Our Young Man

2

“‘Monsieur le Baron’?” Pierre-Georges said angrily.

“How did you know I said that last night?”

“Édouard phoned me. He was very irritated and disabused.”

“I felt sorry for him. I was worried about him.”

“So he said,” Pierre-Georges said acidly. “The scales fell from his eyes and he no longer thinks you’re a real man but some sort of mama’s boy.”

“I knew it was a blunder but I felt genuine compassion for my friend—”

“A blunder? I’ll say. That’s what he wanted; he’d paid two hundred dollars to each of those types. Since his childhood, he told me he’s dreamed of being disciplined as a bad dog and then forced to eat a turd—un étron.”

“No one has that fantasy. Little boys want to be cowboys or fireman — no one wants to be a bad dog forced to eat shit. Not even a Belgian baron.”

“Chacun à son goût,” Pierre-Georges said philosophically.

“What should I do when I see him the next time?” Guy asked. “How should I act?”

“It’s finished. He won’t bother you again. No more intimate or name-day parties. No more amazing gifts. You might be invited as an extra on a crowded stage if you’re lucky.”

“But we’re friends!” Guy objected.

“Oh, sure. Do you think he invites you because he likes your scintillating conversation about the ups and downs of the rag trade? Do you think he has a burning interest in the rag trade?”

“We have other subjects, serious subjects.”

“I forgot: Your sad childhood. Your Buddhist chants. No, it’s finished.”

Guy thought for a while. “He talked about his sad childhood, too.”

Pierre-Georges snapped, “The only thing sad about his childhood was that he couldn’t convince any of the footmen to shit in his mouth.” Pierre-Georges was warming up to his role as the disabuser. He’d come over to Guy’s for the emergency. He smiled for the first time today. He opened a white paper bag and pulled out a croissant, found a plate in the cupboard, and ate it. As Guy’s manager he of course didn’t offer him anything to eat; Guy’s breakfast was always a cup of black coffee, which he was sipping now while looking sheepish.

After a solitary lunch (a third of a chicken salad at the Front Porch, a neighborhood restaurant where he liked the campy waiter), Guy felt absolved and talked himself into a storm of irritation. He was tired of feeling foolish for a simple act of human kindness. He’d been brought up by a sainted mother. Was it his fault that he couldn’t despise a kind old man, even someone as deeply perverted and depraved as Édouard? Guy imagined most aristocrats were decadent. He was proud of his humble origins. His instincts were still unimpaired. A decade in fashion hadn’t spoiled him. He was still a good person, a simple boy of the people from Clermont-Ferrand and, thank god, not a shit-eating Belgian. He tried to feel sorry for Édouard, for making a mess out of his life.

He decided he’d invite Édouard to dinner. He knew how to cook eel in green sauce, which Édouard loved. And Guy would wear his leather harness and shorts and have menottes, cuff links — no, handcuffs! — dangling on his left side. After a bottle of Gewürztraminer, the baron would end up on his knees begging for it. He’d always been fond of Édouard, who’d been so kind to him, who’d bought him this house, who’d celebrated his name day. He was strange, but then they’d had some good conversations.

But when he phoned Édouard the butler told him once, then twice, that “Monsieur le Baron est sorti”—not at home. He decided to phone at eight A.M. before the butler, who’d never liked him, would have arrived and he’d get the cook, who adored him. But Marguerite for some reason was very cold, too, and told him “Monsieur le Baron est sorti.”

“Ça va, Marguerite?” he asked cheerfully.

“Ça va, Monsieur Guy. Et vous-même?” She’d said tu to him for ages, and Guy felt rebuffed. He said, “I’ll call back,” and she said nothing. He hung up.

A week went by. At last Guy received a creamy envelope embossed with the baron’s coat of arms (two books surrounding a lion and the words MON PLAISIR), inviting him to a large reception honoring the Belgian king’s birthday with the note, “Business attire.” Oh, it would be a straight evening, a champagne reception for dozens of business associates and their wives. No opportunity to flaunt his leathers there!

He made sure he’d look better than everyone else and took a long time with his toilette. His Armani suit, his lace-up Churches, his classic white shirt, and the solid maroon silk tie — and, of course, the emerald. He felt sure the baron would melt when he saw the emerald. It would bring back so many memories.

But the party was a rout, all Belgians (mostly speaking Flemish), toasting the king with American champagne, none of the usual crowd of hot guys, nothing to eat except pretzels (which for some reason the baron thought elegant), several awkward conversations with slow-talking businessmen who wanted to find out how Guy knew the baron and did he work for one of his suppliers, then a sudden general departure at eight engineered by the hateful, tight-lipped butler (the invitation had specified six to eight), and Guy had only caught a glimpse of Édouard, and when he tried to talk to him, the baron had brought forward a fat man in a sports jacket and said, “Oh, good, you two can speak English. Fred, Guy,” and the baron rushed off to kiss an old woman’s hand as she entered the room. Guy waved at Walt, who pretended he didn’t see him.

It turned out this Fred was a very nice man, not a Belgian, not even linked to the baron’s brewery, like all the others, but a film producer from Hollywood who invited Guy out to dinner. They went to Casey’s, a place in the Village, all candles and mirrors, which Guy had walked past a million times but never entered, though it was only four blocks away from where he lived. After the cold douche of the baron’s reception (he hadn’t even said goodbye as Guy was being ushered out in the general stampede), this Fred’s kindness and obvious interest and openness was a balm. Guy felt he’d been slapped in the face and looked at the mirror almost expecting a red hand mark on his cheek, but no, his skin was perfect. Never had Guy been insulted like that, but was the baron, he wondered, freezing him out for his thoughtless kindness? Would he give Guy a second chance? Maybe he was just provoking Guy, hoping to be punished later. (Guy had heard masochists were good at needling their tops.)

At first Guy didn’t say much, nor did he have to. Fred wasn’t exactly a braggart, but he was quick to fill Guy in on his life and work.

“Where are you from?” He’d learned that was the standard question in America, not an impertinence, as it would be in France.

“Oregon.”

“What kind of films do you make?”

“Blaxploitation.”

“Pardon?”

“Movies for black audiences.”

“Oh,” Guy said, losing interest.

“It’s mostly for export. Not something we’d go see, but they love it in Accra.”

“What are they about?”

“Get whitey.”

“Who’s Weddy?”

“Where are you from?”

“Paris.”

“What brings you to these shores?”

“Work. I’m a model.”

“Hands? You have beautiful hands.” Fred smiled.

Guy looked at his hands as if he’d forgotten them. “Oh, really? Do you like my hands?” Did he say hands because he couldn’t think of anything else nice to say? Then he was afraid of thinking like an airhead model and asked, “How do you know Édouard?”

“We have the same taste in boys,” Fred said, lifting his eyebrows significantly.

“You met in some dungeon?”

“Oh, no, I’m a romantic. I like to kiss. I’m looking for a partner.”

“A business partner? For a new African film?” Guy wasn’t paying attention — there were too many mirrors.

“No, a partner in love. A life partner. Someone to share my life with. You see, I just came out.”

“Really? What did you do … before?” The unfamiliarity of the topic made him focus for a minute and to raise his hand to his forehead to block out his own multiplied reflections. He couldn’t concentrate in front of so many mirrors.

“I was married. Three kids. You won’t believe this, but two grandchildren,” and he pulled out his wallet to show their pictures.

Guy didn’t like children but he smiled, not with tenderness at the pictures but out of politeness. “Was it a hard transition?” Guy asked sympathetically. His main course, which Americans for some reason called an entrée, arrived; it was beef Wellington, rare and in a crust that for once wasn’t soggy. He vowed to eat only half of it.

“Coming out?” Fred was tucking into his dish, which was flounder stuffed with crabmeat and shrimp — Guy should have taken that, it would have been lighter. Oh, well, nothing but yogurt for lunch tomorrow. Damn, there was his reflection again. He looked very young in candlelight, he thought, though he usually blew candles out, they hurt his eyes. Like all Frenchmen he preferred a well-lit restaurant and no background music.

“Yes, it was agonizing, but it had to be done.” Fred made it sound like pulling an infected tooth.

Guy realized with a start it was his turn to say something. “Was your wife very hurt?”

“Ceil?” Wasn’t a seal an animal, a phoque? But then Guy realized it must be short for Celia. “Angry? Livid. Ceil had thought for years she must not be desirable, that was why I was shunning her, but when she realized I was gay from the get-go, boy, was she pissed, I’d condemned her to a loveless marriage, ruining the best years of her life.”

“But you gave her children — and grandchildren,” Guy reminded him, “and probably a nice house.”

“A showplace. But she has that famished look of a woman that hasn’t been touched in years — you know the look.”

Guy wasn’t sure he did know the look.

Fred said, “And to come out at sixty-three — okay, sixty-six — is no joke. If you’re a romantic and looking for love.” Fred expected Guy to say something — but what?

Guy pointed out, “There are plenty of other available gay men in their sixties.”

“Nah,” Fred said, and actually shuddered as if he’d seen a ghost. “Older guys have too much emotional baggage. They’ve already lived their lives. I’m only just starting out on mine. I want another youngster, if that makes sense.”

“Perfectly,” Guy said, though he didn’t quite understand.

“A young, handsome guy — a masculine, muscular one. Masc-musc, as we say in L.A.”

Guy wondered if he qualified, though he wasn’t at all attracted to Fred. The minute someone announces a casting call, Guy thought ruefully, I always wonder if I’ll get the part.

Fred was on his third martini. “All my life I’ve been staring at those guys, wanting them, never daring to talk to them, volunteering to coach Little League—”

Little League. Oh, dear, Guy thought, isn’t that children?

“Going down to the beach and staring at the surfers. Say, we’ve got to get you out to L.A. for some screen tests.”

“Aren’t I the wrong color for your films?”

Fred laughed. “Put a little slap on you. Seriously, I’m coproducing a wonderful art-house movie about a schizophrenic who falls for an anorexic.”

“Schizophrenic? So you thought of me?”

“I can’t stop thinking of you,” Fred said in a lower, sexy voice. “No, the schizophrenic’s confidant, a pastry chef.”

“And this pastry chef is French?”

“Why not? We need some textures.”

“Do you have a director?”

Fred sat up in his chair. “We haven’t signed anyone yet, but this is such a high-end property we’re talking to some of the European and experimental guys in the business.”

“I’m not sure I’m much of an actor.” Guy flashed on his recent debacle in the dungeon.

After dinner Fred invited Guy up to his place in a new building overlooking Washington Square.

“I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”

“I’m bicoastal,” Fred said suggestively. “Nah, I was born in Brooklyn. I need New York the way a fish needs air.”

Guy tried to work that one out.

The apartment, which was a dusty neglected penthouse with dead plants and a view of the graffiti-covered Washington Square arch and the seething, dangerous park beyond it, was glitzy-Oriental, with three gilt life-sized statues of the meditating Buddha at the entrance, low black-lacquered tables with pagoda trim, blood-red silk couches with heavy tassel pulls, a spotlit abstraction that some decorator had obviously chosen for the color, a terrazzo floor with glitter buried into it delineating — oh, a dragon lounging on the Great Wall of China. “I’m a sort of Buddhist myself,” Guy said, to be agreeable in case the décor was an expression of Fred’s beliefs rather then his tastes.

“This is something Ceil concocted with that pansy decorator of hers — I’m going to clear it all out and put in something simple and modern and classic, maybe with a Pompeian motif or a Moorish.”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Guy advised.

“Maybe I’ll go all antique. Édouard has that handsome young antique dealer he’s so crazy about. What a body that kid has! Gr-r-r …” and he made the sound of an angry dog, which reminded Guy uncomfortably of Édouard’s excesses.

“I haven’t met him,” Guy said coolly.

“Really? Édouard’s besotted with him. He’s clearing out all that boring-ass white furniture of his and going all Chippendale or something, but I’ll bet you it’s just so he can be with young Will, who’s going to supply him with lots of priceless lumber with a fifty percent markup, you can bet.”

That was quick, Guy thought, panicking to think he’d been replaced.

Fred turned a dial and lowered the lights. “It’s nice to see the city from here, if you can glimpse it between all those goddamn Buddhas. Sorry,” he said.

“I’m just the chanting kind of Buddhist,” Guy hastened to say, “not the begging-bowl kind.” Fred had refreshed their drinks and now was sitting next to Guy. He said, “Isn’t that the kind where you chant all day for things you want? I had a friend who chanted who was bi and kept by rich men and women one at a time. He chanted for a Rolls and got it. He said the only disadvantage of being a live-in gigolo is that you have to be willing to play canasta at three A.M. with some ancient insomniac lady.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Guy was quick to say.

“But what are you chanting for?”

“A beach house in Fire Island Pines.”

Fred, who’d been leaning forward, now sat back. “Whoa! I’m not that rich. I’m a millionaire, but a very minor millionaire,” and he held his finger and thumb apart to indicate two inches.

Guy laughed. “But I wasn’t asking you for anything. That’s what I chant for. I pray to Amida, not to you.” But after Guy went to the toilet he said he was tired, he had an early call, and he thanked Fred, who looked devastated.

“You can’t just walk out of my life like that.”

They exchanged phone numbers, but when Fred tried to line him up for lunch or dinner or a movie, Guy said, “I don’t have my schedule yet for this week. It would be unfair to you to make a date and then have to break it.”

“Don’t French people kiss each other goodbye on two cheeks?”

“Fathers and sons. When you get the Légion d’honneur. Silly Parisian queens and society people.”

While Fred was pondering this, Guy shook hands, thanked him, and left.

Guy needed some time alone to absorb how the baron had turned on him. All that talk about how they were soul mates, about how Guy had a rare gift for transcending nationality, class, age. Had he said class? Did that mean he thought Guy was beneath him, low-class? Pierre-Georges had insinuated he, Guy, was a bore, with just his looks to offer. Was he a bore?

On his way home he cruised a hot kid who turned out to be a nineteen-year-old dancer named Vladimir. Guy took him home, gave him a drink, and fucked him. Enough old men! Guy told himself. But after the adoring, rapturous Vladimir had left (“Sorry, I can’t sleep with another person in bed,” Guy had said drily), he still felt bruised and insulted.

He wondered the next morning if Édouard would phone him, but Vlad and Fred did. He agreed to have a quick lunch with Fred, who was in some sort of golfing clothes minus the cleats.

“I couldn’t sleep all night,” Fred said. “I worried that I’d said something wrong, that I’d turned you off somehow.”

“Not at all,” Guy said, turning on a thousand-watt smile. He smiled like that when he wanted to appear inaccessible. “I had a delightful evening.”

“Really? You’re not bullshitting me? Because, honestly, I’m completely dazzled by you.” He sighed heavily and ran a hand across his baldpate. “Coming out in your sixties is no joke. I mean, you’re so vulnerable. It’s like being a pimply fifteen-year-old all over again. I’m a whizz at picking up birds.” (Oh, he means women.) “Birds are easy, at least in L.A., if you have a nice car and you say you’re a producer. They’re all like Lana Turner waiting to be discovered at that drugstore.” (Guy didn’t get the reference, but he thought he’d heard of that old actress).

“I guess you must be quite the stud,” Guy said, and wondered if Fred would detect the irony. From his decade in Paris, Guy had learned how to insult people sweetly.

But Fred didn’t pick up on the irony. “I’m not saying that. It’s just that wealth and influence count more with women than they do with men. You see, men want to be the top dog, not attract him.”

Dogs again, Guy thought. “It must have been a relief to come out finally.”

“Yes and no. I was in terrible shape. I had to go on a diet and lose fifty pounds. Now I go to the gym three hours every day and my personal trainer is a real demon. Then”—here he dropped his voice—“I’m only telling you this ’cause I trust you — I had a face-lift.” He showed him the scars behind his ears. There were whiskers growing there — some of the beard skin had been tucked back there. “That’s why I look so young.”

“Oh, that’s why,” Guy said.

“And I had liposuction — they boiled down ten pounds of gut fat. I had to wear a corset for a month. I’m having hair implants, but boy, are those painful. I had my eyebrows and my ears lasered clean of hair. I had the age spots burned off my hands with an acetylene torch. When the scabs fall off, your hands are white.”

“In French,” Guy said, “we call those spots cemetery flowers.”

“Gross. I had my elbows sanded. My teeth are all new.” He smiled to show his new teeth.

“Is it worth it?” Guy asked.

“I want to be an A-list gay. I want people to say, ‘Who’s that young stud?’”

Guy didn’t know what to say, so he just smiled. The campy waiter stopped by to chat for a few minutes; they were the last lunch customers. Talking as two masculine men with one who was so flamboyant formed a kind of bond, and after the waiter tripped off, Fred said, “I feel really good with you. You know how to make a guy feel good. I don’t know why I trust you.”

Guy looked at his own beautiful Beaume & Mercier watch, which he’d bought at duty-free at Charles de Gaulle, and exclaimed, “I’ve got to be running.” He was trying to head Fred off from making an embarrassing avowal.

“Run, run,” Fred said in a friendly way, though the color drained from his face and his eyes went extinct.

When Guy called Pierre-Georges to relate all his recent news, Pierre-Georges said to him, “You see, Americans aren’t realistic like us, even the old: They want to be loved for themselves. They want to be young. They don’t recognize they have to have something to offer — money or power or a title.”

“Would you check this guy out — Fred Hampton — and see if he’s legitimate?”

The next night Fred invited Guy out to a musical (Guy despised musicals, but didn’t say anything) and to dinner in a Russian restaurant complete with blinis and caviar, lamb shashlik on skewers, and a caterwauling baritone who accompanied himself approximately on the piano. (“Memories light the corners of my mind …”) Fred drank quite a bit of one of the twenty-three kinds of vodkas on offer. (He chose bison grass, whatever that was.) “So tell me — gosh, you’re handsome! What’s the secret of being a successful male model, other than being fabulously good-looking?”

Guy decided to ignore the compliment and to answer the question seriously. “It’s like acting — knowing how you look to other people.” He’d thought about this and talked about it with Lucie. “Most people can’t see themselves from the camera’s — or the audience’s — point of view. They just do what feels natural. They don’t know how they look, how they’re coming across.”

“For example?” Anglo-Saxons, Guy thought, always want examples. So lowering. They’re incapable of thinking abstractly.

“Bad actors, if they want to look anxious, wave their arms a lot, which feels right but looks absurd.”

“And models?”

“You might hold up your hand to suggest protest or resistance, but an open hand thrust forward is the size of a head — it feels right but it looks wrong. A hand should never be seen except in profile.”

“How interesting,” Fred said, looking uninterested. He wants to talk only about his love for me. “Go on.”

“A model selling a new typewriter might look directly at the camera, especially if he’s been told he has beautiful eyes.”

“You have beautiful eyes,” Fred said sadly, possibly anticipating Guy’s indifference.

“But a model, if he’s selling a product, should look at it, never the camera.” Suddenly Guy felt shocked by the childish insistence in his voice and disheartened by how trivial the knowledge of his “craft” sounded. For different reasons both men were sad, and they lapsed into silence.

Suddenly Fred brightened and said, “You know, that house on Fire Island you keep mentioning?”

“That I’m chanting for,” Guy corrected, smiling.

“I think we should go out there this Sunday now that it’s getting warmer. I’ve lined up a real estate agent who could show us some houses.” Fred smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to chant in vain. We can stay over Sunday night.”

When Guy told Pierre-Georges that night his news over the phone, Pierre-Georges exclaimed, “You see! I’ve always claimed you get more if you’re a man by not putting out. Women succeed by sleeping with men, but men do better by not sleeping with them.”

“Have you always said that?” Guy said, teasing him. “I’ve never done anything through calculation. I just chant.”

“She just chants — Little Miss Innocent.”

“It would be nice to have a house right on the beach. Wake up at noon, pull back the blackout curtains, open the glass doors, cross the dunes … just wear a smile and a Jantzen.”

“That dates you!”

“You’re right. I wish we could just wash our brains clean of everything from the past. What are you eating?”

“White beans and sardines and chervil.”

“I love that! But it’s better with red peppercorns.”

Lucie came by to show off her new burnt-orange sweater, which stretched attractively across her tits and looked like a radiant mango against her light brown skin. She twirled around to show it off but she was so little an exhibitionist that she ran out of steam after a half turn and deflated self-consciously onto the couch.

“Look, I’ve only got ten minutes,” Guy said, “before I go off for a Banana Republic go-see way uptown, but I want to talk about something with you. Then I have a Bacardi rum shoot midtown.”

“Fine,” she said. “Tell me.” He was never this serious and she felt flattered and hoped to be worthy of his confidence.

“This chanting thing is sort of creepy.”

“How so?” She chanted, too, and always defended Buddhism.

“Just for fun, I was chanting for a beach house in the Pines, and now this old guy seems to want to offer me one.”

“Bravo!”

“Do you think I’m just a big whore?”

“None of us is getting any younger.” She reoriented herself and said, “Americans are always so cheap. They always want to split the bill. Of course, the younger girl models never pay for anything, but they have to go out with horrible Russian gangsters. You’re the only one who gets an apartment”—she looked around—“or a house out of the deal. How do you do it?”

“Chanting.”

“I’ve been chanting for a Cadillac convertible and I’m still taking the IRT.”

They laughed. Guy took her hand between both of his. She was surprised by the gesture. “Do you think I’ve become a gold digger? I’ve already got plenty of money saved up. But I can’t stop myself.”

“Look, it’s nothing you’re doing. You’re gorgeous — that’s your only fault.”

Guy decided to believe her. It was simpler.

But what was he going to do Sunday night when Fred would want to share his bed? He could always say he had a big job Monday early, that he was doing a whole shoot for Perry Ellis.

It was a cool March day in the Pines as they crossed the bay in a powerboat Fred had hired in advance. (The ferry wasn’t running yet.) Big gray clouds chased one another like fat, playful puppies in a pet store window, except the enclosure was immense, all of outdoors. It was fairly cool and there was a stinging hint of rain in the air, what the French call “spit” (crachin). Fred squinted at the wind and rain reproachfully, as if it were conspiring to ruin their day, but Guy said, “I love it. It reminds me of Brittany.”

They were shown a gray-shingled house from the 1950s a block from the beach with a rotting wood staircase. Inside, the house smelled of kerosene and septic tank. “Did some old couple just live here and die?” Guy asked.

“How much does this cost?” Fred asked, raising and lowering his jacket zipper nervously.

The agent — a prematurely tanned middle-aged man — smiled and held out his hands jokily, miming as if he were trying to juggle several balls or answer both questions at once. “Yes! An old couple lived here. They haven’t died but they need the cash. Their winter house is in Sayville. This is a fixer-upper; that’s why it’s only a million and a half.”

“Only!” Fred shouted. “It’s run-down, it’s off the beach; even fixed up, the rooms are too small. And you can’t get flood or hurricane insurance out here, you told me that yourself.” The agent shrugged and Fred zipped his blue windbreaker shut so it held his stomach as in a sling. He walked out on the stairs and flicked open his chrome lighter, cupped the flame, and lit a Camel, squinting into the blowback. His jaw muscles were working; maybe he hadn’t expected such high prices.

Next they saw an architect’s house right on the dunes with glass doors and turrets and a great room two stories high, but a screen door was banging in the wind, the rubber insulation around the kitchen windows was rotting, and the parquet floor was buckling. “How much is this one?” Fred asked.

“Just three million. You’d pay that much for an empty lot in this location.”

“We’ll take it,” Guy called out, then looked at Fred and said, “Right, Daddy?” Then he bent over laughing at his little joke.

Fred smiled a sour little smile.

As they walked along Atlantic, they battled a cold wind, which raised goose bumps on their legs. They were both in shorts. “I know some of these kids get into calling their older boyfriends ‘Daddy,’ but I think that’s sick.” Fred was holding on to Guy as if to keep him warm and grounded in the wind. He had a strong arm across Guy’s back and was whispering into his ear, “I don’t want to be anyone’s daddy. I already have three kids and two grandchildren — you’d never guess it, would you?”

“No, you don’t seem the type.” But then Guy realized Fred was referring to his youthfulness, not his paternal image. “You look too young.”

Fred brightened. “I do? Honest?”

“Honest,” Guy echoed, feeling depressed.

Because he’d inadvertently cooperated with Fred’s sense that he was an A-list gay, Guy went to bed with him that night in the suite he’d rented in some Potemkin-village “palace” an old queen had pieced together according to her fantasies of luxury and history. It was all falling apart, but at first glance it did seem baronial-Liberace, especially compared to the humble dwellings that surrounded it, with names like “Lickety Split” and “Atta Gurl.” It was all gray and white like some comic-book version of a stately home, except inside it smelled of Kools and roach spray and the potted ferns were turning brown. The “velvet” bedspread was some flimsy synthetic that clung to their bodies and didn’t breathe.

They sat down to a big porterhouse steak, creamed spinach, and a quart of sour red wine, all topped off with a brandy alexander pie in a graham cracker crust. Their “romantic table” was positioned under a dusty chandelier missing lusters. The whole place felt dirty, greasy. Guy had swilled three Rusty Nails over shaved ice and then willingly, drunkenly presented Fred with his asshole, with a full-sized replica of the David in the corner, apparently carved out of soap, its penis no more erect than Fred’s. But what Fred lacked in turgidity he made up for in passionate utterance. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he mumbled into Guy’s crotch.

It was all over in five minutes and Guy was drunk enough to sleep through Fred’s scary-sounding roller-coaster snores — his chain-saw breathing, then his disturbingly long silences and his sudden, panicked gasps.

They woke up early and Guy hurried to take his shower and dress before Fred began with another blowjob, this one with halitosis. In fact, Guy hurried off to the breakfast nook with its goblin-and-leprechaun motif for a first cup of coffee and a squishy croissant. Fred looked reproachful and slightly uncertain.

They saw three more houses before heading back to New York; Fred decided to rent a new house right on the beach — a cool $60,000 for the four-month season. Guy said, “I’m sure you could buy a house somewhere for that sum.”

“But it wouldn’t be the Pines,” Fred pointed out, “and no one would visit. Not even you.”

Guy was impressed by his take-charge attitude; he hadn’t seen that side before.