The Married Man (15 page)

Austin bought Peter a beige silk sports jacket and a belted raincoat and three dress shirts on sale. When they emerged from the shop with its English look—the polished wood shelves, green library lamps and brass-fitted counter—they were plunged back into the true Venice, the constant murmur of a thousand muted human voices ricocheting off stone pavements and walls, of stray sunbeams irradiating a window display of colored glass trinkets and projecting rainbows, of sweating tourists in shorts, their faces baked red. Darting quickly through them were elegant locals already in evening clothes as they rushed, bejeweled and coiffed and perfumed, towards an early dinner before an opera at La Fenice, a house that had burned down so often it had a stake in its name: the Phoenix.

Austin cut short their walk when he felt Peter losing strength. As they were threading their way through the narrow chasm leading to the door of their
palazzo
, Peter bent down stiffly to stroke a puppy muzzled with a little wicker cage over its mouth and nose. His master was trailing not far behind. Peter looked like a very old general tousling the hair of a child who’d brought him flowers.

Once upstairs Austin set to work making dinner while Peter perched on the roomy windowsill, sipping a wine so pale it resembled water. He was looking down at the Canal, its noise and activity so far below they were generalized into a picturesque haze.

Peter went to his bedroom to hang up his new jacket and raincoat. He came into the kitchen, tears standing in his eyes, and said, “I’m sorry I’m being so emotional, but you offered me new clothes and that suggests you think I’m going to go on living for a while….”

•   •   •

When Julien arrived two days later it was in the evening. He’d boarded a
vaporetto
at the streamlined Mussolini-era train station and now, as he descended the boat at the Stae stop, he was exuberant, as though the brightness dancing in his eyes and his quick, excited movements were assembled out of the lights fractured by the myriad currents and cross-currents of the flowing, sloshing Grand Canal.

He looks so young, Austin thought. Then he glanced over at Peter in a cruelly unconscious instant of comparison. Peter looked so—well, it wasn’t old, exactly, but
dry
, as though Peter were the white-haired, stiff-jointed, desiccated version of this brunet young Frenchman with his full lips, rounded rump, his clear dark-blue gaze focused on some distant point of pleasure whereas Peter’s washed-out blue eyes were blurred by the indistinctness of all his present woes.

Austin was so happy to be with Julien. For the first time since coming to Venice he was light-hearted.

Although Peter spoke some sort of pidgin French, he was too tired to summon it up, or maybe he’d forgotten or found it embarrassing to test out. Julien scarcely registered this linguistic problem. He was so exuberant about being in Venice that he stormed the city, rushing across bridges and plunging into the Piazza San Marco, which, if it was the drawing room of Europe, was at once more tattered and more solemnly majestic than any other
salon
one could imagine. Old-fashioned floor lamps with fringed silk shades had been dragged outdoors and lit above each of the competing string orchestras and the lights lent a slight credibility to the drawing-room idea although the guests nibbling ices and the streams of shadowy passersby sauntering along under the dim arches were dwarfed and even mocked by the enameled church domes, the great brick upthrust of the campanile, the solemn entrances and exits of the huge Moorish figures of the corner clock, the soaring columns supporting saints and a crocodile, the illuminated stonework of the Doge’s Palace like patterned fabric stretched above the tent pegs of the short, squat columns and the distant moonlike glow of the neoclassical church of San Giorgio on its own island, looking on but muted, really exactly like a moon on a foggy, unhappy night.

Austin and Peter were silent, somnambulistic tourists but Julien was the excitable kind who had to share his impressions, half of which Austin translated into English more or less at random and half of which he let skip like stones across the lagoon. Peter nodded encouragingly, smiling, his head lowered and his eyes rounded—maybe he was a bit attracted to Julien, since he was being ever so slightly seductive, or maybe coquetry, after all, was his only way of showing friendliness to a man.

They ate at the little restaurant Harry’s Bar had opened over on the Giudecca,
spaghetti alle vongole
and grilled
bronzino
and silver cups of raspberries in sugared lemon juice. Peter drank too much and tried to interest Julien in his unhappy childhood and lonely if glamorous school years in Florence but Julien, though kindly and well-intentioned, didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all the information, which wasn’t exactly urgent or even recent. Austin kept hoping that Julien would understand that Peter didn’t have much to live for and that, after all, Austin would be sleeping with Julien later tonight and poor Peter would be alone.

Although they never really found a topic that first night together, Julien was a good sport and was even happy to go along for yet another drink to Haig’s Bar, for if Venice was a crowded museum by day, at night it was nearly as deserted as a museum. English aristocrats and successful French decorators and rich Milanese businessmen—all the people who owned apartments here and were willing to endure the city’s dullness for the sake of its chic—were laughing and talking loudly as they raced along, hoping to get to the Accademia for the midnight
vaporetto
. Most bars, the stand-up zinc-counter kind, had closed long ago, but Haig’s carried heroically on into the cool hours after midnight, perhaps exempt from the usual laws by virtue of its English name. Here Julien was happy to see the last remnants of an earlier Italian era consecrated to mindless pleasure. He watched with sympathy the bored, stylish young people in rumpled evening clothes, a black tie undone and dangling like an unfinished joke, a fragile chain-mail evening bag slung carelessly from the back of a chair, thick black hair curling over a sickly forehead, the drinks—brought up on a salver in eccentric stemware—chosen for their colors: garnet, chartreuse, cloud.

Back in their rented apartment Peter was almost falling asleep standing up and crouched a bit so Austin and Julien would kiss him on the forehead, as though he were their son; then he toddled off and Julien rushed to the window for one last glimpse of a passing
vaporetto
, projecting its yellow lights in every direction as it zigzagged up the Canal.

In the evenings Julien would put lavender-scented brilliantine in his hair and tie a complicated ascot for himself out of a blue silk scarf printed with gold hunting horns. Peter lifted an eyebrow fractionally at each of Julien’s efforts to emulate the Haig’s heroin-and-Campari crowd, but he also seemed amused by so much boyish posing.

As the days passed, Austin and Julien became intensely romantic in their lovemaking (back in Paris sex had been rougher, even brutal). Austin’s only worry when they embraced in the dim
salotto
was that Peter might surprise them en route to the bathroom or kitchen—he was sure he was feeling what parents with young children must feel, but like a young parent his desire overcame his misgivings.

Because he was a Southerner, and a Southerner whose mother had been a Virginia lady, Austin always needed to know what his friends thought of each other; any reservation someone might express he considered an insult, any criticism a betrayal. Julien had figured out how much Peter meant to Austin and made vague but approving sounds. One night, when for professional reasons Austin had to dine with the Cinis and the Montebellos, Julien and Peter ate alone at the Grappa di Uva and came back laughing and stumbling drunkenly, arm in arm.

Austin was thrilled. For weeks he’d been brooding about his new job in Providence, Rhode Island. Now he thought that he could invite Julien to live with him. Of course Peter wouldn’t want to leave New York for Providence, but he might have to spend longer and longer periods of convalescence with Austin—and with Julien, if they should stay together. Maybe because Austin was a product of the unpossessive 1970s, he’d always thought gay men shouldn’t pair off in little monogamous units. They should stay loyal to their old friends and lovers and take them in when necessary, not reject their former mates like heartless heterosexuals.

Anyway, Peter and Austin had promised that they’d take care of each other and now the time for honoring that pledge was speedily coming due. Austin had felt guilty about lingering on so long in Paris after Peter had gone back to live in New York, but he was comfortable with his cozy life on the Île Saint-Louis. As long as Peter was still able to go out and meet the preppie black men he liked as they stood around the piano singing show tunes at the Town House, right after work, still dressed in coat and tie, then he wouldn’t really want to share the East Village studio apartment again with Austin—he wouldn’t like to have his style cramped. Peter was looking for a last lover as frantically as if he was searching for a cure.

And Austin couldn’t really afford to rent a second studio for himself. Besides, as long as he was based in Paris he could work regularly for several American magazines as a journalist fluent in French, but if he lived in New York would the same editors think of flying him down to do a story about a Key West Eaton Street renovation or sending him up to Litchfield to write about a neoclassic
atelier?

Now this teaching gig had come along and Austin would be a useful but discreet distance from New York; he’d be teaching just three days a week and could devote the rest of his time to Peter, if Peter needed him.

In bed that night Julien whispered, “What do you and Peter have in common?”

“Nothing, really,” Austin said, “but I’ve always loved him and wanted to take care of him. We lived together for so long
—that’s
what we had in common, our life together.”

“So being in love means you want to take care of someone? For you that’s what it means?”

“Peter just wasn’t made to work. He never had any ambition. When he first returned to New York with that degree from the Louvre, I got him interviews with half a dozen decorators in New York, but nothing came of it. He doesn’t make a good impression. He can’t really follow a conversation. He dresses far too young—he thinks he’s still a kid, but he’s white-haired and in his mid-thirties. Certain gay men fall for his little-boy act, but it makes straight women want to throw up, and they’re the customers. They don’t mind if a guy is gay
so long as he’s virile and smooth and intensely interested in them and even a little autocratic, but an aging sweet little boy who’s self-centered and speaks in a high voice like a girl—well, that doesn’t play.”

Julien laughed and said, “You certainly have no illusions about him.”

“But I love him. I feel bound to him. He’s the witness to my life. I call him every few days from Paris. If he’s sad I think of treats to cheer him up. The last time he came to Paris, it was last summer, we had lunch at the Bagatelle. We looked at all the roses and we took photos of each other beside the ponds and the weeping willows and that greenhouse where they have Chopin concerts, then we sat in the shade and ate a long, complicated lunch that was so light it left us hungry. We drank a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet, the best white wine in the world, and we were so happy that we held hands under the table, because even if AIDS wasn’t going to kill us this year or next, we knew it couldn’t be far off and we were entirely happy.”

Austin went on thinking about that day in the Bagatelle even as he stood naked on the cold marble floor (for they had gotten out of bed one more time to look at the Canal) and held Julien in his arms. Their room was lit only from the illuminated boats below and the unique street lamp with its three clear panes and its single pink one—the basic street furniture in Venice, like everything else, was irregular and strange. The water traffic had at last abated and most of the palaces were darkened—though soon enough low-riding barges powered with outboard motors would be bringing small dark-green melons to market, the melons the size of children’s heads.

After a week, Julien took a morning train back to Paris and his job. He thanked Austin rather formally, at least with an unusual degree of politeness for someone of his generation, and Austin realized they still hadn’t spoken of living together. They weren’t yet a couple, nothing could be taken for granted.

Peter and Austin lingered on another five days. “You really love him, don’t you, Austin?” Peter said when he saw how Austin lit up whenever Julien phoned.

“Well, I don’t really know him that well, but—”

“Come on, Austin, admit it.”

“Peter, I’ve never played my part so carefully. I just think about winning, I scarcely stop to wonder how I feel, really feel, inside.”

“Well, it’s obvious he adores you. He told me, that night we had dinner alone, he said he thought you were … what does
pour
or maybe
tour ghetto
mean?”

“Hors ghetto
. That means I’m not a typical fag—I’m out of the ghetto, I’m non-scene, as the English say.”

“Mary, you could have fooled me. Miss Girl …”

There was a seafood restaurant way out toward the Arsenale, a place that had been trendy a decade ago partly because it was so hard to find. As they strolled home after a charred, greasy meal of squid, they skirted the Lagoon, up bridges and down, past the church where Vivaldi, the red-haired priest, had been the composer, past the Danieli, where Byron had stayed, past the Piazzetta; when they reached Harry’s Bar they went in for a last Bellini. Peter was a little drunk and said, “Austin, I don’t completely trust Julien. I hope he doesn’t hurt you. You say you’re playing cool and fast just to win, but I think you’re out of your league, just as you were outclassed by Little Julien.”

“There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about Little Julien. And you know he’s becoming a wonderful artist—everyone in Paris is talking about his furniture. His own apartment had six pages in
Elle Déco
—I’ll show you, I kept it. I wish he’d loved me more or, failing that, I wish I could have done more to help him along in the world. I wish I’d been famous or rich—God, he was the best sex I ever had.”