An Idol for Others (61 page)

His sight dimmed, and he closed his mind to the voice. He had the right to spare him. If their positions were reversed, he would want every moment with Tom that fate allowed, but he was older, his life had been free of tragedy, he would know that he had nothing more to hope for after Tom. Tom had barely recovered from tragedy. He was young enough to still find everything he wanted in life: success, new love, fulfillment. Let him think that he had betrayed him. It would break Tom’s heart, but time healed such wounds. Let him think he was a shit. Anger and outrage would help him over the first shock. Whatever he did, he mustn’t leave any ambiguous loose ends that might bring him running after him.

When the taxi stopped, he got out and paid and was able to deal efficiently with the people at the hotel desk. He was recognized, and they were eager to be helpful. He asked to be put on a New York plane any time after 3:00. He asked for a room and a bottle of whisky. He had little cash, but luckily he had credit cards with him. He was ushered into a room and was finally alone to cope with his crisis in any way he wished. He hoped he could keep tears at bay. He went immediately to the phone and called David.

“Listen, old pal,” he said, cutting through his exuberant greeting. “This is important. I’m about to leave for New York. There’s something wrong with me. I want you here as fast as you can get here.”

“Now wait a minute, honey–”

“I haven’t many minutes to wait We’re about to start rehearsing Tom’s play. I don’t want anything to go wrong. You can come up for a few days and take charge and then carry on from down there. The production is all set up. I’m going to ask Alice to have a power of attorney drawn up or whatever we need so you can take over for me. I want Herbie Sklar here. If you can’t get him, get Sid Linden. Either of them can direct the show beautifully. I want this play to have the best production you can possibly give it. This may be the last thing I ever ask you to do for me.”

“When do you want me there?”

“Right now,” Walter said. “Take the first plane you can get. I want you here with Tom.”

“Listen, are you telling me you’re sick?”

“Yeah. Bad. You know nothing, you understand. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Tom, but I’m not going to tell him that. All you know is that I called and told you I had to go to New York and asked you to come up and handle the production. I sounded perfectly normal and natural. Right? Stay with him, for God’s sake, David. Keep his mind on the play. Don’t let him go off the deep end. Find him a boy if you think it’ll help. He likes big cocks. Do anything, goddamn it. Just keep him on the play and keep him going. I’m counting on you sweetheart.”

“The studio may come to a grinding halt, but I’ll get there. You know that, honey.”

“I’ll get Alice going on Herbie and Sid. Don’t waste time on that till you’re here. You usually stay at the Mark Hopkins, don’t you? I’ll leave word with Tom that you’ll be there. I don’t think he’ll really take it all in till he’s talked to you. Stay with him, for God’s sake, David. Stay with him.”

“Sure, honey. Needless to say, you’ve knocked me for a loop. I mean, about you.”

“Yeah. Don’t say any more. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You don’t know anything about it, remember. Good-bye, old pal.”

“Good-bye, honey.”

Walter hung up and, not allowing himself time for self-pity, put in a call to Clara. If she had gone out for lunch, she should be home by now. Alice answered and told him Clara was there. He gave her instructions about Tom’s production before asking to be passed on to her.

She was suddenly speaking to him. “Have you found out already?”

“What about?”

“About the money.”

“What money?”

“Let’s not go on sounding like Abbott and Costello. I obtained a court order stopping any further payment of money to you until we get a few things settled. I thought that’s what you were calling about.”

“Oh. No, I haven’t heard anything.” That was a question he hadn’t even thought about Who was going to pay to have him chopped up? Certainly not Tom. “I’m not much interested in money. I’m just about to take off for New York.”

“Really? Is this the end of the romance? I told you you’d probably expect me to welcome you home with open arms. I don’t think it’s going to be quite as simple as that.”

“Let’s make it as simple as possible. The doctors here think I’ve had it, Clara. I’ve got cancer.”

There was a silence. When she spoke again, her voice had altered. Hostility had been replaced by tough defiance. “What can you expect of those quacks out there? You’d better get here as quickly as possible.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. I’m getting on a plane in an hour or two. I’ll have the airline let you know when I’m arriving. It seems I should go into a hospital right away.”

“Of course. Cousin Clarence is one of the biggest cancer men in the country. I’ll let him handle everything. Don’t worry, dearest. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

The tremor of alarm in her voice touched him more than he wanted to be touched. He gave her the local doctor’s name and telephone number. “He’s expecting somebody in New York to call him. He can tell them what they’ve found out here.”

“Good. We’d better hang up, dearest. I want to get everything organized immediately.”

“Thanks, Clarry. See you in a few hours.” He hung up and rose and went to the bureau, where whisky and ice had been left. He poured himself a stiff drink and took long swallows of it while he wandered around the room. He wondered why he had felt so rushed. There was nothing more to do except the thing he couldn’t imagine doing. What could he say to Tom that he would believe? There hadn’t been a discordant moment between them since the night with Jerry. Last night they had made love as exultantly as they had every night for months. The perfect harmony they had achieved had transfigured his life, but it didn’t make it easy for him now. He longed to find some flaw he could seize on as a convincing justification for what he had to do.

Think of Tommy, and you can do anything
, he told himself.

He replenished his drink and swallowed some of it and sat at the desk. He placed several sheets of hotel stationery in front of him and drew out his pen. “My very dear Tommy,” he wrote. His hands began to shake. The pen slipped from his fingers. He flung himself forward on the desk, and racking sobs were torn from him. He let himself go, knowing that he was beyond control, that his only hope was for his agony to wear itself out. His sobbing slowly subsided, and he was able to see himself, a sick, aging man slumped over a hotel desk wailing like a child. It wouldn’t do. Would it help to think of it as some sort of judgment? Just as he was learning to handle forbidden love, it was forbidden him? Neat but not comforting. Death was too arbitrary and meaningless; it offered no lessons. Should he have recognized love (Mark’s?) when it was first offered him? The spirit’s evolution couldn’t be forced. Magic failed. Death followed. There was no point trying to rationalize it. He pulled himself to his feet and went into the bathroom and dampened a towel and bathed his eyes. He returned to the desk and sat down with determination and finished his drink.

He picked up his pen and put a fresh sheet of stationery in front of himself and tried to think of the right words. He could face dying if only it would happen quickly. Tom’s long, lithe body would still be moving about in the world. His cock would get hard for somebody else. He wished him joy. He couldn’t bear to hurt him, but the very fact of Walter’s being alive here, there, under any circumstances, was bound to hurt Tom now. All he could offer him was to make it as easy for him as he knew how. He wrote in his bold decorative script:

My very dear Tommy,

This is an impossible letter to write. You said once that you’ve always been half prepared for me to go back to Clara. You were right to be. This has been building up in me for a long time. I’ve discovered that 30 years is too strong to break in the way I tried to do it. You know how hard I’ve tried to accept being gay. I can’t. If you find this hard to believe, considering all the happiness we’ve shared, remember that I’m a theater man. The theater is good training for secret agents too.

You’ll probably be as shocked by my quitting on the play as by everything else. I told you that if I didn’t feel up to doing a good job on it, I’d rather see it done by somebody else. That’s the way it is. I find that the conflict that’s been growing in me is making me more and more unsure of myself. Everything is being taken care of. David will be at the Mark Hopkins later this afternoon and will be expecting to hear from you. You’ve written a beautiful play. You owe it to yourself to be tough and see it through. That’s the one thing I think I have the right to ask of you.

If in the next few months I discover that I’ve made another hideous mistake, I won’t be too proud to come crawling back to you. If I do, I hope for your sake that by then you’ll be able to tell me to go to hell. I won’t ask you to forget me, but I beg you to believe in yourself and in all the good in you you’ve offered me. I can’t even ask you to forgive me. I’d rather anger made you feel that I’m unforgivable and help you kill regret. Maybe someday we’ll be able to meet with the love that will always be in my friendship for you. I’m sure you’ll agree that we mustn’t see each other or try to get in touch with one another soon. I’m sorry.

W.

He folded the two sheets hastily, unable to force himself to reread what he had written, and sealed them in an envelope. He couldn’t imagine Tommy’s believing a word of it, anymore than he would believe it if Tommy wrote such a letter to him. He hoped that he would be so lost and confused that his first instinct would be to get in touch with David as quickly as possible to find out if he could shed any light on Walter’s inexplicable behavior. He could count on David to handle him as well as anybody could.

He went to the phone and asked the switchboard if the plane reservation had been made. He asked the time. He was surprised that it was so early. Only a little after 1. He had left word for Tom to be at the office at 2. His theatrical sense of timing hadn’t failed him. He considered asking the hotel to have the letter delivered, but he knew he’d be tormented by the possibility of a slipup. He had to know the letter was there.

Only two dangers remained. He might run into Tom on the street. If he got held up at the airport, Tom might trace him and intercept him. He would use his VIP privileges to forestall him. He looked around the room and picked up the letter and the whisky.

Downstairs, he signed for the room and the whisky. He filled out a blank check on his New York bank and cashed a small amount. He wondered if what Clara had told him meant that it would bounce. No matter. He couldn’t draw another check on his account with Tommy. He was told that his ticket was waiting for him at the airport. He asked for something to carry the whisky in and was given a plastic bag. The solicitude with which he was surrounded irked him. You might suppose they thought he was about to die. He asked for a taxi and went out and got into it and gave the address of the office on Market Street. He looked around cautiously when they pulled up in front of it and told the driver to wait and made a dash for the decrepit elevator inside. The dim woman he had hired as a secretary was there. He handed her the envelope. “Tom will be here in a little while. Make sure he gets that. It’s very important. I’ve got to rush.”

He was out and back in the taxi, and they were off for the airport. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was unlikely that Tom could get at him now. He could make his mind a blank and forget everything. From here on, Clara would be taking charge. He took a long swig from the bottle.

He was met with more solicitude at the airport. Officials took him under their wing. He told them that if anybody tried to reach him before takeoff, they were to say that he was already gone. He suggested that he was being pursued by the press and wished to travel incognito. It turned out that there was an earlier plane he could board in about 20 minutes. He asked that Clara be notified of his arrival and was escorted to a deserted lounge, where he took several more swigs from his bottle. By this time he had almost forgotten what he was doing. When he boarded the plane he felt as though he were walking though a dream.

The dream continued. For a while he actually slept and dreamed of Tommy and sailing the boat over land and laughing gleefully with him about something he couldn’t quite place. He awoke in a state of agitation, staring around him, looking for him. He fell back in his seat and almost broke down again. He fought back the tears and, as soon as he could, ordered a drink. He seemed to have lost his bottle.

A stewardess came to him when they were approaching New York and told him that his wife would be waiting at Kennedy with a car. He would be the first off the plane and would be escorted to her. The transition had been made. He was now Clara’s property.

He saw her flanked by officials standing at a doorway. The officials at his side made him feel for an instant that they were both being marched off to prison. Then he held her briefly and kissed her. The Makins were together again. She was looking majestic and glamorous, a member of the elite of a world he had fled. She made him feel like an urchin who had been called to order after wallowing naughtily in the mud. They thanked the attendant officials and went down a ramp, and he saw Mike waiting at another door. They shook hands.

“It’s good to see you back, Walter,” Mike said. “We gotta have a talk sometime.”

“Sure, Mike. It seems I have to let the doctors have some fun with me first.”

“Aw, that won’t amount to nothing. You look like a million bucks.”

He and Clara settled into the back of the limousine. Mike took his place in front. “OK, Mike. Shut us in.” The panel of glass rose between them. Memory stirred.
You were alone the last time you were in this car
, he reminded himself,
so don’t get sentimental
. He was enclosed once more in the sterile, hermetic world he had created for himself. Some part of him seemed to go slack, as with a struggle ended. Perhaps that was the only meaning he would find in death: that he was no longer young or adaptable enough to follow the thrillingly perilous road Tommy had opened to him.