The Lord Won't Mind (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (15 page)

The evening passed with swift gaiety. When they were once more in the street, Peter’s feet were ready to race for home.

“Let’s stop somewhere and have a drink,” Charlie suggested, sounding very adult to Peter.

“Oh, OK. Do you think they’ll serve me?”

“Of course. You look as old as me, and I haven’t had any trouble for over a year.”

They crossed back to Lexington and went into the first bar they came to. Peter ordered a beer, Charlie a whiskey. Despite Peter’s hunger for them to be alone, the small occasion confirmed them as inhabitants of the city. They could walk into a bar, the night was theirs to dispose of as they wished, they were their own masters.

“She’s amazing,” Peter said, thinking over the evening. “You know, the things she says, you’d swear sometimes she knows all about us.”

Charlie’s eyes flashed to him. “Don’t ever think that.” He enunciated each word with emphasis.

“Oh, I know. If she really knew, she probably wouldn’t be so open about it. Still, I love it. It makes you feel as if she’s on our side.”

“Time to go home,” Charlie said as he finished his whiskey.

Peter laughed softly and struck his forehead with his fist. “I just can’t believe it. Time to go home. Just you and me. It’s absolutely incredible.”

Charlie started to pay, but Peter intervened. “Please. Let me. I’ve never bought you a drink. I’ve never bought you anything. I’m going to get rich and buy you thousand of things.” He paid, feeling very adult in his turn, and they went on their way.

When they reached the truss shop, Peter moved ahead. He had his own set of keys, and he pulled them out proudly. “You did it the first time. It’s my turn now.”

He unlocked the outer door and stood back to let Charlie pass and then ran ahead and unlocked their own door. “Isn’t that something,” he said as he closed the door behind them. They switched on lamps, and the room sprang up around them. It looked settled and comfortable and snug. Peter moved in close beside Charlie and put his arm around his waist and hugged him. “It’s beautiful. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this. Aren’t you sort of stunned?”

Charlie laughed. “A bit, I guess. And yet it seems so natural, somehow. I keep thinking what it would’ve been like if I’d been doing all this alone. I don’t see how I ever could’ve thought of it.”

Peter hugged him again and turned shining eyes to his. “That’s nice. Of course, it’s different for me. It’s all just happening out of the blue. I feel sort of as if I were just being born.”

“You make a fine bouncing baby.”

They laughed, and Peter moved around to face him and held him close and kissed his mouth, astonished by the taste of whiskey. Charlie put his hands in his hair and pushed him away. “For God’s sake, let’s get out of these clothes.”

They flung clothes from themselves and Charlie ran to the bathroom and returned with towels and the tube of lubricant.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” Peter murmured, his eyes fixed on Charlie’s swaying sex. Then they were in bed, tangled with each other, their mouths open to each other, their hands searching avidly for the loved, remembered places. When the first urgency had passed, Charlie slid down over Peter’s body and took his sex in his mouth and welcomed it. Then he lifted himself to his knees between Peter’s legs and sat back on his heels. They smiled softly at each other. Peter’s lips moved in some unknown prayer or song of praise.

“Give me the stuff,” Charlie said. Peter did so and started to roll over onto his stomach. Charlie stopped him with a hand on his thigh. “No,” he said. He applied the lubricant to them both.

“What are we going to do?” Peter asked, his eyes adoring and puzzled.

“I’ve been thinking about you.” Charlie pulled him toward him and lifted his legs and put them over his shoulders. He guided his sex with his hand and entered him. He slowly worked the hips closer to him. When they were completely coupled, he bent over and took Peter’s sex in his mouth.

“Oh my God,” Peter moaned. He flung his arms out and clawed the sheet with his fingers. He lifted his hands and covered his eyes. He reached out and put his hands on Charlie’s face and felt for his sex where it entered Charlie’s mouth. “Oh my God. Oh my GOD,” he shouted, as his body thrashed about in the grip of orgasm. Charlie waited until he had received it and then he straightened and threw back his head and in an instant reached his own climax with a joyful cry. He toppled over onto Peter’s willing body.

They lay, one on top of the other, breathing heavily, still loosely linked. Peter bore with rapture the whole warm abandoned weight of his love, his own body lifting to melt into Charlie’s. He felt consumed, absorbed, penetrated, possessed beyond the possibility of his own identity’s survival. It was an oblivion he had sought and dreamed of. When he was finally able to speak, he said, “You make the bad times so wonderful. I could’ve stayed away from you for six months for that. Well, not really. Nothing can make up for even one day without you, but you get the general idea.”

“You said you wanted it. I was pretty sure it would work. It probably wouldn’t with most people. It’s because your beautiful cock is just the right size.”

“I never really cared before, but now—thank God. Thank God for every inch of it.”

THE next day, Peter was given a job. He became a runner in Wall Street, but he was placed under the protective eye of the head of the firm and there was talk of advancement as his studies progressed. His hours were short because of his classes at Columbia, and his pay was proportionately short, too. Peter didn’t mind; he hadn’t the slightest idea what money was for. He had time in the afternoon to shop, clean the apartment, and get dinner started before Charlie came home. Peter kept careful accounts and scrupulously paid his share. He loved keeping house for Charlie. It was understood that the rent was Charlie’s responsibility. Sometimes, when they were feeling particularly grownup, they had a drink before dinner, but neither of them very much wanted it. Then there were the long glorious evenings.

It was quickly established that Sunday was more or less reserved for C. B. They slept late and made love luxuriously all through the midday, but by late afternoon they were handsomely dressed and ready. She conducted a sort of salon in the big living room, which evoked generations of moneyed permanence rather than the smart, showy instability of the city. She presided, a shade too grandly to promote casual informality, too intelligently to permit boredom, over selected gatherings of young professional men, with an occasional female attachment. The drinks were neither notably good nor plentiful, but the young men came, handsome and well-dressed, publishers, journalists, an exceptionally favored actor, a Congressman’s executive assistant, sometimes the Congressman himself and his wife, some out of a sense of sharing in a more gracious past, more out of real devotion and sometimes gratitude to C. B. There were never more than six or eight at a time, so good talk was the rule. Peter found these occasions rather awesome and confining and didn’t shine. He and Charlie usually stayed on for dinner, but this was never taken for granted. Invitations were duly issued in advance. They both dropped in on her at odd moments during the week when she could be irresistibly playful and winning. This was the way Peter preferred her. Charlie lent himself wholeheartedly to the Sunday ritual.

It was very nearly the married life that Peter had looked forward to, but there were flies in the ointment. Charlie announced one evening that he had been obliged to accept a dinner invitation from one of his superiors for the next day.

“It seems it’s a great honor when they invite you. It’s more or less part of the job to go. It’s their way of grooming you for promotion. I think that’s what they call it.”

“That’s great. It’s important for you.”

“Not really. I’m not going to be there indefinitely. In another week or so, when we’re finally settled and you’ve started night school, I’m going to start calling people about the theater.”

“That’ll be really exciting.”

Peter considered filling the empty evening by calling the Congressman’s executive assistant who had given him his card and asked him to do so, but decided against it. He was pretty sure he knew what the Congressman’s executive assistant had in mind.

THEN classes started, and everything changed. There were no more dinners with Charlie, no more long evenings. He had just time to give Charlie a welcoming kiss when he returned from work, and then he had to be on his way. More and more frequently, Charlie didn’t come home to receive it. When Peter got home, Charlie was sometimes asleep, sometimes not there. On the latter occasions, he would sit with a textbook propped in front of him, struggling against sleep, frequently losing the battle. Charlie would help him fumble his way into bed. When he automatically initiated the gestures of love, Charlie would kiss him and hug him and say, “We’re tired, baby. We’d better go to sleep.”

Whenever there was time, Charlie told him all about his doings, the Princeton classmates he had encountered, the senior editor and his wife with whom he was becoming real friends, the important theatrical director who had preceded him at Princeton and the agent who had seen him there, both of whom held out hopes for the immediate future. There was mention of a girl called Hattie he had met somewhere. There was another mention of her, and another. Hattie became a presence.

“Listen, baby,” Charlie said one evening as he was coming in and Peter was going out. “I’d like you to stay away tonight until eleven-thirty.”

“Stay away?”

“Yes, not come home. It’s only an extra hour or so. Hattie wanted to come over and cook dinner here tonight. It’s better if you’re not around. I don’t want her to get any ideas about us.”

“You mean, she doesn’t even know I exist?”

“Well, not exactly. There’s just been no reason to mention it.”

“Has she been here before?”

“Of course not. I’d have told you. She just got this idea she wanted to cook dinner for me. She lives with her family.”

“Are you planning to do anything with her?”

“What do you mean?” He caught Peter’s eye and added, “Certainly not.”

“I don’t care about anywhere else. But not here. I couldn’t stand it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Stop being so damn morbid. You’re going to be late.”

Peter nodded distractedly and gathered up some books. Charlie grabbed him as he passed and kissed him. For an instant, all of Peter’s body flowed to him, then he pulled himself back and left.

Shortly afterward, the bell rang and Charlie went to the door to admit Hattie Donaldson. She came whirling in with an armload of groceries. “Don’t try to take them,” she cried. “I’ll drop them all. Where’s the kitchen? Ah, here we are. It’s all mostly from the delicatessen, but I’m going to do something delirious with the steaks.”

“All that’s supposed to be for two of us?”

“I never know how much to buy of anything. You can have the leftovers for breakfast. How about a drink for the cook?” She had a face of wondrous eccentricity. Her features included enormous, mocking, protuberant eyes, a nose like a blob of putty that looked as if it had been added as a facetious afterthought, and a wide mouth that filled her whole face when she laughed, which she did frequently—crowing laughter, conqueror’s laughter, with a hint of warning. She was of average height, but very thin, all arms and legs attached to an angular skeleton. The Donaldsons, of whom there were many, were important in the cultural and philanthropic circles of the city. She had the supreme self-confidence of belonging, of having always moved in the centers of power. She dressed to accentuate the eccentricity of her looks, with fanciful hats and a great deal of jewelry. She unburdened herself now of an impressive collection of accessories: bag, hat, scarf, gloves, a couple of rings. “Strip for action. That’s my motto. Do we eat in here?” she asked, indicating the kitchen table.

“Why not?” Peter always set up a card table in the living room, with candles and all the trimmings. The change of locale was appropriate. Peter would be pleased.

“I’ll find everything. Out with you. I don’t give away my secrets. One must guard one’s assets.” She crowed with laughter as he left her.

Listening to her clattering about in the kitchen, he realized that this was somehow the most intimate thing he’d ever done with a girl, more so even than a sexual exchange. Perhaps she would turn into “his” girl. He would be glad for a name to drop for C. B., and Donaldson was an impressive one. C. B. would be bound to find her above average, a manifestation of his cultivated tastes, even though being a girl would be a strike against her.

“You can come back now,” she called after a reasonable interval. “How clever of you to live next to El Morocco,” she said as he returned. “So convenient. Shall we go over after and dance?”

“Listen, I’m just a very junior editor making my way up in the world.”

“I have money. That’s no problem.”

“Fine. As a matter of fact, I’ve never set foot in the place.”

“Oh, you must. It’s so awful. I love it. Wait till you see the palm trees. They’re hysterical.”

They sat down to foie gras and a bottle of wine, followed by the steaks, which involved mushrooms in some sort of sauce. After, there was asparagus with hollandaise and some exotic preserved peaches.

“It’s fabulous,” Charlie said, dazzled by the richness of the fare.

“Don’t ask which is mine and which came out of cans. That’s one of my secrets.”