Perfect Freedom (23 page)

Rico turned up a narrow side street and they walked beneath a canopy of crisscrossed clotheslines hung with tattered garments. Bedclothes spilled from windows and hungry-eyed children crouched on stoops, staring as they passed.

“Anna my girl. Gina, she's sister. She for you,” Rico told him. “Here we are.” He stopped and peered up through the linen at a mouldering building across which was scrawled: w M
USSOLINI
. They entered a dark hall and mounted flight after flight of wide slanting stairs. Sounds and smells emerged from behind every door. The building seemed to vibrate with life. There was a vitality in it so unfamiliar to Robbie that it seemed almost dangerous. They went on up until they reached the top. There, Rico knocked on a door and looked at Robbie with a smile and a wink.

The door was thrown open by a pretty dark-eyed girl in a plain cotton dress. She shrieked and fell on Rico and he and Robbie were swallowed up in a wave of laughing men, women, and children. Robbie's hand was shaken, everybody talked at once, his Italian foundered, and he found himself grinning foolishly. In the confusion, Rico apparently managed to identify his companion and explain their presence, for Robbie heard himself addressed by name and the whole group jostled their way to a table at the end of a big room.

Once seated, they seemed less numerous. There was a small gaunt woman, a fat man, a younger man who was turning to fat, the pretty girl who had opened the door, another girl very like her with the same delicate nose and flower-petal mouth, a beautiful boy, younger than Robbie, and four small children. Robbie was pleased to find Rico still beside him. Glasses were distributed and filled with a black wine from a long-necked bottle, and everybody drank to everybody else. Robbie recognized this gathering as the sort his father would feel at home in and he felt himself stiffening against the noisy laughing group. His mother would find them common.

He looked around and observed the poverty of the place, plaster broken from a corner of the ceiling, paint flaking from the walls, two sprung iron beds with soiled blankets, a tin tub in one corner, cotton underclothes hanging on a line in another, a geranium struggling from a tin can on the window-sill.

Depressing, but he liked having Rico beside him and the others responding to Rico's extravagant praise of his new friend. He launched into his favorite joke about Robbie's devastating effect on all females. Robbie blushed and could think of nothing to say and then, carried away by the atmosphere and the wine, he clapped his hand over Rico's mouth. The instant he felt his lips and nose and cheeks beneath his fingers, he was appalled by the familiarity of the act. Rico pommeled him and everybody laughed and the awful moment passed. Robbie shut his eyes and laughed wildly, too. His hand still tingled with the feel of Rico's face. There was danger here, danger in his wild sense of freedom. He wanted to trace the straight line of Rico's brow with his fingers and the curve of his laughing mouth. He pressed his legs together to subdue the inexplicable stirrings of his sex.

Food appeared, a hearty soup and a mountain of pasta. When the meal was over, Rico suggested a stroll with the girls before the cafés closed and there was another explosion of voices, this time devoted to farewells and promises to return. Rico and Anna took the lead, arm in arm, Robbie and Gina followed decorously. They made their way to the waterfront, bright with the lights from the cafés and busy with strollers.

Robbie tried to make conversation with Gina but found little to talk about. She gazed at him wide-eyed, her charming young mouth slightly open. He was relieved when Rico and Anna stopped at a sidewalk table and the talk became general. They had coffee and sticky liqueurs, which Robbie paid for, and then Rico suggested a walk along the quai. They had to pick their way cautiously in the dark once they'd passed through the gates to the docks. A waning, moon silvered the water and the shipping lying at anchor. Rico led them out along the quai where
Northern Star
was moored. A sea wall ran on one side of it and when they came to some steps in it, Rico mounted them. The others followed. He stopped at the top. On the other side, great rocks stretched unevenly down to the water.

“Me and Anna, we go for serious talk,” he said to Robbie. “We leave you here: You like serious talk with Gina, yes?” He laughed and gave Robbie a pat on the shoulder. Robbie's heart began to pound. What could he say to stop him? Something about the way he stood close to him urging him toward the girl stirred in him a memory of the afternoon long ago at Boldoni's.

Rico and Anna slipped off, hand in hand, down the rocks. Robbie heard Anna giggle and then their shadows melted into the night. He stood helplessly on the wall, avoiding any contact with Gina, praying for the pounding of his heart to subside. The intense and perilous excitement of the evening drained away as he felt Rico's absence.

The girl moved closer to him, smiling softly. Invitingly? “It's cool here by the water,” she said.

He had been imagining things. They would just have a little talk until Rico came back. “Yes, it is,” he agreed in careful Italian. “It is hot there where you live?”

“Oh, it's not too bad. It's quite high. There's always some air.”

“Yes, that's true. It is high.” She made no answer and Robbie searched frantically for another topic, but the longer the silence lasted the harder it was to break. What was he supposed to do now? Put his arm around her? Would he be obliged to kiss her? And after that? What if she let him …? This was the first time he had been in a situation where it could happen and he knew he didn't want it. The girl was pretty but he hardly knew her. He felt paralyzed from the waist down. What if he made some false move? What if nothing worked the way he thought it was supposed to? It was beneath him, indecent. He abruptly turned his back on the rocks. “Come on,” he said, and started down the steps without looking back. He heard her scrambling after him. When they reached the foot of the steps she stopped.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked breathlessly.

“Home, of course,” he said, turning to her but looking over her head.

“Oh!” she gasped. She seemed to shrink from him and then she gathered herself together and sprang away and went running off along the quai, her feet padding lightly into the night. Robbie stood for a moment, feeling a stinging heat behind his eyes, a crushing sense of failure in his chest. I didn't want to, he told himself, conquering the turmoil of his thoughts. If I'd wanted to I would have. And how did he know she would have let him? He would never do it. It was disgusting, lying on top of a girl he didn't even particularly like and pumping his bare behind up and down in the air. It was apparently a responsibility of manhood that he would be expected to assume some day. He dreaded it. He turned and walked rapidly back toward
Northern Star
. Rico had betrayed their newly declared friendship. He had said they were going to spend the evening together. He could get along without friends. His mother understood; she hadn't wanted him to go with Rico.

Stuart had decided to take a stroll before turning in. He walked up to the gates and turned back. A girl ran past him and for the few seconds she was visible he admired the fleet movement of her young legs. When he came to the steps in the sea wall he mounted them to contemplate the sea and the sky. As he stood there he heard muffled laughter on the rocks below and through the still air he recognized Rico's voice. Was Robbie down there somewhere with the sister?

Stuart smiled to himself and discreetly descended the stairs and headed back to the boat, thinking of Marguerite and his first love. Had he been even younger than Robbie when he had proposed marriage? He laughed at himself, envying Robbie the fire of his youth.

Early the next morning they set out across the Ionian Sea for Greece. Robbie was determined to snub Rico as a punishment for abandoning him but he couldn't make much of a dent on the sailor's happy-go-lucky affectionate nature. He soon gave up and carried cushions forward to the open deck and lay out in the sun, wearing the swimming trunks that had become his uniform on board. He was turning a dark mahogany brown. As usual, Rico flopped down beside him during breaks in his nautical chores. He pinched and punched him and made him laugh. He was full of talk about girls, in particular last night's girls. For some reason, Robbie insisted on the fact that nothing had happened with Gina.

“Why not? Gina good girl. Why you no take her?”

“Why should I?” Robbie said with a superior shrug. “We didn't fall in love with each other or anything. Why bother? She didn't want it, either.”

“Sure she want. I no understand.” Rico shook his head with perplexity. “You got beautiful body. You got beautiful face. You very fine man here too, I bet.” Rico dropped his hand on Robbie's cock and gave it a squeeze. Robbie's body gave a great leap and he rolled over hastily onto his stomach to conceal his immediate erection. He hoped Rico wouldn't think he minded being touched there. The gold in Rico's mouth flashed as he laughed. “Sure. You take every girl you want with that.”

Robbie wondered if Rico had felt it getting hard. Everybody told him that he was just entering manhood and he was still prepared for surprises. Maybe all guys got like this when they were with somebody they liked. Every time he thought he had discovered something special about his body, it turned out that everybody was the same. Like masturbating. Or before that, when he'd had the odd thrilling spasms without much coming out, unlike Michel's performance. He'd discovered that it was just a matter of time. Or when hair had started growing around his cock. He'd thought it was some weird throwback to the beast. His father had hair there but it had never occurred to him that he would. Michel hadn't. His father had some hair on his chest but he hadn't grown any there. Maybe it would come later. Live and learn. “You never think about anything but girls,” he said in his most world-weary manner.

“Sure. I very sexy. I take any girl she want me. Next time, I stay with you till I sure you get the girl.”

There wouldn't be a next time, Robbie thought firmly. They were embarked on a long passage across open sea; they wouldn't reach port for several days. By then, perhaps they would have become such close friends that they could do things together without bothering about girls.

If not, he would stay with his parents. He turned over and sat up and pulled his knees up and put his arms around them, keeping his erection out of sight. It brought his face close to Rico's. “Wouldn't you be more comfortable if you didn't wear all thoseclothes?” he asked.

“What you want I wear? Much sun very bad. You be careful.” He pressed Robbie's shoulder with his fingers. “You no burn?”

“No.” His erection grew achingly rigid. He closed his eyes, longing for him to put his arms around him. He wanted them to lie in each other's arms. There was nothing ugly about that. Rico acted as if he might want it too, always touching him. How could you tell what people were thinking?

“I got work. I come back.” He gave Robbie's shoulder a pat and Robbie opened his eyes as Rico rose and moved forward with an athletic spring in his compact body. If you liked somebody, wasn't it natural to hold each other, perhaps kiss gently, as he and Jean-Marie had kissed? There was nothing wrong with wanting it. He had heard plenty of crude jokes about boys doing things together but he didn't mean anything like that. That was some sort of insane depravity that couldn't happen with decent people. He wanted only something he had caught hints of in an E.M. Forster novel he had read that winter, nothing explicit but something that seemed to quiver beneath the words, a sense of a deep passionate masculine love that could light life with joy, as if friendship were almost like falling in love. He could love Rico like that if he would forget about girls. Thinking about it made his spirit soar again. The vast discovery was almost within his grasp.

Time slipped out of focus as it had a way of doing on board. Day melted into night and became day again without any change in the routine. The wind stiffened and subsided. Sails were trimmed and eased. The course was altered. Robbie lay in the sun, with Rico always near at hand. Nobody else existed; they were alone together in the isolation of the empty sea. Robbie felt something suspended between them that a word or a gesture might precipitate into an expression of the love that he knew was growing between them. Thinking of his father's casual attitude toward nakedness, he stripped off his trunks one day and lay on his stomach to tan himself all over. It was thrilling to expose himself totally, knowing that his friend would soon find him. He hoped his example would persuade Rico to shed some of his clothes. It would be bliss to be able to fool around naked together.

Rico came upon him with a shout of laughter and a flash of gold. “You gotta pretty bottom like a girl. You watch out who you show.”

Robbie looked up, giggling delightedly. “I suppose you'll want to pinch it next,” he said, resorting to schoolboy banter.

“You watch out. I spank pretty bottom.” He leaned over and gave Robbie's behind a resounding smack. The rules of horseplay demanded retaliation. Robbie made a grab for Rico's bare foot and caught him off balance and brought him tumbling down beside him. “You get good spank for that,” Rico cried, entering into the spirit of the fray. He snatched up Robbie's trunks and gave them a whirl and sent them sailing along the deck. “Now you got no clothes.” He tried to wrestle Robbie over onto his back, yanking at the towel he was lying on. Robbie was so accustomed to what happened when Rico touched him that he was scarcely aware of it. He felt an intense ecstatic physical freedom that made him want Rico to know all of him. He wriggled free and clutched the towel against himself and started crawling toward the forward hatch. Rico pulled his knees out from under him, bringing him to a painful halt. He fought him off, kicking and squirming out of his grip, and reached the hatch.