, Peter slid down in bed and pulled the covers over his shoulders. The room was cool, the quiet, profound. Every rustle of Will’s twisty quest to find a good position in bed sounded like heaven.
“I’m a terrific roommate, by the way,” said Will. “I don’t snore. And if you do, I won’t care.”
“I don’t snore,” said Peter. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Peter realized that he wouldn’t know if he had become a snorer. The last person he’d slept with regularly was Nick, and that was ten years before. What if he snored now? These things happened.
CHAPTER 17
The next morning, when Peter awoke, he found that Will was already up. The other bed was empty, semi-made in the same manner that Peter had been taught to leave a bed when a guest in someone’s home: the bedclothes straightened and crisply turned down, the pillow plumped.
In the kitchen, Peter was pouring himself a cup of coffee when Will bounded in, winded, in gym shorts and an XL tank top that was patched with sweat. A towel was pulled around his neck.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” said Peter.
“You know there’s a gym here, right?” said Will, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. His hair was wet around the edges and he smelled faintly of fabric softener.
“Yeah,” said Peter. “I meant to tell you last night.”
“I was going to go run outside, but I figured what the hell?”
Will leaned against the counter where Peter was standing. His body was even more luscious than Peter had dreamed, and the sight of more of it was a lot t
o take in: the big traps and bulging triceps, the surprisingly well-defined deltoids, the smoothness of so much glowing, unblemished convexity. Peter giggled inwardly, remembering that this was, after all, a mortal being and also a friend. No hair was visible on the sternum or the part of Will’s chest that Peter could see through the armholes of the tank top. Then Will bent forward to reach past Peter and tear a paper towel off the roll, and the front of his shirt bagged outward, affording a lavish view of the right pectoral. The nipple was small and tender-looking, positioned well to the edge of the pec, and not perfectly round but a little stretched, as if in delicate tension due to the development of the muscle underneath.
“Sleep well?” said Peter.
“Big time,” said Will. “And you?”
“Very well, thanks.”
“No snoring.”
“Oh, good.”
“Banana?”
“No, thanks. I was actually thinking about making a frittata, maybe having breakfast ready when they come down.”
“Aldebar’s up with Jonathan.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” said Peter, opening the refrigerator and peering inside.
“He went out for croissants.”
“Plenty of eggs,” said Peter, taking stock.
“And fresh OJ.”
“Yup. OK—mushrooms, onions, zucchini.... Ooh, Gruyère! I guess we can do it.”
“Gimme five minutes for a quick shower,” said Will. “I’m totally helping.” He tossed the banana peel in the trash and bounced out of the kitchen.
Lord—and well-defined calves, too! I’m fucked!
Cooking together was fun. Moving about in sync in the kitchen was as automatic for them as it had been the previous time, at Peter’s place. As they went about prepping and tidying, Peter saw that the level of silent communication and thoughtfully choreographic awareness of each other had, if anything, improved. Will handled the mise en place for the frittata without prompting. When Peter put the frittata in the oven and turned to slicing potatoes and onions for the home fries he decided to make, Will took the egg bowl, cheese grater, and the rest over to the sink.
He swooned as he started washing.
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