Diamond Shadows
8
Red, blue, green, and yellow lights streamed in the taverna from the ceiling, crossing over and under each other, making a confusion of light. The band played a brassy rock and roll and Robertson shimmied, almost naked but for the skimpy cut-offs of an old pair of jeans -- cut so high in the back that the upward curve of his muscular ass was visible. He was bronze now from a week on the island, and applause broke out when his dance finished. And then he brought hoots of exploding appreciation with a heartbreaking rendition of "He's Just My Bill," which he introduced, making the segue from his frenzied performance saying, Just because I'm loose doesn't mean I'm fast.
There was a whoop from the crowd and Robertson left the bandstand strutting like a drum majorette and sat down across from Julian.
Julian looked at him for a long time without speaking. There was no question, the boy was beautiful. He had seen it a week ago when he first watched him as the headlights of the on coming cars lit up his face. Now it was a deeper beauty, tuned to a higher perfection by the Mediterranean sun.
Robertson felt uneasy under Julian's gaze. That was a strange experience for him. He had lost the confidence to return the gaze and he dropped his eyes to the old wood table. But Julian said, I want you to continue to look at me as you always have.
Robertson shivered with excitement to hear Julian say that, but he was uneasy with anticipation, too.
Julian smiled and took his hand and led him out into the still night. The moon above them was silver bright. It cast a diamond light on the rocky path they trod.
Why have you wasted your life?
Wasted my life?
Squandered your resources?
I have haven't I, and now^Å
Now you have nothing but what I give you.
Now I have nothing but what you give me.
I must say your timing was perfect. You didn't let yourself crash until you had a place to land. That was me. But once I was secured^Å.Robertson, my boy, listen carefully, you do not want to be on top. You never did. You have always dreamed of being dominated by a will more powerful than yours. But with money and privilege you could never experience it. Now, however, the only power you have is your own inherent, and it is sick and frail and swoons before mine. And that is exactly what you wanted.
That is exactly what I wanted, Robertson said, as if enlightened.
Julian stopped on the road up to his mansion and Robertson did, too, and Julian faced him and took his right nipple, which had been pierced with a diamond stud, between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed it till Robertson gasped.
Being a slave, Julian said, will not always be, mon cher, diamonds in the moonlight.
Anticipating his master, Demetrius now approached with a lantern to guide them in the darkness, led them up the stone steps to the terrace, and slid open the large glass door.
Some champagne, Demetrius, and then you may go to bed.
Yes, sir, withdrawing and soon returning with a silver tray upon which, in a silver ice bucket, he brought a bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes.
Nothing else, Demetrius.
Champagne, marijuana, the two saluted each other, embraced and kissed warmly, like lovers unified by love.
Julian's palm enclosed the muscularity of Robertson's muscular butt, his fingers played with the sensitive nipple on the muscled chest, he caressed his lips with his and wet them with his tongue.
Then his finger was inside Robertson, and Robertson gasped for breath again and inadvertently let slip the word Master.
9
Heart it may not have, but Paris has a central nervous system undoubtedly. It is alive -- with the congestion of people proud of being a part of it, with a ceaseless flow of traffic, with the undulations of the Seine, the electric shimmer of the Eiffel Tower, the veins, arteries, and capillaries of the Metro and the RER. Paris is a presence that can delight your heart or oppress your spirit by leaving the sense that right around you there is a life that you want to live but do not -- cannot -- that there are people you want to be but are not.
But if you are among the chosen, then you know that the air bears a lightness and the light has an airiness; that the sky is of an eternal and profound blue except when aggrandized by coruscations of white, gray, and black clouds forming windswept marble vaults that render the indescribable dimensions of experience. Innumerable trees with their foliage cut into squares turn boulevards and paths in parks like the Luxembourg Gardens into regal alleys that make your eyes command long distances of sight and impose design on Nature's random architecture.
It was on a day of clouds enriching the Paris skies and casting a transcendental melancholy over the city that Robertson sat in a metal chair at the side of a round pond in the Tuileries looking at the arch at the end of a long path that went up to the Louvre. He was waiting for Julian who was meeting with his French publisher to discuss a new translation of his poetry and to meet the translator. They hoped he might collaborate on the translation, and that meant a higher percentage for him on each book sold. What that profit ought to be was the object of negotiation, and now Julian walked down the Champs Elysees quite happy. He was dressed for autumn, but nevertheless went without a top coat.
His suit was a three-piece, three button, charcoal grey of worsted wool twill. His shirt was a muted chocolate brown, his tie a solid burgundy. His shoes were of the same color, made of unadorned leather polished to a high shine.
As he approached the Place de la Concorde, he saw Robertson coming towards him.
Robertson! Julian smiled at the transformation. No more the slightly nervous aesthete who covered up for his embarrassment by non-stop conversation about collections and lineage, but a gorgeous, self-contained leather boy who knew how to be quiet.
They kissed on both cheeks when they met, as the French do.
Then walked, so obviously a man and his boy, to the Seine through the Tuileries and crossed over the Pont des Artes to the left bank and strolled along the Quai d'Orsay to the Boulevard Saint Michel, where they stopped in the fading sunlight on the terrace of a café for espresso.
My darling, Julian said, taking his hand.
Robertson looked at him with shining eyes and gently kissed him on the mouth.
Julian, I know what you've done for me, he said, looking down and blushing. Thank you.
I can't wait to get my cock inside you again. Finish your coffee.
Moonlight streamed in at the window and they stood naked in its glare as they looked over the Seine and several of its bridges. There was the Samaritaine, and there the two towers of Notre Dame.
The diamond stud in Robertson's pierced right nipple sparkled in the moonlight.
Part Three
10
Next day Farrington spotted them walking in the Tuileries, made his report, and waited for instructions.
He was killing time, taking a beer at Acide on rue Pavee when a belligerent muscleman with too much flesh and a blemished and hairy face said belligerently, J'n'ai vous jamais vu ici.
What's your problem? Farrington responded just as fiercely.
My prob^Ålem, the muscleman responded. I got no prob^Ålem. I give prob^Ålem.
See what happens if you try to give me a problem, Farrington said with Irish hauteur.
Je te dis Irishman. I like you, boy. I buy you drink.
Farrington did not like to be called boy. He was not a boy. Might have been a chauffeur, but even then, was not a boy. He was the Man even if he were not the Master, even if the Master were not really a Man.
Julian had an uneasy feeling about the stranger who stopped them and asked directions to the rue Champolion. There was something familiar about him, but it was hard to place until Farrington thanked them and walked off. Then it came to him. There was the same something about the way his jeans clung to his butt that reminded him of Farrington walking off with Robertson to tell him of the broken axle on his Bentley the first night they met.
But he couldn't be sure. Farrington had been in uniform, and a chauffeur's cap covered a head of unruly red hair that stuck out on the sides. This man's skull was a cleanly shaven dome. His eyebrows and lashes had also been removed. His only facial hair was a rusty handlebar mustache. He was dressed like a biker with bare muscular arms and a brown leather vest hanging open over a ripped black and orange t-shirt.
Robertson was aware of nothing but stood quietly by his master's side as his former servant examined him while Julian gave directions and noticed the intensity of the biker's gaze.
And then he knew it for sure, instinctively. It was Farrington. And there was going to be trouble. He knew he had to protect Robertson, but he didn't appreciate what real danger lay in wait for him.
When his orders came, Farrington moved swiftly. He was an ideal agent with as much invested in the cause as his principal.
It was a chilly, rainy day late in December, when the excitement of a dying year is propulsive and expectation has not yet become disappointment. The wind was blowing across the lake in the Bois de Boulogne and Farrington was bent against it, pushing through it as he walked. Just as brusquely, his thoughts were pushing themselves through his mind. Bitter, they were, and resentful, and full of triumphant fantasies. He hadn't said a word to Max in nearly ten minutes, and Max had been nursing gin from a flask, but he couldn't hold his mouth closed without the liquor, so he opened it.
You don't know it, Irish, but you are jealous.
Farrington looked at him with a look that was both threatening and imploring
You heard me, Max raised his voice, defying the defiance. You think you're angry, but really you are hurt. Poor little girl.
Farrington jerked his body and was seized with the urge to punch Max, but was held back when Max looked at him without fear and said in a flat voice, It stings, doesn't it?
Odd, he continued gaily, unconcerned with Farrington's pain or anguish -- just the opposite of what the situation is so frequently for most people. They think they're hurt, even feel themselves to be hurt, when it is only that they are angry, which they would be even without the hurt. The hurt is valuable, prized, precious, necessary -- it justifies angry feelings which would be shameful if they didn't seem to have a reason.
Now Farrington was looking at him with less anger and simply thinking that the man, as usual was drunk and even more incoherent than the French characteristically are.
Not just anger, Max added to put a garnish on his indifference, but all the feelings -- and that's how perversions are made.
And you certainly would know about that, Farrington grimaced, but Max was not fazed and continued, And for sure you're going to make a bloody mess of this present project.
And what exactly do you know about this present project? Mr. Egg-in-his-beer-smarty-pants.
Farrington could indulge such a complete insult because he held his victim's nipple, through his shirt, in the vise grip of his pinch and squeezed it as he spoke.
After a moment of inadvertent submission, Max woke up and pushed at Farrington's arm to free himself from his fingers with such success that he was held more tightly in their grip as, in some way beyond him, his hands have been cuffed behind his back, and his neck is in the grip of Farrington's left hand.
Now what is it you know about my project?
You don't know what everyone in the Marais knows.
What don't I know?
That you're not going to defeat Julian. He has the guile, charm, and sensitivity of the hero whose name he bears.
Well, ain't you sweet, Farrington shot back, mincing.
Suit yourself, Max countered with disgust.
Farrington threw him to the earth and kicked him. They were alone, there was no one in sight, and Farrington kicked him.
He would not have needed to be so violent if he had only read Stendhal and could have reminded his inebriate companion that Stendhal's Julian goes to the gallows in the end.
Farrington walked quickly from the scene and caught a cab from La Muette to the Marais, stopped there for an hour and then took another cab across a bridge of the Seine to San Michel and got out there.
He wandered along the boulevard, hardly looked at, one of a multitude.
He saw Robertson standing by the fountain in the Place San Michel by himself looking in the direction of the Seine.
You've not been eating well, have you?
Robertson was startled. Who are you? What are you talking about?
You've lost weight, Sir.
Do you know me?
Do you know me?
I cannot say that I do.
How astonishing! What strong necromancer has you in his grip? Perhaps I can take his place, return it to me, actually, since he took mine. You remember, Robertson, when you were the naughty apprentice and I was the irate master?
I don't say I do, Robertson responded.
Oh, but you will. You can't dump a ^Å
Wait, Robertson clenched his teeth and bit down on his fear. How do you know my name?
How do you not know mine?
Robertson attempted to step away from this nocturnal intruder, but Farrington, just as he did, clasped an arm around him, and pulled him to him and took him on the lips with a kiss of masterful assertion and took hold of his balls in his leather crotch and enclosed them in his hand
Robertson swooned and felt himself struck by the force of oblivion.
Farrington was installed in a fourth floor room on the quai overlooking the Seine. He guided Robertson, half-catatonic at the moment, up the worn down twisting steps of a seventeenth-century building.
Inside the room he ripped Robertson's clothes off and threw him on the bed and spoke softly, almost chanting a little phrase in his ear.
Once he had broken into Robertson's mind, he began rearranging it.
You are in Mykonos, on the terrace, in a large hammock. You feel me by your side and you like it when I slip my arm around you and bring your lips to mine, and feel my kiss, Farrington said, his lips nearly brushing Robertson's -- the only air he has to breathe, Farrington's breath. You know who I am. You see Julian's face; you hear Julian's voice. You feel Julian's cock inside you busting you open.
Robertson did. Julian, Julian, Julian, he moaned as Farrington took him further out of his mind. The stars fell through the sky like roman candles breaking apart into the separating lights of a single beam and he flew through the aether as he fell into Julian's body and swung and trembled in ecstasy -- until a sharp gasp cut through his throat and froze in his chest. He knew it wasn't Julian who had taken him now, to whom he had surrendered. He knew Farrington for who he was. He knew now what he had not known before -- just a few moments ago. He knew it was Farrington.
Farrington knew the second the realization punched Robertson in the gut. It was when he (Farrington) banged out all his anger in his come and shouted, You cocksucker now I've got you, the same phrase he had repeated innumerably to Robertson in their old secret game.
Then he began laughing, like the devil laughs, laughing astride Robertson.
I have not lost my touch have I? Farrington said, pulling his detumescence out of Robertson's nether orifice and giving it a slap as he did.
But Robertson could say nothing.
Farrington slapped him, this time across the cheek of his face.
I have not lost my touch, have I?
No, sir, Robertson said mechanically, hearing himself say it and wondering where he knew those words from.
That's the way it is now for real, not pretend this time. You stopped being Sir for good.
Robertson said nothing and Farrington slapped him.
Say thank you.
Robertson complied, but Farrington slapped him again and caused a memory jolt and Robertson remembered to say Thank you, Sir.
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