Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (6 page)

Dennis Savage began to weep.

“Oh, no,” I said, “not another crying story.”

“Everyone cries around you,” said Carlo.

“Anyway,” said Dennis Savage, wiping his eyes, “I knew he wasn’t an android, didn’t I?”

The following afternoon, Cosgrove and I picked up his suit, and that evening we went to
G
tterd
mmerung
. Cosgrove fretted because he didn’t have the chance to show himself off to Virgil in his virtuous new chic—curtain was at six
P.M.
—but he brightened when I
told him how much more effective he’d appear to his buddy’s eyes after he had absorbed the grandeur of a Night at the Opera. And, in the event, I have to say that Cosgrove acclimatized himself beautifully.
Ring
audiences tend to be stationary and strictly attentive; and so was Cosgrove. Except for a frantic five minutes during the second intermission, when he insisted that he saw Mr. Popyucork, the Sheriff of Hangtown, “gleaming” at us from the top gallery, Cosgrove moved among the cognoscenti as a native.

(There are a number of Misters in Cosgrove’s world. Mr. Popyucork inhabits only his nightmares, but Carlo is Mr. Smith and Dennis Savage, not to his knowledge, is Mr. Fee Fo Fum.)

I have introduced many an associate to a work of art. I took Lionel to
Salò
, and he was so dazzled we sat through it twice; and I took Dennis Savage to
La Strada
. He didn’t care for it, for which he got a slap upside of the head. Till now my protégés have always been coevals—never before had I squired anyone younger than myself to anything. It felt somewhere, I would guess, between going to Weasel’s and listening to someone talk in his sleep: being in charge of an uncontrollable adventure.

Cosgrove was so eager to exhibit himself to Virgil that after we cabbed home, racing like the wind, Cosgrove went on up to Dennis Savage’s while I got out at the sixth floor to rustle up something from the fridge. Thank God for peanut butter and jelly.

When I made it upstairs, in mid-sandwich, despair was in season. Cosgrove was crushed, Carlo worried, and Dennis Savage agitated: Virgil had not come home from work, and it was past midnight.

“I wanted to show him how I could look,” wailed Cosgrove.

Dennis Savage asked, “Should I call the police?”

Nobody wanted to. Cosgrove took off his jacket and showed Carlo how the vest could be worn inside-out for a sporty checkered look. Suddenly he seemed exhausted, dazed by a long day and a long opera. He sat next to Carlo, and Carlo slowly unfastened Cosgrove’s tie.

“I wonder if I should ever wear a tie,” said Carlo.

“You’d have to,” I observed, “at
G
tterd
mmerung.”

“I’d best stick with
Friday Night Wrestling.”

I went down for another sandwich. Up again: no Virgil.

“I’m getting really concerned,” said Cosgrove.

“He never, never does this,” said Dennis Savage. “He always comes straight—”

Key in the lock.

Virgil walks in, and everyone is invisible to him but Dennis Savage.

“I was at the hospital,” said Virgil. “You wouldn’t go, so I did. I saw him die. I had to tell lies. I gave him messages from you that you should have said yourself. I made them up.”

He was advancing on Dennis Savage.

“There was everyone there, and all he wanted was you. He held my hand and asked me, ‘When will he come?’ That’s what he said. Are you so proud now? He died away, and you did nothing. That’s how you treat your best friends.”

Chénier on oath, Dennis Savage said, “You know it isn’t.”

“I know what I see. Everyone asked you to go, and no, no, you wouldn’t.”

They were face to face. Dennis Savage tried to put his arm around Virgil’s shoulder; the boy threw him off.

“Who was in that hospital?” Virgil cried. “Who would it take to get you there? If you don’t care about everybody, you don’t care about anybody!”

“That’s not—”

Virgil gave him a shove, and another shove.

“Who’s going to come when
you’re
in there?” he said, his voice rising. “Who should care about
you?”

Dennis Savage grabbed Virgil, but he broke free again.

“Shouldn’t you see this death?” he shouted. “It’s
blood
and
shit!
That’s how you go, because I saw it
happen!
And no one even to say, ‘I’m sorry you’re dead today.’ That’s what
you
gave him!”

Virgil shoved him again, this time so hard that he went down; but Carlo was up, Cosgrove’s tie in his hand. He reached for Virgil,
and Virgil leaped away, shouting, “This is not with you!”; but Carlo is a one-man crowd when he wants to be, and he surrounded Virgil and snapped the tie around his skull at eye level and tied it up and spun him around, all this so fast we others scarcely saw it happen. Virgil was sobbing and Carlo was spinning him; none of this made sense. Bauhaus gaped. It was some sort of picture, an action yet to be reckoned, sketchy, snarky, who knows? Dennis Savage was getting up and Carlo had pulled Virgil close, gripping him around the torso and arms so he couldn’t move, whispering in his ear. Blinded and immobilized, Virgil bore it as Carlo carefully loosened his hold and gently pushed him toward Dennis Savage. Virgil stumbled. Dennis Savage caught him, and took care of him, and all was still in the room.

After a long while, Dennis Savage unfastened the tie and took Virgil into the bedroom. Carlo went with them; I don’t know why.

“Tuffy didn’t see my suit,” said Cosgrove.

We were sitting on the couch.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.

He was silent.

“How did you like the opera?” I asked.

“Thank you for taking me there. It was really nice.”

His voice caught on something, and I held him for a while. True: Everyone around me does cry. To distract him, I talked about
The Ring
. I answered his questions—Brünnhilde loses the Ring to Siegfried because it wants to be with the more powerful person; and Brünnhilde wants Siegfried dead, even though she laves him, because he hurt her and her love has magnified the hurt. She was very desperately threatened. Androids may be dead fish, but they shield us from our passions.

Carlo came out of the bedroom, looking a bit pale.

“Is he all right?” Cosgrove asked.

“It’s quiet now. They’re talking.”

“You know what I would like?” said Cosgrove, mildly brightening. “A chicken breast and some nice baked beans. And then seven-layer cake. And I would like a little blue car of my own size
to ride in. I wouldn’t have to park it, because it would come inside with me. And I would like the Ring, to rule the world. Everyone who was mean to me dies horribly. They’re screaming as they die, and I would laugh.”

“Don’t say that,” said Carlo, stroking his hair. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then his voice caught, too.

“Why is Mr. Smith crying?” Cosgrove asked me.

I said, “He is very desperately threatened. See, we’re the Lost Boys,” I said. “The anonymous Greeks, a hill of unknown dead. We have been abandoned,” I said. “But you know what? I still believe.”

Wonderingly, Cosgrove touched Carlo’s moistened cheeks.

“You don’t have to be a vampire,” he told Carlo. “See, how I break the spell, and your eyes are now clear?”

“Exorcis,”
I said.

Carlo shook his head; the tears kept flowing. “Can I please stay with you tonight?” he said.

Quite some years ago, in my days as an off-Broadway music director, I coached the teenage son of a producer and an actress I worked with, in preparation for some music exam that he had to pass to get into Dublin University. In return, he gave me banjo lessons and helped me find an ax of my own—a Fender, no less, secondhand, in splendid condition.

The producer was wealthy, with a gigantic apartment on Central Park West; each of his kids had not only his own room but his own terrace, and the boy and I would sit outside of an afternoon and trade jokes as I mastered “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and “The Groundhog Hunt.”

I’m rusty now, but every so often I haul out the banjo and take it for a spin. Cosgrove, who found it fascinating from day one, kept trying to sing along, improvising lyrics when the folklore failed him. He hit some sort of apex with “Camptown Races”:

Cosgrove’s tired ‘cause he slept too late.
Doo-dah, doo-dah.
Chicks with dicks are a heavy date—

and I immediately put the banjo in his lap and taught him some chords. If he’s busy playing, maybe he won’t sing.

(When neither Virgil nor I am around to stop him, Cosgrove parks himself in front of the erotic cable channel, where he incubates an obsession for “chicks with dicks”—preoperative transsexuals—waiting hours, if necessary, for a glimpse of this ultra-contemporary phenomenon.)

Oddly, Cosgrove, who usually can’t find anything he can do without fumbling, is a decent rudimentary banjo artist. With the instrument tuned to G Major, Cosgrove can muster a worthy D
⁷
and a quite competent “bar 5” (for which one places the finger flat across the fretwork at the fifth bar, lining the strings up in C Major), all together
giving him the wherewithal for at times quite lengthy concerts.

Of course, Virgil will not be left at the hitching post when the latest Pony Express is mounting up, so I had to show
him
some chords, too. Then you get the Bremen Town Musicians in residence on your sofa.