Chapter Fifty-Eight
The Gisela's barroom held an energetic Friday night crowd and Phil was glad to take a between-sets break outside. The air was crisp and chilly, a preview of the coming winter, which kept their walk brisk. Everyone who wasn't drinking beer at the Gisela seemed to have gone to ground, in a bar across the river or in his home. “Schloss Jedermann” was painted on the front of one tidy house Phil passed. Phil contemplated a half a dozen possible shades of meaning for “Everyman's Palace” pleasantly distracted by the warmth of Alex's hand in his own. Alex didn't normally like public displays, but he wasn't wearing gloves. Cold hands and the deserted street made him bold. One hand stayed warm in his pocket and the other hand stayed warm in Phil's.
“It's getting cold, Alex. Do you think we ought to buy some winter clothes?” Phil gave Alex's hand a squeeze.
“I don't know.”
“Do you think we'll be here all winter?” Phil persisted.
“I don't know. Would you mind?”
“Not if you're here. You know, I thought I was getting to really like Kufstein until you drove away in that truck. It turned into a gray little town where I knew nobody. Does Dimitri know we're here just sitting on our asses?”
“He knows. The job is sporadic. We'll hear when he has something for us. I'm getting a hard on.”
“Why? There's nothing ...”
“'Cause I like holding your hand, dummy. You have a very sexy hand.” Alex never let Phil ask too many questions that had no answer.
“I was asking, Alex, is because Andi's new friend Mariel seems to have been born with the shopping gene. She said there's a sale in Salzburg on Saturday that ...”
“What I have learned is don't buy clothes for a future that may not happen. We can get things if we need them, when we need them.” Alex did not have the shopping gene. “You can, however, do whatever you want and I will still love you even as we throw away all your winter clothes as soon as Dimitri tells us to go to Kenya.”
The bar remained crowded and Andi and Mariel looked harried keeping up with the orders. There was one odd table with two old women. They were sipping tiny glasses of something very pale yellow. “Wachauer Marillenschnapps,” Andi explained, introducing two of Mariel's aunts. The women were presumably checking him out as a prospecting nephew-in-law over a glass or two of apricot schnapps. Phil asked if they had a favorite song, hoping it was something he knew.
“Die Hände zum Himmel,” they replied immediately. “Raise your hands to heaven” was the song of the Munich football team. Phil got to sing only three words before the whole room joined him, holding their hands up and singing enthusiastically. Tyrolers do nothing half-heartedly.
They followed with “Cowboys und Indianer”, another song guaranteed to get people out of their chairs. In the crowd of people dancing, neither Phil nor Alex noticed Florian Obstbauer standing near the door. When the song was over and Andi and Mariel were refilling glasses, Florian motioned to Alex. It looked as if Alex was taking a bathroom break and the envelope passed unnoticed as Alex left the room. When he returned Obstbauer was gone.
There was no chance to talk until the night was over. Both young men were still wired from their performance. They flopped onto the big bed but sleep was not the prospect. The kissing started off gentle as they slowly undressed each other. Phil was relaxing with his eyes closed while Alex paid some attention with his mouth to Phil's chest, gradually moving lower.
“You know what? You have perfect balls,” he told Phil.
“Two. They work ok, I think … Of course I don't actually know. I'm not a father or anything.”
“Some guys have monster balls and no dick ...” Alex explained.
“Might be nice to find out if they did work,” Phil mused.
“Other guys are all dick and no balls ...” Alex licked the objects of his attention.
“Having a kid would be amazing ...”
“But yours are perfect. The size, the proportion ...”
“What do you think?” Phil asked.
“I just told you. They're perfect. You have the best looking overall package ...”
“No. About kids. Wouldn't they be fun?”
“Messy, lots of work, eventually they eat you alive and complain about the taste. At least that's what my married friends say.”
“What married friends?”
“Oh, just people I know … in embassies. They complain about their kids all the time.”
“Where do they find the time to have them?”
“Having them is the easy part. It's what comes next that grinds you down. We'll never have to worry about that.”
“I guess not … I'm not sure it's as bad as you make it sound, though.”
“Um … you want the news before of after I take care of this?” Alex held Phil's erection in his hand and licked the head while he waited for Phil's answer.
“News!!! What news!!!”
“Herr Obstbauer gave me two tickets to Vienna and a reservation confirmation at the Imperial. We're supposed to meet Dimitri there.”
“What? When did you see Florian?”
“When you were taking extra bows, collecting tips, and sucking up to little old schnapps-swilling ladies ...”
Phil was dumbfounded. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because we don't need to leave until Tuesday, and you would have gone crazy in the barroom, and then there was other stuff that seemed more important … like getting your clothes off and telling you how nice your ...”
“Vienna! Then are we coming back here?”
“Probably not. Dimitri likes the Imperial. He's probably giving us a little treat before he sends us to Bumfuck, Egypt. The Imperial was the Soviet headquarters when Austria was occupied after the Great Patriotic War. It's supposed to be a nice hotel.”
“Do you have any more news you've been keeping quiet about?”
“No news. Just a prediction. After I suck your cock you're going to fuck me.” Alex delivered his prediction as an order and then he softened. “You will won't you?” He didn't have to ask twice.
“I don't care, Rawson. I don't give a damn what they say.” That was Matt's undramatic reaction to the item in the Post.
“They say I'm the boyfriend of an actor who appeared in a scandalous nude version of Othello. It starts out 'Attention tea party: do you really want to invite these two to your next outing.' Nice play on the word outing, don't you think.”
“Do you give a shit? I mean who cares what the Washington Post says?”
“A lot of people care. The Post can still form opinions with some people in this town. They're trying to blunt the impact of my next research paper by making me the scandal.”
“The Post can only form the opinions of people who don't like you anyway.”
“But those people used to have to respect me. Now they will have a reason not to. Being gay is only semi-ok. There is an element of the right that will reject me and all the top people of every party will think I'm not quite their kind of person. I won't even feel the cuts, they'll all be behind my back.”
“Well, I don't care.” Matt held Rawson possessively. “I'll go anywhere anytime and tell everybody that I love you. I'll tell 'em that you're the best fuck I've ever known. I'll tell them they could only dream about having somebody like you. That one afternoon with you is better than a five-year affair with anybody else. That ...”
“You make it all worthwhile, Matt. You make everything worthwhile.”
Rawson decided he could take the professional damage if he was careful to keep his ideas the topic of discussion and avoid the Washington limelight himself. Avoiding the limelight was going to be easy, it seemed. His upcoming appearance on a television news panel was canceled the following afternoon and an invitation to give the keynote address at an economics conference was withdrawn without explanation.
Matt was his support. “You could rally Custer's troops when only three were left, Matt. You make me feel I can get through this.” Some self-pity was unavoidable
“Of course you can. You don't need me. Lots of people already knew you were gay. You didn't hide it. The Post wasn't putting out any news. Did you know John Maynard Keynes was gay?”
“Yes. Everyone knows that.”
“The point being: it didn't hurt him any.”
“British, though. They're used to that stuff, they just don't talk about it.” Rawson amended his thought. “Well, I guess they do talk about it; they just don't broadcast it.”
“So you can become America's noted gay economist.”
“I just want to be an economist. Why does gay have to be part of it.”
“Being gay inevitable informs your views, they say.”
“That's what the feminists say, but in economics there's no difference between gay inflation and straight inflation. Being gay only informs some of my views ... like how glad I am you're in my life, Mattie, in my heart, in my bed.”
Rawson was being very sentimental; at the moment he was being informed by personal stress, not his sexuality. For the next few days Matt was ever at his side, helping in more ways than he knew and providing a lusty love Rawson needed. He convinced himself that Matt's necessary involvement with LaTrella Langourville was professional, a bit of method acting, not worth discussion.
Matt felt that way, too. Confident in his homosexuality, he dismissed the sex with LaTrella as just a physical act – something he and LaTrella needed to get comfortable with if their performances were to be convincing. There weren't having an affair; it was nothing close to that. It was really just two and a half sex sessions in which they demonstrated to each other a familiar and comfortable kind of intimacy. Matt only climaxed on two of the occasions, he was interrupted by a Fedex delivery the first time. LaTrella had to sign for the package and was out of the mood when she got back to the bedroom.
“It's a food processor, Matt. I'm going to process food.”
“What process are you going to use?” Matt asked while he got dressed.
“Hmm? Don't you just dump the food in and fry what comes out?”
“I guess you could do that.” Matt decided he would always be busy in case of a dinner invitation from LaTrella.
“I'm working on a healthier diet. I need to keep a taut figure.”
“You don't need to look like a gym instructor, LaTrella. You look great with a little softness to your body. It's very appealing.”
“Are you sure you're gay? You had no trouble keeping up your end of the deal here.”
“I'm gay, but you're hot. I couldn't be in bed with someone like you and not show my appreciation.” Matt gave LaTrella one of his heart-stopping smiles. “I'm just sorry we got interrupted.”
At LaTrella's demand, additional sessions became necessary at which Matt demonstrated his ability to make LaTrella feel like a very sexy lady. After their third time together, she lay back, relishing the residual feel of Matt's weight on her. She told Matt the disappointing news.
“Parker decided to go with the short version of our curtain speeches. He decided that traditional was what the theater wanted. It should still get us some good notices.”
“Wow ...” Matt was plainly disappointed. “When did you find out?”
“At the end of rehearsals today. You had already left.”
“So this was a waste of time, having sex?”
“Did you think so?” LaTrella didn't think she needed to say that the sex was a good enough end in itself. Matt didn't say anything, so she continued, keeping his hopes alive. “Tom the Scrivener and I have convinced him that the longer version should be a show of its own. Keep the R&J stuff abbreviated as essential education for those in the audience ignorant of Shakespeare, setting things up for Acts Two and Three. He thinks it could do a short run during Shakespeare in the Park or some similar festival.”
“The Park … as in Central Park? New York?” Matt couldn't believe it.
“You are such a cutie. Come here. Kiss me right there.” Her fingers pointed to a tattoo normally covered by bikini bottoms. “Mmm … Again.”
The Washington Post did not report LaTrella's story, which was only a slightly embroidered version of her conversation with Peter Parker; the Village Voice published it. A reporter at the Post did make sure Rawson heard about it, however.
When Alfred arrived at the library to meet Ben, there was an initial discomfort that Huette Cromarty couldn't figure out. How could hanging a few prints and testing a computer terminal put people so on edge?
Freshmen Ben who was too insensitive to feel anything, she decided, and the head American were the only two who appeared unaffected. Alfred was mortified by unexpectedly meeting Tom, Heiko was annoyed to witness his best friend's embarrassment; Alistair regretted engineering the whole thing, and Edmund was bewildered that Alistair could be so incautious and insensitive.
Tom, however, was all business, ignoring the problem and getting the job done to his satisfaction. He punched up two of the prints newly hung in the reading room and duly reported to Huette that the British Museum file now reported the prints as “on loan to the University of East Anglia. Apply to H. Cromarty for specifics.”
“Our job is done,” Alistair closed. “Why doesn't everybody come to our house for luncheon. Edmund has prepared a little repast that should round out the day.”
Edmund's eyes said to Alistair, “I have?”
“You really must come,” Alistair insisted, pointing out to Huette that it was on her way home, and to the rest that it promised to be a brilliant day of near-sunshine and a walk along the shore would be the perfect tonic for whatever might ail.
Alfred politely begged off and no one urged him to reconsider; but the rest agreed and soon a three-car caravan headed in a northwesterly direction with Edmund and Alistair in the lead, Tom and Heiko following, and Huette with Ben for company trailing. The conversations were varied.
“What the fuck am I going to make, Alistair? For six fucking people, Alistair!” Edmund's use of profanity made a brief impression on Alistair.
“My darling, you could make mousse out of a mouse. You are a genius in the kitchen. It will go beautifully.”
In the second car, Tom spoke. “Well that installation went easily. I couldn't do it without you, Heiko.”
“You're bullshitting me,” Heiko said watching the clouds roll in off the sea.
“I'm flattering you, maybe, but it's not bullshit. I don't want to lose you.”
Heiko abruptly looked at Tom trying to see if his words went even the tiniest distance beyond professional. He decided they didn't. “There's a million guys like me in South Bay.”
“There's nobody like you anywhere,” Tom answered.
Huette had a practiced line of student chatter. “So, are you enjoying your first days, Ben?”
“You have no idea! I'm having a super time. I've already met the most interesting people. Like those two Americans.”
“I believe one of them is German.”
“But I'd never meet anyone like them if I worked for me da'.”
“What does your father do?
“Horses. He's a veterinary surgeon.”
“What a noble calling! You must be proud of him.” Ben looked at her like she was bonkers. “The squire in our village is a veterinary surgeon, really a beloved person,” she added.
“Me Da' says he's beloved by some pigs. He masturbates them and collects the sperm for artificial insemination.”
Huette swerved her aged Rover just slightly as she felt a little thrill in her loins. The car handled very precisely on the narrow road. Being around all these young men has its benefits she thought.
Alistair poured drinks and Edmund whipped up something to go with the drinks and two more courses besides. The conversation was lively and wide-ranging, from San Francisco to North Sea oil platforms. Alistair enjoyed the afternoon and quoted Carroll regarding the conversation, concluding with “And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings."
“Ben knows quite a lot about pigs,” Huette giggled.
Ben, who had been mostly silent, just listening, nodded. “Son of a vet,” he explained.
“Really, maybe he could treat an old goat like me.”
“Alistair,” Edmund cautioned, gathering up some plates. “Why don't you take our friends on the walk you promised them.”
“I shall head them in a promising direction and put a light in the window for their safe return.”
Huette declined, saying she needed to get home. So after good-byes, the three young men headed for the beach.
“So far Alistair hasn't drawn any pictures,” Heiko noted.
“He draws?” Ben asked.
“Oh, yes, he does,” Tom laughed and explained Alistair's technique.
“Really. Really!” Ben echoed. “Starkers! He gets you to pose?”
“He draws from pure imagination and he's very generous with his depiction of how people look,” Heiko added. “He gives his subjects big dicks,” Heiko amplified when he saw confusion on Ben's face.
“I'm shriveling up at the thought of it,” Ben said.
Tom paused and looked at the rock when he sat when Alfred drew him. “You should get Alfred to draw you, Ben. He's good, too.”
“He just fucks me. Oh! I mean … I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said ...”
“Is he any good?” Heiko asked innocently, watching for Tom's reaction.
“Oh, yes. He's … I … er .. I think he is. I don't have much experience.”
“If this is a 'brilliant' day, I'd like to know what you call dark and stormy.” Tom felt not rain, just moist air in his face, at first. The moisture was followed by drizzle, then drops, then buckets; sheets of rain swept in from the sea. Running back to Alistair's house didn't keep them any drier, but it did lessen their time in the chill.
“Poor chaps,” Alistair moaned. “Wet as otters. Tom, you know the upstairs bedroom. Show your friends the way and use all the towels you need. I'll find some of Edmund's things for you to wear whilst yours dry ...”
The three men reappeared looking warm in some loose-fitting jeans and sweaters and woolen socks. They sat by the fire looking cozy and sipping something that Alistair said would ward off something else.
“Aren't you three a picture?” Alistair said as he began to draw.
“What are these again?” Ben asked, licking his lips.
“Brandy creams. They'll take the chill off you,” Alistair explained as he sketched rapidly. After a few minutes, Alistair got up and took their glasses. “I'll freshen these up for you.”
“He's drawing us,” Ben whispered. “Should we get naked? You want to?” Ben sounded eager.
“He wouldn't mind if you did, but there's no need. He's good at guessing.” Tom liked Ben's innocence.
“These pants are so big, I think they'd fall off if I stood up ...” Ben stood and the pants fell. He had a generous ass, almost plump, invitingly fuckable. Tom admired Alfred's choice. “Oops,” Ben said as he pulled up the jeans.
Alistair's eyes twinkled in admiration. He had obviously not missed Ben's brief display. “Here you are, a bit of medicinal brandy.” He resumed drawing and discussing the unreliable weather. The rain had ceased and been replaced by a misty fog. “Driving back to town is out of the question,” Alistair said, “And your clothing is still wet. You must stay the night. I'll get more brandies.”
When it came, bedtime got interesting. “I can sleep with you, if that's ok,” Ben said to Tom. Tom shrugged his ok and took the bigger bed, leaving a single for Heiko.
They all got settled and turned the lights out. “I'm not used to sleeping naked,” Ben whispered.
“Yeah, well our clothes are wet, so it's ok.” Tom answered.
“I think I like it,” Ben whispered. Tom said nothing. “Do you like it?” Ben asked.
“I do sometimes. Usually I wear boxers.”
“You're not wearing any now,” Ben reached out tentatively until he encountered some bare skin.
Heiko coughed loudly. He sounded disapproving
“You want to fool around?” Ben whispered.
“We better not,” Tom said moving away from the hand he felt on his ass.
“We could. You could do whatever you wanted. I'd be good with that.”
Suddenly Tom felt the bed heave.
“He said no.” Heiko's voice was stern. He picked up Ben and carried him back to the single bed.
“No, it's ok, I'll just go back to the bigger bed. Just to sleep.” Ben struggled to get out of Heiko's hold.
“Quiet,” Heiko said.
Ben stopped struggling and relaxed in Heiko's iron grip. He became aware of his surroundings, which was mainly a lot of Heiko. “Is that your cock poking me?”
“I guess,” Heiko muttered.
After a long pause, Ben whispered, “You want to fuck me?”
“Shut up and go to sleep, Ben.” And so they did, Ben erect and horny, Heiko erect and pissed, and Tom trying not to laugh.
By morning Ben had shifted his affections. He whispered to Heiko, “You're the best man I ever slept with naked and hard and didn't fuck me but I wanted him to.”
“Shhh … You'll wake Tom,” Heiko cautioned.
“I had no idea not doing it could be so much fun,” Ben rearranged himself in the small bed.
“Quit hugging me. You're still hard,” Heiko whispered furiously.
“Well, so are you!” Ben sounded put upon. There was a silence and then another comment.
“Alright, no more of that,” Heiko told Ben. After another longer and mostly silent pause, Heiko was slightly out of breath, “Seriously, no more, Ben.”
Tom laughed. “I'm so fortunate to have loonies in my life.”
