Now and Yesterday (10 page)

The men of his generation—the ones who were left—disdained new music, except for official icons like Madonna, and new styles, except for those sanctioned by the
Times
“Thursday Style” section. They were stuck in overcurated bubbles defined by things like classic Callas performances and 1977's idea of a sexy tweed: “It looks gray from far away, but up close it's pink and blue and purple and green. . . .”

Please.

Nick was a
bit
younger—fifteen years younger than Peter. When they met, fifteen years before, Nick had just come out of his twenties and seemed to be entering a kind of prime. Peter wasn't thinking consciously about younger men, at that point—only that Nick was cute and had lots of a new kind of gay energy: fun, open, but connected to the world in ways that didn't constantly reference gay in a political way, or reference it at all. And not referencing it any longer felt as dangerous as in the old days! They'd met at a party and gone home with each other that night. The sex was great—for Peter, the best since Harold—and for a few years the relationship built in an organic way: They attended each other's family events, mixed with each other's friends. Then Nick started mixing with new people whom Peter didn't like much—club people, whose existence, though they had jobs and lives, revolved around clubs, which meant drugs. Peter was naïve, at first; he didn't understand the drug part until it was too late and Nick was in too deep.

Over the years, Peter had tried this or that drug, and enjoyed the experience without feeling the need to repeat it immediately. A certain sacramental quality of drug taking, and the insights attached to it, made the experience special, and Peter always wanted to take some time to honor the specialness before repeating it. And there was always a voice in his head when he took drugs—the same voice, his father's, that arose when he was tempted to do things like divert money from savings into an investment: “Be careful.”

Things went downhill fast. Nick continued to deny he had a problem, accused Peter of not being cool, not really A-list. They argued constantly, though still followed through on social commitments with family and friends. Then Nick started going absent for important events, disappearing for days at a time, and coming home exhausted and needing to sleep for twenty-four hours. When the arguments threatened to morph into physical violence—a possibility that changed everything for Peter—they decided to part.

Officially, they were now best friends, or family, as a wise old queen suggested they say. Nick finally got some help and maybe wouldn't slide again. Mercifully, he'd managed to hang on to his job, his health, and his bank account.

They were together for nine years. After that, Peter's preference for younger men was even more entrenched. And though Peter had gotten older, the men who interested him—the ones who weren't already taken, that is—were still around thirty: old enough to know they weren't the only creatures on the planet, but not yet bitter, or disillusioned, or curated into a bubble. The “team” idea had come from Jonathan, when Peter confessed one day that he was afraid that some of the guys he was seeing felt too much pressure to become Peter's third husband.

“I think I can be a little intense for people,” said Peter. “I'm a pretty open and unblocked human being, you know. I just feel that if there's a connection, it should be explored, like,
now,
and a little thing like age shouldn't matter.”

Jonathan chuckled.

“Little to you,” he said.

“Thirty little years,” said Peter, knowing how absurd the idea was, even as he found it perfectly normal.

“Look at them as members of your team,” suggested Jonathan. “You're not dating,” he said with a lilt. “You're hanging out with each other, having fun. If someone turns into something special, you'll know it. Meanwhile, keep it light, easy.”

“I know, I know,” said Peter. “But I'm stuck with this sense of fate that I felt with Harold.
It's
supposed
to be this way. So we must rise to the occasion and let destiny be fulfilled.
That's what kept me with Nick for so long, I think. I couldn't imagine having made a mistake.”

“No, Peter—no fate,” said Jonathan. “Just happy. Fun. Light. That fate thing—comes across as Lonely Guy. I'm being honest with you.”

“But happy, fun, light—aren't I just enforcing my own loneliness, unless I push for something deeper?”

“You can't really push these things, darling. You can't when you're twenty-two and have all your looks, and you can't when you're sixty and a master of the universe.”

Peter sighed. He
was
lonely—even if, at times now, because he was an adult, he was able to enjoy solitude more than ever. Something else was going on, something he didn't have a word for. His hunger for bonding with another soul had always felt cosmically urgent; now, since Nick, it had ripened into a kind of starvation. Peter once explained to Tyler that he felt he possessed more than just the knack for couplehood. He said he felt he could breathe comfortably only on that elevated plane of existence where relationships were pure, true, divinely purposed—a thought Peter had hoped at the time might help dissolve Tyler's infatuation with him, but apparently didn't. Playing fast and loose with affections was like suffocation to him, said Peter, even if it did make him popular with young guys who were looking for a cool daddy or something. That was fetishization, objectification, whatever. Instead, Peter wanted to be known by another man specifically and completely, and was willing to know that man just as specifically.

Sometimes when he was home alone, Peter found himself desperate simply to share his apartment, since it constituted a form of such personal expression for him. The harmoniously odd bits of furniture and haphazardly acquired art collection all seemed to require more witness than one person could offer. A gag gift that Tyler gave him one day, a beautiful book entitled
The Pleasures of Cooking for One,
by the legendary food book editor Judith Jones, left him mysteriously enraged. It was unacceptable, the idea of this marvelous woman, cultivated and sensuous, now a widow and dining alone on a little gratin, at the table she and her husband might have found together at an antiques shop one marvelous day in Sag Harbor. As was the idea of Peter living alone in the home he'd thoughtfully fitted out to nourish body and soul—a refuge from city stridence that could gratify the mind with its sensible arrangement of books and objects and files, and feed the soul with the well-ordered flow of dry goods and fresh produce. The delight Peter took in the apartment was so strong that even the dark memory of his losing Harold there—in a wheeled-in hospital bed that scratched the floor—couldn't dim it.

What happened to delight like that, if not shared? Did it accrue interest, like money in the bank? Or rot, like food on a supermarket shelf?

Of course, beyond the apartment, it was happiness that Peter most wanted to share. He had never been happier! It was the pleasantly predictable result, perhaps, of looking inward and working on one's self for five decades, after being encouraged to do so in elementary school by well-meaning child psychologists, in high school by radical, Vatican II–inspired nuns, and as a wannabe adult by the entire spirit of the 1960s. At the age of almost sixty, Peter had finally managed to shut down most of the spirit-sucking shame and doubt programs that had once occupied his mind. He was confident now, even buoyant. Sure, it was enjoyable simply to be this way. It was better to share it.

Worshipping with Tyler in a temple like Paul Smith was a small part of the sharing that Peter had in mind—vibing over sweaters meant to re-center you in the redeeming splendor of optimism. Only with Tyler, dear boy, there was no chemistry. Fun, yes, and maybe a little lust. But no real chemistry, and Peter needed chemistry. He always had. And this was a quandary, because Peter had little taste anymore for the maneuvers of lust that gay men used to deploy instantly in their search for chemistry with another man. That jump-into-bed thing felt outmoded now; anyway, Peter couldn't do it anymore. In this way he felt he might have something in common with younger guys who were contenting themselves with occasional hand jobs in the men's rooms of their local gay bars, even if it meant that neither he nor they were locating much chemistry.

“You're going to meet with him?”

“Sure am.”

“The guy is pure evil.”

“Yeah, unlike the rest of our clients, who are only partly evil.”

In a cab, on their way back to the office after Paul Smith, Peter and Tyler talked about Henderson McCaw.

“I just don't know what it would feel like, to work on an account like that,” said Tyler.

“It would feel like getting paid your usual six-figure salary, wouldn't it?” said Peter.

“You know what I mean. I came to work for you for certain reasons—we all did. You stand for something—your work does.”

“Look, I'm not going to get us caught up in the wrong thing. I'm only gonna talk to the guy. It's my corporate responsibility, really.”

“Now there's a phrase I haven't heard until now.”

“Nothing wrong with money.”

“Since when have you only been about money?”

“Tyler—enough. You'll be the first to know what happens.”

“OK,” said the boy, backing down with politeness that was meant to be conspicuous.

It was only a little after noon. Traffic was light. It took both men a second to figure out how to shut off the cab's backseat video screen, which was blaring nonsense.

“Anyway, on a lighter note,” continued Tyler, “are we going to do the holiday party or not?”

“Oh, shit—yes, we are. Thank you. On that date we spoke about. Hold on.” Peter fished out his phone. “Just us,” he said, tapping in some numbers. “No clients. Let everybody know?” And then he held up a finger to pause the conversation with Tyler. “Jonathan—sorry to disturb,” said Peter. “How are you doing? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm—good. Mm-hmm—great. Well, listen, I won't keep you. The bartender you used for your housewarming party—was he any good? Mm-hmm. He seemed good. I need someone for an agency thing I'm doing at my house. Mm-hmm. Can I get his number from you? What did he charge you? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And he was thorough and on-time, and all that? Mm-hmm. OK, great. Text me the number. You're a rock star. I'll call ya later. Big hug.”

“Yay,” said Tyler.

“Yeah, good,” said Peter. “Agency staff and plus-ones, OK? I want to keep it under fifty. People, that is.”

 

Will couldn't believe his eyes. It was the fanciest, if tiniest, New York apartment he'd yet seen.

“Whoa,” he said, stepping into the minuscule entry hall and looking around.

“Take your coat off; make yourself comfortable,” said Enrico, stepping away with a little squeeze of Will's wrist. “There is a closet on your left.”

It was late, around midnight. Will had met Enrico at G, in Chelsea.

The entire hall, tiny though it was, had been painted in
faux marbre
to look like the interior of an ancient temple. Doorways leading off to the kitchen, where Enrico slipped away, and to a sitting room, opposite, were framed by trompe l'oeil Corinthian columns and classical pediments. The door to the coat closet was painted with a trompe l'oeil niche featuring a statue of Cupid.

“I'm just getting us a nibble,” said Enrico, from the kitchen.

A delicate console and bijou of a mirror, flanked by two fragile-looking chairs, upholstered in pearl-colored silk that harmonized with the blue-gray of the “marble,” clung decorously to one wall. Surrounding the mirror, which was framed in a band of gilt scroll-work, was a collection of scallop shells in different sizes, carved out of something that looked like ivory, hung in a pattern that appeared at first to be symmetrical, but on closer inspection proved subtly asymmetrical. Then the lighting altered. In a gentle cascade, the wall sconces and chandelier in the hall dimmed, and a little lamp on the console came on. Beyond, in the sitting room, done dramatically in black, lights came up to half, creating a warm, inviting glow. That room looked spectacular, too, though also quite small.

“Go on in,” said Enrico, reappearing with a plate of cheese and nuts.

Will proceeded and tried to take it all in.

“Please feel free to sit, or of course look around,” said Enrico.

“I don't think I've ever been in a black room before,” said Will. Enrico chuckled.

“Aubergine, please,” he said. “I told you I am a designer.” Enrico spoke with a light accent that Will had learned in the bar was Argentinean.

The room could have been no larger than twelve-by-fifteen feet, yet there were no surfaces or corners that had been left unembellished. The walls, moldings, and floors had been enameled in a lustrous, semi-matte finish that resembled onyx. Such a finish, which draws the eye to every bump and imperfection, would have been disastrous on an old surface, but Will noticed that every bit of wall, molding, and floor in the apartment appeared to have been newly renovated. Even a close look into a corner or at a joint betrayed no messiness.