Intersections

When he was gone I wondered at what I had done.

I had invited him back to my place after we left Benny's. What else could I do? Let him drive through a maze of drunks back to the Hamptons, on New Years Eve, on a motorcycle?

Him on a motorcycle! I'd like to see that!

Why do you dress that way? I said, pouring champagne for us once we were back at my place.

You don't like it?

I didn't say that.

So you do like it.

Sure, I said, afraid I might have touched a nerve and trying to appease him.

Sure, I said.

What do you like about it?

I don't know why he wouldn't let up, why he kept dragging me through this conversation.

Why do I like it?

Yeah, he said stretching. His bare chest arched; a model of muscularity, a perfect form you can't help looking at.

You fishing for compliments? I said at the last minute.

Yes, he said, you got any? His eyes shone. His rich lips were full of delight. He winked. Tell me what you like about me.

I like that you keep yourself fit, I said.

xv

Paul and I went skiing on the thirty-first. It was after four when we got home. The light was beginning to fall on a day that had seemed to be engulfed in a haze of gray.

Where's Mike, Paul said when he saw Alec arranging champagne glasses in the pantry.

He's in the city for the weekend, Alec said with a wink that suggested he knew Paul would understand something that could be left unsaid.

We went into the kitchen and Molly made us each a sweet and lemony rum grog.

We soaped each other in the shower and slowly slid soapy bodies against each other as we writhed under the delicate warm spray and dazzled each other with kisses.

xvi

It was not a costume anymore. I had begun to dress regularly in tight jeans, boots, and a leather jacket. I was in better shape than I'd been in for years. I was going to the gym. I had gotten rid of the gut and the side handles that were beginning to form after I'd gotten lazy. I started to shave my chest and my legs. Mark did, and I liked how it looked on him. So one morning I tried it. I could not believe I was doing it. But later on, when Mark saw me at the pool, his eyes popped and I knew I liked it.

It was worth it.

Yes, I had gotten lazy. I had given up. I did not know it when it was happening. Or did I?

I had stopped caring about myself. To be able to do that, I thought it was a virtue. I felt it was. I had lost myself, surrendered myself to the work I did. I got resigned to it. I did not even look for my heart. I did not want to find it. It would have been painful to look at it. I had lost my hold on a whole lot of things. I can't even really say what they were. It didn't matter. It's a feeling. But I know it made me brutal. It put me on edge. But that's how I was supposed to be, on edge, tense, taut, ready for action, quick to follow orders.

A feeling. Feelings. I shudder. I'm not sure I know how to respond to feelings, how to think about them, you could say.

I feel something like open spaces inside me, day-dreaminess, floating white wisps of clouds in soft and velvet azure.

He had touched the grief center of my brain. Without reason, I began to cry at nothing.

And that made me angry.

The energy of anger burned inside me. I felt like a volcano.

But I had the discipline. I took that charge and turned it right around and began a daily workout routine. It kept me in the gym from six until ten-thirty every morning. After showering, I took a swim, had lunch in the Healthy Café down the street and came back to the gym where I worked now: front desk receptionist until nine.

It was hard for the guys in the precinct house to believe. Hell, I could not believe it, either, but one morning I walked into Personnel and gave notice.

I was seeing Mike a least once a week, and we'd e-mail each other little love notes several times a day. I was never so aroused in my life.

Like everything else, I held it in check. That arousal. But that does not mean it went away.

I told Mike about it.

He took me in his arms and told me he was proud of me. He said discipline looked good on me. He said it was like a chiseled steel armor highlighting the muscular contours of my body.

It had been a week since the first time he kissed me. I mean really kissed me.

He visited me late afternoon in the gym.

He winked at me when he came in. I knew he liked how I looked in my gym uniform, black spandex boxer briefs, a black, tight-fitting square-top tank, little black socks and black leather athletic shoes.

Hey, babe, he said taking my hand. You are hot all in black.

It gets me hot when you talk like that, I said.

It's about time you became aware of that.

What can I say? I said with a smirk. I'm slow.

But getting faster, he said with a wink. You look great.

So do you, I heard myself say. He did. And it excited me. Saying it, I mean.

He was dressed as I had never seen him before, in a slim, velvety gray Armani suit, three button jacket over a jet black collarless cotton shirt and black suede boots. All very willowy and flowing. There was a burgundy handkerchief spilling from within his vest-pocket.

What time you get off work, babe? he said in a gangster voice, perching on the edge of my ebony receptionist's desk.

Fifteen minutes, I said.

But Marvin was early. He did not mind starting a couple of minutes early.

Just let me get my water bottle, he said.

I could tell by the way he looked at Mike that he knew something was up.

Don't get out of that. Just pull your jeans and sweater on over it, Mark said, accompanying me into the locker room where I was going to change.

I never had raw fish before, but it was ok, and the restaurant was entrancing. The colors were quiet. The spectrum went from the soft pink of the table cloths and napkins to the soft umber of the walls and the burnished but unpolished exposed wood beams.

Afterwards, Mike gave me a helmet. I got on the back of his bike and we were off in a roar.

You like me like this? he said standing dressed the way I first saw him in just a pair of black leather shorts, thigh high, thigh hugging shiny black boots. His chest was bare and held proudly as he showed off his pierced nipples, each with a small silver ring circling through it.

I had stripped down to my little black uniform.

Yeah, I do, I admitted. I guess it was about time.

Thought about it for you?

Yeah, I said.

Come here, he said, wagging a finger at me and smiling.

Now take off your shirt, he said.

I complied, and he took hold of me by the nipples and gazed quietly into my eyes.

I let out a breath that it felt like I'd been holding for ever.

And then he did it. He pressed his lean muscular steely chest against mine and pressed his mouth to mine and made me yield I don't know how because without my awareness of it happening, I was devouring his kisses, swimming in his breath, giving myself to him without the power, the will, or the desire not to.

I felt myself becoming his mirror image.

I never knew how hungry I was for him until I had him in my mouth, kneeling before him, worshiping his power, my own body the perfection of steel.

I watched him sleep and kissed his lowered eye lids. I have never felt so deeply protective towards any other individual, not even in the days when I was risking my life for strangers.

I began to ache for him, even when I was with him. I felt like I had been ripped open and he had invaded me and occupied me. Only he had not penetrated deep enough yet.

He opened his eyes in the darkness, the almost darkness, a darkness visible in the illumination of one wax candle on the mantle.

What are you doing? he asked smiling.

Looking at you, I said.

You can't take your eyes off me, he said.

No, I said, caught between shame and pride.

The evening after my nipples were pierced, I suffered a disturbance of memory.

We were walking east through Central Park, away from the basement storefront where the piercing was done and the rings drawn through my newly pricked nipples. I had the weird sense it was morning. I was waiting outside the Parc Butte-Chaumont in Paris. I was eighteen and on a two week leave from the Navy. I was in the midst of being stood up. The boy I had met on the metro the night before, whom I had agreed to meet here across from the grand brick Mairie in a café was not showing up. I never could figure out why. I had been eager in a youthful way to get to know him.

But I was not there either. I was here in Central Park, in New York City, with Mike. I was in great physical shape. I was working in a great gym. I was seeing Mike. I was walking next to him; our shoulders touched as we walked. I had had my nipples pierced.

For a moment, that was all I could think about. It was a string of words turning in my head like a Moebius strip, I got my nipples pierced.

I turned to look at Mike. He smiled and winked at me.

xvii

Alec knocked on the door to tell us that Paul's mother wanted us down at nine and we were all to be at table at nine-thirty.

Paul was in a slinky cat suit like the one Michelle Pfeifer wore in one of the Batman movies. I only saw the poster, not the movie. It was impossible to keep my hands off him. I was dressed like an intellectual in oxford loafers, tweedy trousers, a good leather belt, a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, a turquoise shirt with a brown tie loosely knotted. I smoked a pipe. But there was some nice shake instead of shag in its bowl.

Just wait, Paul said, by the end of the night I'm gonna corrupt the hell out of you.

Why don't you start now? I said.

Because we must put in an appearance and bring excitement and energy to my mother's annual New Years Eve gathering.

You say that with great dignity, I said.

I mean it, he said with a spirit of determination.

But his manner was pure easiness. Nothing required effort. He was charming with everyone. He was equally forthcoming and receptive throughout dinner and afterwards. He listened to everyone who spoke to him. He spoke to everyone, attaching each interlocutor's gaze to his, with real involvement.

Me he pulled aside at midnight. Half hidden behind heavy velvet drapery, we stood, with our champagne glasses ready, looking out the window at the moon reflected as a long silver stripe, hardly rippling, on the lake.

The big grandfather clock in its intricately wrought mahogany case rang out in a resounding base tintinnabulation, heralding the exit of what we call the old year and in tones that had neither joys nor sorrows resonant in them. Only the purity of musical noise heralded also the entrance of the new year.

Into this open possibility I place my love, he said touching my glass with his. We drank. Our lips still were cold and wet from the champagne. We touched them, brought them together, slowly opened our mouths to each other, and kissed.

It was one in the afternoon when I opened my eyes. Paul was sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard reading Anna Karenina.

How long have you been up? I asked.

Not long, he said. I was waiting for you, but I did not want to wake you.

The sky above us, that section of it framed by the skylight above our bed was gray and moist, an undifferentiated thickness of incipient snow.

After showering together and dressing, we went downstairs. Paul's father was crouching by a fireplace in the library, turning the logs with a fire iron.

We exchanged good mornings and Paul's father pulled a bell rope by the side of one of the floor to ceiling bookcases.

I noticed it with amazement, but said nothing.

In a few minutes, Alec entered with a pot of coffee, little squares of dark chocolate, and croissants.

Outside a blizzard was beginning. Now, it was only centripetal swirls of snow, a congestion of the atmosphere, a harbinger.

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