The Lord Won't Mind (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (22 page)

Charlie’s mouth clamped shut. The muscles of his neck swelled. He lifted his fists to his face. His control broke. A sob escaped through clenched teeth. He covered his face with his hands and repressed sobs shook him.

Peter stared at him, appalled. “Oh, no. No, don’t, please don’t. You’ve never cried before. I swore I’d never let you.” He went to him and put his arms around him and led him to a chair and put him into it. He knelt beside him and smoothed his hair. “Please, my darling. Don’t cry. You
can’t
cry. It’s just not like you.”

“I’ve—wanted to—often enough,” Charlie gasped between sobs.

“Oh, my darling. My own love. I’ll go if you stop it. I’ll go if you want me to. I won’t see Tommy if that’s wrong. It just doesn’t seem to matter much what I do if I’m not here with you. Please, sweetheart. Please, my dearest. I guess I understand. There’re a lot of things you want to do in life. You can’t have me hanging around your neck all the time. I just want you. I guess I am a silly little queen. You’ll be fine without me. You’ll probably get married and have lots of babies. I’ve never dared tell you how much I’ve wished I could do that—have your babies. Lots of little Charlies. God, what heaven. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be OK, I guess. It seems people get over everything. I won’t get over you because I don’t want to, but I’ll be OK. It must count for something to start life with what I’ve had. So much happiness. So goddamn much happiness. More than most people have in a whole lifetime, I’ll bet. Please don’t, darling. Everything’s going to be OK. You’re going to be a big star, and I’ll come see you and tell all my friends that I was yours and always will be. Or I won’t say anything, if you don’t want me to. But I’ll know. God, will I know. Please, darling. Please.”

The sobs gradually subsided as Peter continued to stroke his hair. At last, Charlie rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hands and put an arm around Peter and hugged him close. He rested his head against the golden hair.

“God, baby. You’re so good.” His body heaved with a long sigh. “Why does this happen if it’s so wrong? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Who says it’s wrong?”

“It is. It must be. We can’t be the only two people in the world who’re right. OK, maybe I’m queer, too. At least, a lot of me is. But I’m not going to be. You’ll see. It could only have happened with you. You’re the only one. You always will be. My boy. My baby. I swear to that.”

“I’m glad. But don’t say any more, please, or you’ll get me going again. I feel as if there isn’t a tear left in me. I probably will have stored up plenty by tomorrow.” He disengaged himself and stood abruptly and went into the alcove. Charlie found an unfinished drink beside him and drank it. He was aware of Peter moving about nearby, but he couldn’t look at him. He heaved himself out of the chair with difficulty and weaved his way into the kitchen and replenished his drink. It seemed to him that he had barely done so when Peter dropped both bags in the hall and was standing in the doorway. He had combed his hair and was wearing a fresh shirt. Even in his drunkenness, something happened in Charlie’s chest as the impact of his beauty struck him.

“Well, out into the cold, cold world,” Peter said. “You can keep the rug. Mother will kill me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“That’s a hell of a question to ask a silly queen at nine thirty on a winter night. How should I know? I want to find out what everything’s all about.”

“Will you go on with school?”

“I don’t know. No. There’s too much I have to learn.”

“Do you have enough money?”

“Oh, money. I haven’t figured out yet why people make such a fuss about it. Anyway, I’ve got plenty.”

“Will you let me know where you are?”

“Sure. If I am anywhere. I know none of this is really happening. I’ll wake up and we’ll be in each other’s arms with great hard-ons, the way we always are.”

“Oh, Christ.” Charlie swayed toward him, and Peter stepped forward quickly and caught him. Their mouths met and opened to each other. Their kiss was drowned in tears. They laid their heads together and clung to each other.

“OK, OK, OK,” Peter whispered. “You’re probably right, darling. I guess it was too soon.” He withdrew carefully, holding Charlie’s swaying body and took his hands and placed them gently on the counter. “There. Got it? Hang on. Go to—” His voice caught. He thrust his hand into his pocket and slapped metal onto the counter. “The keys.” He turned and pulled open the apartment door and shoved his bags into the outer hall. He looked back from the threshold. “Go to—bed, darling.” He pulled the door closed behind him. Charlie looked at his hands where Peter had put them. He lifted one and grasped the almost empty bottle and poured himself a drink. He wasn’t even aware that he was crying. He felt fine.

He woke up the next morning fully dressed on the bed. He had such a hangover that at first he didn’t remember what had happened. It wasn’t until he had showered and shaved and was fumbling about in the kitchen at the unfamiliar chore of getting himself breakfast that it hit him. He slumped over the kitchen table with his head on his arms and wept.

WHAT happens next is incomprehensible in retrospect unless we adjust time to youth’s rhythm. It seems too compressed, too dense for its chronological dimension. The crowded hour is both the privilege and the burden of the young. Minutes drag as experience accumulates—an afternoon, an evening can contain the foundations of a life; a day is a sufficient span of time to break a life in two. Later, when all experience has lost its novelty and the years flash by, a decade may offer not a single memorable event. Looking back on the crucial epoch of discovery, we say, “Good heavens, did all that happen in only one short winter?” While it’s happening we say, “Dear God, will this never end?” or, “This eternity is not enough.”

It was a day for telephone calls. Charlie called C. B. from the office and told her not to write Peter’s mother. “I don’t think you completely understood what he was trying to tell you yesterday. Anyway, I packed him off last night. He’ll write his family himself. He’s going to live with some friends from school.” Being able to talk to her with nothing to hide made him feel as if this must be what it had been all about, that he had won the right to deal with her as an equal. Life held no more schoolboy secrets.

Later, his mother called from Philadelphia and asked him to have lunch with her the next day at a sort of tea shop where nobody he knew ever went. “You needn’t tell Mother I’m coming,” she said. It was the only odd note struck in an otherwise ordinary conversation.

At the end of the morning, unable to restrain himself any longer, he called Tommy Whitethorne. “Did Peter turn up last night?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I more or less expected to hear from you. I think we’d better be careful what we say on the telephone.”

Charlie suddenly felt an imposed intimacy with Tommy Whitethorne that he very much disliked. “I just wanted to know if he’s all right,” he said coldly.

“Yes and no. Yes, I guess, in the way you mean. I understand better than he does the position he’s put you in. I’m sorry. I don’t think you should see him for the time being.”

“I have no intention of doing so.”

“Oh. Well, if we can get off in a corner at C. B.’s on Sunday, I’ll be able to tell you more.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, and hung up.

He called Hattie and arranged for her to cook dinner for him that evening.

They arrived at the apartment within minutes of each other, which was what Charlie had been counting on. Once she was there, chattering and crowing with laughter, the place felt quite safe and normal.

After dinner, they went through their scene several times, making nothing of the kiss. Eventually, Hattie said, “I suppose it’s about time for Peter to show up. Let’s go to Leary’s for a drink.”

Charlie looked at the rug. “He’s gone,” he said. He jumped to his feet and hurried out of the room and shut himself in the bathroom. He braced himself at the sink as his shoulders heaved with his silent tears. When he had himself under control, he returned to her.

“You all right?” she asked, her bulging eyes surveying him.

“Sure. I just had a funny sort of cramp in my stomach. It’s passed.”

“Compliments of the chef. What do you mean, Peter’s gone?”

“He moved out yesterday.”

“Awfully sudden, wasn’t it? Lovers’ quarrel?”

“How did you guess? As a matter of fact, he’s moved in with some kids at school, which is what he was planning to do all along. This place is too small.”

“Rather cramped, I would’ve thought. A perfect place for passes now.”

“Ideal. Shall I make one at you?”

Her great, mocking eyes bored into his. “Don’t bother. If you want me to go to bed with you, just say so. I don’t want you to think I’m like those other girls you mentioned.”

“What’re we waiting for?”

“
I’ve
been waiting to lure Peter into a sack and drop him into the East River.”

“You really mean it? You really want to go to bed?” It seemed enormously important to him that it should be right. No nonsense, no hasty retreats. He liked her a lot, and the thought of going to bed with her made him feel that he loved her. It didn’t matter whether C. B. liked her or not; there was nothing suspect about marriage if it came to that.

She laughed at him. “Don’t tell me I’m going to have to talk you into it.”

“I just want to be sure you know what you’re doing. I don’t like all the teasing and heavy breathing and the rest of it. I’ve had enough of that.”

“Aren’t we masterful. You’d better be good.” She laughed at him again. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. I just happen to be madly in love with you.”

Their eyes met and dueled with each other. He smiled with satisfaction as hers turned defenseless with desire.

“Come on,” he said gently, generous in victory. Her look was deeply exciting. He felt himself stirring with it. He stood and held out his hand to her. She shook her head.

“Let me get undressed. Women look so silly getting out of their harness.”

He moved away from her with a gesture toward the alcove. “Help yourself. Call me when you’re ready.” He went to the bathroom and took off his clothes. In spite of his excitement, he was relaxed and completely self-possessed. This was the way he had always hoped it would be with a girl; easy, voluntary, civilized. He stood in the bathroom door, idly stroking himself. “How you doing,” he asked, raising his voice only slightly to carry around the corner.

“Just a second. All right.”

“Do you mind if I’m naked?”

“I hardly expected you in full evening dress.”

He laughed as he came out, his sex swaying heavily. It rose into full erection as he approached her. Her eyes were wide on it.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “I feel as if I ought to stand up and salute. You mean to say there are girls who’ve turned that down? They must’ve been stuffed with sawdust.” She was lying on the bed under the sheet. She pulled it off. She could have been a skinny boy hiding his sex between his legs, narrow of shoulder and hip. Her breasts were unexpected, gently swelling with enormous nipples that stared at him like insentient eyes. He lingered over her a moment, displaying himself. Her eyes didn’t waver. “Come on down here where I can get at you,” she said. He sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on a breast and covered the hard nipple.

“Do you do this with anybody that comes along?” he asked, piqued at her clear-eyed composure.

“Don’t get smart. I told you I’m in love with you. That doesn’t happen to me every day. I’m not a virgin, in case that matters to you.”

He stretched out beside her and gathered her in his arms. There was very little of her. Her body felt as if it could be demolished by the act of love. The thought brought him a new excitement. She took his sex in her hand and felt all the length of it.

“So this is the way boys are built. The others—well, only two when you get right down to it—must’ve been undernourished. I’ll admit it doesn’t come as a complete surprise. I’ve been doing some discreet crotch-gazing.” She laughed as he performed what he supposed were the essential preliminaries. He put his hand between her legs and fingered her. He took her nipples in his mouth. He lifted his head and put his mouth on hers. As their tongues met, her composure vanished. Her nails dug into his back, her body writhed beneath him, her breasts began to heave. He lifted himself and guided his sex to hers and entered her. She tore her mouth from his and uttered a wordless shout. “Oh, no. No. No,” she cried. Whatever the negative referred to, it was clearly not intended to arrest him. She grasped his buttocks and pulled him to her. His sex thrust deep within her. Her face dissolved into a look of animal hunger, rapt and possessed. “Oh, God. No,” she crooned. “It’s not possible. I’m yours. Charlie. I’m yours.”

He felt intensely the truth of it. His sex possessed her, feeling immense in her slight body. He was filled with a lust for procreation. This was the way it was supposed to be, his taking this panting, writhing creature and giving her life. There was no question of holding back. She drove him furiously, her hands working his buttocks to move his sex all through her, her hips thrust up and rotating in a passion to enjoy all of him. His orgasm came quickly. He uttered a series of great shouts as he felt himself exploding within her. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God,” she cried in unison as he collapsed, heaving, on top of her. She seized his head by the hair and put his mouth on hers.