An Idol for Others (45 page)

Walter laughed. “I doubt if you ever do.”

“Why not?”

“Lots of reasons. For one thing, I’m old enough to be your father.”

“You’d have had to be awfully young when you had me. I’ll bet there’s less than ten years’ difference between us.”

“I ought to take you up on that. I’m 38.”

“I don’t believe it. You can’t be. I’ve never fallen for an older man.”

Walter touched his arm kindly and felt his slightness under his jacket. He was a dreadful boy, yet there was something appealing about him. Walter hadn’t the slightest twinge of sexual interest in him, but he felt a parental urge to protect him from his dubious playmates. “If you’ve fallen for me, why do you want me to go to any orgy with you? I should think you’d want us to go somewhere alone.”

“You haven’t asked me.”

“That’s true. What’s your name, Kenny?”

The boy smiled slyly. “I don’t usually give it in these bars. It’s not Kenny. My real name’s Jerry, for Geraldine.”

Walter knew him instantly. He was looking at Fay as a young girl. “And Kenny is for Kennicutt?” he asked with a fluttering around his heart.

The boy looked startled. “You’re a mind reader or a seer or whatever they’re called. How did you know?”

“I knew you when you were a little boy. You look very like your mother. Your parents are friends of mine.”

“Uh-oh.” Alarm replaced amazement in his eyes; then the sly smile returned. “Well, I guess neither of us is apt to tell anybody where we met. Why don’t my parents have more friends like you? Their baby daughter might stay home more often.”

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school, or something?”

“Geraldine was a tiny bit naughty at school. She got caught being fucked by one of the gardeners. Twenty-five, built, and dreamy, with a cock like this.” He measured off a generous length of bar. “Even so, he wasn’t half as gorgeous as you. Are you going to take me away from all this? I’m your slave for life.”

“I have to go.” Every word the boy said made Walter wince. His son was appalling. Anger, directed at the Kennicutts, stirred him. Why had Fay let this happen? He still felt the boy’s appeal in spite of so much that repelled him. Somebody should tell him that he could be queer without making a spectacle of himself. He put his money on the bar beside his empty glass and ran an arm across the boy’s back, feeling its fragility, a vulnerability that pierced him with tenderness. “I want to talk to you, Jerry. You’re living at home? I’ll call you in the next day or so. I’m Walter Makin.”

“Walter Makin! But you’re … What are
you
doing here? You’ve just been nominated Father of the Year. My mother was talking about it the other day.”

“Yeah, well, there’re all kinds of fathers. I’d like us to get to know each other.”

“We can’t help that if you take me where I want to go.”

A hand moved over Walter’s crotch again. Walter looked at the boy expressionlessly. “I think I’ll have a word or two to say to you about groping people in public.”

“What do you expect? A girl can’t keep her hands off you. I think it’s getting a little bit hard. Why don’t you take me home with you now?”

“Because I’m Father of the Year. Fathers don’t generally go to bed with their children. If I find I can make any sense with you, I may make an exception. We’ll see.”

“You’re the most glamorous father I’ve ever seen. It gives me goose bumps. You really will call?”

“I’ll call.”

“I’ll be glued to the telephone. You’re the most utterly thrilling man in the world.”

“Have a nice orgy.” Walter gave the boy’s back a pat and made his way through clutching hands and voices shrill with protest at his departure.

He walked home feeling strangely disturbed. The boy, Kenny, had interested him only mildly. The minute he had known he was Jerry, all sorts of unfamiliar emotions had begun to clamor for attention. Blood responding to blood? A sense of responsibility for having brought this misguided kid into the world? Neither would explain the sexual element that had intruded undeniably on his consciousness. Jerry perversely excited him. He wanted to talk to him and try to straighten him out, but he also wanted to hold him. If Jerry persisted in making passes at him, he knew he would probably go to bed with his son. The hell with incest.

That he had a son old enough to offer himself as a bed partner made him acutely aware of the passage of years. He wasn’t yet 40, and as far as he could see, the big adventures of life were all behind him. At Jerry’s age, he had been so desperately eager to get started. He wondered if he hadn’t perhaps rushed it a bit.

Walter swept across the lobby of the Gladwyn, carrying his jacket over his arm, and went directly to the elevators without bothering to have himself announced. Tom knew he was coming. The room number was seared into his brain. Tom. Tom Jennings. Tommy. The love of his life? Unlikely, but he intended to give it a whirl.

Going up in the elevator, he tried to gauge what he was feeling in comparison to the way it had been with Mark. It was hard to bridge the gap of so many years, but he remembered that he had tried to think of Mark as a sensual rather than emotional experience. Tom had none of Mark’s physical splendor to blind him to what was taking place in himself, although he found him very sexy. If he understood Tom correctly, he had refused to go to bed with him because he felt there might be something much more important at stake. Clever Tom. It had seemed to grow more important with every hour they had been apart.

He knew that his sense of lost time was making him impatient. The age difference between them wasn’t enormous, but if he were thinking in terms of a lifetime, 50 was a bit late to start. So much had happened to him so early that he felt awfully old to be given a second chance. Perhaps it had already slipped past him in any case. In the last couple of hours, Tom might have fought free of the spell they had instantly cast on each other. Walter too might see Tom with different eyes. Their second meeting might prove to be an anticlimax, an embarrassment to both of them. He was prepared for anything.

The elevator door opened, and he strode down a corridor, barely able to take in the numbers on the doors. His heart was beating rapidly. His excitement was making his senses unreliable. The number he was seeking leaped out at him. He stopped and pressed the bell. He heard it within as if it were at a great distance. He wondered if he would be able to speak at all. He had been struck deaf, dumb, and blind. The door opened, and Tom was a shape in front of him. His eyes were shining.

As Walter looked into them, their expression deepened and filled with welcome. There was something naked and exposed in them that affected Walter’s joints so that he didn’t trust himself to move.

“Aren’t you going to come in?” Tom asked in his deep, gentle voice.

“Thanks.” Walter knew he could have him now without meeting any resistance, but it was impossible to reach out for him while the door was open. When it was closed, they were somehow separated by the room. He was vaguely aware of suitcases standing about the floor.

“They said it was urgent,” Tom said.

Walter was beginning to be able to see him whole. He was wearing jeans and a tight, thin knitted jersey that revealed the supple angularity of his body. He had good shoulders and slim hips without any heavy muscular accents. It was a keen, swift body. “Urgent? Yes, it was. It is–to me,” he said.

“Yes. I can see. You’ve changed. You’re more stunning than ever.”

“Don’t talk to me about that My driver, my secretary–they’re all nuts about you.”

Tom grinned. “It must be some sort of peculiar disease that’s going around.”

“Thinking about you has turned me into a blithering idiot. I haven’t the slightest idea what I’ve said to anybody for the last two hours.”

“My thoughts haven’t been exactly lucid.”

Walter took a few steps toward him and felt a great glow of triumph when he didn’t retreat. “I can’t let you go. I know we have an awful lot to talk about. If we’re going to make sense, I suppose we should try to keep sex out of it. At least, I’ll try. Hadn’t we better sit down?”

Tom stepped back and dropped onto the bed. Walter disposed of his jacket over the back of a chair and sat facing him. Their eyes met and delved into each other. Walter felt light flooding him. It was going to be good. He felt complete just being with him.

A little grin, shy, almost apologetic, played around Tom’s mouth. “You’ve got it bad, Mr. Makin,” he said, each word carrying a teasing lilt of joy. He found it incredible that Walter Makin should be in a blaze of passion for him. The highly theatrical manner that had given an air of make-believe to everything Walter had said in the car had been burned away. The passion remained. With luck he could make Walter Makin his. “When I left you, I knew what I was doing, but God–when I got your message, I was over the moon. I didn’t know why you wanted to see me. I still don’t. It doesn’t matter so long as you’re here.”

“That’s all I wanted–just to be here.” His eyes were drawn to the smooth hollow where his collarbones met. He wanted to rest his mouth there forever. He raised his eyes to Tom’s again. “Where to begin? I think I’m going to want to be part of your life. For that to make sense, I’d have to tell you a lot about Clara, and we haven’t got time. Let’s say she’s a phenomenon that has nothing to do with the rest of my life. That sounds like nonsense, but it’s true. It’s been a good marriage in lots of ways, but … that’s all. But I’m talking about something big, not picking up guys in bars. You say you’re gay and I’m straight–with fringes. Do you still believe that?”

“From what I’ve heard, maybe that’s what you want to believe. That’s good enough for me. I talked about being in love with you, but … oh, hell, Walter, your life has no room for a man, and mine–mine’s a great void waiting to be filled by someone I can love. I thought I’d never find anybody, but now I know different. That’s what I want to hang on to.”

“I want you to hang on to me.” His eyes dropped to lightly muscled arms, and he wanted to be held by them. He felt Tom’s frank, searching gray-green gaze on him, and he met it with all the longing that was in him. “What can I do to convince you? Believe me, Tommy, in my business I could have had an attractive guy every day of the week for the last 20 years if that’s what I wanted. You’re something else. Everything about you delights me–just being near you, everything.” His eyes fixed on long-fingered hands spread out on thighs, thumbs pointing in toward the substantial bulge of crotch. Tom’s grip on his imagination, emotions, thoughts, desires seemed to broaden and strengthen. He lifted his eyes and caught a slight frown crossing Tom’s brow. “Why shouldn’t we be in bed together, Tommy?” Walter asked, not insistently but for information.

The frown became perplexed, but the deep-set eyes remained direct and affectionate. “I told you in the car, if I go to bed with you, it’ll just make it harder to leave you, but that’s not all of it. I’m shy with you about sex. I’m bound to be a lousy lover. I’ve had no real experience. I was faithful to one guy for 15 years, and sex was never our trump card. I know you’re sensational in bed. I’ve heard all about it. If we were going to live together, I’d learn fast enough, but not like this, not here, not a quick roll in the hay and see you next week.”

“No, not that at all. I want to make love to you, Tommy. It’s as simple as that I don’t want a demon lover. I want you. We don’t need bed to prove anything. We already know–”

The telephone rang. The shattering of the intense communion between them was like some vital organ being severed. Walter took a deep breath and watched the movements of the rangy body as Tom stood and went to the head of the bed. He looked more powerful from behind. There was a spring of power in the well-rounded buttocks. He listened to the deep voice dealing courteously with whoever was at the other end of the line.

“Yes, I’m sorry. Something came up … Of course … I understand. I’ll pay for another night … I’m not sure. I’ll let you know later.”

A crucial moment was behind them. Tom was no longer in a hurry. He hung up and turned and lifted his arms from his sides, his hands open, his tight clothes molding his body, poised as if inviting an embrace. Walter gathered himself together to spring to meet him. but the arms extended into a stretch, the hands closed into fists, he grimaced and uttered a little grunt and dropped his hands back to his sides. The milestones of Walter’s life were apparently to be marked by young men stretching. He thought of the dramatic poetry in Mark’s body. Tom stretched in a straightforward easing of tension. He wasn’t being seduced by tricks of physique.

“God, how I long to cling to you,” Tom said with a hint of playfulness. “Or do I mean cleave? Yes. That has a nice ecclesiastical sound. How I long to cleave unto thee, O my husband, wife, master, mate. Do you grasp the dimensions of the problem?” A low roll of laughter broke from him; and he returned to the place on the bed where he had been sitting before, which was the closest place in the room to Walter’s chair. Walter was aware of it and knew that he couldn’t have borne it if he had sat anywhere else. Their feet almost touched.

Walter leaned back and looked for a suspenseful moment at Tom. He was beyond caring whether any of this was real. He was prepared to pretend that it was, say words that might be true, follow it wherever it led. He was discovering endless unexpected attractions in the face that confronted him attentively. It was a face of extraordinary character and appeal.

Tom watched the imp take possession of Walter’s face, the lips curl, the eyes slant upward. He shivered with delight and desire. Walter had the fascination of originality. Tom never knew what he was going to say or do. He wanted them to be naked together so he could see if the things he had been told about Walter were true. He wanted to feel the magnificent body wanting him. He wanted to be seized and used and stripped to the soul. That he could fall in love with him threatened disaster, but he was past his initial panic. He was playing for high stakes, with little chance of winning; but he felt it essential for his own survival to play it out to the end. He grinned in response to rich laughter. “What’re you thinking?”