Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (15 page)

Then the elevator door opened upon a weepy, fearful little girl and her outraged mother, who glared witheringly at me all the rest of the way down.

“You think you’ve got problems,” I told her.

“The element we get nowadays,” she muttered, shaking her head in fury.

“Breeder bitch,” I said, happily; but by then she was Ignoring Me.

So now, the travel agent. Is Plaza Tours really going to happen? The whole thing isn’t a joke?

It wasn’t. The guy went on about “re-sign-ups” and “regional favoritism,” and I had to speak up.

“I don’t understand why tourists who could take in the theatre or poke around in museums would be content with—”

“Patience, my friend,” the travel agent told me in a soothing tone. “It is a virtue, patience, yes? Too much life at once can be all so . . . discouraging. Slowly lead to it, yes?” He had a Hispanic accent, though his name was Riordan. “These are people coming out, you see?, from the heartland. Yah, simple people who want a simple trip.” His many smiles as he said this. “They cannot use adventures. So what is New York? Robbery within the hotel, scam artists are prowling, everywhere are untrustworthy types casing doorways, windows. It is all cheat, cheat, cheat. Or, in the museums, it is surrealistic paintings, nude statuary, unexpected fountains. Everyone must travel, da? So they have traveled, traveled here—but what do they want?” His head bobbed at every word: “The least amount of challenge we can give them. Harry and Myrna is how I so fondly think of them. Si, and your two young friends have conjured up a beautiful massage for the Harry and Myrna tour unit. Relaxing. Functional. Inexpensive. And something to take back to their friends in the heartland of Flag Day and the War Memorial. Think of the history! Washington says farewell to his troops in the plaza of the AT&T Building!”

“Actually,” I said, “that would have occurred way down in the Wall Street—”

“So what we like about Plaza Tours is the lack of risk. There is no affront to the sensitivities. You show up, you walk and learn, you wonder. Then you go home absolutely untouched. That’s what the people want, vershteh?”

“They want surprise, delight,” I said.

The travel agent beamed at Cosgrove. “What do they want, my friend?”

“To be safe.”

“Yes,” the travel agent gushed. “Muy bueno como eso. If you’ll sign,” he continued, pushing papers at Cosgrove.

“Don’t you dare,” I said, getting up.

“It is a beautiful tour. Exciting yet healthy. Like knowing about sex without having to have it.”

“Cosgrove, we’re late for a party.”

Cosgrove hadn’t moved, and now he said, “As usual, you are not listening to me or Virgil because you think we are just little pandas. You are afraid of what will happen if we have joy and truth.”

I looked at the travel agent.

“If someone would sign,” he urged.

I grabbed the contract, saying, “We have to think about this.” At Cosgrove’s protest, I went on, “Virgil has to read this, too, doesn’t he? Business is business.” I thanked the travel agent for his trouble.

“De nada,” he replied, blandly content. As we went out, he added, “Remember, my friend—too much life at once . . .”

Cosgrove sulked and grumbled for a bit, but at the prospect of Dennis Savage’s dinner party he brightened and even began pulling ahead of me in eagerness. My suspicions went on instant alert. Cosgrove and Dennis Savage are mortal enemies; as with the mongoose and cobra, the war is ontological, war for war’s sake. Many a time have I heard Cosgrove plotting to “fix that Dennis Savage for all the mean things he’s done,” but when I request a catalog of these sins, Cosgrove clams up. It just is, because it’s there. In any case, a quick on-site body search of Cosgrove’s overcoat and pants yielded up a whoopee cushion, a joy buzzer, and a small puddle of plastic vomit.

“Where do you even
find
stuff like this?” I cried.

“I have ways,” he muttered.

“Look,” I said, grasping Cosgrove by the shoulders, “Dennis Savage needs very, very badly for this party to go well. He requires us, his dear friends, to support him on this terribly important turn in his fortunes. Despite our little grievances now and again, we are family—and who else, in the end, can we depend on? You see that, surely?”

Cosgrove slowly nodded his head.

“You realize that disrupting his party with pranks is infantile?”

Cosgrove slowly nodded his head.

“It’s a solemn thing. We celebrate ourselves. You see this, right?”

Cosgrove slowly nodded his head.

“Why do I feel that you’re setting me up?”

Cosgrove said nothing. We were starting to attract attention as street characters, so I hustled us along.

Our building’s elevators used to close too fast, crunching the unwary; now, retuned, they shut only after an interminable waiting period, which makes them run so slowly that there’s always a someone or two in the lobby waiting for the next car. Cosgrove and I happened upon a serious-looking man, his overcoat open to reveal one of those really
tailored
pin-stripe suits and a latest-thing tie. Could this be Peter Keene? I tried to frame Dennis Savage’s description around him, already editing it—why didn’t he mention the devastating green eyes, the affably insolent cheekbones? He was taller than I’d expected, too. I was about to say something when Cosgrove piped up.

“Are you Dennis Savage’s editor?”

“Why, yes,” the stranger said, after a moment of surprise.

“I’m Cosgrove. This is Bud. We’re all in the party.”

The elevator door opened, and once we were on our way I made somewhat more elaborate introductions. Peter smiled and said, “Well, you must be Justin.” Turning to Cosgrove, he added, “And you’re Percival.”

Cosgrove said, “You may have to be kneecapped.”

Peter glanced at me. I said, “Joke?”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed, relaxing. “The nonstop hilarity of the stories.”

“I eat pretty children for snacks,” said Cosgrove.

“Ah, the eighth floor,” I exclaimed, quite immediately after
that, “and the gourmet cooking—did you know?—and Little Kiwi is sure to charm, and wait till you see . . .” Cosgrove’s features, I noticed, as I ran out of cover material, were set. I told him, “Stop being relentless!” But by then Virgil had opened the door and Dennis Savage was coming out of the kitchen (an entrance that I, personally, had coached him in), his smile slowly growing as he took off his oven mitt and his apartment surged with the scent of French Chef expertise.

“Ah, you’ve met?” he asked, cooling his anxiety with the gay guy’s first weapon: a blasé manner. “Yes, there’s our wonderful little Cosgrove, and it’s coats into the bedroom, and I’m working on the watercress, orange, and coconut salad for that Balinese effect.”

So Peter Keene goes “Balinese salad!” in the tone David Drake uses when Fabio drops in. And no sooner am I back from laying my coat on the bed than I see Cosgrove pulling a
second
whoopee cushion out of his right sock and blowing it up with the cool determination of David facing Goliath. Dennis Savage has gone back into the kitchen, Virgil simply misses this, and Peter Keene is about to drop into the armchair and become Cosgrove’s victim when I pull Peter away, crying, “Come see the . . .” We’re walking and my mind is racing. Come see? “Oh! Yes! It’s Dennis Savage’s fabulous collection of Modern Library Giants!”

Actually, it’s his pathetic bookcase full of the remainder of his college reading lists; since then he became an enthusiast of the public library. But Peter and I do a little number on the quaint look of the familiar old covers: the gold and red
War and Peace
with the beaten French army straggling homeward, the Lewis Carroll with the Tenniels, the tree-framed country scene for
The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
.

“My parents had this edition,” says Peter, just in time for Dennis Savage to join us and blush at the reference to his age. (It isn’t fun to be older than your editor; it’s like being nineteen in fifth grade.) Drinks were offered and taken, and Dennis Savage slipped off to the kitchen while Peter, Virgil, Cosgrove, and I tried small
talk. I always bungle it, Peter seemed shy, Virgil kept running into the kitchen to assist, and Cosgrove was eerily silent, one of his favorite modes.

Suddenly, he jumped up and asked if Peter would like to hear a song. “I have a unique repertory,” Cosgrove explained, “so it’s sure to be a surprise.”

“You mean you lip-synch to records?” Peter asked. “I’ve heard of that.”

“No, I just sing.”

“Oh—to karaoke tapes? It’s popular, of course, but the selection of titles is—”

“No, I just sing,” said Cosgrove, starting to smile.

Peter turned to me. “And you accompany him?”

“No, he just sings.”

“Well.” Peter turned back to Cosgrove. “What kind of songs do you—”

Peter got no further, for Cosgrove had broken into one of his “country” specialties—more precisely, into the instrumental prelude to the number, which Cosgrove also sings, wordlessly, in imitation of a fiddle tuning up on open fifths with a jazzy upbeat urging it on. The song itself, which Cosgrove rendered in conjunction with an altogether disquieting rustic dance reminiscent of a mule kicking down a barn door, is sung to “Turkey in the Straw”:

Well, the poodle did a dance
As the chickens pranced and clowned,
Then along come a farmer,
But he make no sound.
He slip into the silo
Where he petted all the pigs,
And the crocodile landed in a pile of twigs!
Life is a barnyard,
Life, anyhow.
Farmer is angry,
Busted his plow.
Chow bell’s ringing,
Time to go;
And the goose celebrated with a do-si-do!

Cosgrove posed for the finish, and I noticed that Dennis Savage had come out, his face the very glass of worry. But Peter took it in stride.

“The crocodile landed in . . .” he began. “Who
launched
the crocodile? And what’s a crocodile doing on a farm?”

“He escaped from the zoo and found a nice home.”

“Awfully cosmopolitan farm” was Peter’s view of it.

“What’s
he
looking at?” Cosgrove asked, meaning Dennis Savage, who was not too lost in contemplation to signal me with his eyes; but then the buzzer rang.

“Thank God, that’s Carlo,” said Dennis Savage, returning to the food. But Cosgrove ran to the intercom, passed the guest in, and turned back with a look of do-it-yourself apocalypse.

“That wasn’t Carlo, was it?” I asked him.

“You’ll soon see.”

“Is there some . . .” Peter asked. “Trouble? Young Cosgrove appears to be quite—”

“They have a tiny worm,” Cosgrove told him, “that you can bake into a muffin and still it lives. Then you eat such a muffin, so now the worm crawls around in you, nibbling on your heart and kidneys, and it makes more worms out of itself, and soon all these worms are nibbling and you are screaming. First you were quiet, then you’re on fire. A freak is loose in you.”

Peter looked unhappy, the doorbell rang, Cosgrove answered it, and a drag queen entered, Kind Three. I mean with a Marie Antoinette wig, a nobody-gets-out-of-here-alive bust, makeup by Jackson Pollock, and a walk right out of
Kitten with a Whip
.

“Miss Faye!” Cosgrove cried. “You came!”

“That’s
just
what Arnold Schwarzenegger said to me,” she replied, “at about two o’clock last night in his—and I do mean—
master
bedroom.”

She surveyed the joint, posed, said, “Who’s the dearie with the big eyes?”

“That’s Virgil. This is Bud, and that’s some editor.”

Dennis Savage, at the kitchen entryway, was going deeply rose as Miss Faye sashayed (I’d never seen anyone quite
do
that verb before) up to Virgil and stroked his hair, passed me making moue-lips, and parked herself before Peter. She read him up and down
real
slow, then purred out, “I’m a devout Mennonite, you know.”

Peter was pretty rose himself. He asked me, “Do I shake hands?”

Cosgrove was looking at Dennis Savage as Iago must have looked at Desdemona; and we all caught the feel of the moment and looked at Dennis Savage ourselves. His ball.

“I’m Dennis Savage,” he said. “This is my house. Please honor it.” Then he went back into the kitchen.

“Who’s the telegram?” Miss Faye asked.

I was shooting daggers at Cosgrove, who glared back defiantly, treacherously, independently. I liked him about as much, that moment, as my parents liked me the day I set fire to the gazebo chairs
and
fed my little brother Tony raw eggs (unshelled), all in one afternoon.

“Let’s all sit and be nice,” Virgil suggested. “We’ll each tell a funny story about childhood.”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Miss Faye, settling into the armchair. “Getting oh so deeply
shrewed
by Father O’Halloran in the choiry, and he was ever a
hairy
beast, but lean and jazzy.” She smiled. “Ah, the blossom time.” She turned eagerly to Peter. “Now to you, handsome yet secretly warped type in a suit. Who shrewed you in your teens? The full list, I please, and photographs where possible.”

After a moment, Peter said, “I am not warped.”