The Good Life (2 page)

Perry's being in the Air Force also suited Bet. His being away in Canada and out of New York suited her even more. She had the baby and the Beekman Place house to herself.

Since Bet's social life had become even more strenuous with Perry away, it was actually Nanny Brown who had Little Billy and the house to herself. Bet often allowed herself the luxury of staying out all night — sometimes several times a week — since there was nobody to answer to. She'd grown weary of making up excuses, so this new arrangement was perfect as far as she was concerned.

Perry's friend Johnny Jardine had an apartment near Beekman Place, and Perry stayed there on his first weekend pass after basic training. He thought it wiser not to break in on Bet's new freedom, and besides, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what she was up to.

When he went around to the house that first time, Bet was conveniently absent. After ringing the doorbell repeatedly — he was hesitant about using his key — he was finally greeted by Nanny Brown, who apologized for not hearing the bell.

“We were out in back,” she explained as she led him down the hall and into the garden, which was filled with expensive swings, toys, slides, and a sandbox as big as a swimming pool.

Nanny Brown left him alone with his son, who was thrilled with a huge fuzzy stuffed elephant Perry had brought him. He spent the most pleasant hour he'd ever had with Billy and promised to bring him another “elepan” on his next visit.

On his next pass he and Johnny had barhopped all over Manhattan with the notion of perhaps bumping into Bet while she was out on her rounds. Their search had been fruitless. All they managed to do was get drunk.

Perry slept late into the next morning and just had time for a quick shave before dashing out to see Billy. He was afraid Billy'd be having his lunch or his nap and he'd have to wait around. He didn't want to run into Bet.

He couldn't imagine why he had spent so much time looking for her last night. He'd written that he was coming and hoped to see her but told her not to make any special plans. He was still giving her her head.

He'd enjoyed being with Billy so much the last time and hoped that their being alone together would set a pattern for his visits. He'd tried to find another “elepan,” but the nearest he could come was a slightly ridiculous oversize giraffe.

By the time he got to Beekman Place, he'd worked up quite a sweat by practically running all the way carrying the awkward animal. He rang and rang and waited and waited. Nanny Brown must have gone completely deaf. Finally he used his key, figuring that if Bet had been there, she'd have answered the door herself by now.

The house felt empty. He called tentatively before actually going inside the hall and walked quickly down it to check the back garden. It was as empty as the house felt. It was strange being in what he still thought of as his own house but feeling like a burglar. He had to consciously stop himself from tiptoeing cautiously and forced himself to move with purpose.

And the purpose was a beer. His hangover and his run had made him thirsty, and he went to the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer and stood drinking it straight from the bottle. The Air Force had taught him many things. He could imagine Laszlo and the crew of the
Belle Époque
frowning in disapproval.

He finished the first beer and opened another, sipping it more slowly as he wandered through the dining room and up the stairs into the living room. It looked like home. There were his photographs on top of the baby grand. His Graham Sutherland still hung over the bar table. He and Bet had agreed that his nude portrait would cause less comment — or, more likely, stunned, embarrassed silence — if it were hung in their bedroom. “Besides,” Bet had laughed, “I don't want everyone who comes here to see what they're missing.”

Perry suddenly had an urge to see the picture. How would it measure up next to him now? His newly hardened muscles ought to compare favorably with that youth he could hardly remember ever existing — that youth pushing a chair at the World's Fair and arriving breathless and full of expectation for that first sitting with the artist.

On the next landing he paused and listened intently at the door of Billy's room to make sure that nobody was there. He opened the door silently and got a whiff of the extraordinary smell that was Billy. He drank it in. It was the cleanest smell he'd ever known. He held his breath so that he wouldn't contaminate the air with the exhalation of stale beer as he carefully propped up the stuffed toy on Billy's bed.

Going on up the stairs, he again found himself moving with catlike grace, barely touching the floor, creeping soundlessly along the corridor like an intruder toward Bet's door — no,
their
door, damn it; it was still his too — where he listened intently again. The emptiness of the house was almost audible.

The smell from the top-floor bedroom when he opened the door was heavy with perfume. The room was in the usual disarray he associated with a hasty exit by Bet. He could almost hear her anguished cry of “Oh, God, I'm late!” hanging in the air. He moved automatically to pick up her clothes and put them away but stopped himself before touching anything. He was an outsider. Mustn't touch.

He took another swig from the bottle and turned slowly to look at his portrait. For some reason he thought it might have been removed, but there it was. There he was as the artist saw him. Perry was mesmerized and drawn to the painting. The memory of the artist's adjusting his hand just so, ordering him to bend his knee like that was so vivid that he could hear his voice.

He remembered now how he'd started to get a hard-on and was afraid he'd ruin the pose. He smiled up at his cock. It really was something. Staring at his cock immortalized on canvas made the real one stir. Was he really like that?

Without taking his eyes off the picture, he put his bottle on the chest of drawers and took off his jacket, feeling behind him for a chair to toss it onto. Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt, slipping it out of his trousers and off his shoulders with sensual deliberation. Unfastening his belt and undoing his fly caused his cock to throb and stretch. He giggled.
I'm doing a striptease for myself
, he thought.

By glancing to his right, he could see himself reflected in the full-length closet mirror. This was fun; there were three of him. He could have a threesome. Like the ones he and Bet and Timmy had had, only he'd have to play each part.

Bending to untie his shoes brought his face close to his cock. “Why, hello there,” he said aloud and glanced quickly around behind him. What if somebody caught him doing this outrageous pantomime? They could have him locked up. He squatted to get at his shoes more easily and to get his cock out of his sight.

With shoes off he straightened and slid the trousers slowly down over his hips, moving them slightly with his arms stretched above his head in a parody of a stripper. He kicked the pants away from him.

He didn't know where to look. The mirror held him for a moment, but his attention was drawn again to the painting. He had been painted showing almost a full erection. It really was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. He ran his hands over his chest and slowly down over his abdomen, as flat now as it was in the picture, and watched his hands in the mirror. By taking two steps back, he could get both the painting and the mirror in his range of vision, which caused him to take a sudden deep breath, stunned by what he saw.

His hands felt real flesh; his eyes saw hands on real flesh; the canvas became a third mirror, and he thought for a moment that it too had started to move. The hand on his thigh in the picture seemed to move toward his cock, and his painted cock seemed to grow. He could see all three of them at once, and his hands became so uncontrollable, they moved down to his cock, stroking the pubic hair beside it and slowly moving along it until he held it gently with both hands. It filled them and ached for release.

He moved one hand to his balls and cupped them as the other hand started to move with practiced ease on his hardened flesh. His head dropped back, and for a moment he thought he was going to come. He straightened and took a deep breath, filling his vision with the sight of himself — all three magnificent cocks straining beautifully with potency.

What the hell
, he thought,
why not?
Why not make himself come?

His hands started to move on himself more purposefully. His buttocks tightened, and his hips thrust forward. He could see all his muscles, all trained and sleek from recent physical training, rippling in the mirror, taut and defined in a more perfected, mature way than in the portrait.

He looked so cool in the painting — so in charge but virginal. He was just a young man naked on a chaise longue, beautiful but a bit vapid. It wasn't lewd; it was just a study of youth. He felt ancient now by comparison.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw himself again in the mirror and thought he looked perfectly ridiculous. What a silly thing jerking off was. He let out a hoot of laughter at the sight he made pounding at his cock and threw it out of his hand as though it burned him.

He stiffened again with apprehension. Had he heard something? Voices? A door slam? Could it be Bet? Perhaps Nanny and Little Billy? It would probably amuse Nanny to find him in front of a mirror masturbating.

He was blushing like Timmy as he fled to the bathroom, his cock swinging crazily in front of him. He slid the glass door to the shower stall open and jumped into it. He could explain taking a quick shower more easily than he could a narcissistic hand job in front of his portrait, even to Bet.

With the water running, he was cut off from any sounds in the house until the bathroom door was flung open and he heard a scream.

CALIFORNIA, 1935

Perry was eleven when something called the Crash happened. He didn't understand the connection between Wall Street and their small farm in Ohio, but shortly after the Crash, the farm was gone, and they were on the road.

They were on the road for more than six years. He quickly learned that it was the Depression, which meant that there weren't any regular jobs. His father got work here and there — farm laborer, handyman, garage mechanic, anything. They lived in rooming houses or broken-down houses with foul outdoor toilets. They were always moving after jobs. He couldn't remember ever going hungry, but he got awfully tired of beans.

His clothes weren't much shabbier than his schoolmates', but there was always an inner circle who lived in nice houses and whose fathers had businesses that hadn't gone bankrupt. He never had any close friends.

He discovered books. Everywhere they went, even quite small towns, there were public libraries. He devoured novels about a life he never expected to know, where people always seemed to have money and plenty of time to get involved in complicated love affairs. There was one that touched him deeply called
The Great Gatsby
, about a mysterious guy who came from nowhere but was a millionaire. He got shot at the end because of some mix-up about a woman. He wished there were more in the book about how he got to be a millionaire. That was what Perry wanted to find out about. It had something to do with his being befriended by some old rich guy.

When the Langhams finally hit California, Perry hoped it was as far as they would or could go. His father got a job driving a truck. By then, they were living in a loathsome trailer that they parked in a trailer court off Alameda Boulevard in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. Perry picked up high school in the middle of the winter as a junior.

He hated the trailer — four of them living together in it, all piled on top of each other — and the public toilets and showers, but the school was the best he'd ever attended. He prayed that he could finish high school there without another move. He might end up with a few friends, perhaps even with a steady girl.

When they were still there at the beginning of his senior year, he almost let himself believe that he was going to be lucky this time. But no, they were going to move on to Seattle and a better job.

He was trapped in his father's never-ending search for something better. There was nothing better than the Bay Area as far as Perry was concerned, and he hoped for some miracle that would allow him to stay and graduate from this school. If not, he was going to have to start all over again — new teachers, new courses to try to get interested in, new friends, new girls. You stopped giving a damn when you had to start all over again once too often.

“They say Seattle's real nice,” he heard his mother say. “We'll be able to get rid of this trailer and rent a little house.”

“The main thing is to get up there quick,” his father said. “We can get away from here in a week, May be less. I want you kids to finish up whatever you're doing in the next few days and be ready to go.”

That was it. There was nothing to be said. Perry felt like crying but clung to the thought of living in a house again anywhere to cheer himself up. It helped a little.

He was going home from his part-time job in a furniture store a couple of days later when he stopped to help a woman who was having trouble getting a big bag of groceries into her car. She gave him a guarded look and then accepted his offer.

With the groceries safely stowed in the backseat, he straightened and looked at her. She was standing back, looking him over. “What a charming-looking boy,” she said. “What's your name?”

“Perry.”

“I'm Mrs. Rosen. Can I drop you anywhere in return for your gallant help?”

“Thanks. I'm going over to Alameda Boulevard if that's not out of your way.”

“Get in.”

She was an attractive woman, and Perry thought she was very elegant in her simple summer dress. She had dark hair, stylishly arranged, and regular features. She was a bit old but not too old to be pretty. Her manner was brisk but friendly.

He went around and got in beside her. She took a moment to fish around in her expensive-looking bag for her keys.