Monkey Suits (16 page)

Cal liked to stay stuck together after they spurted on each other, bodies commingling in the darkness. It was what Lee so desperately missed; the decrescendo. So many furtive post-orgasmic clutchings for the ever-ready cum towel led Lee to wonder if men didn’t secretly think HIV was transmitted by the mere proximity to sperm.

Instead, Cal was quite comfortable with it, and had grunted a plea for Lee to bend the rules and aim his cock at Cal’s chest. A few spurts had flown up to Cal’s face, but he hadn’t panicked or even wiped it off.

“Just keep talking,” Lee murmured as he lay atop Cal’s sweat-smeared chest, licking his chin and nose. Demurring to the much-debated rules, they’d agreed not to kiss until after cleaning up. “Your voice. It ...”

“Oh, that. I get asked to do phone sex voiceovers all the time.”

“But you haven’t?”

“Not exactly my preferred subtle style.”

“Like whipping your cock out on the street?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Lee giggled through his last slurp before teasingly shoving the towel over Cal’s face.

“Tell me what you like about me.”

Maybe Cal needed a little reinforcement to get his battery recharged. Lee was already hard again.

“Well, you’re just about the most handsome guy I’ve ever shared a bed with, and you taste good, so I guess that means you have good taste.”

“I’ll forgive that atrocious wit,” Cal smirked. “What else?”

“You’re, uh, very good in the give and take department. I like that.”

“You like that?”

“Oh yes.”

“You mean you’re not just looking for a nasty top?”

“Oh, no.”

Cal burrowed his tongue deep into Lee’s armpit, then lower, until his tongue tickled the back reaches between Lee’s legs.

“Mmm...” Lee grunted as he raised his hips. “The only way you’re gonna get that tongue any further in me is to operate.”

After a very late morning meal, Cal left, smiling at the door. Dazed and exhausted, Lee waltzed around his tiny apartment in his boxer shorts. He’d completely missed a job interview for the new catering company, but he was happy. His bed smelled of Cal, who’d left his underwear and T-shirt as a gift, and for the first time, through the entire night, Lee hadn’t once thought of Brian.

15
Strains of crisp violin arpeggios echoed through the medieval altar at
the Metropolitan Museum. Ritchie stood in the back behind the rows of two hundred seated guests. He watched as a young Asian woman fiercely attacked her instrument with sharp precision, accompanied by a delicate man at a black grand piano.

After the last piece, the audience burst into applause. The museum rumbled with the sound. The young violinist bowed several times and left the stage.

As the guests rose and broke into adulatory chatter, several left programs on the padded rental chairs. Ritchie deftly picked up a program and stuffed it into his inside tux pocket.

Between serving drinks and getting underway with dinner, Ritchie set down his tray behind a screen and walked down a long corridor to where he thought the rest room was. He felt in his pocket and took out the program to discover that the performer’s name was Mai Ling.

“Excuse me, is there a drinking fountain somewhere?” Ritchie turned to see the Asian violinist. Her pale white dress hung delicately on her small frame.

“Um, I’m not sure where it is,” he stuttered.

“Oh, of course,” she said apologetically, assuming he was a guest.

“I think it’s down this hall. I’m going that way.” He walked with her. “That was absolutely wonderful playing,” he said.

“Oh, thank you. Could you hear?”

“Well, the acoustics weren’t worthy of your artistry.”

“Oh, please.”

“No, really, I mean it. I’ll look forward to hearing you play in a proper hall sometime.”

“I hope you can come.”

He stopped at the hallway marked Rest Rooms. “Well, here we are.”

“Thank you. Your name?”

“Rich- Richard.”

“Thank you, Richard.”

She slipped into the bathroom. After sipping water from the fountain, he practically skipped back to work with a subdued joy.

When Lee was pulled aside from the breakdown labors by Philipe, he first thought someone had ratted on him for taking a guzzle of champagne in the back kitchen. Then he thought he was about to be fired. But Philipe pulled two others up to the top of the steps of the dining room with him, Andrew Spears, the unpretentious crewcut captain, and Mandy, a strong-featured brunette with whom he’d occasionally worked. He realized there was a simpler mission underway.

Philipe stood the three in front of him. They stared out at the forming crowd of waiters, who giggled mischievously.

“Are we ready?” Philipe called out. “One, two, sree.”

“Happy birthday to you,” the workers sang out. “Happy birthday to you ...” All farcically jumbled their three names on “Happy birthday, dear ...”

Lee flushed with embarrassment and joy. He’d almost forgotten, or rather
tried
to forget that he’d not celebrated his birthday.

The crowd broke into applause. Mandy leaned in to him. “Is yours today?” she asked.

“Last Sunday. Yours?”

“Yesterday. Did you do something special?”

Someone special,
he said to himself, thinking of Calvin as Andrew gave him a hug.

“I’ll take a day off.”

“Good, maybe I’ll do that too.”

“Take it when you can,” Andrew said. “But take the work first.”

“Right,” Lee nodded, as they stepped back into the crowd. Ritchie and a few others offered jovial pats on the back before returning to work.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Brian kissed Lee on the lips. It took him by surprise.

“Well,” Lee said. “Glad you remembered.”

“I didn’t. But how ’bout a drink after work?”

Lee thought a moment. Did it mean
just
a drink? Would the pleasure be worth the pain?

“Sure. Meet me at the coat racks?”

“Right.” Despite his exhaustion, despite his foul mood, Lee felt better. Perhaps this company was human after all. He felt bad for Ed, knowing Brian might easily be convinced to stop over for one more little fling. He didn’t know Ed very well, but he did know Brian. Every inch of him.

“I can’t wait ’til I don’t have to cater anymore. Then I can grow my hair long,” Brian said to Kevin Rook as the two finished changing, the last in the men’s room. He’d always thought Kevin was especially cute, but seemed to constantly be in one or another serious boyfriend relationship.

“Yeah, it’s very fashionable now, in a way.”

“Either really long or really short.”

“A sort of sixties resurgence,” added Kevin, as he slipped on his black leather jacket, the back layered with peeling ACT UP stickers. His closely cropped blond hair, contrasted by the black leather and his strikingly angular features, created an almost cartoon streetwise look that Brian envied. Kevin had lived in Europe. It almost seemed as if he were catering merely for amusement.

“You’d probably get some modeling jobs with longer hair,” Kevin said to Brian.

“I wish. I’m too short.” Brian looked into the mirror, combing his hair.

“You should go to Europe,” Kevin suggested. “They don’t care out there at some places, as long as you’re pretty.” He patted his ass.

“Europe? Me? Never.”

“Yes, you. Call me. I have a few friends in Paris.”

“Paris?”

Brian had studied French for one year in college. He’d even gone on a student trip to Montreal. But after three days of churches, museums, and being hounded by several girls and a few of the wispy boys, one night he simply left the hotel room. Using a saved travel article, he found the gay district within minutes. A hundred Canadian dollars later, he’d discovered the joy of private shows at a male strip club, which gave him an intimate affection for French-Canadian culture. One he learned how to have sex in French, for the rest of the year, he got A’s on all his tests.

But Paris?

As Kevin disappeared out the bathroom door, Ritchie popped in, bag packed, coat on and ready to go. “To the train, my man?” he asked.

“Uh, no. I’m gonna go out with Lee to celebrate his birthday.”

Ritchie glared knowingly at Brian. “Shall I inform the spouse?”

“If you so desire,” he snapped.

“You never quit, do you?”

“Ed can handle it.”

“Oh, can he?”

“Look, we’re not married. Get it? Leave the breeder rules on your side of the fence.”

Ritchie held up his hands in surrender and backed out. “Later.” The door closed.

Alone in the rest room, Brian searched through his bag and into the pocket of his tux where he’d kept the evening’s pilfered trinket, this time a silver-plated creamer. He’d add it to the collection of baubles lifted from the tables. He’d never stolen anything of real value before. It was the idea of it that amused him. It was a lot like the thrill he got as a young kid, just barely out of high school, stealing things from campus stores. He developed an intricate system of shoplifting that excited him. He’d never been caught. The trinkets helped him remember one night from another. That had become difficult.

Brian shoved the creamer deep into his bag, zipped it up, and stood alone in the silent tiled bathroom. He pulled his coat on, glancing back at the mirror, and imagined his face framed in a passport photo.

16
“You better be storin’ your cash away, baby,”
Marcos warned. “The
rich don’t party much after New Year’s, so we don’t get that much work.”

“You’re telling me,” Connor, an attractive husky waiter commented. “I go on unemployment until March.”

“And it’s a witch’s titty winter till then.”

While Annette, the Special Events coordinator of the Benefactor’s night at the Guggenheim Museum, had been quite precise about every table setting, bottle of wine and flower arrangement for her big event, she had forgotten, as many do, about where to let the workers change. They had all been called an hour late, and the guests had shown up an hour early. The guests of honor had been flown in from Brussels. Air France was celebrating its first non-stop trip via New York by donating several hundred thousand dollars to the Guggenheim’s new wing. To top it off, the new Jenny Holzer installation was having electrical problems. Strips of LED screens swirling up the circular interior of the museum had failed to light up properly. The installation electrician was called in from Queens.

The French and Belgian guests were a bit surprised to see waiters scampering to finish setting tables and open wine bottles to keep up with their thirst. Most hadn’t completely changed, and Annette was in a tizzy.

“Please hurry up,” she scolded to Andrew Spears, the evening’s captain.

“Certainly, just give us a few minutes.” He could see his breath fog out of his mouth as he spoke. The kitchen, breakdown and changing space for all the workers had been delegated to what, before the museum’s renovations started, had been the loading dock. The area was walled by a skeletal structure of plywood, two by fours and sheets of milky-white plastic that fluttered from the chilling breeze. In thirty-five degree temperatures, the waiters, women included, were swiftly booted from the tiny bathrooms and out into the cement back stoop amongst dumpsters and sawdust.