Like People in History (52 page)

"I see," she said quietly.

"That's where I stand."

"But right now you're stuck... with me," she said.

So it seemed.

"Why not make the best of it?" she asked. And before I could say something snide: "I'll keep the
Manifest
attitude in all my articles. Brash, irreverent!"

"Evidently, you've given this some thought."

"I've worked up some ideas. Articles on women that gay male readers will enjoy. For example, the meanest women in movies. Complete with photos. Crawford. Davis. Stanwyck."

"'Golden Bitches of the Flicks!'" I said.

"Or motorcycle girl clubs on the West Coast. 'Dykes on Bikes!' Maybe a full-page color photo of one tough chick on the inside back cover...?"

"No! That's prime advertising territory. Inside front cover and back cover, inside and out. But anywhere else inside the book's possible. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the male centerfold."

"It won't."

"What else?" I asked.

I listened for the next half hour to suggestions. I guessed she'd already run them by Harte, and even talked to Newell Rose, since she gave visual touches with his undeniable stamp.

The result was that I opened myself up to possibilities, and she felt she'd cracked the door open. I knew Harte was going to be breathing down my back about her work, so I might as well get the best I could. More important, I wanted her to take a load off me. Copyediting articles and stories, captioning, and fact checking were tiresome and time-consuming. If I kept her happy, allowed her to think we were a team, she'd take on more work, help me and the Grunt.

I finished my third cup of coffee and said, "Put together three trial articles. Use anyone in the office except the Grunt. Bernard," I explained. "Can you be ready in a week?"

"Can I ever."

When we got outside, Newell had arrived with his ancient Hasselblad camera and was making the usual nuisance of himself with firemen and cops. I left Sydelle with him, hoping they'd keep each other from getting into too much trouble.

"I'm glad we had this talk," she said, following me as I got into a taxi down to the magazine's office. She sounded sincere.

"Mafia princeling!" I scoffed when the taxi took off.

"What's that?" the cabbie asked.

Even so, I wondered: How much did I know about Matt's family? I'd never met his parents, though they lived an hour away by car. I'd spoken to his mother on the phone, true, but just to exchange one-liners, to say, "Matt isn't here. I'll say you called," or "Sure, I'll get him." She'd never made conversation with me while waiting, not even about the weather, for which I'd been grateful. As for Grandpa Loguidice, as I'd told Sydelle, I'd met him twice, each time in a different expensive midtown restaurant, where he'd treated Matt to dinner.

A heavyset, almost round, man in his late seventies, the senior Loguidice resembled his grandson in size—he was almost six feet tall—in the vibrant black of what little hair remained on the sides of his head, and in the entire lower half of his face—perfect Calabrian lips, astonishing dimples on either side of his mouth, a cleft chin!

He'd been warm, welcoming, intelligent. His large, dark eyes— Matt's gray beauties came from his mother—were clever and curious. I'd been impressed by how at ease old Loguidice had been (Caravelle is
way
out of our range) even though he'd admitted he seldom "dined out. Only now a little since your Grandma passed on, God rest her soul!"

Both times, Grandpa Loguidice mentioned that he'd had a playmate named Roger he'd lost track of years before. There was no doubt at all that the old man ruled his family; yet with respect and with love. Doubtless, his money paid for many of their needs and all their luxuries. But he enjoyed independence in them—"Your cousin Sylvia, sixteen, tells me to go to hell. She says she'll pay for college and go wherever she wants!"

I never had a hint that he was dictatorial. The proof was how many family members—two sons, a daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren—worked for his company.'

I did get the sense he adored Matt: the way his eyes followed him doing anything—calling the waiter, say, or pouring the wine. He was proud of Matt's Navy service. He was even proud that he wrote poetry—"Can you imagine? A Loguidice a literary man with literary friends like yourself! Back in the Old Country, you know, only the
nobilità
read and wrote! Not
gabons
like us. A wonderful place, this America!"

From what I'd been able to gather over the years about the Loguidice family, Matt's father was the youngest of four brothers. Sickly from youth, he'd been pampered and protected, first by his parents then by his siblings. Because of his sporadic long hospitalizations as a youth, he'd never finished school or held a job long, but he'd married early—"My parents are one of the great romances," Matt had once told me. "They married against everyone's wishes and expectations and haven't been apart a day since." Matt had been born a year later, their only child. And while Grandpa Loguidice had plenty of grandchildren by his other sons—"I could field a football team with 'em!" he'd said over dinner—Matt, son of his favorite son, had become his favorite grandchild from the moment that the old man called his "miraculous birth!"

During those two meetings, I couldn't get any sense of whether or not old Loguidice knew Matt was gay and that we lived together. I definitely had the impression that Grandpa Loguidice had gotten around in his day. He possessed that quiet acceptance of things and people that suggests a widely lived past. The one time I'd pressed Matt on the subject, he'd irritatedly answered, "I could be sleeping with Rodan for all he cares!" Though I'd gone around the next week swooshing through the apartment as though on long, leathery wings, making what I thought were properly pterodactyl roars, Matt never said anything more. And his parents? They must know, I thought. "Who do they think I am?" I demanded. "The butler?" Matt had been vague about that too.

He saw them only for Thanksgiving. His father's birthday was close to the holiday, which coincided with their wedding anniversary and other family birthdays. So Matt would take a train up to his grandfather's big house in Rye, where the entire Loguidice clan gathered, and he'd generally be away anywhere from a day to an entire weekend. He'd invited me twice. But it had seemed so much a family affair, I'd passed it up, and he'd never mentioned it again. When I'd asked what he did there, Matt answered, "Talk, eat, play cards, eat, play touch football, eat, rake leaves, eat, watch the game on TV, eat!"

Christmas we spent together. Seasonal cards from his relatives were addressed to Matt, except those from his parents, who addressed both of us on the outside envelope and on the inside of the card itself. Lucille always signed the card in her neat elementary school penmanship, "Love, Dad and Mom."

That was better than what we got from my parents, who seemed determined to remain blind to the true nature of our relationship, even though on their invitation, Matt and I spent nights in the guestroom at their new house in Oyster Bay twice a year, and we always pushed the twin beds together. Once we'd been in the shower loudly screwing when my mom opened the bathroom door a slit to ask if we minded her washing the underwear we'd dropped on the floor. Twice, when my dad decided to discuss investments and insurance and other monetary things with me, I'd insisted Matt be present since "Our bank accounts, all our resources, are combined!" All to no avail.

I now thought that despite how much more time we actually spent in their company—both in town when they came in, and out on Long Island—and despite their chatting with us on the phone, my own family must have seemed as mysterious and unknowable to Matt as his did to me. But wasn't that one point about our new gay lifestyle? That we'd formed our own family? Not based on blood, children, or ownership, but on shared tastes and pleasures, on the love of another?

Even so, it would give me a
louche
sort of pleasure to be able to go around saying, "You know my lover, Matt Loguidice? The Mafia princeling!"

I'd hoped to get back out to the Pines early that weekend to compensate for having come into the city early. But what with the magazine's accountants flying in from wherever the hell they hung out, then having to entertain both personal and magazine-related guests from out of town, I wasn't able to free myself until the middle of Saturday afternoon, when I hopped on a seaplane.

"We've laid eyes on him maybe twice," Luis said when I asked where Matt was, "and we've been here all week."

"You have?" I asked. I didn't hide my surprise. I'd arrived at Withering Heights ten minutes before, dropped my bag, ripped off my Lacoste, and thrown myself—still sneakered and rugby-shorted—upon a chaise longue in the welcome sun on the side deck, where my housemates had set themselves up for the afternoon—complete with portable tape deck, magazines, telephone, drinks, and prerolled joints.

"We were
all
going to take off vacation time this week," Patrick said.

"Not only us, but you too. Remember?" Luis asked.

"Vaguely," I said. Of course, I remembered it now. We'd planned to all be together the entire first week in July and the third week of August. Thanks to the fucking magazine, I'd managed to miss both weeks.

But I was more concerned with what Luis had just revealed about my lover, which seemed to confirm what I'd silently gnawed on all week. Matt had stayed out here, of course, not come into town at all. We'd talked by phone twice, each time brief as telegrams.

"What you're trying to tell me," I said, "is that Matt's been with Thad all week?"

"Tha-a-ad?" Patrick hooted. "Honey, you're so totally out of it, you're weeks behind the dish on your own husband."

"Don't insult me! Just bring me up to date!"

"Thad resigned as maître d' a week ago."

"What?"

"From what we heard, he went back home. Elkville, Illinois. Can there be such a town?" Luis shuddered.

"I guess." I was still calculating. "But if that's true, and I'm not really too surprised, since 1 thought it was less of a 'thing' than what all the gossip said, then why didn't Matt come into town?" Before either of them could answer, I did. "Of course! To be with you two!"

Luis and Patrick exchanged looks I couldn't interpret.

"But," I quickly corrected myself, "you just said you've only seen him twice this week." "The girl's a whiz!" Patrick said. "We saw him twice—fast!"

"Then where...?"

"So are we going to put together our costumes for 'Jungle Red' or what?" Luis asked, deliberately changing the subject. "That was one of the things we were supposed to be doing this week, you maybe recall?"

I recalled all right. And it could wait. "Where
has
Matt been, if not here with you guys?"

"When we asked, Matt said..." Patrick stopped and looked at Luis, as though checking his story before turning to me. "He's been at your cousin Alistair's all the time."

Now I remembered. During one of those brief phone calls we'd had, Matt told me that Alistair had moved into the house he'd rented for the final month of the season. Next walk over, Tarpon Walk. Matt had helped him.

"Oh, well. I guess that's okay then," I said.

"It's
okay then?"
both of them said, not hiding their disbelief.

"Well, sure. It's not like it's some stranger."

"You trust Alistair?" Luis asked. "I mean, I know I'm supposed to be a hysterical Cubano queen and all, but do you actually trust him?"

"Matt's there
all the time!"
Patrick added.

Now they were getting to me. "He sleeps here though, right?"

"We don't exactly checkup on where he sleeps," Patrick said.

"He's usually sleeping here," Luis says. "But that doesn't mean much."

It wasn't that I couldn't for the life of me see Alistair going after Matt, using weapons no more subtle than a harpoon. The problem was I couldn't for the life of me see what attraction Alistair could possibly offer Matt.

And said so.

"Novelty!" Patrick suggested. "Pines boredom sets in. Someone new arrives. Someone with as much if not more money than Matt himself, for a change. Not to mention the novelty of Alistair's traveling and living abroad. His widespread social contacts and—"

"Well, maybe you're both right." I wavered. In fact, I could picture it all far too clearly. I'd seen Alistair charm people whose language he didn't speak, for no more reason than he was looking for a little diversion. Remember poor Dario, deported back to Sicily... The only problem was if they were right, which was still only half credible, the last thing I could do with someone of Matt's temperament would be to face-off on it. First thing he'd do was throw it back at me, say how I'd made this summer's plans, how I'd then stayed away from the Island even more than I'd said I would, leaving him alone. How it was therefore all my fault. Which it would be, naturally.

Having failed to find an answer, I decided to change the topic. Cleverly, I chose one I knew would totally involve them. "By the way, I think I've found my costume for the Jungle Red party."

"Oh no you don't." Luis jumped for it. "
We
are dressing you."

Patrick just shook his head at me. I knew he was still thinking about Matt and Alistair. And was aware of what I was doing. But then, what else could I do?

"I'm not doing drag," I said. "I'm just not the type."

"You're just afraid you'll like it so much," Luis said. "You'll end up being a TV!"

"I mean, look at my build. I should be thin and..."

"Oh, pul-eeze, Marie," Luis charged back. "You've got the exact same build as I do. Not to mention half the people out here! You've got to try it once."

"Maybe," I temporized. Then I peeled myself off the longue, went in to shower and slap my face into some semblance of humanity. I emerged fifteen minutes later with a dyed cantaloupe A-shirt dangling out the side panel of my forest-green-and-cream-colored Speedo.

"Sure you're not overdressed?" Luis asked.