Everybody Loves You (13 page)

“Yes,” she said, sporting that smile again. It said, People are interesting because sooner or later everyone's bizarre.

“I
knew
I could do it!” Little Kiwi exulted. Then he looked at the card. “No, that wasn't it.”

Susan shrugged, still smiling.

“Why can't I do it right?”

“He's sort of a Peter Pan figure,” she told me. “He should fit right in at this party, because this is a night for all the little boys who never grew up. Why
are
you all here?”

“We're friends of that fellow there,” I said, pointing out Dennis Savage. “The one talking to—”

“Golden Boy. I can't remember the names of all these historical personages, but I know what each of them represents. To Jensen, anyway.” She laughed. “What do they look like to you?”

I grunted.

“Ask Peter Pan to sit with us and we'll sing him a chorus of the good old Penn song.” We made room, and Little Kiwi sat between us. “My ten-year-old is going to look like him in about ten years, and he's going to break hearts like a highwayman. And he plays beautiful piano. Men never realize what that does to a woman.”

“Why don't you tell
me
that?” Little Kiwi asked her. “I can talk, too, you know.”

She quietly sang to him:

Drink a highball at nightfall,

Be good fellows while you may;

For tomorrow may bring sorrow …

“That's silly, isn't it?” she said. “This notion that everything after college is a letdown. It's just silly. I didn't like college. All that homework. The catty sororities and the frat boys using you to prove themselves. I couldn't wait to be married. I live in a house with people I love, instead of a rathole of a dormitory. My chores mean something to me—to me, not some professor. Everything I put into my life comes back a hundredfold. Little things and big things. I remember the day my daughter first walked by herself as vividly as I see you two now. Her brothers witnessed the whole bit; and they were so excited.”

“Do you make grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches?” asked Little Kiwi.

“‘For tomorrow may bring sorrow,'” she repeated. “How does the next line go?”

I told her: “‘So tonight, let's all be gay.'”

“Brace yourselves,” said Dennis Savage, looming over us. “The Six Hamiltones are going to sing.”

We scarcely had time to connect Dennis Savage and Susan Drinker and get him ensconced on the couch with us before Jensen Drinker was calling for silence and attention. As the party wafted back into chairs and against the walls, he welcomed us, joked at us, and marshaled our reserves of sentimental recollection. He held up an old yearbook so we could look back at the Six Hamiltones in their and our youth, so we could split the difference between then and now and feel … perhaps not younger, but less adult, less wise, less finished. A buzz ran through the room as old hands murmured, “The
Sex
Hamiltones” to each other. We laughed, relaxed. Throwing off your bad, mean wisdoms is a hard trick; but the trick was taking.

As the blazer men slid into their first selection, “Hello, Young Lovers,” I tried not to harp on the thought that, had they been gay, they could hardly have brought the original sextet back for an encore twenty years later. Some of them would be dead.

Dennis Savage was thinking no such thoughts. He was misted in a dream. Susan Drinker was smiling her smile and watching her husband lead the music. Little Kiwi whispered, “This is nice.”

Three songs then followed, to warm, even thrilled applause, all favorites from the Hamiltones' old repertory. However, for their final number, they offered a contemporary song in a new arrangement especially for us, here, tonight. So memory renews itself. Maybe. And at the first strains of “Kiss today good-bye,” Little Kiwi was up and moving, and by the line “The gift was ours to borrow,” he was standing right up there with the Hamiltones, his tenorino lightly tracing the melody as confidently as if he had always lived in the castle, as if there were no enemy.

“Well, now,” Susan Drinker whispered to me, “this is one for the yearbooks.”

The Hamiltones took it so calmly it might have been part of the staging. The man behind Little Kiwi even put one hand on this young stranger's shoulder, as if to portray the serenity, the sweet clarity of the moment when everyone is happy and well liked.

And Dennis Savage, jolted from his dream, looked upon this picture like Cortés upon his peak in Darien. Like Diogenes finding an honest man. Like a lover seeing love.

But Chad Jeffers was staring at Dennis Savage like someone who just figured something out and dearly wishes he hadn't.

*   *   *

After the singing, the party restruck its cymbals. Everyone rose and refilled his glass and started grouping up again, but I stayed on the couch talking to Susan Drinker till Jensen called her over for something or other. As she left, she made an “I wish he wouldn't” suburban grimace at me. It made her look like a six-year-old fresh from a mud pie session. Then Chad Jeffers pulled up so quickly that I was staring at him before I realized who he was.

And he was talking.

Sitting next to me on the couch. You know: any chum of my chum is My Chum.

Oh, he raved on about the Hamiltones, and asked me what I did, and told me how much he missed the Old Days. He mentioned the playings of
Tosca
in Dennis Savage's room. Pausing now and again to look comely, confidential, sternly bemused, he leaped from topic to topic as a hunter crosses a woodland rapids stone by stone. He always counted Dennis Savage as one of his best friends, even through all the years of separation, because Dennis Savage is
so
smart. Really such a … such a
smart
guy. And knowing smart people is the best thing for you, isn't it? The best way to live. The best friends to have.

“Friendship,” he said “amplifies our opinions.”

Another pause. We approach a difficult stone, slippery, distant, perilous.

Of course, we all have opinions of each other, he was telling me. Everyone is very judgmental in our society. Some of us are merry; some are earnest. But all of Know What We Know, don't we?

Who's talking here? you ask. Who's judging? Who's on the couch with a very dazzling Golden Boy, his head swimming with the novelty of place, the excitement of encounters, and, very possibly, the vertigo of the brimming cup?

Who was crinkling? Not Chad Jeffers. Golden Boy is concerned about something. Golden Boy is going to tell me what it is. But Golden Boy doesn't know quite how to manage it. Golden Boy's head must be swimming, too. Two men at this party are very wet just now. But watch the cautious passage atop the stones: from
Tosca
to opinions and smarts, back to
Tosca,
thence to opera to I like opera, don't you? and Oh, you do? because I have this wonderful friend, single, pretty, who'd love to meet you, would you like me to give you her number or no, I could give her yours how about?

And the hunter has made it to the far bank of the rapids.

Now, years ago, when various relatives would do this to me, I had an answer all ready: “Anyone you'd have access to, I'm not interested in.” The rudeness deters them from ever doing this again, and also bounces their boring straight fascism back in their surprised asshole faces. Okay, that's very satisfying—and how can it be wrong if it feels so good? Besides, if I were straight, it still would have been true. Eventually, however, I began to feel I was letting my side down by not dealing with the question directly. The issue was not (only) They are trying to manipulate me. The issue was I am gay. So I developed a new answer, and I revived it in conversation with Chad Jeffers.

Let's do this again:
Tosca,
amplifies, pretty friend, can I phone number … and I said:

“No, but does she have a brother?”

I believe that's what Chad Jeffers was waiting to hear. His eyes lidded over—the opposite of crinkling, no doubt—and his head hung heavy, and he gasped. I'm wrong, aren't I?, to play Show Them How It Feels with Dennis Savage's special friend at Dennis Savage's alumni reunion. But hypocrisy shatters the soul.

“Anything else you'd like to ask?” I said. “Because I need another drink.”

I was already rising, but Chad Jeffers got up with me, his hand on my arm.

“I'm sorry if I … intruded,” he said. “The … young man … with the card deck. He came with you tonight. Is he your … Is he?”

“Friend. My friend.”

“Yes.” Chad Jeffers nodded. “Quite a fine fellow. He was up there singing with the—”

“Sex Hamiltones.”

Chad Jeffers laughed. “He also … the young man … knows Dennis Savage. I mean … doesn't he?”

Over Chad Jeffers's shoulder I saw Dennis Savage watching us. I believe he had been doing so for some time. He looked somewhere between thoughtful and worried.

“What are you asking me?” I said. “What are you trying to hear?”

“The truth,” he said, all wide-shouldered and up-jawed. “I want to hear the truth.”

“Mister,” I replied, “you caught me on just the right drink.”

“No,” said Dennis Savage.

“You snuck up on us,” I reproached him.

“The truth, that's all,” said Chad Jeffers softly.

“This is my scene,” said Dennis Savage.

Now Chad Jeffers took Dennis Savage's arm.

“It's my fault,” said Chad Jeffers.

“You're both blitzed,” said Dennis Savage.

“I am
not
blitzed!” I told him.

“What does ‘blitzed' mean?” asked Chad Jeffers.

“Drunk.”

He thought it over. “Nor am
I
blitzed!” He shook off Dennis Savage's touching hand. “You're gay, aren't you? That young fellow is your … your confidant.”

“Look—”

“He
is
blitzed,” I said.

“I am
not
 … I simply require some information.”

“Tell him nothing!” I muttered.

“Will the two of you please sit down? You're spinning on your pins.”

“No, the room is spinning,” said Chad Jeffers. He sat down.

“I'm not sitting next to him,” I said.

Dennis Savage pushed me down on the couch next to Chad Jeffers.

“Starting tomorrow,” I added.

“I'm sorry if I pried,” said Chad Jeffers. “I just think friends should trust each other.”

“Friends,” I offered, “should respect each other's privacy.”

“Look who's talking,” said Dennis Savage.

Little Kiwi was suddenly looming over me with those cards. “This time,” he said, “I've really got it. Okay. First you—”

Dennis Savage closed up Little Kiwi's outfanned deck, brushed the hair back from his forehead, and said, “Would you please go get our coats?”

“Not yet!” said Little Kiwi.

“Yes, yet. And you,” Dennis Savage told me, “should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Not yet.”

“What did he do?” asked Susan Drinker, who must have come up with Little Kiwi.

I tried to stand, but Dennis Savage pushed me down again. Maybe I fell.

“A controlled substance,” said Susan. “Tang in the punch.”

“Everyone's gay,” said Chad Jeffers.

After a moment Susan said, “Well, you'd better make an appointment with Nurse Renfrew, so Doctor can see you and cure your ills.”

“I don't have ills,” said Chad Jeffers.

“Oh, Nurse Renfrew!” Susan and Dennis Savage called out at the same time.

Nobody laughed.

I guess I was blitzed. Chad Jeffers was even more so. I looked at my watch—we had been at the party over six hours. All that drinking on an empty stomach, fatal every time. Pushing forty and I still can't hold my juice. Don't tell my father.

“‘For tomorrow,'” Susan told Little Kiwi when he brought our overcoats, “‘may bring sorrow.'”

“Not at our house,” he told her, distributing the coats. “I saved these really radical chocolates from the dish that turns around.” He put a hand in his pocket and pulled one out. “Oh, they got a little—”

“I just bought that jacket!” said Dennis Savage. “It isn't even paid for yet!”

“He buys clothes for his friend,” said Chad Jeffers. “A sports car. A co-op.” He looked up at Dennis Savage. “Is that right or not?”

I said, “Everyone's blitzed on this couch.”

“What do you want?” Dennis Savage asked Chad Jeffers. “Tell me and I'll give it to you. Because what you want I swear I don't know. I swear it here. Speak. I listen. I'm still your friend. So what is this about? What have you been looking at? Did something catch your eye or were you out hunting? Just tell me. Because I don't know what this is about. And I'd love to. The two of you stumbling around here, like potty old Latin professors battling over the possibility of a sixth declension. And the term is not ‘confidant,' it's ‘lover.' This man is my lover.”

“They didn't really melt yet,” said Little Kiwi. “They just started to squish together a little, so—”

“Come on, confidant, help Uncle Bud to his feet.”

“Well, it's been terribly
entre nous,
” said Susan as we shook hands. “We'll do this again.”

Chad Jeffers hung back, still on the couch, staring at us a trifle glassily.

Little Kiwi smooched her hand like a Parisian bon vivant.

“Lord,” she said.

She gave me another wink of her bright, sharp eye, and we were off and away and, in due course, home. Little Kiwi went on up to see to the copiously invalid Bauhaus, while Dennis Savage insisted on accompanying me to my apartment: because otherwise I would pass out in the hall.

This was a bald libel. On the contrary, I was just getting my second wind. I put on the Gieseking recording of Debussy's
Children's Corner Suite, moltissimo pianissimo,
and steeled myself to talking it out. Anyway, I had a feeling he had more on his mind than keeping me from disgracing us in the hall.