Remembering Christmas (2 page)

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Authors: Drew Ferguson

BOOK: Remembering Christmas
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“Merry Christmas to you, too, you mean, cranky bastard,” he teased the old man, knowing the septuagenarian reveled in his contrarian nature.
“Is that gift for me?” Ernst asked, his interest piqued by the box James had set on the table. “Don't make an old man crawl over the place settings to get it!”
“What makes you so sure it's yours?”
“Very funny, Jimmy. I suppose you want to pay for your own lunch, in which case I'm ordering the most expensive bottle of Cabernet in the cellar and having Severin charge it to you.”
“You win. Your taste in Cabs would set me back two months of co-op maintenance fee. Please accept this small token of my affection,” James laughed. “Merry Christmas, Ernst.”
Ernst, like many gentlemen of means whose emotional attachments required significant financial support, took an almost childish delight in receiving gifts. He tore off the ribbon like a greedy boy and held up the tie to admire.
“Unusual,” Severin commented, unimpressed by the loud, bright color.
James was shaken to hear the same critical judgment of his taste repeated within a single hour.
“Well, I love it!” Ernst declared, insisting Severin help him from his chair and lead him to the men's room so he could replace his own canary yellow cravat with James's gift.
James sipped his bourbon, potent as rocket fuel, and stared at the menu, not bothering to read it. He hated everything about this pretentious little bandbox, its Tiffany glass panels and Wedgewood china and Christofle silverware and, most of all, the haute-faggot affectation of a red rose at every place setting. He knew the lunch selections by heart; nothing ever changed here, nothing ever new, let alone, God forbid,
nouvelle,
on the menu
.
The routine never changed. Ernst would stuff himself with bread and butter, avoiding the wasteful extravagance of an appetizer because, despite his taste for luxury, he was, like many wealthy men, at heart a cheapskate. He would order the escargot, complaining they weren't as well-prepared as they had been his last meal here, and vow never to return until Augustin V. Paege himself descended on their table to flatter and mollycoddle him, soliciting Ernst's undying loyalty. James, as always, would order a salad, the sole, and a dessert.
Ernst wobbled back to the table, stopping to accept Betty Bacall's compliments on his marvelous tie. Severin poured the first glasses of a very good, not great, mid-list Bordeaux. James drained the last dregs of his bourbon before moving on to the wine, steeling himself for the annual accounting of Ernst's financial affairs, followed by the none-too-subtle warning about his continued expectation of James's unquestioning fealty. James was one of Ernst's three surviving long-term relationships; each had been promised an equal distribution of the considerable estate, built on the profits of his wine import business. Cody Parkinson, James's second successor, now a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Davis Polk, knew for a fact the old man was delusional, that his business partners, his sister and her sons, had gone to great lengths to ensure the assets would never pass out of the family. But the three younger men were all genuinely fond of their old benefactor, and none of them wanted to hurt him by destroying any illusion that he still held complete power over their good fortunes. Plus, even though a cash endowment was out of the question, the personal effects—the furniture and the museumquality tchotchkes and the artworks by minor painters—would be up for grabs when the old toad croaked. James had first dibs on a pair of sterling candlesticks and the German-language first editions of Thomas Mann.
But much to James's surprise, instead of delivering mildly veiled threats of being cut out of the will, Ernst wanted to spend the afternoon reminiscing, which in the past had always meant his repeating oft-told tales of notorious and celebrated homosexuals of the middle and late decades of the Twentieth Century, their scandalous behavior observed firsthand by Ernst in the discotheques of Manhattan and on the dunes of Fire Island. These anecdotes had been his currency, traded for invitations to the best dinner parties and weekends in country houses on the upper Hudson. Personal memories, however, were rarely shared, such indulgence being an affront to Ernst's deeply engrained Old World sense of privacy, so it was unsettling to James to hear the old man speaking sentimentally about their early years together.
“You were such a gawky boy, all knees and elbows. I remember Peter Orlovsky saying whoever took you home the night we met was going to wake up black-and-blue with bruises.”
But fear of contusions hadn't deterred Ernst from descending on him in the basement of The Ninth Circle, where he had plied James with so many bottles of Budweiser he had to be carried up the stairs.
“I should have had you arrested the next morning for assault,” James teased, delighting an old man who still took great pride in a well-earned reputation as an aggressive sexual predator.
“I still can hear your voice, Jimmy, protesting you were a top, though you were far too drunk to get it up. What a silly boy you were, thinking I would believe you had never been fucked before.”
Ernst was clearly tipsy, his voice growing loud enough to offend the sensibilities of the legend lunching at the next table. But James was relieved to see Miss Bacall was too busy enjoying the ribald conversation of her own lunch companions to pay any attention to the embarrassing details of his youthful escapades.
“Do you recall that terrible shirt you were wearing that night? With those nasty little holes under your armpits?”
“That was my favorite shirt! I loved that shirt!”
And, indeed, James had worn his Patti Smith Group “Easter” Tour souvenir tee until the day it literally disintegrated in the wash cycle.
“I was so young and naïve in those days,” James laughed. “I thought it meant you really loved me when you agreed to go see the Talking Heads with me at CBGB.”
“Warhol was there that night,” Ernst reminded him, always having perfect recall of even the briefest interaction with celebrity.
“At the next table.”
Ernst took a deep breath and sighed, reaching across the table to grab James's hands with his own.
“We should spend one more Christmas in Munich. It's not too late, Jimmy. There is a night flight from JFK. My treat.”
“You know my mother is expecting me in West Virginia tomorrow. It would break her heart,” James laughed, expecting that this proposed spontaneous Christmas trip was nothing more than an old man's pipe dream and that the aged tightwad would never consider paying the walk-up price for two first-class tickets to Europe. “Besides Ernst, it's not like you to want to embark on sentimental journeys.”
The little rube in the punk rock tee shirt had had pretensions to worldliness, but he'd never been issued a passport before meeting Ernst. Ernst had insisted they spend their first Christmas as a couple in Bavaria, making every effort to ensure the trip was memorable. James had studied his Baedeker's at breakfast, preparing for long mornings touring spectacular castles and cathedrals with Ernst as his guide. After a long, heavy lunch, they had meandered through the stalls of the Christmas Market with steaming cups of chocolate or spiced mulled wine. Come evening, they had dined in the ancient rathskellers, feasting on roasted slabs of pork and beef, pierced with the jagged ends of broken bones. And Ernst, being an experienced lover of much younger men, was wise enough to plead exhaustion and the need to retire to his comfortable bed after his nightcap, allowing James to explore the dance clubs and the cruise bars with their pitchblack, maze-like back rooms alone, undeterred by his patron's critical eye.
“I'll start working on my mother tomorrow to give her an entire year to prepare for the disappointment of spending her favorite holiday without her favorite son,” James said, halfbelieving the two of them might escape to Europe for one last memorable holiday in the coming year.
“Oh, that hateful mother of yours will never give you permission to ruin her Christmas,” Ernst said bitterly, rolling his eyes.
James relaxed as the conversation veered away from uncomfortable nostalgic reveries to the more familiar territory of resentful complaints. Momentary lapses into elegiac interludes must be an inevitable malady of old age, he expected, like macular degeneration and osteoporosis.
“My mother is very fond of you, Ernst, and you know it,” he said, lying through his teeth.
“I am not so senile to have forgotten how your mother chose to have her guest rooms painted during my one and only visit to that wretched town, so that the two of us would have to stay at a hotel.”
James had long accepted that Ernst was far too self-absorbed to understand why a woman of a certain age and place who was struggling to accept her son's uncomfortable “problem” could never have trusted an overbearing and controlling and much older gentleman who seemed to exercise an undue and most likely unwholesome influence over her child. He'd long suspected the real reason Ernst found his mother and his hometown repellently distasteful was that they reminded him of a far more provincial upbringing in rural Germany than he would ever deign to admit. James was starting to feel unpleasantly drunk after imbibing a cocktail and two glasses of Bordeaux. He hadn't been drinking much lately as overwork had left him too exhausted to pursue much of a social life. Even in his younger days, he'd never developed a taste for consuming alcoholic beverages before sunset, being pale eyed and prone to blinding headaches whenever he eventually needed to emerge into the sun. Ernst, greedy little bastard that he was, happily killed the bottle of Bordeaux and was about to order a brandy until James insisted he had to be in Chelsea for an appointment at half past three.
“With an hourly companion, I suppose,” the old man snorted.
“Don't be ridiculous,” James huffed, acting affronted by the assumption that he, a very well-preserved and youthful forty-six, with a body that still attracted appreciative glances in the locker room thank you very much, needed to pay for it. But Ernst's still uncanny instincts had correctly discerned that commercial trade was James's primary means of erotic release lately.
“What reason is there to go to Chelsea other than muscle boys or an overpriced meal at a bad neighborhood bistro?”
“None of your business. Just finish your wine.”
“I would think that after my treating you to this lovely Christmas lunch you would have the courtesy to explain your reason for denying me a small brandy. It seems obvious the demands on your time are too pressing to indulge me in a pleasant afternoon of companionship and conversation.”
The old man was slurring his words and sloshing the dregs of wine in his glass perilously close to the rim. James's better instincts told him to ignore the elderly despot, but the spirit of the resentful young pup he'd once been rose to the bait, provoking him to nip at the ankles of the master who had held the leash.
“Well, if you're so interested, I'm not going to Chelsea. I need to stop by Tiffany to buy a gift for Alex and Leo because I'm having dinner with them tonight,” he announced, intending his words to be hurtful.
Ernst slumped in his seat, deflated, and James immediately regretted the unrestrained impulse to punish him for being such a demanding bastard. Severin quietly appeared behind Ernst's seat and helped him from his chair, but his offer to lead Ernst to the bathroom was gruffly rebuffed. While they waited for Ernst to return, Severin assured James that Monsieur's place of business would be invoiced for the meal. After helping the older man into his overcoat, the waiter graciously accepted the twenty-dollar bill James slipped into his palm for summoning the car.
“Merry Christmas, Severin,” James said, as he led Ernst through the open door.
“And to you, sir,” Severin answered, as he closed the door behind them.
The town car was waiting outside, a sleek black Mercedes, spit-polished and glistening in the bright midday sun. The chauffer ignored the honking horns of lesser vehicles and the curses of their drivers as they tried to squeeze past the parked obstacle blocking the narrow street. Ernst hesitated before climbing into the car, then turned and gave James a tight, affectionate hug.
“Please, Jimmy. Don't mention Germany to your mother tomorrow. There's no reason to upset her,” he said, shockingly sober and coherent.
“It might be fun, Ernst. Another Christmas in Munich. We'll talk about it when I get back.”
“No, Jimmy. I won't be able to go next year.”
The sense of dread that had been looming in even the bright and sunniest stretches of the day came crashing down over James's head.
“It's pancreatic cancer, Jimmy. The doctor told me last week. I refuse to have the surgery. I will live the rest of my days as I see fit,” he said, his words ennobling him, granting him stature, imposing and dignified as Rodin's Balzac, master of his fate. James stood speechless, too shocked to cry, as the door shut and the town car carried its doomed passenger down the street.
 
He rolled over on the bed and opened an eye, jumping off the mattress when he realized he'd overslept. He had exactly thirtynine minutes to shower and dress and find a cab to slog through the last dregs of crosstown rush hour traffic and deposit him at the entrance of Alex and Leo's Central Park West co-op for a seven o'clock dinner invitation. He planted his feet on the floor, grabbed his head between his hands, and squeezed, trying to crush the throbbing pain in his skull. Why hadn't he popped three aspirin and chugged a bottle of spring water before he lay down to “rest his eyes”? He stumbled into the bathroom and was shocked by the haggard image that confronted him in the vanity mirror. His gray pallor and the dark rings under his puffy eyes made him look like the child of Lon Chaney's Phantom.

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