Now and Yesterday (16 page)

“OK, so
are
you going to work with him?”

“I'm thinking about it.”

“You are.”

“It could mean a million a year for me alone, Jonathan, on top of my salary. For two or three years. The company's billings would obviously be many times that.”

“You think you
can
work with him? I seem to remember you claiming to revile the guy.”

“I don't know that I revile him, exactly. I do regret the conditions that make someone like a McCaw possible—fifty years of decline in American intelligence, for one thing. I was sitting there at lunch thinking that the citizenry who bought the soap our company was built on, in the twenties and thirties, are like nuclear scientists compared to the public today. I can't very well blame McCaw for that.”

“But you don't have to help him exploit it.”

Peter frowned half-comically.

“No, I know,” he said.

“Three million bucks. Sounds like you guys are a team already.”

“You wouldn't revile me if I were to work with the guy?”

“We do what we have to do. I'm feeling very live-and-let-live, at the moment.”

“I guess I
am
a little curious about being able to influence him, since we seem to be at least partly on the same wavelength. That's a powerful inducement. I just . . . don't know where it could all end up.”

Jonathan smiled wanly.

“Do we ever know that?” he said.

Though Jonathan was eating and drinking modestly, he presently found the evening too much for him. Shortly after the main course was served he said he was feeling dizzy and sick, and asked Peter if he would mind leaving. Of course not, said Peter. On the way out of the restaurant, clutching a gaily decorated goody bag of holiday confections prepared by the dessert chef, Jonathan tripped on the foot of the receptionist's lectern and fell, narrowly avoiding hitting his head. At the curb they ducked into the car that Peter had booked for the evening, and on the way home Jonathan remained quietly slumped against his friend, half holding on to him. They were sitting like that, not speaking, when, stopped at a traffic light only a few blocks from Jonathan's building, they suddenly heard the people in the streets cheering and singing, which meant that midnight had come.

“Happy New Year, darling,” said Jonathan feebly.

 

Peter and Jonathan had plans to see
Der Rosenkavalier
at the Met during the first week of January, but Jonathan canceled, so Peter asked Tyler. Tyler couldn't go, so then Peter called Will, who said yes.

The night of the opera was cold and clear. They met in the lobby, ten minutes before curtain time, greeting each other with a handshake that turned into a huggy collision of overcoats, but no kiss. What with shuffling toward their seats with four thousand other operagoers, past ticket takers, bag inspectors, and ushers, they barely had time for snippets of “How was your day?” and “Glad you could come!”–type exchanges before the lights went down and the curtain went up.

The performance was radiant. Though Peter had heard the opera many times before, he found himself particularly caught that night by the Marschallin's first-act aria about the passage of time. It's morning and the great lady is in the lavish bedroom of her Viennese mansion. She's dismissed her elaborate levée and is alone with her much younger lover, who has spent the night and is about to part, reluctantly. Still lovely, but knowing that loveliness is bound to fade, she warns the lover that physical love is not always a reliable measure of happiness.

The aria was unutterably beautiful, and somehow its sentiment percolated into Peter's soul more deeply than ever before. Some joys, even love, must be let go eventually; knowing that becomes its own joy.

Yes,
thought Peter,
but when?
As he listened to the soprano—herself a great diva of a certain age, whose voice was fading and time in the spotlight was nearing its end—he found himself breathing shakily and then, as the aria ended, shedding a few tears.

During the intermission they headed up to the Grand Tier bar, where Will bought them some champagne and they found a spot to stand near the glass doors to the terrace.

“Great seats,” said Will. They were in the middle of the orchestra, on the aisle.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “We've done a bit of work for the Met, so they're always very kind when we ask for tickets.”

“You mean they're comps?” said Will.

“Yes.”

“Cool. It was so nice of you to ask me.”

“I really love this opera,” said Peter. “You know, it's funny—it grabbed me the first time I heard it. I was maybe, what, twelve? I just knew
Rosenkavalier
was what life was about.”

“Hmmm.”

“Whereas I've seen, oh,
Marriage of Figaro,
just as many times, and maybe that's even a greater opera, but somehow it's always an ordeal to sit through.”

“I've never seen
The Marriage of Figaro
.”

“
Rosenkavalier,
it's like I wanna eat it with a spoon.”

The bar area around them quickly filled up with other patrons, some of whom were dressed better than others. Gaily, Peter and Will critiqued a saggy velvet pantsuit they saw on one of the ladies, trashed a man's egregious toupee, and shared a moment of love for Chagall's kitschy
The Triumph of Music,
which commanded the bar from far above.

Peter found Will even brighter than he had thought, and slightly bitchier, too, in a good way. The Chagall brought the conversation back to the opera.

“I love that it pretends to be this light confection, but it's really about very serious things,” said Will.

“The painting or the opera?” said Peter.

“I meant the painting, but the opera, too, now that you mention it,” said Will. “The opera is both frothy and philosophical, all at the same time.”

“Strauss and Hofmannsthal knew what they were doing.”

“I know, I Googled it earlier,” said Will. “Hey, and I noticed that you were kinda touched during the part where the princess was singing about . . .”

“Age,” said Peter.

“Yeah,” said Will. “That must be a section you really like.”

“Well, it's powerful stuff. I am, shall we say, really relating to that subject matter nowadays.”

“I know,” laughed Will, adding, with drag-queen emphasis and a toss of imaginary tresses, “the clock just
won't
stop ticking.”

Peter smiled.

“Says the guy who's, like, twenty-four,” he said.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Same thing.”

The way they could banter genially so soon after meeting surprised Peter—and thrilled him.

“C'mon, who cares about age?” said Will. “Like my grandmother says, ‘It's only a number.' ”

“Of course, and it's always the eighty-year-olds who say that.” Will gave Peter a playful push on the shoulder.

“Well, look,” he said. “So . . . what number are you, if I may ask?
I
told
you
.”

Peter smirked. Had he nudged the conversation toward this question?

“I'm fifty-nine, thank you very much,” said Peter.

This question had been arising more frequently, in discussions with younger men, Peter noticed, and he knew what came next—and both enjoyed it and dreaded it, the latter because he had no idea what it meant that he was beginning to enjoy such a low pleasure so much.

“Wow, I would not have guessed that,” said Will. “You're in great shape. You don't look a day over forty.”

Ahhhhhhhhh!
Peter heard his inner Elaine Stritch screaming a little. For some boys, even forty meant unfathomably ancient.

“Thank you,” he said.

“What's your secret—champagne, right?” laughed Will, raising his glass.

Yeah,
Peter thought,
when I can drink it with someone like you.

As Peter took a sip of champagne he found himself savoring a delicious lilt that seemed to brighten Will's laughter. He'd heard it several times during the evening when he tended bar at Peter's home, and several times already that evening.

The conversation rolled on to popular music, which was just as well. Peter didn't really want to talk about why he had wept, though there was a lot to say about that, and perhaps he would have said it, if he had been at the opera with Jonathan or someone else his own age. Yet Will was diverting. He was enthusing about the debut album of a young new R&B singer when, on their way back down to the orchestra, they ran into an acquaintance of Peter's, a member of the Museum of Modern Art's board, an elegant lady in a long dress, and her husband.

“Regina, good to see you,” said Peter. “Harry, how are you?” Peter introduced Will and couldn't help noticing, as he spoke briefly with the lady, how smoothly Will swung into light conversation with the gentleman. The kid had not been raised in a barn, Peter noted. So many young men couldn't pass the intermission test. Will had also worn a sport jacket, too, for the evening, which also scored points with Peter.

For the second intermission they returned to the Grand Tier, where Will, in a quick bout of texting as the lights went up, had arranged to meet a friend of his who had seats in the balcony with a bunch of friends.

“There they are,” said Will, as they approached a group of boys that looked like a high-school field trip. Everyone was in sweaters and chinos, or jeans.

After introductions and comments on the performance, Will and his friend started chatting and included Peter nominally, though Peter, of course, knew no one they were talking about and realized he didn't particularly care to. Meanwhile, the other boys talked among themselves.

Who were these boys, Peter wondered—young opera queens? If so, why weren't they better dressed? Were they the kind of boys who went to sports bars? They didn't even look gay. Were they academics or scholars of some sort? Were they trying to make some statement, by dressing down?

Just when Peter thought he needn't be so preoccupied with how the boys were dressed, Will's friend asked him why he was “dressed that way.”

There are a thousand ways to answer that question, Peter thought, including a reminder that one might always run into a museum board member with whom one has worked on a multimillion-dollar benefit.

“I had a meeting,” Peter said automatically, still trying to fathom what the boy could possibly mean. The Prada jacket? The Paul Smith shirt? The Berluti shoes? The fact that these pieces were selected to act together in harmony, in something known as an outfit, appropriate for this particular time of day and social milieu? Rather than get all dudgeony, though, Peter let the moment pass. It was only after Will told the boys where he and Peter were sitting that Peter felt them looking at them in a somewhat different way.

After the opera, Peter and Will decided to go for a bite at Fiorello's, even though it was late. Braced by the fresh, cold air they walked quickly across Lincoln Center's plaza, chattering about the opera's luminous final trio and the lovely bit of business at the end, where the Marschallin's little servant Mohammed scurries back into the room his mistress and the others have just left, to retrieve the handkerchief dropped by young Sophie, whom the lady's former lover will now marry. As Peter followed Will in a dash across Broadway, he found himself braced, too, by the cinematic long shot of a tall, broad-shouldered young man, stepping quickly over the pavement with athletic grace, in a long, dark overcoat that swept behind him rakishly, because he'd neglected to button it. This was the man he was with! Somewhere in Peter's brain, the shot was accompanied by a sexy line of jazz sax, arcing propulsively over a matrix of future beat, on a track laced with gauzy-vibey echoes—meaning that life in the city was sometimes splendid.

Fiorello's was welcoming, warm. Even at midnight the place was still crowded and convivial, and they were shown directly to one of the red leather booths. While waiting for their drinks, instead of examining the menu, they clucked over the brass plaques on the wall, that identified the booth as “belonging” to a variety of New York boldface types.

“So if they show up, what, we get kicked out?” said Will.

“I think it's more of a memorial,” said Peter.

“Golly,” said Will, reading some of the names aloud. “Yeah, some of these people are dead, aren't they?”

“Yes, they are,” said Peter. “We're sitting on their remains.”

They laughed. The waiter delivered the drinks. Suddenly, they knew that the antipasto sampling platter for two would be the perfect thing to order. Five selections were made with telepathic ease.

Will asked for the life story and Peter agreed to give him the short version: the small town upbringing, coming out at Cornell, moving to New York with Harold, AIDS, the merry widower, Nick, the breakup with Nick, the merry widower again—only this time not so merry. Will seemed especially impressed by all the traveling Peter had done, both with Harold and afterward, for his ad agency.

“Well, in a way, I was groomed to ingest the world and everything in it,” said Peter. “And when you think about it, life as a gay baby boomer is the result of a perfect storm. Our parents survived the Depression, saved the world by winning a righteous war, perfected the backyard barbecue, and raised kids who expected to have more happiness, abundance, pleasure, and truth than anyone else in human history. It's an ethos of entitlement.”