Chapter Nineteen
Sarah Felsen, awaiting my reply, was patient, I'll give her that; and she looked different. Fecund, even, although nothing showed. She didn't press or plead; she just kept smiling even when I exhibited some distrust.
“Sarah, I'm having my lawyer look over the agreement, if that's ok with you.” I didn't tell her Charlie's instantly formed opinion of the whole thing had already been rendered in loud terms.
“Well, Refo, it seems a waste for both of us to be spending money on lawyers ...” Cagey, I'll give her that, too.
“He's actually a real estate lawyer ...”
“Oh?” Sarah's interest rose. “You have real estate?”
“I'm considering an investment.” True enough, I thought; I'm not lying. I had already invested the price of four apple trees.
“Really!” Sarah's juices were flowing. “Nearby?” Any real estate that could be termed near-by was very expensive.
“Virginia farm land,” I told her, not what she was looking for.
“Do you know much about farming?”
“No, but I'm visiting a poultry … farm? ranch? What do they call them?”
She shrugged. “I think China uses the term poultry factory.”
“I don't believe Randy Krol used 'factory' to describe it.” She recognized Randy's name from Democratic Party associations and was suitably impressed. “Yes, I met him at the Vice President's house. We were thrown out together. Remember?”
“THAT was Randy Krol? I assumed he was older. He looked so … preppy.”
Well, of course.” I hoped Charlie had been right; I used his line. “He went to Georgetown with Hunter Biden.”
Sarah Felsen nodded gravely. “He has children, Refo. You know that, right? He's not gay.”
“He likes my jokes – invited me to a cook out. It's a chance to see a real farm.”
It all sounded so plausible, so innocent when I explained it to Sarah Felsen. Why did I have the sense of foreboding when I drove through gates with the Randy Krol Farms, Inc. banner stretched from one side to the other?
“So it's a farm, not a ranch,' I said to Sarah as we looked for signs of life along a long drive through some trees. Suddenly the whole works appeared before us and the Chinese description was correct. It was a sprawling factory with a collection of smaller buildings on one side and trucks at loading docks on the other. An unearthly sound - dead chickens walking as Hollywood would say - and a terrible stench came from the small buildings.
“Dead chickens walking ...” Sarah laughed. “Such a terrible joke, Refo. Is this what I have to look forward to?”
It was presumptuous of her to think she had anything to look forward to, but maybe I had accidentally allowed her to dream a little. I didn't mean to. I meant to give her the strong impression that my lawyer had Reservations with a capital R; but somehow she got the impression that I was giving her a tentative “yes” to her proposal. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wrong, so I told her that Charlie was drafting a reply to her lawyer. Apparently to Sarah, any form of negotiation meant that it was practically a done deal.
Consequently, thinking she was all but married to me, she was being very kittenish. Flirty, almost. I didn't know what else to call it when she smiled and said, “I've never had a gay guy try to look down my blouse before,” and then in an adroit move she bent forward a little to give me a better view. She did it in such an unstudied, accidental way that I had to admire the practice that must have gone in to it.
Alright! I had been looking, but she was wearing a very sexy dark colored brassiere under a deep V neck and I've said before I thought she had a nice rack. And she does. And none of that WonderBra push up stuff, either. That's all Sarah in there. When she's fifty, they'll be down to her knees, I guess; but meanwhile, she's pretty hot, if you can take the word of a gay guy on the subject of boobs.
The shorts she was wearing showed off everything else and she was aware of the impression she made. “Refo, my God! You keep staring at me! What's the matter?” She was fuckin' hot, that's what was the matter. I was flustered, not aroused like with a guy, but there was a tingling going on in my dick that I couldn't account for. Imagine being aroused by the girl your going to marry. Wait, a gay guy being aroused by the girl he … Wait! I'm NOT going to marry her!
“You look very nice,” I told her and she basked in the compliment.
“Refo, if I didn't know better ...” Fortunately the extent of her knowledge was cut off by our arrival at a valet parking station.
The valet sneered at my car but openly admired Sarah Felsen; he opened her door and then mine. Butch, as his name tag stated, winked at me. “The boss is gonna like her!” he whispered as he accepted my five dollar tip.
Butch was right. Randy took Sarah for a look at the main house while I got a tour of the brood house. 'A million chickens, goin' to the dickens,' as an old song said; the songwriter must have taken as earlier tour. After the horrors of the chicken rendering works, the turkey building was a picture of serenity and civility. The guide explained that turkeys are uptown birds and will not abide the crowded conditions of the slum property the chickens lived in.
His point was made clearer when he showed us some wild turkeys, very demanding about everything. The wild variety was kept as an experiment. They knew they were the real McCoy and acted accordingly, strutting about rather archly. One of them deigned to notice me.
“Someday I'll have a better car, but you'll still be a bird,” I told him and he turned abruptly away. Turkeys have their own follies to deal with and I felt a positive feedback when the flock scattered at his return.
“He has antiques,” Sarah Felsen oozed when we met up.
“He has turkeys,” I countered as we walked to the buffet line. The food was actually quite good, poultry, of course, variously prepared. I got a chuckle seeing a Perdue wrapper in a trash can, but then Sarah informed me that Krol was a supplier to Perdue.
“How do you know that?”
“Randy told me when I saw Perdue packages in his freezer. Do you know he has a walk-in freezer in his kitchen?”
As we ate, I listened to a glowing account of her house tour. Randy was very rich and the very rich have a lot of STUFF. Sarah had mentally catalogued the whole house, it seemed. She named brands I had never heard of and several kinds of Louises. Did French kings all make furniture in their spare time? She made Randy's house sound like the world's biggest junk store. “So much STUFF!” I said when she took a breath.
“Is that how I made it sound? It doesn't look that way. It looks comfy,” and then she laughed at herself. “In a very expensive way, of course. His wife was the furniture collector.”
“Divorced?”
She was shocked. “Don't you listen to the news? Drowned.” She paused. “Tragically, in the Bahamas.”
“Just like Harry Oakes,” I tried to sound sympathetic. She looked back at me blankly. “Harry Oakes? Famous unsolved murder? In the Bahamas, Sarah?”
“She fell off the boat. It wasn't murder.”
“Witnesses?” I prodded.
“Randy. So sad. He had to watch her death.”
“Just Randy? No other witnesses?”
She laughed. “Refo, really.” She laughed again. And then she got serious. “They investigated. Nothing was provable. They were a happy couple.” I didn't push it. Randy didn't seem at all murderous to me, either.
We walked around attempting to strike up conversations with people who had no interest in talking to us. The party seemed to be agenda-driven with earnest political discussions on all sides. The instant people learned that Sarah and I were mere researchers at the NIH, their eyes began to wander and suddenly they were needed urgently elsewhere. It was plainly not our kind of crowd and eventually even Sarah gave up trying. We began walking toward the parking lot.
“Refo, come on,” Sarah suddenly insisted pulling me to the left. “You have to see the kitchen. It'll only take a second. It's amazing.”
'Kitchen' failed to describe a series or rooms bigger than most houses. I'll admit it: I was impressed. It looked more like a Williams-Sonoma store that any kitchen I had ever seen.
“Do you like it? It's not really practical for a family, but there are a lot of parties like today.” The speaker was an older woman with a slight German accent; she wore her hair in a tidy gray braid; altogether she looked like a Disney-created fairy godmother.
It's amazing,” Sarah said. “I hope you don't mind us looking. That fire place? Is it practical?”
Sarah and the woman began a conversation on the difficulties of cooking barbeque for two hundred in the winter. I tried to stay involved, but it was one of those conversations with just enough household and culinary jargon that I couldn't follow it. I began to considered napping while standing up.
“Refo!” Randy called me back to the world. “I see you and Sarah have met my mother! Excuse us,” he said to his mother and Sarah. He hustled me into a hall and then another room. He grabbed me in a bear hug. “Why didn't you tell me you were gay?” His bear paws slid down my back until they were cupping and squeezing my ass. He ground his pelvis into mine.
“I didn't figure ...”
“Well, you should have. We could have had a much more exciting time.” He was humping into me. I could feel his cock starting to expand. “Wednesday I'm gonna be in town. I'll call you. We can get together.” He kissed me hurriedly but gently and then hustled me back into the kitchen as if nothing had happened.
Back to formalities, Sarah and I were escorted to the front door by Randy and his mother with invitations to return on some unnamed occasion from them and many thanks for the day from us.
The valet was solicitous as he returned my car. “I think I can hear a pinging in the engine. You might want to have the timing checked.”
That was the last that was said for a while. At the Maryland border, Sarah said, “Refo.” It sounded portentous. “I have a date with Randy next Wednesday.”
“So do I” should have been my response. Instead I just said, “Oh.”
“It doesn't mean anything. I just couldn't say no. I've never been out with someone like him and … before the baby changes everything, I figured once couldn't hurt.”
I was the soul of sympathy, insisting that she should see Randy, no, it didn't matter a lot to me, some, of course, but not a lot, even under the terms of the pre-nup she could have other friends, we weren't really committed to anything yet, I certainly had no rights in the matter, and billionaires don't come along every day.
By the time we crosses the Bay Bridge, she was feeling guilty and apologizing. But the time we got to Washington, she was more modestly contrite and appreciative of the day. She even invited me in, but I declined, promising to do so another time. Mutual see-you-at-works ended the night.
Too much drama. Whew! I was glad to get home to my empty half-house. I was heading for the bathroom when I hear a noise in the kitchen. A scrabbling sound. A mouse. Damn, I usually got one during the first winter cold snap, but I'd never had one in the summertime before.
I snapped the light on, expecting to see a blur of fur cross the floor. Instead the enormity of Charlie sat in a chair, red-eyed and sobbing. “Where the hell have you been?” he shouted.
“Sarah and I went to ...”
He waved my phone in the air. “Couldn't you have taken your phone? What if there was an emergency? What if I needed to call you?”
Charlie was a wreck. Something must have gone wrong with Frank, I assumed and was immediately ashamed of my temptation to gloat a little. “What's the matter?” I asked him ready for the answer.
“I'm in love,” he said. I waited for more. That was all he said.
“What's wrong with that? You said Frank was ...”
“Not with Frank, you idiot.” Well, he had me there, idiot or not. Frank was the only possibility that I knew of. “With Mike, you numbskull.”
“Mike! The cousin? The village ...”
“He's not an idiot.” Charlie made it sound like sure death if I pursued that point.
“How did it happen?”
Charlie took a deep breath and sat up straight. “I did it your way.” And then he slumped. “He fucked me.”
“Mike?”
“Yes, Mike. Who else are we talking about? The first time I had to show him how. By the third time, he was very good. More than that. He was amazing.”
“Was this over days? Weeks? How did it happen?”
Charlie sniffled. “We were watching True Blood and when it was over Mike said to me, 'You spent an hour lookin' at that Jason guy. I look like Jason. Why don't you ever look at me?'
And I did look at him, and he does look like Ryan Kwanten, kind of, a little, ok, not so much, but he's blond and built and … I looked at him. And one thing led to another … and I had to show him how, but he didn't need much more help.”
“And the third time was ...”
“About two hours later. Around midnight, I think. He made me cum and cry and ...”
“Charlie, you cry pretty easily.”
“Are you trying to ruin the LOVE of my LIFE? Seriously, Refo?” He drummed his fingers on the table and then he sobbed again.
“Well, what's is there to ruin? It's sounds as if ...”
“He loves me.” Charlie said it very quietly. “He says. But he's never been in love before. What if it's just lust? What if it's the pure novelty? I'm the only guy he's ever been with. And there weren't many girls, either. And he says he never loved them. Just me ...”
“Well ...” I began; he cut me off again.
“And … I'm ten years older than he is, Refo. Ten years.” Charlie threw his hands up.
“Ten years is not a death sentence, Charlie.”
“He's twenty-three and I'm thirty-three.”
“Thirty-five. I remember because you're the same age as Sarah Felsen.”
“I can't give him up, Refo.” Charlie sounded like a desperate man.
She is based on a real person, one I felt sorry for.