A Bouquet of Gardenias

A Bouquet of Gardenias

Love

bloomed like a flower,

then

the petals fell.

"Blue Gardenia"

I stood in front of the mirror, chest thrust forward, smooth and sculpted, belly flat and soft, wearing only lacy black bikini panties, and admired myself. I lined my eyes with kohl and lightly rouged my lips and made them glow. I clipped a pair of fake ruby earrings to my ear lobes and another pair onto my stiff and pointy nipples. My clitty-cock was tumescent and warm. My backdoor pussy-cunt was throbbing. I pulled a pair of maroon tinted nylons up over my shapely silken legs that many a `real' girl would envy and adjusted the rear black seams so that they went straight up the back of my long legs. I fastened their paisley borders with garters attached to a transparent gauzy black garter belt. I chose a pair of fake patent leather, chestnut burgundy ankle-straps with high stiletto heels that matched the silky, wavy and clingy spaghetti-strap tank top I was wearing, and got my feet into them once I had wriggled into a shimmering sequin-covered black miniskirt. I did not wear a wig. My hair was cut the way a girl who wanted to look like a boy would have it styled. I wore a wide silver bracelet on my left wrist. My arms are lithe and gracefully muscled; my shoulders, straight and square and on the verge of being bony. When I dress in boy drag, I let my hair fall over my forehead and I look like a twink. The bracelet matched the choker I had on around my neck and the wide belt that hung on my hips. I put a cigarette in a long black rhinestone-studded holder, but I did not light it – I never do -- and, assuming several magazine-cover poses, admired myself one last time.

The bell rang. My heart fluttered, but I never answer on the first ring. I waited for the second and then opened the door. Charles stood there beaming at me, holding a bouquet of the most exquisite roses I had ever seen and a split of champagne. I threw my arms around his neck and brought his lips down to mine and kissed him with a thousand promises dancing in the kiss.

"How much time do we have?" I asked.

"Just enough for a glass of champagne."

"A moment to be alone now, a prelude to a long night together later," I said, gazing dreamily into his powerful eyes.

"You are very beautiful," Charles said, handing me a glass of champagne.

"Everything that belongs to you should be beautiful," I answered, touching his glass with mine. He took me around the waist and drew me to him and gave me the kind of kisses that let me know that I belong to him and to no one else. I melted. I was a feather. I was diaphanous.

The December night was dark and clear and very cold. When we left, Charles helped me into a long honey-colored fur coat with a voluptuous hood. It is mink. This is not fake. It is a gift from him. I hugged myself, shivered, and caressed the sleeves. Outside a limousine was waiting.

We were the last ones to arrive. Helen and Ralph greeted us themselves at the door and sent Reginald for two glasses of champagne. Clarissa curtsied and took our coats. Ralph is in his fifties, toned and tanned and in control. He is a lawyer and an international banker and is accustomed to the best, expects it, and never does, or has to, settle for less. Helen is a trophy blonde, but not a bimbo. She stopped teaching anthropology at Yale when Ralph decided he wanted her to. It was her thirty-fifth birthday we were celebrating. Charles brought her a yellow gold authenticated Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, manufactured in 1935, and gave it to her as a gift from both of us. She smiled naughtily at Ralph and said, "May I give him a Thank-You-Kiss? On the mouth?" "He has earned it," Ralph said, "and I will keep a hostage, as long as you do," he said, pulling me towards him and pressing his lips to mine as Helen kissed Charles.

"You are more stunning than ever," Helen said, taking me away from him and taking me herself around the waist.

"Not more than you," I replied, and I meant it. "If you only knew just how much I admire you," I whispered near her ear. She shivered.

"You are very sweet," she said, kissing me on the temple. "And thank you, too, for the lovely basket of fruit Charles sent this afternoon."

From the salon, we could hear the sounds of the chamber orchestra tuning. "Let's go in," Helen said, taking my arm. I took a seat beside Charles, and Helen walked to the front of the room, greeted the guests again, and introduced the piece that would be played. It was the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg, "In Memory of an Angel." It is one of my favorite pieces of music, and I am a good listener when I listen to music, but that did not prevent me from seeing how many of the men simply could not take their eyes off me. One in particular kept boring into me, and although I usually like to be looked at and appreciated, he made me uneasy. I touched Charles' wrist, and he understood that something was wrong. He looked at me. I pointed with my eyes in the direction of the disturbing gaze. He gave my hand a squeeze and I felt safe.

We stood after the performance and Charles looked at me with his bedroom eyes. I could see that the music had touched him and I kissed him gently on the mouth. "I'm so glad that I belong to you," I said. "You'll always be my only girl," he said, using his favorite pet name for me, "my only girl." I looked at him with glistening dreamy eyes.

Smiling broadly with a truly warm smile that was irresistible, Ralph joined us. He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips and kissed it. "You are enchanting," he said. "May I take your man away from the party for about ten minutes. There's something that cannot wait."

"Of course," I said. "Thank you," Ralph said, bowing slightly. "Charlie, let's go into the study."

"I'll be right back," Charles said.

"I'll wait for you," I said.

When they were gone, the man who had made me uneasy during the performance approached me. "I could see from the way you were sitting that you were deeply moved by the concerto," he said.

I did my best to smile politely and looked for a way out without being rude.

"Don't you speak," he said.

"What would you like me to say?" I said.

"Ah," he said, "You do speak, and your voice is as captivating as the rest of you. But your question is not a fair question." He smiled suggestively and stared at me. I felt he was trying to look inside me, underneath me, through me, as if he wanted to take something from me.

"It was very nice meeting you," I said, almost losing my poise, "but I must," and I turned to go. Before I could, however, I felt his large paw on the bare flesh of my shoulder and I was spun around to face him. The music was loud, and some couples were dancing. Without a thought I slapped him across the cheek and his hand went up to cover the sting.

"You little bitch," he said. "You think I don't know what you are. You think I cannot have you. How much do you cost?"

I had not seen that Charles had returned. Nor had my interlocutor, but now it was he who was spun around. Charles held him by the lapels and – I swear – hoisted him several inches off the ground and kept him there, and shaking him, said, "if you ever do a thing like that again to her, I will have you killed." I gasped. "Do you understand?"

"I understand. Yes," the terrified man said. But Charles was not finished with him. "Yes?" he said, indicating that the man had left something out. By now, everyone was looking at us.

"Yes, Sir," the man said.

"You owe the lady an apology," Charles said.

The man bit his tongue. I knew he wanted to say something like "What lady?" but he was a coward as well as a sleaze. He was also smart. I have never seen Charles so angry or so coiled. Turning to me but this time averting his gaze, he said, "I apologize."

I did not respond but for a slight toss of the head. I accepted Ralph's proffered hand. "You ought to leave now," he said to the man and catching Reginald's eye, signaled him to come and see the man to the door.

"Come with me into the gallery," Ralph said, leading me there. "Let me show you some of the ceramics I got just last week. Charlie, come with us."

The gallery was a large, oval room containing a small and elegant collection of paintings, sculptures, and pieces of exquisite early deco furniture: exquisitely wrought tables and desks.

"Please accept my apologies," Ralph said. "I am pained and embarrassed that such a thing should happen here." I kissed him on the cheek and embraced him. "I love this," I said, indicating a large and complex spherical ceramic exfoliation of contradictory glossy and rough surfaces and textures standing by itself on an Eileen Gray table from the twenties. "That is by Anne Mercedes. She is English, works in London," Ralph said, pleased that I liked it. A little before noon the next day, a man arrived at my door with the sculpture and a bouquet of gardenias.

"Let's walk for a while," Charles said when we were in the street. It was nearly three a.m. "We can get a cab whenever you feel like it." I put my arm through his, leaned against him for support, and gazed up into the boundless, cloudless sky, at the blazing moon, as we walked downtown. A taxi was stopped for a light. "Let's go home," I said.

In the morning, Charles ignored his cell phone as it slithered on the bedside table and emitted what was to me an unidentifiable ringtone as he detonated his desire inside me. But afterwards, he checked his messages and told me that he had just learned that a serious accident had occurred at the worksite of a hotel in Sydney that he had designed, and that a man had, in fact, been killed. He was not culpable, he said. It was through no fault or engineering mistake of his. Nevertheless, he was transformed. He sat on the edge of the bed, disconsolate, and when I tried to console him, he cast me out.

"I must go," he said. "I will leave tonight."

"Take me with you," I said. "I hate to see you like this."

"No," he said. "The time for all that is gone."

"What is `all that,'" I said. "My love for you? My desire for you? My wish to make you happy and give you anything you need?"

"You can't give me a man's life back."

"His death is terrible," I said, "but it is not your fault."

"It is my building. My work has been cursed. Something I have done. I don't know what. I must change my life, and I need to find out how. Perhaps you ought to think about that, too."

"I like my life, my life with you, our life. I don't want it to change. I don't see why this has to make it change."

"But it does. I have to figure out exactly how."

"What about me? What will I do without you? Will I be without you?"

"I won't leave you high and dry. You won't be without money or security."

"I wasn't talking about money," I said, unable to believe it was Charles talking.

"You don't have to as long as I am, and I did. What else?"

"I don't believe this," I said. "What else? What about us?"

"There's nothing about us," Charles said. "I have to catch a plane."

"Will I see you again?"

"It's time to move on," he said, got dressed, and left. "Not even a kiss good bye," I said. But he was already gone. Wouldn't you know it would be a sunny day, crisp, clear, cold? Central Park from my window was vibrant. I couldn't eat. I pulled on a pair of jeans, a cashmere sweater, boots and a fur lined leather coat. If this was the role I was being given, I would dress for it. I walked aimlessly through the park and wondered what the future would bring. At every turn on the ramble somebody was cruising me, but nobody was him, and it was going to take time for me to be unfaithful.

Tuesday morning, a week after Charles walked out on me, I got a call from a Mr. Alison, a money manager at Rattan and Billows Fiduciary and Trust, the bank, he explained, that managed Charles' fortune. He wondered when it would be a good time for me to meet with him. I asked him what we had to meet about, but he only said he could tell me everything when he saw me. I agreed to see him Friday morning.

I was exceptionally nervous. Charles said that he would not leave me cold and hungry and out on the street, but he had said other things, too. Remember, I was his "only girl," until I wasn't. I hardly slept Thursday night before the meeting, and I worried that I would look a wreck and make a bad impression. I did not know what to wear that would be appropriate. Finally, I decided on a smart, blue silk, man tailored suit with a skirt that just came to the knee, sheer nylon pantyhose and blue leather pumps with a four inch heel, a pale creamy white blouse and a soft fulvous silk scarf. I went light on make up, and the weather was threatening so I wore a classic trench coat and carried an umbrella.

Mr. Alison received me in his office, and a very nice office it was, a man's office in dark mahoganies and deep burgundies. He showed himself to be in every way a gentleman, deferential and businesslike. I could not help sensing that he also found me quite attractive, and I appreciated all the more his reserve and his professionalism. I like a man who knows how to keep himself under control. It's the kind of man who has the self-assurance to keep me under control, and, within limits, I like a man who is able to exercise control over me. Just whispering the words "a commanding gentleman" sends shivers all through me.

Damn if Charles was not as good as his word. I was provided for. The apartment had been put in my name and a great sum of money had been transferred to me. It was mine and belonged to me as if it had never been Charles's. It made everything worse. I hated him because he gave me one more reason to love him.

I met Helen for lunch at The Diaspora on Madison Avenue. She called in the morning, said she'd heard about the "break-up," said she was thinking about me and would always hold me dearly and would always be around for me, and she asked how I was bearing up. Without expecting to, I started to cry. But I brought a hankie to my eyes and held back my tears. "I'm trying to be a brave girl," I said. "Meet me for lunch," she said. "Twelve-thirty at The Diaspora. It's ten now. That should give you plenty of time. Dress casual." "I love you," I said. "I love you, too," she said. "See you soon."

I put on boy drag: jeans, boots, a rust-colored V neck pullover, a Dresden blue chamois jacket, a long mustard-colored over coat, and a woolen fedora, tan, from Borsalino that Charles had given me five years ago.

"Wow!" Helen said. "I don't often get to see you like this, but I like it."

"Thanks," I said, kissing her on both cheeks.

"You seem better," she said.

"I'm ok. I lose it sometimes when I get a feeling of closeness with someone, like with you this morning when you said what you said."

"And I meant it. Ralph told me to tell you he feels the same way."

"What is Ralph going to do?"

"The firm is insured; the job was insured. The man was married. A wife and two small children. She will see more money than he would have earned in a lifetime. I'm not being callous. I understand a man is dead and he was her children's father and her husband, and she probably loved him. But I don't doubt that she will re-enter life, honoring him as he fades away." She paused a beat, looked me square in the eye and drilled something into me. "You got my drift?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "I got it. Don't worry. I got a lot of give."

"You should go around like this more," she said, taking hold of a handful of hair in the back of my head.

"Maybe I will," I said, teasing her.

We both had a salade chevre chaut and a dry vodka martini. We went back to Helen's place. On the way she filled me in. Charles was going to stay in Australia, Ralph was there now, helping Charles supervise design revisions and settling compensation claims.

"Have I told you how sexy you look as a guy?" Helen said approaching me and taking me in her arms. We were in her library.

"Kiss me like a top," she said. I did. I brought my face to hers and pressed my lips against hers and made her yield. She spread open her lips and took my tongue in and gently fucked her mouth with it while I overcame her efforts to stay in control, and penetrated her to where she became nothing but desire.

"I would not do this for just anybody, you know," Helen said, laughing. "It's because I love you and I want you to see that everything will be alright if you are alright."

Couldn't she see that my grief was real and that it is just the opposite with me: I will be alright if everything is alright. But if anything is not alright, then I will not be. I was not autonomous. I was dependent. There was nothing I could do about it. That was at the root of my girl drag. But I did not like that kind of thinking – explaining is very close to explaining away -- and it was Helen's fault I was doing it. But Helen was right, too. I did feel in possession of another life stream.

I gravitated to boy drag at this period more and more. It was a magnet for Helen and she was around me as much as she could be, and the need for sex with me was always gripping her. She made me hard like I have not been hard since I was sixteen, almost ten years ago. I'm not complaining. The ten years I spent with Charles were thrilling and I was consumed with the need to feel him inside me. He knew how to make me yield and to bring me to the joyous frenzies of a woman. It was strange to desire to overcome her, to assert myself, to conquer her and groove on her surrender, her very willing surrender. That was how much power I had.

"I love being ravished by another woman," she said, teasing my cock with her finger tips, pressing her hard breasts against my chest, tipping my lips with her tongue. I entered her with my crown and held myself rigid above her. She hardened under my strength and thrust herself up offering herself, begging to surrender as I thrust more deeply into her and pulled out, each time making her more desperate to feel me in her – quivering, panting, begging.

When Ralph returned from Australia, Helen told him about our affair. He was comfortable with it, she told me, but she said she wanted to stop seeing me, for the sake of her own emotional clarity. It was hardly as traumatic as when Charles left me. I had, in fact, begun to grow weary of always being the sexual aggressor with her, of being in the male role. I wanted someone to ravish me the way Charles had, and take possession of me. My desire for Charles may have abated but my need to be consumed by an overwhelming, masculine appetite was as powerful as ever.

I was surprised when Helen called me a few weeks after she had broken it off, but I was not bitter or needy. I was glad to hear from her and asked her why she was calling. Ralph wanted to see me. It was important. She could say nothing on the phone. The three of us met for dinner that night at The Diaspora. Charles, Ralph told me, had not gone to Australia because of the accident, although there really had been an accident, but because his name was about to be connected to some kind of insider trading, stock manipulation activity involving, "well it didn't matter what" that had been very lucrative for him, but quite the opposite for some others. Charles knew that the morning he spoke to Ralph on the phone from my bedside in my apartment.

"So Charles broke up with me," I began.

"in order to make sure you were not implicated in any way in what was about to happen," Ralph said.

"And the money he transferred to me, and the apartment?"

"He did that several months ago. It was all perfectly legal. Everything you have is incontestably yours."

"He's worth so much more than his money. The fool," I said, words I was shocked to hear myself utter.

I told Ralph and Helen that I wanted to see Charles and to tell him to his face that I loved him and that he did not have to protect me, that I did not care about the money, that I cared about him and wanted to be with him, that if he was sent to prison, I would wait for him.

"No," Helen said. "That's impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because he has disappeared."

"He's disappeared?"

"No one knows where he is."

"You do," I said.

"No one knows," Helen repeated, less to emphasize the veracity of her assertion as to assert its finality.

Their revelations did not really change anything. But they added to my grief. Yes, Charles was gone. That was old news. You couldn't do that twice. Once was enough. But he kept reappearing -- without coming back. And I had to begin to get over him all over again. It was hard when I thought of how it had been with us when I'd dress for him and be his girl in heels, glamorous and in love and he was the embodiment of powerful masculinity.

I learned all too soon the extent to which Charles was in trouble and also that he had not, despite his precautions, succeeded in protecting me from it.

Now that I was an independently wealthy woman and had too much time on my hands, I decided I needed to do something useful. Consequently, I spent several hours each day working at a GLBT crisis center. My tasks ranged from sitting with the dying, to preparing the daily free lunches we provided, to tutoring high school kids after school. I felt at home at the Center, and that surprised me. Whether I dressed like a woman or a man, I was accepted, I was popular, I was myself.

A year passed since Charles' disappearance, and I was not heavy-hearted, but I was also not grounded, the way I had been when I'd had him to – I guess I'd have to say – define me.

It was late November and it was snowing. It was not the kind of weather I liked, but I had worked late at the Center and was on my way home. I was wearing skin-tight leather jeans, high pirates boots, a silver fox jacket and a fur cap. I was walking carefully because of the snow.

"Don't slip," a man's voice warned me as I approached the curb. I looked up, but all I saw was a muffled figure in a long overcoat, a scarf hiding half his face and a brimmed had that shaded his forehead to the eyes. Just then the bus came. I got on and the stranger was gone. I thought nothing of it until the next morning when I checked my e-mail and found the words "Don't slip" at the top of an otherwise empty message. The e-mail address was yourowngood@gmail.com.

Now I was frightened. I looked out the windows, peeking through a slit in the drapery, the way they do in scary movies, to see if anyone was in the street. The street was empty. It had stopped snowing. I overcame my reluctance to leave my apartment and made my way to the bus stop. That was a mistake because just like in the movies, a car cut me off as I was crossing at an intersection, and before I knew what was happening, there were hands all over me and I was hustled into a van. A blindfold was secured over my eyes. I was terrified. Someone with surprisingly soft, warm, and dry palms took my hand gently but firmly in his, and in a voice that did not fit with what was happening told me that I was alright and that I was not going to get hurt, and that they would try to minimize any discomfort I might experience.

"Who are you?" I cried. "What are you doing to me?"

"You will be alright," the same voice repeated. "Unfortunately, we must use you as a bargaining chip."

My blindfold was not removed until I was inside a rather large and opulently furnished living room. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was not in the city, for on the way from the car to the house, I realized there was earth, not concrete under my feet.

"What is going on?" I demanded, for frightened as I was, I also knew how to be a queen bitch. It came with the territory when you did drag, if you wanted to hold your own.

Instead of answering, the young man who was guarding me – it could be called nothing else; I was, after all, a prisoner – said, "You must be hungry." The truth is, as much as I ought not to have been, as much as I ought to have been too frightened to eat, I was hungry.

"What have you got?" I said in a voice that had – I heard it even though I had not intended it – a voice that had a touch of defiant flirtation in it.

"Whatever you want," he answered, picking up the tone perfectly and returning it.

"I want you to let me out of here."

"That I cannot do. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"I am."

"Can you tell me where we are and why I'm here and what's going to happen to me?"

"All I can tell you is that no harm is going to come to you. The rest – all in good time."

"`No harm is going to come to me!' It already has. You call this no harm!"

"Relax. You're a beautiful girl. It's gonna be ok. Trust me."

I did not trust him – later, I learned Frank was his name -- and I had no reason to think that anything would be ok, and, although I am beautiful, didn't they know – at least according to the way they thought about things – didn't they know I am not a girl? "I am not a girl:" the words rang hollow in my head, dizzyingly, and I was astounded to hear myself forming such a sentence. I was nothing if I wasn't a girl. They had broken into my world and I felt a sense of danger. I had to be alert. I had always been able to float above everything in a trance. Reality was a part I could play in my sleep. Now I'd have to be awake. So I let him bring me some food, and I ate it. Afterwards I was locked into a lovely bedroom, and fell asleep without difficulty. Night had fallen. Before I slept I saw a thin crescent moon in a sparely starred sky. The house was in the country. I looked out from behind a locked casement of old, thick, wavy glass as the daylight faded. There was nothing around but meadows, forests, streams, lakes, and waterfalls. The house itself was large and made of stone. Something made me think I was in Connecticut.

I woke in the morning feeling alert and up to the challenges. I only had the clothes I was wearing. I'd slept in them.

Frank had slept in a cot outside my door all night, and he was not quite fully wide-awake when he knocked on the door. I said come in and heard a key turn, and the door opened, and he came in.

In another part of the world, where sensible people did not go, Charles looked nothing like the man Linda described at the beginning of her story. She called herself Linda, Dale when she was in boy drag, and sometimes she used that name when she was female. It fit however she was. But this is not about Linda, or Dale, if you prefer, now – it is about Charles. What Ralph and Helen had told Linda was not so. Charles was not in Australia. He was "volunteering" in a clinic in a god-forsaken place between Ethiopia and Somalia, apparently doing good work. He was caring for the wounded: villagers injured fleeing from marauding gangs of lawless pillagers, waving scripture as a battle flag. He had come to work in this hospital – do not picture whatever you imagine when you read "hospital," for it looks nothing like that; it is a collection of people desperate and debilitated who must have time and place to rest in order to regenerate, but here they will not be able to; the place is shoddy and ramshackle and poorly equipped; it is not dirty, but its floor is earth -- Charles had come here because doing this work provided him with excellent cover as he brokered deals in weapons on the non-governmental arms markets.

He called himself McGuire, "just McGuire," when he shook hands with clients and made his contact. He was a broker by nature. But now his stock was not abstract capital values but life and death weaponry, the same weapons that injure the people that he gave himself to the healing of. At the hospital he called himself William McGuire, and everybody else called him whitedoc.

"McGuire" hangs out in unsavory places with unsavory characters. It is an oppressive climate, and there is hardly any green. Much of the earth is sand. What vegetation there is, is rough and aggressive rather than lush and inviting. But it suits him, invigorates him. He likes the sense of accomplishment. And he does not plan to stay long.

"Somebody's got to do this," he argues. "If I didn't do it, it doesn't mean it wouldn't get done." It is late. He is not drunk, but he is not sober either. He has brokered another trade and the money is already in an account in Luxembourg. He takes one more vodka and tonic. It is warm. He usually does not like them that way. But he has no complaints now, just thirst. It is hot even at two in the morning. They are standing around in The Fat American drinking and talking, mainly prancing and preening and boasting. Charles knows he is, and thinks of Linda. She mingles in his melancholy as the embodiment of a world forever lost, as the emblem of sublime impossibility and self-creation. But he does not say anything. He will be at the hospital another week and then go to Amsterdam.

Charles in Amsterdam is unrecognizable, neither the African Charles nor the Charles who loved Linda in New York. His head is one of the few that looks as sexy shaved to the scalp as it looks thick with living hair. It gleamed. He wore jeans, tight and bunched at the fork of his crotch, a maroon sweater and a biker's leather jacket. He did not smile and he walked along the canals looking at the passersby with haughty curiosity that made most shrink from him. But near the Anne Frank House there was a boy, a young man from New York City, who turned twenty that day. Charles stood by him as he looked into the canal. "I like to look at the water," he said.

Charles put his right arm around his shoulders and turned his head towards him. "I like to look at you," he said. Jacob stepped back and stood for Charles to look at him. "Come for a drink with me," Charles said. The night was dark and clear. The canals made the golden reflections of amber street lamps shimmering tremors in the black water.

"What are you doing in Amsterdam?" Charles said. He sat beside Jacob in the candle-lit corner of a brown barroom under ancient heavy wooden ceiling beams. Surrounding them was oak wainscoting. The walls above the wainscoting were of painted plaster, darkened by the smoke of centuries. Behind them, at right angles were yellow glass windows. An old staircase in the corner turned upon itself and led to a second floor eating room.

"Recovering from heartbreak," Jacob said.

"Really," Charles said, smiling with a hint of condescension.

"Really," Jacob said. "I was stupid. I gave myself to him. He was irresistible and I surrendered to him. I don't mean just sexually, although I did that way, too. I mean I really fell in love with him. I admired him. I needed him. I was not myself without him. I was like the moon and he was like the sun. I know it's trite."

"Not if it's true," Charles said, reaching across the small table and taking Jacob's hand. "Now?"

"I was a toy. He had a wife. When he broke off with me, he apologized and explained that he needed to recharge his batteries once in a while. I could not believe that he could be so trite and that I had never sensed it." He paused. "I still long for him even though I know he's not worth it. But he was someone else when he was with me. And I want him. Now," Jacob said, "I'm writing a book. That's why I'm in Amsterdam."

"A novel?"

"No," Jacob said. "I'm not writing a novel. I don't believe in that. Expiation through confession and healing through objectifying. No! I'm writing my doctoral thesis on the influence of their cultures on Rembrandt and Van Gogh."

Charles looked at Jacob. "We can go to the Rijksmuseum tomorrow," he said, and then to the Van Gogh, across the way, unless it's one time too many for you."

"It's never one time too many," Jacob said. "Sure."

"Come home with me," Charles said.

"I'd like too," Jacob said. "My name is Jacob."

"My name is André," Charles said.

"What are you doing in Amsterdam?"

"I'm here on business. But I don't want to talk about business now." Charles said. Instead, he kissed Jacob flamingly on the mouth. "Let's get out of here," he said. It was a short walk along the canal to Charles's room, high up in the grand attic of a narrow brick house, its windows overlooking the canal. Charles took a joint from a glass dish that held a handful of them, lighted it, inhaled deeply and handed it to Jacob, who drew in a great lungful of the nutty smoke, and before he could expel it, Jacob felt Charles's lips pressing his and drawing the smoke back into his own lungs. Jacob tottered. His hard cock pressed against his jeans. "Take them off," Charles commanded. Jacob stood before him naked, and only then did Charles see just how exquisite he was. He kneeled before him – but not in submission – and took his hard cock in his warm mouth that became awash with hot saliva. Jacob raised his arms and grasped a low beam that spanned the room and supported the gabled ceiling as Charles gently fucked him with his mouth and ran his nails down along his arms and his chest.

Jacob's eyes were closed, his head thrown back in ecstasy. Charles took him to the edge and kept him there. His entire body was ramrod rigid. Charles stood and clasped Jacob's taut body to him and whispered, "I want you to fuck me, slowly, intensely."

There was rain in the morning and it was chilly outside. Charles phoned downstairs and Annika brought up coffee and croissants for them. They showered together.

"It's a perfect day for museums," Charles said, "and I have a pass that's good for two. So we won't have to wait on line."

"I've never fucked anyone," Jacob said as they approached the Rijksmuseum. "I never thought I could. I have always been a bottom. Now I am not sure."

"There's no need. How can you define yourself when you become who you are at that moment every time you encounter some one or some thing new?"

Over coffee and a bowl of Lavender weed, Charles told Jacob that he could not see him that night, that he would leave him after the museum, because he had an important meeting to go to and that if things went as he figured they would, he would be leaving Amsterdam in the morning. When Jacob asked where he was going, he only said, "I can't say."

"We just met," Jacob said.

"Life's like that," Charles said.

"I don't want mine to be," Jacob said.

Charles nodded. "Let's go," he said. "I want to show you a very special Rembrandt. Do you know his picture of Jeremiah Lamenting the Fall of Jerusalem?"

Every now and then, there's an explosion that makes it onto the front pages and the twenty-four hour news outlets. A suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, a pressure cooker bomb in Boston, a drone strike in Pakistan, a massacre in Gaza or Syria or Iraq, a shooting in Texas or Colorado or Connecticut, but, daily, there are countless other unreported bombings, little acts of murder and of terror, that leave children without parents and parents without children, that turn whole-bodied men and women into cripples. That's what happened that night in an old warehouse in the outskirts of Amsterdam, a minor action that left three, or maybe four, dismembered and unidentifiable bodies. For some reason, the explosion was hardly mentioned in the papers. It remained an anomalous neighborhood event, like a house burning down in a fire, terrible, but not much to cover in the paper after reporting that it happened and the police are pursuing leads. How many died, how many were injured, these were not issues of any importance except for the dead people – and really, being dead, not much for them –, for the injured, and for those whom they called family and friends, if there were family and friends.

I knew nothing of this explosion, nor did I know that it was because of the explosion that I was being released from captivity. "You are no longer of use to us," Frank told me sadly, as he blindfolded me, and he drove me back home. I said nothing. He took my blindfold off when we arrived at the place Charles had bought me on Gramercy Park.

"Do you want to come in," I said, "for a moment?"

"Sure."

"I can make some coffee," I said, "if the coffee is where it used to be."

"Sure," he said. "You know, I'm going to miss you."

"I'll miss you, too," I said. "Isn't that weird?"

"We could continue."

"What!"

"To see each other."

"It lacks necessity," I said. "Can you really call what was going on `seeing each other'?"

"Not at first. It was just something I had to do, but, you know, after a while I got fond of you. I began to like you, and you must know you're a very attractive girl."

"Yes, I know," I said, ironically.

"You are," Frank said countering what he thought was a dismissal of his compliment.

"What do you want, Frank?"

"I told you. I want to continue seeing you. We could be like regular people, go to the movies, have dinner, go dancing."

"But I'm not `regular people'," I said, reaching for coffee cups.

"Hey, I don't exactly work in the Post Office," he said.

"Finish your coffee," I said. "I haven't been by myself in a long time and I want to see what it's like."

When he was gone I pulled back the drapes and threw the windows open. The chestnut trees, whose branches had been bare the last time I looked at them, were full and green and flowering, and the park was festooned with beds of tulips and forget-me-nots, but otherwise, quite empty. Like me. I had disappeared, and I had returned, and I had not the slightest idea of what had happened or why or where I was now or who I was now or what I was going to do.

It seemed absolutely clear to me, however, that my abduction had something to do with Charles, but I did not know what, and it followed that my release must have had something to do with Charles, also. I was a "bargaining chip," Frank had told me. But that did not really tell me anything.

When I called Helen and Ralph, what was surprising to me is that they were not surprised or even particularly glad, to hear from me.

"We knew you'd be alright," Helen said.

"How did you know that?" I said.

"We had faith," she said after a beat of silence.

"I need to see you," I said.

"We are quite busy."

"I need to see you."

"I'm looking at my calendar as we speak," Helen said. "This week is impossible. Late Sunday afternoon. Is that ok for you?" We made the arrangements and I hung up more perplexed than ever.

Sunday, the air was thick with impending rain. I was sluggish and without a sense of purpose. After the way Helen had sounded on the phone, I did not look forward to seeing her and Ralph. They were already at a table in the corner, their table, at The Diaspora, when I got there, although I was not late. They stood up when I arrived, but shot each other a quick glance, as if confirming a shared suspicion.

"My poor darling," Helen said. "How are you?"

"Holding up," I said.

"That's more than can be said for most of us," Ralph said with a playful chuckle.

I did not know these people. This was not the man who had sent me that wonderful ceramic sculpture, nor the woman who had abandoned herself to me. These were two people who were, instead, abandoning me.

"Charles was involved in," Ralph said, "several – how shall I say it? –" he glanced at Helen as if he needed the help of her discretion, "several international projects, projects that you were unaware of and that, for your own good, it's best you remain unaware of. But it is reasonable to tell you that they involved a considerable degree of risk and real danger. Charles, as you might know, was not one to be put off by danger. In fact, it made him keener, contributed to his charm, you might say."

Helen glanced at him as if to indicate that he was going on too much. "What you ought to know, probably what you have already put together is that Charles had had some difficulties in negotiating, let us say, contracts, with a certain... organization, you can call it, and they held you in order to apply some pressure to make him comply. Things had not been resolved when, well, when Charles was killed in an explosion in Amsterdam. It's best I say no more about that except that once Charles was no longer a factor, the people holding you had no other use for you and released you."

"Charles was killed." Helen said the words so matter-of-factly, as if he were a person she'd heard about on the news, not someone she had known, had dinner with, probably slept with, and god knows what else. This was very odd.

"How do you know all this?" I said.

Ralph nodded his head several times, looking at me as if he were giving me a warning. "What is, is," he said quietly, as if it explained something.

"And now," I said, confused, "what am I to expect?"

"Ralph shrugged. "It's time to get on with it. What to expect is up to you to determine."

I had the feeling that they did not like me, that they would be happy to be rid of me. I felt the same way about them. "I think I will try to get home before the storm," I said, rising and taking my raincoat from the hook beside the window.

"Get some rest, dear," Helen said.

"If there's anything we can do," Ralph said.

I pushed my hair back from my forehead and raised my chin. I felt several pairs of eyes giving me the once-over as I made my way to the door, which a uniformed doorman held open for me. "Stay dry, Miss," he said, tipped his cap and smiled handsomely. I nodded in appreciation. "I'd like a cab, please."

The man who walked into the bar on Rue Rachel was an angry man. It was near the end of May and the winter still held its grip. The days were bleak and chilly. Rain fell daily and if there were any periods of sun, they were sporadic, suggesting a possibility that was quickly aborted by clouds that filled the sky and brought another episode of bleakness.

"You don't know what you are talking about," an executive in a tailored suit, a shirt of pale pink and a burgundy cravat said to a magazine-beautiful woman in a buff suede jacket, faded blue jeans, high boots, and a black turtle-neck cashmere sweater. "I worked hard for what I've got. I don't let things that are not the truth about me get spread around. Image is what's important. Image is the new reputation. Image, now, is what reputation used to be."

The angry man shuddered, looked around and saw Franz turning his back to the bar, making change at the register, and turning back to his customer. He handed the change to him and noticed the angry man as he did. He acknowledged him, and when he finished his transaction, walked over to him. "Mr. Carleson," he said. What can I do for you today?"

"A shot of vodka and I need a place to stay for maybe a week, maybe longer."

"I can do that," Franz said.

"I thought you could. Then I'll have something permanent, whatever permanent means."

Franz scribbled the address and the angry man read it and shoved the piece of paper it was written on into his pocket.

"Thanks," he said and put twenty euros down on the zinc countertop.

The cemetery was on the left, up the old steps that twisted off the street and ran out onto rue Caulaincourt. Carleson, as the bartender called him, headed in the other direction, where the buses run. He was lucky. The Thirty came in two minutes and he was at Trocadero in fifteen. He found the address on Rue Georges Mandel. It was an old maison particulier. Only a maid and a butler were there. Otherwise, it appeared untenanted

"This is incredible," he said. The maid led him to a suite on the third floor and installed him there. "You will be all by yourself here. Quite alone. I will make breakfast for you at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Perhaps you would like some coffee and a little madeleine now." Carleson was overwhelmed. It would have been camp. But it was real. Linda would have loved it. He thought that, and it was a painful thought. Everything he had done, he had done for her, and in the end, it meant he couldn't have her.

He took the coffee and the madeleine from the maid and bid her good night. She told him that he could press any button on the phone by the bedside if he needed anything. He thanked her and said good night again. She left him with a curtsy.

"I'm damned," he said, if this isn't turning into a comedy.

In the morning after breakfast, he walked over to the Palais de Tokyo. It was raining. He was wearing a cap and a pea coat, old jeans and boots. He went into the bookstore. There were expensive books with pictures and analyses of some of his buildings on sale. He was astonished at the pictures of him on the back or the inside flaps of the jackets. He didn't look like that anymore. He was so elegant and...sedate was the word that came to him. He had not felt that way then, if he remembered right. He had lived with an internal jitter machine he could never shut off. Being elegant and what appeared to be sedate was an image he inhabited and presented as a counter pose that he adhered to with a fierce strength of will. Now he looked anything but at ease. He was always in motion. He emitted tiny bursts of rhythm. One jacket photograph he kept returning to pictured him with Linda in her apartment. They were sitting beside each other on a small sofa, each at a quarter turn so that they were facing each other, looking like they knew something no one else knew. He began to feel haunted. He got out quickly and walked toward the Seine and the Pont Alma.

Charles did not have to worry about the insider trading charges. They were true, and he could have served time, but a lobbyist who had been steady in his contacts with certain members of Congress managed to find a twitch in the law that got his clients off the hook. He did not have to worry about the buildings he had designed. They were becoming iconic. They were pictured in museum bookstores. He did not have to worry about prosecution for the arms dealing he had done. He was officially dead. And he knew things the governments that might have tried to prosecute him would not want to have released.

But he did have to worry about the international underground of arms merchants, drug dealers, and mercenaries. Among them it was rumored that he was not dead, that he had done a stunt ingeniously, never certain whether it was staging his own death or with uncanny luck managing to outwit an assassination and turn it to his own advantage. But there was no way to be sure. And if he kept out of sight, they'd probably let him alone. For them, it was a time for retrenching not revenge. It was not the time for settling scores. The Amsterdam job had been botched. The explosion was larger and more damaging than it had to be, bodies were unidentifiable, a great magazine of costly ammunition was gone. That was to his advantage. It could not be proven that he had not been inside when the bomb exploded. The people who carried out the job and messed it up would only make it worse for themselves had they confessed they were unsure he was killed, and they moved to The Hague for safety. There was no point in being around.

Charles walked along the quai, his gaze lost in the Seine. He passed the Louvre, passed Chatêlet. At the Hotel de la Ville he crossed the Pont d'Arcole to the Île de la Cité. He sat under the awning of a café and ordered a coffee when the rain got heavy. A very handsome guy wearing a leather jacket hanging open over a white T-shirt looked up from his book and was staring at Charles. "Something bothering you?" Charles said. "I'll say." Charles was disarmed. He looked at the guy inquisitively. It was all that the fellow needed. He took his coffee over to Charles's table. "My name is André," he said. "Jacob," Charles said. "Why were you staring at me?" "Was I staring?" "Don't be coy." "Well it's better than pretending not to stare and forcing yourself not to look. You're very pretty." "No one's ever called me that before." "Does it bother you?" "No," Charles said after a moment's reflection.

"Good," André said. "You aren't French." "No," Charles said.

"American."

"American."

"I will show you Paris." "I have seen Paris." "I will show you parts of Paris that you have not seen." "Like what?" "Like the inside of my bedroom."

André lived in a sixth-floor walk-up, a petite chamber de bonne that had been made into what they called a studette. But it faced the river and it was on the Île de la Cité. And Mme. Vauxbienne, the old lady who rented it to him had a kind heart, a bohemian sensibility, and told him that he made her think of Rimbaud. She let him have the room at a ridiculously low rent.

"Look, the night is falling," André said, "and the sky has that wonderful darkening cerulean intensity. Just like you. I can feel your intensity. Right now it is contracted. But not for long." He leaned towards Charles and kissed him. Charles reciprocated. He let himself go. He had never been the one pursued; he always made the first move. He liked it that way. This way was odd. André picked up on it. "There's always a first time," he said. "It's ok."

Charles shook his head and grinned.

"What?" André said with a coaxing smile.

Charles laughed. "It's just that this is happening."

"Do you want it to happen?"

"Yes," Charles said.

André said nothing but began to nibble at his neck and then to kiss his mouth, and with each kiss the more he entangled him in silken nets. He pressed him to himself, took possession of him, and touched the holes that open into him with intimate familiarity. He looked into his eyes as he ran his fingers along his perineum and then, slippery with his saliva, he circled around inside him with his first two fingers.

"Do you want me to go into you?" "I want you to go into me." "I'm coming into you." "Please, come into me." They stopped making words: their breath became kisses. André screwed slowly into him. Charles's cries of pain became screams of joyous agony and then crowing cadenzas of pleasure.

Afterwards they kissed in grateful lust.

"I did not know that about myself," Charles said.

"

"Now you do," Andre said smiling.

"What other parts of Paris can you show me?"

"You into S&M," Charles said a few evenings later as they were crossing the Alexander Bridge going to a Hopper exhibit at the Grand Palais.

"You?" André said for an answer.

"I have had a lot of power," Charles said.

"Had?" André asked.

"I'm retired now," Charles said with a laugh.

"You can't get out of it that easily," André teased him. "What does that mean?"

"It means I don't shape the way everything is."

"You mean you think you did."

"I did," Charles said, reflectively.

"I feel like shaping you," André said.

It astounded Charles that sentences like that could excite him. It was not like him. He had called the shots, determined how things would be. He could not forget that. But this excited him. He had a recurring physical memory of André inside him. "What would you like to make me?"

"You can only know that once I've done it."

"That could be dangerous."

"Not really. Where do you live?"

"I'm staying at a place on Georges Mandel."

"Let's go to your place tonight. Can we?" "Yes," Charles said.

It was Thursday night and outside the Grand Palais there was no line to speak of. They walked through the bright foyer into the black corridors that open onto the galleries. Text about Hopper's beginning years was mounted on the first gray-green wall; then the pictures met you. They stood together looking at the pictures of women in offices and hotel lobbies, in black heels and green dresses shot through with yellow that clung defiantly to their firm flesh. They looked at country-town streets and old New England Victorian wedding-cake houses, and paved roads with painted lines that get lost in the distance, reflected in the beaten and unyielding stare of a man sitting by a gas pump. They looked at sea water and empty rooms blazing with sunlight, and at skyscrapers and souls trapped in cement. They looked at umbers and reds and dark blues and flaming yellows and transparent surfaces. They saw the existential misery of isolated women with large, stiff breasts and lonely, dazed men wearing blocked fedoras, forced together painfully into a common life. They saw the artist underneath: lost, dazed, shaping space by his presence, drawing forth the color of things as they are seen, composing volumes inside infinite emptiness. They held hands and leaned against each other as they looked.

Outside a million stars pressed their whiteness into a black sky. Winter had relented. The air was fresh and full of spring. At the intersection of the Champs Elysées and the Rue Montaigne, they got into a cab.

"I want you to tell me all about yourself," Andre said, drawing Charles to him as the cab sped up Avenue President Wilson.

"There's really not much to tell."

"I don't believe that. But it does not matter. I know everything about you just by making love to you. You don't know how much you give away when I fuck you."

"I've been in love," Charles confided, then, in the back seat of the taxi, "and I've cherished someone, and I was touched by how much she loved me, but I did not ache with love, I was sure of myself, and that made me sure of her. My love was solid. But with you, it's different. I'm flooded with fear. I'm not sure of myself. I ache for you. I depend on you. I know that you have a certain kind of power over me that I have never experienced before."

"May be you weren't ready for it."

"I'm not sure I am now, either."

"It's not a problem," André said as the cab stopped in front of the house where Charles was staying.

"What does it mean, `it's not a problem'?" Charles said as Andre surveyed the place.

"I want to fuck you right now, not have a conversation," Andre said, taking Charles by the shoulders and bringing his face close, kissed him into silence and oblivion."

"That's what I want too," Charles said, unbuttoning André's jeans, button by button, and once they were opened, bringing his hard cock out. He lowered himself to his knees and opened his mouth and took in André's cock with his lips. He slowly sucked on it, taking it to the depth of his throat and his larynx became a cunt. He was hard and being whipped by the early indications of orgasm.

There is a certain amount of pretense, whether deliberately or blindly, in most things. With André and Charles as they fused with each other, it was not so. What had begun as an erotic quest, for each became love. Their hearts were pulled together and opened to each other. Through the passage made, their hearts were exchanged.

"Things are not beautiful when they strive for beauty," André said, "only when the real beauty just comes through."

"I loved Linda," Charles said, thoughtfully. "It was not a game. She was a consummate poseur, but she was entirely real. She came out underneath her poses. That's what I loved. I still do when I think of her."

One love does not drive out another. One love does not supplant another. One love does not prevent another. Charles left Rue George Mandel. He was happy. Andre said it would be right for them to live together. He lived with Andre in an apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. André kept his tiny room over the Seine. Mme Vauxbienne said she was glad for him that he was going but for herself she was sorry. She did not intend to do anything with the room. He was always welcome.

"She's a very sweet woman," he said to Charles, "and old as she is, she is very good looking, wears heavenly perfume, and have you seen how shapely her ankles still are?"

"You are turning into a quean," Charles said.

"Just for that, I'm going to fuck you brutally."

"Can't be brutal enough," Charles said."

Once Charles was gone, permanently gone, irretrievably gone, I could not fit anymore into being Linda. Linda was his. So was Dale. So who then was I? I understood the black-wearing widows of southern Europe who remain widows forever. They are reluctant to shake up their identity. But the identities I had garnered in my years with Charles, without him now would suffocate me. It seems funny, but the way my problem expressed itself was as a problem of what to wear. Clothes make the identity.

I had to get hold of myself. I needed discipline, and without Charles, I was afraid I would disintegrate. I wandered around the city, unmoored; and then a window display in one of the great department stores caught my eye and I stood in front of it, transfixed, as I used to be by clothing, knowing just how sexy I could look in it, if I wanted to. That was the issue, did I want to? There was something about the short sheath skirt and the heels that mixed the demure and defiant at one and the same time. I knew it was just right for me. My feet led me into the store. My mind was not yet ready to acknowledge that I was coming back to life. I stopped at the make-up counter and as I browsed the eye and lip liners, I felt an arm on my shoulder and saw a beautiful boy all in black. "Do you like it?" he said, referring to the sample of eau de cologne I had just sprayed onto my wrist." "Very much," I said. "You're a very beautiful girl," the counterboy said. "Thank you," I said. "You are very sweet." I took his hand and held it and looked into his eyes. I felt the current that passes from one flesh to another then, and I know he did. "I'll wait for you until your shift is finished," I said.

"Look," he said uncomfortably. "I think you are gorgeous, but I am into guys. So I don't want to lead you on." I laughed. "You're jumping to conclusions and getting too far ahead of me. I'm asking you if you want to go have a cup of coffee with me. It's not gonna scramble your spine to hang out with me." "I just don't want you to get the wrong idea and get hurt." "If I worried about getting hurt, I wouldn't be here," I said. "You never feel attraction for girls?" I said, teasing him. He blushed. "Not the way I feel it for boys." "You're not turned on by me?" "I am, but." "But what?" I said, refusing to relent. "But I don't know what to do." "Give me your hand," I said, and took it. I felt him slightly pull away but I did not yield. I brought his hand to my crotch and put his palm against my hard cock and helped him encircle it. I watched as his eyes lit up with a sense of being at home and exactly where he wanted to be.

He asked me my name. I did not have to think. "Linda," I said.

"Beautiful," he said. "Rudi," and he touched his lips to mine and when he quickly backed away, I knew I did not want him to take them away.

"More," I said, and he brought his lips back to me and we wrapped ourselves in our lips and surrendered to each other. When we backed away from each other, it was obvious that we had become the object of some happy interest to quite a few people in the store who had taken a moment away from shopping for gawking and grinning. We blushed and grinned, too.

Rudi opened up a different world for me from the one I'd known with Charles. We were in bohemia. I loved it. Everywhere I went I made new friends and found new admirers. Charles had introduced me into a society of bankers, financiers and professionals. When I went to gatherings with Rudi I met poets and dancers, novelists and singers, painters and set designers. We went to the theater at least twice a week, and always went out with the cast afterward. People loved watching us together. We fit so well together everyone said, two boys as sweet as girls, gentle and tender in their ways, but biting when we had to be. We hardly ever were not touching each other, gracefully, but nevertheless. There was a steam of desire that rose from us, and everybody felt it, and so many of our friends wanted us, wanted to dress like us and be like us and feel themselves inside of us.

Rudi introduced me to Aaron at the Underground Mambo. The three of us got stoned in the garden. Aaron was lean. His muscles were small, but he was strong, and a master carpenter who designed and built the sets for many hit productions on Broadway and at Lincoln Center. It was through Aaron that I started working backstage. It filled my days, and it is obvious that I have always liked theatricality.

"You dress entirely like girls?" he asked as the three of us were walking to Gramercy Park after a night of dancing where I had stripped to my silver lamé panties and French kissed everyone I touched, and I touched a lot of people, and no one turned me down.

"Linda does," Rudi said. "I don't, or, I haven't yet, but I do lean that way in the way I choose boy's clothes."

"You're interested," I said, giggling.

"I confess I am," Aaron said, open and debonair.

"If you want to when we get home, before we take you to bed with us, you can play dress-up with us."

"I'd like to," he said.

Aaron looked wonderful after we fixed him up. "I can't believe it," he said, when he looked in the mirror, almost squealed, in a voice pitched higher than the one we'd heard before. But it came to him and fit him as if it were his own. He was delighted. He walked across the floor, hip thrust forward, a tilt to his head, and stood by my chair like a magazine girl, being sophisticated, advertising a cigarette, and waiting to be told what to do, absorbed, lost in her own pleasure.

"You look beautiful," I said and bit little kisses from his lips that made him itch to kiss again. He brought me near him. I dropped my eyelids, kept my gaze lowered, and stood there being sultry. He wanted me. He was going to have me.

Rudi turned my face towards his and kissed me. Aaron brought his lips near ours. I thought a new world was here giving itself to me. I turned to Aaron and opened my throat and brought my mouth to his. I rubbed my hardened cock on his in comradely frottage, and he took hold of me and raised his legs and took me in his arms and said, "Can I ask you to fuck me."

"Ask me to fuck you."

"Please fuck me."

"Say my name."

"Linda."

"Ask me to fuck you."

Please, Linda. Fuck me, Oh, beautiful Linda, please fuck me."

And as I fucked him, Rudi pushed himself into me. I gasped and growled and felt my heart speed quicken. "Oh, I love you," I said to him as I kissed Aaron and felt the flesh of his hard-muscled chest against me and felt myself inside him. I bit him with frantic kisses and he struggled to overcome my desire with the force of his own. Rudi caressed my nipples from behind as he fucked me. I wagged my tale and howled shrilly as he fucked me until we broke into our own explosions and lit up imaginary skies with impossible fireworks.

"Thank you," Aaron said. "That was wonderful. You were wonderful," he said to me, embracing me and kissing me. "Will you fuck me again, Linda, please. I'd like that. I like when you fuck me."

"You talk too much," I said, and brought Rudi's mouth to his, as I spoke and let them kiss each other.

I walked towards the river, but I turned back at Hudson Street. It was cold and I knew no one would be there. Better to go home and sleep and take a plane somewhere sunny, tomorrow. Somewhere sunny, but where? I remembered Rome where I had wandered all day broken-hearted after I'd been abandoned one morning. It was the year before I met Charles. I thought of Florence and how Charles and I walked across the Ponte Vecchio as the sun set and he kissed me and could not stop telling me in frantic whispers how much he loved me, how we found an old stone church painted ochre, and sheltered by travertine marble walls, wedged in between two buttresses, he penetrated me as I clung to him and bit him with kisses. No. Italy it would not be. Something, besides, about the smell of Italy reminded me of rotting milk. I preferred Greece. There the air sang to you.

I landed in Athens and met my friend Panos the next morning, late in the morning. We had met six or seven years earlier when he was visiting New York to help launch the translation of his book. Now he was gaunt. We walked around the Plaka and we had lunch near the Acropolis. "They're going to sell it to the Chinese." "You're joking." "No, I'm not. Either to them or the Germans."

"Are you working?"

"I haven't written a thing in six months."

"Do you want to come to Anafi with me?"

"Can't. I can't leave my job. I was unemployed for nearly a year when the `austerity' began. This one I've got now is a bitch, but it pays, not much, but I can eat again. I can't come and go as I would like."

"As I can," I said. "I don't begrudge you," he said. He accompanied me on the Metro to the port. We said good-bye at Piraeus and I pulled my luggage onto the Vincentzos Konaros. I had booked a stateroom. I could not see a night sleeping on deck or sleeping inside on an airplane seat in the fetid air of hundreds of other sleepers.

The sun stood midway between the zenith and the horizon when the crew lifted the gangplank and the ship got underway. The deck was crowded with campers. They had staked out their sleeping bags and back packs wherever they found a place that offered a little shelter from sea winds and night's chill. Now, however, it was still hot and everyone was wearing as little as possible. Girls in peasant skirts and blouses, or shorts and halters, their hair twisted into braids, falling free, or closely cropped, boys in only shorts or cut offs and billowing shirts, tattooed on arms or legs or neck or chest, or nowhere, their hair in dreadlocks, or their heads completely shaved or partially, or fuzzy, or shaggy, many with beards, full or splotched, unshaved and unkempt, some outside, sat in groups, cross-legged, crouching, slumping in white plastic chairs, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Some few sat alone looking at laptops or smaller devices. Many had wires falling from their ears. I caught a lot of eyes, as down dressed as I was. That was haute-couture on this boat.

By themselves, a girl with savage eyes sat across from a healthy and neatly groomed young man whose tank top was snowy white and fit him like a second skin; showed off his lean muscular chest, pointy nipples, and shapely arms and shoulders. He caught and kept my eye. He had fine legs with ropes of muscle and wore black shorts that showed him off to perfection. A silver belt surrounded his waist, but it was only for decoration. His black shorts were nice and tight and in no danger of falling. His eyes were violet and his face was too beautiful for a boy's. He wore Japanese sandals that showed his long, shapely toes to perfection. He stood and left the girl and walked to the concession and brought back two coffees. I was entranced by him but glanced away to the disappearing city we had not yet lost sight of when his eye grazed mine.

I had stowed my bag in my stateroom and now went back to shower before returning to prowl the decks. I reflected on the beauty I had seen, and gave him up as an impossibility. I shaved, shampooed my hair, and dressed casually in male nautical drag, white ducks, tennis shoes without socks, a long sleeve boat-neck, blue with silver horizontal stripes. It caressed my chest. A navy turtle-neck sweater over my shoulders in anticipation of the evening chill! I was hungry. The dining room was open, but the steam table presented dishes that, to me, were inedible, although others, and I do not write this to portray them condescendingly, heaped their plates – I am too much of a lady however I am dressed to do that -- which were weighed at check-out by the cashier to determine their cost.

I went to the bar in the lounge and bought a vodka and tonic and sat among the ersatz art-nouveau décor sipping it, feeding on the sugar and the alcohol and a dish of olives. I saw the young man with violet eyes. He was still wearing the snow-white tank top. He was sitting alone beside a frosted glass panel, fish of foliated glass swam upon it, drinking a coffee. He was wearing faded jeans now and boots. He still had that priceless snowy top, but an open blue cardigan hung loosely over it. The fierce-eyed woman was nowhere to be seen. Slightly intoxicated now, I stared, not averting my gaze when he caught me and smiled sweetly. I raised my glass in toast to him and smiled back. It was all the invitation he needed. He stood and approached me, his cardboard coffee cup in hand.

"May I," he said, indicating the empty chair facing me.

"Please," I said.

"Poliserinis Kumalis," he said, extending his hand, "but everyone calls me Paul." I stood and clasped his hand in mine. It was warm and dry and soft and strong. His grip was firm. It was an even grip, hard but with none of the painful pressure that some men put into their grasp when they shake your hand.

"Dale," I said.

"You are not Greek," he said.

"No," I said, laughing. "New York."

"I very much want to go there," he said. "I have an aunt and uncle and three cousins who live in Astoria."

"Why don't you?" I asked.

"I am a student."

"After you graduate?"

"That will be in January. But I have not enough money, and my uncle, his house is small without room for another."

"What do you study?" I asked.

"I will be an architect," he said.

"Greece is a great place for architecture."

"Once, perhaps," he said. "But that is architecture of the past. And now there is no money for such things. I want to make the architecture of the future, like Frank Gehry."

"Would you like a drink?" I said. "I am having vodka and tonic."

"I will get them," he said.

"But I will pay for them," I said, handing him twenty euros.

We sipped our drinks and he asked me what I did.

"I am a set designer," I said, feeling it was wiser to keep silent about a world of things.

"In the movies?"

"For the movies and for the stage."

"That is like an architect," he said.

"The woman you were with..." I began to formulate a question.

"I am not with her. We met boarding. I carried her backpack for her. She is – how to say it? – too intense for me." He laughed.

"Where are you going?"

"I will go to Naxos. For two weeks. Then I must go back to Athens. I work at my uncle's taverna in the Plaka during the summer until school begins."

"Let's go outside," I said, as we finished our drinks. I saw a trace of the orange sunset through the windows and did not want to miss it.

The sun was slowly dropping, sending out its broad rays horizontally, transmuting gold into flaming copper; slowly being vanquished by the darkening azure. The water, once a shimmering blue was turning black. Our heads touched as we leaned on the railing and watched the day depart. We turned and looked at each other and seeing each other's yearning, we kissed.

We saw in the distance the next morning the Temple of Apollo as we neared Naxos. "Do you have to get off at Naxos?" I said. "Must you go?" He smiled at me and pored his coffee into the Aegean Sea as an offering to Apollo and wished for the god's benevolence and strength.

"This is not real," Paul said in wonderment one evening as we walked through tortuous alleys in the oldest part of Anafi. "Then I will go," he said. "Then you will go, and then we will never see each other again. In a few years, what matters so much to us now will be a shadow that will disappear in the sunlight. We will become each other's memories, or even worse, when things have failed, each other's regrets."

"I know what it is to have somebody become your regret," I said. I gazed at this Greek beauty and thought, "he has a head as well as a face." So I kissed him and, standing on my toes, I whispered, "Not if you come to New York to study architecture there."

"How is that possible?" he said.

"You can stay with me. My apartment is not large, but it's big enough for two of us. You could go to Cooper Union. There's no tuition. I know a woman who teaches in the Art Department there."

"Do you think this is really possible?"

"You won't know unless you try."

The sun had declined; the beach was almost entirely in shade. We made our way up to the Chora. We showered, and as the hot water beat on us, I kneeled before him and filled my mouth with him, clasping his ankles in the bracelets of my palms, and lost myself in an ecstasy of sucking him to a voluptuous discharge that brought me to explosion, too. I slithered up his slippery body and held him as I mouthed him and he mouthed me back and we held each other's hard-ons.

I did not care to stay in the Cyclades once he was gone. It was also difficult for me to leave. I did not quit the place until more than two weeks later. When I did, I did not spend more time in Europe but went back to New York. The trip on the boat back to Athens felt long and was uneventful. A smell of gasoline exhaust was permeating the air. And it penetrated the air-conditioning system. In New York, it was obvious to everyone that I was in love. And being in love made me, who once had been so promiscuous, ascetic now. It was an eerie sensation. The more I repressed desire, the more desire ravished me, the more I felt the absence of Paul's presence. And Linda was feeling frisky. Thank goodness for Paul's e-mail.

"I do not mind if you look at boys," he e-mailed me. "I know if you kiss them, you will be imagining me. I will inhabit their flesh for you and give myself to you vicariously. Me? I burn for you. I want only you. I still can feel you in me and I can feel myself inside you. I touch myself and feel that it is you touching me. I look at myself in the mirror and feel like it is you gazing at me. I see the way men (and women) look at me, hungry for me, sensing that I am far away from them." So I abandoned my practice of asceticism and went home one night about a week later with an apprentice electrician who was working with me at the Met on a stage set for Handel's Alcina.

"I know you're using me," he said. "I can feel myself being transformed under your touch into someone else. I don't know who I am when you are inside me. It's very exciting, like making love with a mask on."

Paul arrived in New York for Christmas. I took him skating at Rockefeller Center and to see the monumental spruce, and I took him to the Music Hall where I had done the sets for the Christmas Spectacular, which now also featured a chorus line of high-stepping boys. He was overwhelmed by everything, dizzy with the splendor of Manhattan, awestruck at the beauty of my sets. "I should have known," he said. I wore male drag all the time, but acted demurely and made sure Paul felt like a man.

Paul took possession of my eye. I watched him. I admired everything he did. Life was worth it because I could see him dressed and in every stage of undressed, until he had nothing on but the pose he offered me. His body was perfect. At night I pressed myself to him and wrapped my legs around him. I was his, dazed with wonder. He came into me and brought me to dance with him in love's harmony. I worshipped him and he worshipped me, and it was clear to everyone who saw us together. He gazed upon me when he looked at me. My body bloomed. I was beautiful. I did everything I could for him, but it was really, in the end his own intelligence, gracefulness, and charm – he knows how to use it when he needs it – that worked for him.

When I introduced him to Rudi, I knew it was a mistake. I saw in the fixation of their eyes how their spirits were encountering each other and knew they were kindred. There was no malice on the part of either one of them, but it was what it was. Things always are. So I did not make a mistake. I am not selfish. I have often gotten things done by holding back from letting myself know I was doing them. Paul was very sweet and continued to make love with me, "but you know," he said, "I can't help thinking of Rudi." I understood, and I still enjoyed being with him and fucking. But it was not so easy for Aaron, who had begun at intervals, to identify himself as Anna.

"It broke my heart, and it pulled my very identity out from under me," he said. "I was leaving who I was and becoming who I am. Then there was no path. I could not move and did not know where to go. I'm not sure that I do now. Does that make sense?" he said, desperately.

"It makes life," I said. He snorted. He did not know whether I was kidding or not. "There are not guarantees," I said, to comfort him, "but you can use everything that happens, one way or another, sooner or later," I said.

"Maybe if you're an artist," he said in counterattack. "Especially if you're an artist," I said. "But I'm not an artist," he said. "What are you?" I said. "I am sick with unsatisfied desire," he said. "And you are a master carpenter," I said. "What good does that do me?" "At the very least, it gives you a skill, a calling to which you can devote yourself, a job to go to every day. Beyond that, an outlet for creative sublimation." "Thank you," he said, bitterly "just what I need." "Don't undervalue it," I said. "It's what keeps most of us going."

She was waiting for the bus – New York – an April torrent. She was soaked throughout. The flouncy silk shirtwaist clung to her, showing the sculpture of her strong and delicate young breasts and the thrust of her firm thighs. "Wherever you're going, I'll take you there. Here's a cab, you're soaked." She smiled forward and shy as she held my hand when I helped her in. I wore a trench coat over a pair of jeans, and the Borsolino that Charles had given me.

She said that it was not advisable to go to her place. She began to cry and I pressed her to me and gently soothed her and softly kissed her thick, penetrating, drenched hair. My heart went out to her in her distress. "Why you crying?" I said. I was with her. She relaxed into me; her body went limp. She looked up at me and smiled. "Thank you," she said. "He became violent, sexually. Instead of just fucking me, he wanted to hurt me, to leave a mark by incision or flame or strap. I am not like that. I care about devotion. I want to be cherished and to be able to cherish. Is it old-fashioned?"

"It is," I said. "Just like love." I helped her out of the cab, paid the driver, and took her hand, led her through the marble lobby to the elevator and up to my apartment.

"The first thing you must do is take off your clothes," I said. She grinned at me and without a hesitation, she unbuttoned her dress and stood there in her underwear: little spangles and sequins shimmering on her silver lamé bikini underwear, her breasts small and full and bare. I gave her a robe. She put it on and sat down as I prepared tea.

"You are very sure of yourself," she said.

"I'm very sure of you," I said.

"What are you sure of?"

"That you need to give devotion and to know that your devotion is accepted...and returned."

"Would you accept and return my devotion?"

"Try me."

She pressed her cunt to mine and together we felt a cock that belonged to both of us linking us like an iron bar pressed between us. She looked at me with amazement. "I want to be you," she said. "I've always wanted to be a boy. It's too hard to be a girl. With you, I feel like I'm a boy."

"With me you are a boy," I said and kissed her as a girl would, leading her into the role of the aggressor. She took hold of my neck and kissed me like she owned me. "I adore you," she said, smiling beyond the limits of her face.

"Are you happy?" I asked her. It was months later. We had hardly been apart from each other in all that time.

"More than I've ever been," she answered. "You are not like other guys," she said.

"No" I said.

"You are like a woman." She took me in her arms and kissed me. "I'm going to fuck you," she said, smiling mischievously and unbuttoning her blouse. Her breasts...I touched them and kissed them. She lowered her jeans and took my hand and led me to her cunt. I felt the wetness between her lips on my fingers. I smelled the musky smell of a river full of fish. She consumed me, absorbed me, merged me with her and promised herself to me. I let myself be taken. She surrounded me; she clasped me; she played upon me. My cock in her felt like it was hers in me.