Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (13 page)

“You don’t like my boner?” replied Nicky, falsely coy.

“You’re offending our hosts,” Roy insisted, though I noticed that he couldn’t take his eyes off Nicky’s erection. “You’ve virtually cleared the room with this . . . this outrageous stunt.”

“No, I approve of this,” I said. “It’s mildly eerie yet presented in a farcical naturalism that gives the whole thing a deceptively quotidian feel. A
Symphonic Fantastique
or so.”

Dennis Savage came back with a bathrobe, which he tossed to Nicky.

“No,” Nicky said, shaking his head slowly. “No, because if I don’t show a big dick, Roy won’t like me.”

“He
must
be drunk,” said Roy. “He’s never like this.”

“You don’t
know
what I’m like! You never listen to me, or ask me how I feel, or do anything except take me for granted!”

“Come on,” said Roy, helping Nicky into the bathrobe. “I do, too, listen to you.” He patted Nicky’s shoulder. “Boy, and I thought you were this quiet type.”

From the bathroom, Cosgrove shouted, “We’re not coming out till everybody’s dressed!”

“All clear,” I announced; and even Bauhaus joined us.

“In all the fuss,” said Virgil, “I never got to make my surprise revelation, which is, Guess who won the Dream Man contest?”

“Virgil, we’re rich!” Cosgrove exulted.

“Actually, I only got third prize. Fifteen dollars.”

“That’s still enough for one brand-new CD.”

“So let’s hear the award-winning piece,” said Dennis Savage.

“It’s weird how you can know someone for so long,” said Roy, regarding Nicky, “and be ignorant of the most basic things about them.”

“It’s not basic, I tell you,” said Nicky, almost pleading. “It’s just a device. The real me is more than something that goes up and down upon the application of erotic stimuli.”

“Woo,” said Cosgrove.

“It’s college,” Virgil agreed.

“We have to talk,” Roy told Nicky, patting him again. “Come on, let’s get you dressed.”

“Now you like me in public, is that it?”

“What, I always liked you, you silly . . . big . . . boy . . .”

“Let’s hear your piece,” Dennis Savage urged Virgil, and Cosgrove and I clapped expectantly. Nicky gave us all a weary grieving look, but he let Roy lead him back to the bathroom. On the way, Roy whispered, “Is it really big when it’s flaccid, too? Because I think I love that effect most of all . . .”

“I must admit, I was not planning to read my essay,” Virgil told us, looking after Roy and Nicky with some disapproval. “Of course, upon publication, copies were to be circulated.” He took a bow, to Cosgrove’s “Bravossimo!,” to which Dennis Savage (no doubt still grudging the “Funette” episode) replied, “I wonder if you mean ‘Bravissimo.’ ”

“Sure, Ragmop.”

Dennis Savage was patient, elegant, so
comme ça
. “Didn’t I ask you,” he asked me, “to arrange for our delightful little Cosgrove to stop—”

“Let’s go out for haircuts,” said Cosgrove. “ ‘Barber, I’ll take the Ragmop trim, please.’ ”

Dennis Savage rose, saying, “Now I’m going to mow you down.”

“Stop fighting,” said Virgil, heading for the bedroom, “and I’ll read my piece.”

Dennis Savage poured out white wine for the grown-ups and juice for the kids, as Roy and Nicky made their departure with thanks and apologies, and Dennis Savage lip-mimed “We have to discuss this” to me.

Then: “‘My Dream Man,’ ” Virgil read out. “‘By Kiwi Brown.’ ” He looked at us: Dennis Savage and Cosgrove on the sofa, me sitting on the carpet, leaning against the wall with the aid of a
pillow. His extended family, as we call it. “Don’t be critical,” he warned us.

“Just read it,” said Dennis Savage.

“ ‘My dream man is gentle but commanding,’ ” Virgil intoned. “ ‘Sometimes he is rough on me, but I know it is only to make me a better person. And then he always hugs and kisses me to say, “It’s all right, and we’re still best friends.”’ ”

Dennis Savage and Cosgrove eyed each other suspiciously. Who was rough?
Who
kissed him?

“‘My dream man is not very tall, yet he seems treelike to me.’ ”

Cosgrove, at five-seven, glowed. Dennis Savage, just over six feet, scrunched down on the couch the slightest bit.

“‘You may ask, “What color his hair, his eyes?” I say, “It doesn’t matter.” We two are so close that, however far apart we may be, I can feel what he feels, at the same moment.’ ”

This bewildered Dennis Savage and Cosgrove. What’s going on,
The Corsican Brothers?
They traded a second suspicious look; Cosgrove even made a fist.

“ ‘My dream man loves me not for my special talents but just for myself. I don’t have to impress him. But when I do succeed, he is the first to admire me.’ ”

“Wonderful essay,” quoth Dennis Savage.

“I admire you more,” said Cosgrove.

“ ‘My dream man has the respect of all who meet him, but no one respects—and loves—him more than I, for he is my very own pop, Seth Brown.’ ”

Virgil looked at us. “I surprised you, right? You thought it would be just some boy friend.”

“Some of us did,” I said, getting up. “Now, I have to get some work done and Cosgrove has to do the marketing.”

“I’ll go, too,” said Virgil. “We’re fresh out of Puffed Kashi.”

Dennis Savage followed me downstairs, eager to settle the case of Roy and Nicky. “Here’s the question of the year,” he said.
“Why didn’t Nicky just tell Roy that he had Schlong Control in the first place?”

“But think of the risk. Getting exploited and patronized on a platonic basis is bad enough—imagine how Nicky would have felt if Roy rejected him
sexually
as well.”

“He wouldn’t have.”

“How do you know? Besides,” I added, getting out a notebook, “I think Nicky’s worse off now. It’s a case of the blind fucking the blind. Okay, Nicky’ll get into bed with the man he loves. Right. They may even have a kind of affair. But sooner or later, Roy will tire of Nicky, and he will stun him, scorch him. Why? Because Nicky wants a lover and Roy wants a dream man.” I uncapped a pen. “And dream men, by nature, are out of reach. Touch one, and he becomes meaninglessly real.”

“What are you writing?”

I shrugged. “Some story.”

He looked over my shoulder and read out, “‘The Hunt for—’ ”

“ ‘Alice Faye Lobby Cards,’ ” I finished, my hand covering the truth.

“All right, snarky, I’m on my way out.”

Cosgrove got in quite some time later, but then most people can return from a vacation sooner than Cosgrove and Virgil can return from D’Agostino’s.

“The most incredible thing!” Cosgrove cried, plopping the groceries onto the kitchen counter. “This guy had set up a little flea market right outside his building. There was a crowd going over, like, these books and clothes and stuff. He was saying, ‘Estate sale! Estate sale! Everything must go!’ So I just leaned over to see—and guess what?”

“CDs.”

“Not just CDs. Rock imports that you can’t
get
here! He won’t take plastic, so I’m going to rush back and—”

“I thought it was something like that,” I told him, turning
around from my desk. “Because, you see, Demento was just here.”

Cosgrove froze. “He
who?”

“Demento came. Something about your having ungratefully passed up rarities that he had placed in your grasp. He unwrapped one of those Klondikes that you’re so wild about and rubbed it all over your Rachmaninoff Second. With his awesome power, of course, I could do nothing to intervene. Worse yet, he said that no other copies of that extremely rare and desirable recording will become available till 2001, when a retired mortgage broker in Riverdale will move to Florida and—”

“You didn’t,” he said quietly. “Are you so heartless?”

“I?
Demento!”

He marched right over to his collection, snapped open the indicated jewel box, examined the disc—of course it was unharmed—and replaced it.

“That was such a mean joke,” he said. “It was the acme of cruelty, and then some.”

“Aren’t you going to rush back to that one-man flea market and—”

“No. He was asking too much for them, anyway. And now I have a little idea.”

I went on working as he unpacked the groceries and returned to his catalogs. Making a quick trip to the bathroom, I wondered if I’d gone too far. But, look, if you can’t tease your live-in, whom can you tease?

So I was confident as I came back out. Cosgrove was quiet, deep in catalog and thought. “He was back,” he said.

“Who was?”

“Demento.” He looked up, cool and resistant. “What a surprise for us to learn that he moonlights as the protector of injured roommates. He set up your Super Mario World on the controller.” Responding to the look on my face, he said, “Well, didn’t I
tell
him you don’t like anyone fussing with your Super Nintendo? I said, ‘It took Bud seven months just to reach the Valley of Bowser. Push the wrong button and he’ll lose it all.’ And you know what Demento
said? ‘I will push the
right
button.’ And he erased your entire game.”

With that, Cosgrove went back to his catalog.

“You can’t fool me,” I said as I coolly returned to the desk. (I did take a fleet swipe of a look at the controller. Super Mario was nested there, though I hadn’t played it in weeks. Uh-oh.)

I did this and that in my notebook. Then I said, “You would not be so foolhardy as to erase my game. Surely you would not dare.”

“But,” he observed, “Demento dares all.”

“I will not be taken in.”

He looked at me.

I said, “Did you do something to that game?”

He was struggling not to smile.

“Did you?”

“Someone is worried, I see.”

It was too much to bear. I jumped up, switched the game on, and triggered the playing screen. My game was intact.

“Victorious” does not describe Cosgrove in that moment. “Apocalyptically sated” might do.

“Now who’s so great, Mister Smarty?” he asked. “Demento is my dream man.”

My voice was low, dangerous, Teutonic. I said, “ ‘Consida dot a divawss.’ ”

“What’s going on?” Dennis Savage asked.

“Somebody in this apartment misplaced the TV remote control,” I explained, “despite the strict rule that limits its theatre of operation to the couch so we’ll always know where it is. And if somebody doesn’t
find
the remote control”—Cosgrove raced by, flipping through old magazines, raping the linen chest, nosing into the stove—“he forfeits his birthday visit to Tower Records for any seven CDs of his choice, not to mention the extra two or three he plants by the cash register and then slips in unnoticed—he foolishly believes—by me, his keeper, boss, and mentor.”

“I will, I will,” Cosgrove promised as he hustled around, dipping into the piano bench and investigating the cappuccino maker.

“It’s terrifying,” said Dennis Savage.

“It’s justice,” I told him.

“How sorely it taxes our sweet little Cosgrove,” said Dennis Savage, not without gusto, for he is generally one of Cosgrove’s most energetic detractors. “But enough of these pleasantries. I have important news to lay on you. I sold my book.”

Slowly I turned.

“Yes, I did, too,” he went on. “And entirely without your assistance.”

“It’s bad enough that you brazenly use your closest friends as characters in your fiction. But then to ask me to help you get this grab bag of scrofulous innuendo and betrayal printed is—”

“Well, I
didn’t
ask you, did I?” he replied, looking pleased, even all-conquering.

“Who’s your publisher?” I asked, hoping it was some feeble independent press, perhaps a vanity outfit.

“Actually, I was rather impressed by an aggressive youngish editor at Grove Weidenfeld, and—”

“I found it!”
Crosgrove called out as he ran in from the bathroom with the trophy held in high display. “It was in the hamper, after all. Boy!”

“The TV remote,” said Dennis Savage, “was in the laundry hamper?”

“Don’t ask,” I told him.

“Now I can plan my birthday haul,” Cosgrove gloated, settling down with his record guides and magazines. “I’ve been scouting out the complete Beethoven symphonies, but Miss Faye says, How come we don’t have any Janis Paige or Jessica Dragonette?”

Dennis Savage looked at Cosgrove for a moment, then turned back to me. “Meanwhile, the house made a most generous offer—”

“Fiddlesticks,” I observed.

“I admit it’s in the lower one figure. But everyone starts somewhere.”

“Fatty de Pinero started somewhere, in Oxford, Nebraska,” said Cosgrove, poring over his folios. “He was just walking. Yet he gradually realized that he would never stop till he came to New York. And here he is even today.”