The Emperor's Children Page 17

  Then, too, there was the distinct but also inseparable titillation of the risk of being caught. Living alone, he had all but forgotten that excitement, had felt it only in hurried, humid gropings in public places, or once in the lavatory at a rather elegant dinner party hosted by an old acquaintance from Brown. But this—this was a thrill on the order of his adolescence, a thrill of the kind he’d known back in Danville when, at fourteen and fifteen, his parents had thought him at the movies at the mall, while in reality he trawled the parking lot behind a bar called The Hub, where it was known men could find each other and share the warmth of their cars, and where boys, fresh as he was, were prized; but where, too, hovered the threat of a police bust (they knew the score, just like everyone else) and more frightening still, the faint possibility of marauding drunken youths with knives or baseball bats, and an angry eye for the faggots. In that pullulating white Midwestern sea, an Asian faggot, a teenage Asian faggot, wide-eyed, slight as a reed, would have come in for particular treatment. When Julius was fifteen, a married insurance salesman from three towns over had been beaten into a vegetable (an eggplant, Julius always imagined: purple, spongy) by three footballers, after one feigned seduction and lured him to the gravel pits, and a trap. Not that Julius fantasized about violence—no. But the faint twitch of fear, the way it had made the cold air of that long-ago parking lot colder still, the way it had drawn the outlines of buildings, scurvy trees and, above all, men’s shadowed forms in superior relief—the way fear had been sexy, had made him eminently, absolutely alive—that was craveable, delicious. As a teenager, always the ultimate terror had been not of the gay-bashers, nor even of the cops, but of a known face, of the car door that would open to reveal a friend of his father’s, or a member of the church; or of a miscalculation in timing that would have his father, driving by to pick up his boy at the multiplex just down the strip, glimpsing the adolescent’s entwined and compromised form by the sulfurous flickering of a defective streetlight. The biggest fear had always been that Mom and Dad would find out; the greatest triumph the secret life that remained so long unknown to them. The secret life defined him. Until, of course, the day he was exposed.

  As he waited for the buzzer to ring (why was Dale so slow? Surely not a mere few blocks away? In which case, not, perhaps, a fitness instructor? Nor, perhaps, discreet? And the suddenly expanding, exhilarating, horrifying possibility that Dale could be anyone, anything, could be the bat-wielding thug of his fifteen-year-old nightmare), Julius contemplated, too, albeit briefly, the consequences of being caught, not by his parents this time, but by David, in David’s apartment, in David’s bed. In his least realistic self, Julius imagined that David might see the whole scenario as a setup for their mutual pleasure; but this didn’t actually seem likely. He tried to imagine David’s rage, his disappointment, and found he couldn’t—he didn’t know what David might do—and this in itself excited him. The magnitude of his betrayal was unimaginable.

  Because in the realm of fantasy, at least, Julius was well acquainted with betrayal and its consequences. Yet another motor for this escapade was his certainty—wholly unproven, untraced even, but a thrilling fear of another kind, and, in his imagination, as real—that David cheated, too. It wasn’t a matter of a true, prolonged affair—he was convinced that David loved him, Julius, exclusively; not least because David wanted to keep him shackled to his side, lavishly spoiled and carefully imprisoned, his trophy wife, his Desdemona—but of encounters, of stolen minutes after business meetings, of clinches with tie salesmen in the Barneys’ stockroom, or with waiters at Balthazar’s back door, of dabbling in airports or hotel rooms when the exigent demands of Blake, Zellman and Weaver carried him (business class, of course) to Chicago or Dallas or L.A. Julius dreaded the notion of these encounters in David’s life as much as he reveled in their prospect for himself. This was, to him, perfectly logical; although not explicably so. He couldn’t bear the image of David’s mouth on another man’s, of his penis, in its private glory, shared. Of David’s crushing, heartbreaking behavior, he had no evidence but his own fancy, which he combated with his own, overlaid fantasy-made-real, the fantasy of Dale.

  Dale, who summarily appeared. Neither thug nor Adonis, with little sweetness in him, he proved a pasty-faced man of Julius’s own age, with a near-shaven head, a bristly dun tickler on his chin, and a speckling of metal studs around his lobes. His eyes were round and lidless, his pale skin flecked with pale stubble and a bright blip of razor burn. His expression tended to the mournful; and whether by nature or on account of his own fear (but surely that would have subsided at the sight, and indeed the perfumed smell, of Julius in his stolen robe?) he proved laconic in the extreme; accepted a single malt on the rocks, and proceeded, rather antsily, to disrobe.

  Dale’s penis, while not an embarrassment, was far from gargantuan; and while his lips were pleasingly full, his tiny goatee presented, for Julius, a site of displeasure, a prickling obstacle to arousal. Julius suggested a bath, a line or two of coke (this he had foreseen; and had separated a small portion of David’s reserves for this use. He felt like his mother, fretting; but he hadn’t wanted to countenance the possibility that the unknown Dale might go wild at the prospect of drugs in abundance, make a grab for the lot, deck his paramour, and flee), a porn video on the huge flat-screen TV hung on the living room wall. Dale, nearly monosyllabic, accepted all these offers, his features set, throughout, in weary mourning, and then he fell hungrily, and still soberly, to the escapades for which they had contrived to meet—rather like a Midwestern bulemic, Julius thought, before a box of Cinnabon buns. Upon the living room floor, they wrangled and nipped and sucked, determinedly. The unsavory tickler proved problematic to the last, scratching at Julius’s cheek, his smooth chest, his tender scrotum. Even the cocaine could not render their coupling sweet or even—for Julius at least—exciting. He was, as so often, disappointed, and distracted himself by imagining David’s key in the lock, his slightly uneven tread, his horrified intake of breath. But this, this at least was pure fantasy, with all of fantasy’s reassurance. The bland Dale—surely a fitness instructor after all? So tight, so dull—washed hastily and withdrew, and seemed, in retrospect, a figment. Julius bathed, for the second time that afternoon, inspected himself in the steam-filled bathroom for minor, telltale abrasions, but found none. His eyes seemed wider than usual, as if popping with mendacity: he thought of it as the Pinocchio effect. He didn’t exactly regret his misdemeanor; more, he rued that it had not satisfied. He plumped the sofa cushions; returned the DVD to its box and its box to its place on the shelf; washed and dried the scotch tumblers; sprayed the air with an expensive French lavender oil, and proceeded, still in his robe, to concoct an aphrodisiac Grand Marnier–frothed mousse in time for David’s arrival.

  In the wake of this encounter, Julius felt not sated, nor guilty—opposing but mutually viable emotions. Rather, he felt sad, and tired. This, while no part of the fantasy, inevitably became the reality: because whatever he yearned for—and even to be able to name it might have quelled the yearning—seemed always destined to elude him. It was like Zeno’s paradox, the arrow that can never reach its destination, ever closer but never there. But for Julius, his arrow didn’t even know its destination, knew only that it wanted one.

  This, too, was the relief of David, whose wants seemed so transparent. With David, taken care of, sheltered, spoiled, Julius could relinquish—or try to—the unnameables. He could have nice things, flattering attentions, some kind of respite from his strange, unending struggle. But for that to stand a chance of working, he needed actually to be cared for; and where the hell was David now?

  When, at ten-thirty, his lover finally returned—and where, oh where had he been? Impossible not to wonder about the potential men on the Metro North train, or those in the bar at Grand Central—Julius lay sprawled on the sofa, the universal remote upon his chest like a dead man’s rosary beads, listening to La Wally at top volume and nursing his injured pride.

 
“So, you decided to show up after all,” he snipped, flinching from David’s embrace and flouncing from the room. “Big of you, I guess.”

  “Oh my God, Miss Clarke—forget it. My uncle Merv showed up. The one who sells annuities in White Plains? Wanted ice cream, so we ended up at Ben and Jerry’s after the Panda Garden. It took time.”

  “Then you won’t want any mousse, either.”

  “What are you talking about? Either?”

  Julius flung, or flashed, a glare over his toweled shoulder. Angry, he was also camping up his rage. He didn’t know himself how much he meant it. “I made your favorite, Grand Marnier. But consider that it’s not on offer. And ‘either’ because I, so readily available all afternoon, am not on offer either. Not anymore.”

  There was, as he’d hoped even in his irritation, sufficient comedy in his act to provoke a lunge in response, rather than a row. Or rather, a lunge only tinged with anger, rather than an enraged pawing. And Julius did, then, proceed to enjoy eminently satisfying sex, a tad rough perhaps, but excitingly so, with the man who was absolutely his lover and—at least for now, as Dale’s visit had amply proven—all that he should want.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Awards Night

  Sometimes Danielle found it difficult not to envy Marina, in spite of Marina’s shortcomings. In spite of the fact, for example, that Danielle remained secretly convinced that Marina was not as smart as Danielle herself. Nor as funny. Danielle knew her envy arose from her shallowest self—she wouldn’t really have traded places with her friend for anything; to be thirty and so at sea!—but she couldn’t suppress it. Buffeted by the throng in the lobby, the milling, crowing glitterati assembling for their annual fete, Danielle, so consciously small, filling so tightly her clinging crimson gown, aware with every breath of the trembling white exposure of her cleavage (Marina had chosen the dress; Danielle had allowed herself to be persuaded), caught sight of Marina on her father’s arm and reeled from the unbidden emerald surge.

  They were, in the crowd, a distinctive pair. Danielle could see the swell parting slightly around them—the guest of honor and his beautiful daughter—could see women with bare shoulders and upswept hair whispering to one another as the Thwaites passed. The large, ornate lobby in which everyone gathered, itself the grand hotel’s sub-lobby, reserved precisely for such functions, had a slightly faux Victorian aura—wedding-cake plaster trim on the Wedgwood blue walls, huge tinkly chandeliers, the carpet beneath their feet of a souklike complication, a colorful scramble—everything old in form but brand-spanking-new, the rug’s floral twistings of an invasive brilliance. In this Hollywood version of old New York, Marina and Murray advanced with the authority, the noblesse oblige, of leading players. An insignificant subset of society it might be—Danielle cast a skeptical eye over the assembled writers and journalists, a rumpled and bulging lot even in their finery—but the Thwaites nevertheless had dominion over it: oh, to be so easy.

  Marina’s dress, diaphanous, of a pale, milky blue, floated the length of her frame, softening her boniness, flattering her thin arms, her slightly jutting hips, illuminating the effortless rose of her cheeks and her splendid eyes. Face lowered, head slightly cocked, Marina giggled, like a coy lover, at something her father whispered in her ear, and at the sight of his lips practically upon his daughter’s hair, Danielle felt herself envious anew. She hadn’t allowed herself fully to consider how she might respond to father and daughter together, now that she had, in some small, clandestine way, separate relationships with each of them. She’d known they would arrive together, that Marina attended this event only as her father’s date; but somehow, she hadn’t really known it. Nor had she fully remembered the face that lurked behind the e-mails: fierce but handsome, in its weatherbeaten age; pleasingly leathered by drink and cigarettes; with its appealing, slightly long, upper lip and mildly cleft chin; and, now that she really looked, clearly the forebear of Marina’s fine features. This was the face, she was only too aware, with which she would be conversing in private, when they met for their drink, only two days hence. A meeting of which Marina had no inkling, nor would; which oddity struck Danielle, as she observed their intimacy unseen. Murray Thwaite surprised her (and again: so tall, so silver); and then spotted her, before his daughter did, and pointed and waved with a broad, guileless smile. Danielle’s stomach turned—as if she entertained feelings for the man!—but even as it did, she found herself wondering, from the forthrightness of his expression, whether Murray Thwaite’s interested correspondence had actually been purely, as he purported, in the service of his daughter’s interest. Maybe Danielle had just imagined, invented—how pathetic!—the underlying flirtation? Although, as they approached, she could have sworn that his gaze did drop and linger, momentarily, upon the neckline and bodice of her dress.

  “Mr. Thwaite.” She extended a hand and leaned forward at once, and he both clasped her fingers and kissed her cheek—with, she felt again, an undue and possibly meaningful pressure. “Marina, you look gorgeous.”

  “Doesn’t she always?” said Murray, with an indulgence that seemed more than paternal. “You’re looking rather fetching yourself.”

  “I made her get the dress, Daddy,” Marina slid an arm around Danielle’s shoulder. “Doesn’t it look great?”

  Murray Thwaite smiled again.

  “She wasn’t even going to try it on. I took one look at it in the store and said, you’ve got to have the boobs for it, and Danny’s got the boobs. Didn’t I say that, Danny?”

  “Mind, Marina—I think your friend is turning the color of her dress.” He fixed his eye on Danielle. “But she isn’t wrong, you know.”

  Danielle composed herself sufficiently to laugh, and was about to reply, but Murray Thwaite had turned and been engaged by a small, monkey-faced bald man in a velvet tuxedo jacket.

  “Editor,” whispered Marina. “Uncool and totally boring. But weirdly powerful. You know how it is.”

  “Yep. Bar’s over there. We might pass a waiter on the way.”

  Their progress was slow. The cacophony of air-kissing and gossip echoed around them.

  “Julius isn’t coming, is he?” Danielle asked, when finally they had collected champagne flutes from a young woman in a bow tie.

  “He didn’t mention it, so I guess not. Part of the ongoing Invisible Man act—imagine him, missing this? I’m seeing him later this week, though.”

  “You are?”

  “Don’t be like that. I’d invite you, but he said he wants to talk about stuff.”

  “Just not with me?”

  “You’re being silly.”

  Danielle shrugged. “I think I’m being cut out of his loop. I know, but even more than you are. Don’t roll your eyes. Because you’re a Thwaite, or something. Because you’ll be more palatable to the Conehead.”

  “That’s so paranoid. I haven’t met him either.”

  “But I bet you will.”

  Marina made a vague theatrical gesture with her champagne flute, and only narrowly avoided grazing the shiny, shaven neck of an older gentleman beside her. “Julius has given up all this,” she said. “It must be for something.”

  “What’s to give up?” asked Danielle, who had already finished her champagne, and was scanning the crowd for the bow-tied waitress. “Look at these people. Do we really want to be like this? All smarmy and self-congratulatory?”

  “They’re giving Daddy an award, remember? We like them, tonight.”

  As a different waiter elbowed past, Danielle deposited her empty glass and retrieved a refill, without having to ask him to stop. “I know, I know. But can’t we just tell the truth about it for one minute? Look at all these preening clowns, dolled up in their Sunday best, everyone wanting to be more important than the next guy—it’s gross.”

  “Is it? Don’t you want to be more important than the next guy? You, of all people?”

  Danielle sighed. Marina was annoying her. This was a way Marina had, an obtuse devotion to the more obvious toke
ns of status. “Your dad would know what I mean,” she said. “He’s never given a shit what these people think, these armchair tyrants who’ve never left their tiny New York circles. He goes out and does his thing, writes and says what he needs to, and they come to him. So he really is important. Not like these vacuous nonentities, who spend their time at parties like this one.”

  “Whoa, Danny. What’s eating you?”

  The green-eyed monster, thought Danielle, is chomping at my nerves. But she merely sipped, smiled, adjusted her neckline.

  “Besides, you’re wrong about Daddy, you know. Of course he cares. He pretends not to care, because that’s the person he wants to be. Or rather: that’s the person they want him to be. But you have to care, or you won’t succeed. I’ve watched long enough to know that’s true. You won’t succeed, for example, carping like that.”

  Danielle took a deep breath, closed her eyes. Just when you allowed yourself to believe that Marina was a tiny bit dim, she came out with some irritatingly sharp aperçu. Danielle and Julius had often talked about this—back when they talked, of course. And then there was no call for Marina to hector and patronize: such certainties were easy enough to espouse when you were Murray Thwaite’s only child, and a beauty in the bargain. Perhaps Marina simply needed to care about success, Danielle thought bitterly, and barely to lift a finger. Danielle’s investment in acclaim was a lot less important than the actual work she produced—work that at present seemed to be going nowhere fast. Her boss hadn’t cared overly for the revolution pitch. “It just seems so outdated,” Nicky had said. “So seventies. There isn’t revolution in a little clever sarcasm, Danny. It takes a lot more than that.” She’d tried again to explain what she saw as the nihilists’ revolution all over New York, the particular purging cynicism of the boom on the cusp of its bust—she’d put it like that, and thought it sounded pretty good—but Nicky wasn’t biting. He cared too much for success: couldn’t she pick a winner? he’d asked laughingly.