Michael laughed. He didn't laugh very often. The sound was almost inaudible. "I know. Ron Weasley is Harry Potter's friend. My Viv's read every last one of those books. Seen all the movies, too."
"Bet she has." James resumed stroking Michael's hair. "Love your kids?"
"Hardly know them anymore. Maybe it's my fault," Michael sighed. "Maybe I spend too much time in my own head."
"Love wifey?"
"No."
James seemed unprepared for that. After a moment he said, "Well, maybe it's time to upend the apple cart at home. Let her see you as a ginger. That might get things sizzling in the bedroom."
"I doubt it. Frannie's the one who started me coloring my hair."
James goggled at Michael. "Why?"
"I told you. Ginger hair isn't masculine. She hates it. And when I grew a moustache she made me—
asked me
to color it, too."
James studied Michael steadily. "I see. So which is it? Gun or knife?"
"What?"
"Which one does she use to keep you in line? Gun or knife?" James grinned. "Because you're not the sort of spineless bloke who'd let a woman control you barehanded."
Michael meant to keep his face blank, but he must have failed, because James shifted gears rapidly.
"That came out wrong. I just meant to say you're fit," James said. "Muscular enough to overpower any female. So it's hard for me to imagine wifey saying jump and you asking how high."
Michael said nothing.
"You know what? One of the things I love about living in London," James announced, sounding like a radio advert, "is how you can get what you want, when you want. Feel like tweaking wifey's nose? Because if you do, I know just the ticket."
***
James had been right about tweaking Frannie's nose. She'd screamed—not cursed, not spluttered, but literally screamed when she saw Michael that next day. His conservative brown locks were missing, shaved down to a number 2 all over. Only a millimeter of ginger hair showed above his scalp. His moustache was gone.
"I look naked," Michael had told James as he stared at his face in the mirror.
"You look like a movie star." James was husky-voiced. It was no rent boy line; he was genuinely impressed. "Why the hell have you been hiding all this time?"
When Michael got home at 3 a.m., he'd found Frannie awake and pacing the kitchen. Leave it to her to skip Ambien the night he most needed her soundly asleep. Her recriminations were stern, bitter and perfectly reasonable.
"I'm fine. Worked late. Had a trip to the barber's. That's all," Michael said with false heartiness.
"
Michael
." Frannie stared at him as if he'd changed his sex, sauntering in with penis gone and a sprightly new vagina between his thighs. "You can't be seen like this. What will people think?"
"I suppose they'll think I was after something different," Michael said over his shoulder. He headed upstairs to bed.
***
Germanotti was the next person to interrogate Michael. He found the new hair and missing moustache so inexplicable, so stunningly out of character, he verbally prodded at Michael all through lunch and dragged him to a gastro-pub for dinner.
"It's all to do with that bird from Brixton Park. Admit it." They sat waiting for fish and chips with a pint of bitter in front of Germanotti and a cola before Michael. "Seen her again, haven't you?"
"Four times now."
"And she got you to cut your hair?"
Michael nodded. It felt wrong, agreeing to Germanotti's assumptions without correcting him. Rent boy or no, James deserved basic human courtesy and respect. Besides, the lie wasn't only disrespectful to James. It was beneath Michael's dignity, too.
"All right." Germanotti took a long pull on his beer. "You know I have nothing. I'm a lifeless shell. A skeleton. Bleached bones circled by buzzards who won't even peck at me. Wendy snapped off my cock and keeps it in a pencil box. I visit it twice a year on Christmas and my birthday. The only reason I don't top myself is in hopes you'll spill the sordid details and let me live vicariously through them."
Michael surprised himself by laughing aloud again—the second time in two days. "If your novel reads like that, I think it might sell."
"My novel is one long cry for help," Germanotti continued relentlessly, staring at Michael over the lip of his glass. "For Chrissake. Her name. Start with her name."
Michael drew in his breath. "His name is James."
Germanotti choked, recovering admirably as the waitress chose that moment to appear with their food. He even thanked her, offering up a friendly smile before locking eyes with Michael again.
"You sick twisted son of a bitch," he said levelly, shaking vinegar over his cod fillets and golden chips. "Tell me everything and don't leave out a single detail."
Michael didn't tell Germanotti everything, but he said enough to satisfy the other man's curiosity, at least for the moment. Michael was surprised to find he wasn't blushing. He blushed when a client or publisher praised a textbook manuscript, aware of its deficiencies, wondering if they had low standards or merely lied to be polite. He blushed when someone offered a small kindness, like opening a door when his hands were full. But he didn't blush at all as he skimmed his adventures with James—receiving oral sex at the Holiday Inn, giving it at the Nautilus, the massage-parlor treatment from Deepak and intercourse. Though Michael used a minimum of words, Germanotti obviously filled in the blanks. He was so attentive, his meal went cold.
"So, during all this debauchery, did you let James fuck you?"
Michael nodded.
"Was it good?"
Michael nodded again.
"Hang on." Rising, Germanotti went to the bar, waited briefly and brought back two shots of vodka. "I know, I know. But you'll hardly taste it. And goddamn it,
that
calls for a drink. You sick fuck. My God."
The shot of vodka went down as easily as promised. Michael felt slightly looser afterward, but not really impaired. He feared alcohol's tendency to amplify sadness, to stoke it into a crescendo, but nothing terrible happened. He just felt warm, happy, and grateful to his friend for listening. And the realization of that gratitude did, at last, make Michael begin to blush.
Germanotti did so little actual work at the company, Michael often forgot he was head of the science division and responsible for keeping all the biology textbooks current. So it was a pleasant surprise when Germanotti began talking quite rationally about Alfred Kinsey's sexuality research, including the Kinsey scale. By the end of the evening, they'd diverted to a complex disagreement about research samples and the efficacy of distributing questionnaires to volunteers. Michael went home in a fine mood and oddly comforted, though he couldn't say exactly why.
The next day at the office went normally until early afternoon. Realizing he needed to post a letter, Michael opened a drawer to look for stamps and found a bumper sticker atop his immaculate drawer organizer. It was a square rainbow flag.
Swiveling in his chair, he saw Germanotti at his own desk, hands laced behind his head, literally looking up at the ceiling and whistling. It was a cliché Michael had read about many times, but this was the first time in his life he'd ever seen anyone actually feign innocence that way.
Michael cleared his throat. Germanotti gave him a blank, practiced "Yes?" look. Then they were helpless with amusement, and Michael was surprised at the strength of his own throaty laugh.
***
For his next meet-up with James, Michael wanted nothing more than a repeat engagement at the Green Park Hilton. This time he'd masturbate a few hours before—on his lunch break, perhaps. Then when he penetrated James he'd be able to last, giving James plenty of time to warm up. Michael had read that sufficient prostate gland stimulation always led to ejaculation—this was physiology, not psychology. If he could find the right angle and the right amount of pressure, surely he could bring James to climax...
Excited by the prospect, Michael had tried to ring James. But James, usually quick to pick up or call back, didn't answer. After three tries, Michael texted him. A few hours later, he texted James again. Nothing. By the end of the day, Michael had no choice but to go home.
The next morning he tried again. Six calls between nine o'clock in the morning and three in the afternoon. Nothing. And James had offered no e-mail, cheekily announcing he preferred to exist "off the grid..."
Michael didn't know how he felt. Ignoring his current project, an exploration of religious texts for Year 10 pupils, Michael spent a good part of the day staring at the floor. He kept trying to determine how he felt, but no matter how he approached the question, the answer eluded him.
Around four o'clock he tried to ring James again. This time the other man answered on the second ring.
"Is everything all right?" Michael blurted. His heart hammered in his chest.
"Sure." James sounded odd, like he had a cold or a sore throat. "Fine. Why?"
"I—I was thinking we might meet up tonight. At the Hilton in Green Park."
There was a long pause. "Oh. Well. I'd like to, love, but something's come up. Trouble with a friend. I, um... I'll be out of circulation for a while. Just temporary. Ring you up as soon as I'm back."
Michael felt like someone had stabbed him. "Oh." He tried to say more, but all that came out was, "Oh."
James sighed. "It's nothing tragic. Just—you know. Life. I've told you, I like you. I'll ring you up the second I'm back, I promise."
Michael gathered himself. He practiced the words in his head before he spoke them. "So are we finished, then?"
The silence seemed to go on forever. "Oh, fuck," James said at last. Was he crying? Was that why his voice sounded strange? "Fuck, fuck, fuck. You know that café. Not in Green Park. Outside the Nautilus?"
Michael did. They'd eaten there once, underwhelmed by the shabby décor and chilly, grease-caked sausages. "Yes."
"Meet you there in an hour."
***
Michael waited almost an hour and a half before James came through the door. He wore a zipped-up hoodie and dark glasses. Even from across the room, Michael could see the purple bruise on James's left cheek.
Michael stood up. "Who did this?" he whispered, throat tight, as James scooted into the booth's opposite side and tilted his head down.
"No idea," he said thickly, sounding even stranger than he had on the phone. "Never saw his face."
"Can I get you something, sweetheart?" the middle-aged waitress asked, pen poised above her notepad. She was plump and friendly, the sort of woman James liked to flirt with, but he barely gave her a glance.
"Two coffees," Michael said. He had a feeling they both might benefit from some caffeine. The second the waitress was out of earshot he said, "Tell me."
"The client didn't like me. So he knocked me about to show me how disappointing I was," James said in that same thick voice. He held his right hand over his mouth as he spoke. As if the words, once issued, would become all too real and so much more humiliating in the bargain.
"Take off the sunglasses," Michael said.
James obeyed. His nose was bruised but probably not broken. His left cheek was purple and swollen, some of the redness creeping up beneath his eye.
"It's not so bad." Michael was terrified by his own response, by the violent clenching inside his gut. "Tell me his name. Tell me who did it."
"I don't know!" James cried, hand over his mouth again. "I never sa—"
James broke off, shocked, as Michael pushed his hand away. James's four front teeth were gone. Behind his upper lip was a wide blood-red gap.
"Oh, no," Michael whispered. He meant the pain, not how it looked, but James's eyes filled with tears.
"I saw an emergency dentist," James said. "The doc sewed me up. Gave me antibiotic pills. But it'll be three weeks till I can get a cosmetic consultation.
Three weeks
till the initial visit, and God knows how much longer till this is fixed. And the pills..." Breath hitching, James started to weep in earnest, tears rolling down his face. "They're making me sick. Making me shit all the time. It's disgusting! It's impossible! I can't work this way, Michael. No one would touch me. Oh, God, I'm so scared. I don't know what to do..."
Michael found himself on the opposite side of the booth, arms sliding around James. Instinctively, he soothed the younger man as he might have soothed an animal, with a gentle rocking motion and low murmurs. Reappearing with their coffees, the waitress tried not to notice. Michael looked up at her, hoping she was a human being, that she could recognize the need of a fellow creature in distress, and wasn't disappointed.
"Does he need anything?" she whispered in Michael's ear.
"He'll be all right," Michael whispered back, ignoring the curiosity around him, some of it contemptuous, some of it prurient. "Thank you."
"I didn't deserve this," James wept against him as the waitress checked on her other tables. "I was trying to be what he wanted..."
"I know." Michael held James tighter. "I know."
"You have to let go. People will see."
"I don't care."
James sniffed again, tried to rally and fell into fresh sobs. "Oh, Michael, I'm sorry. I don't know what to do."
Michael ran a hand over James's thick brown hair. "It's all right. I do."
***
Paul Beckman, D.D.S., A.A.C.D., was more than a bespoke cosmetic dentist with a posh London office. He was Michael's brother-in-law.
It was complicated. Frannie's sister Caitlin married Paul Beckman fifteen years ago, when he was fresh out of training. For all that time, she'd been not only his wife but his chief dental hygienist. Then a few months ago, they'd announced their pending divorce on Facebook. No recriminations were evident on either side; until recently, Caitlin had continued working at the office. Frannie, never close to her sister, didn't have the full story, only that Paul was sleeping with one of his younger hygienists. Michael had no idea what had happened, nor did he care. Paul's work was top-drawer, and he was the only dentist Michael knew that would meet them after hours and see James privately.