Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (46 page)

“How can I promise that? I’d have to promise not to see you again when he’s back.”

“I’m not worried about that. Just remember, whatever happens, you’ve made my life complete. You’ve given me everything. Don’t ever think you could have given me more. This might not seem to make much sense to you now, but you’ll understand.”

“I wish you wouldn’t always talk in riddles.” His eyes followed the curve of the boy’s mouth. He could feel his hard sex against him. He knew from the weight of his own that he would soon be ready to make love to him again, but he wanted to postpone another combat of their bodies until they had said things to each other that might take them a step toward a future he was trying to imagine and shape. He longed to bring a light to Jeff’s eyes and see them shine with youth and happiness. That was what this was really all about—leading him out of the shadow of despair—his mind committed to it as well as his body. “We’ve got to talk about simple things, like tomorrow and the next day,” he said. “One day, you’re going to fall in love with somebody your own age. That’s simple enough. Until you do, we’re here, Peter and I, loving you. You know Peter doesn’t want you, thank God, but I do. We’ve got all night to find out what we want from each other. Almost anything’s possible, except as you say, to let anything come between me and Peter. I know what I want most of all. I want to help you to be happy.”

A smile still hovered around Jeff’s lips. “I don’t think I want to be happy, not the way people usually seem to mean. I can’t imagine settling down the way you’re supposed to, the way you and Peter have. I’m not good enough. I was with Dimitri this evening. I made him fuck me. It was the first time he’d ever done it with anybody.”

Charlie stared at the nearly expressionless face, trying to absorb the words. His mind tried to reject them and then he was frantically disentangling himself from Jeff as if he were lying in a bed of glowing coals. He struggled up and flung himself headlong across the room to put space between them. Without knowing what he was doing, he retrieved his sarong and fastened it around him. There was a roaring in his ears. He bent over the desk and pounded on it with his fist. “You little shit,” he shouted. “Haven’t you understood anything? You’ve torn the guts out of me. I was ready to do anything for you. You talk about worship and you—you——” He choked on tears of rage.

“I had to know,” Jeff said with limpid clarity. “If he hadn’t been able to do anything for me, I would’ve known I was all right. His cock is smaller than mine, but it was thrilling all the same. Nothing like you, of course, but he was a man exercising his masculinity in me. Because I worship you, I want to give myself to every beautiful man I find and discover the little bit of you that’s in him. I’d fill the world with a rage of male love. I know it’s impossible. I know I’d make a mess of myself, but that wouldn’t stop me. People go to church and worship their gods with hope and prayer, but when they leave they go on with their little mortal lives. You and Peter are my temple. You could never be my daily lot in life. Please remember, always. You’ve given me everything I could ever want or hope for.”

“Get out. Go,” Charlie said dully while the pain of saying it ate into him until his legs would no longer hold him. He dropped into the chair at the desk and sat very straight with his fists clenched in front of him. The hurt in him was a sickness that unhinged his mind and paralyzed his senses. Why had he thought he could allow the caution of a lifetime to go unheeded? He wanted to tear the house apart. He wanted to beat Jeff. He had to keep himself very still to stave off violence.

The flame Jeff had brought leaping up in him had seemed a precious gift of life; he had somehow convinced himself that it would cripple him to stamp it out. He would cultivate detachment once again; if he was to preserve himself for the long haul of the future, he must maintain an even keel, keep all fires banked.

He had never considered jeopardizing his life with Peter. His thoughts had flown around the possibility of accommodations without having had time to come to grips with the practical problems involved. Peter would be back tomorrow. He could count on Peter. He thought of Martha last night and what had taken place in the hotel room this morning. Peter was his. He would be back, He had promised.

Charlie’s ears had been deaf to Jeff’s movements in the room and he was startled by the proximity of his voice when he spoke.

“I knew you wouldn’t want me again when I told you,” he said. “That’s the way it should be.”

Charlie lifted his head, his expression neutral. Jeff was dressed and stood beside the desk. His long dark hair fell softly across his brow. His head had never been more beautiful. “You’re right, of course,” Charlie agreed with cool reserve.

“All the same, I hope you don’t hate me. I’ve lived in my mind for too long. When I finally began doing things, nothing seemed to fit with what I expected. I’ve got to go a long way away where I won’t be at odds with life any more.”

Something in his voice sharpened Charlie’s attention. “What are you saying now?”

“Oh.” He shrugged and his voice became matter-of-fact. “Harvard’s pretty far away, I guess.”

Charlie was suddenly on his feet. He stepped out from behind the desk, but stopped short of touching the boy. “Stay, for God’s sake,” he begged, feeling acutely that it was vital to keep him here. “Stay for tonight anyway. Let me try to satisfy you at least once. I know I haven’t yet. It might be important for both of us.”

“I told you I was insatiable. Especially with you. Do you want me still? Do you want me as much as before? Do you want me as much as I want you?”

“You know I do, goddamn it.”

Jeff stepped quickly to him and took him in his arms possessively and kissed his mouth with a fierceness that threatened to shatter Charlie’s barely reintegrated control. His hands dropped to the sarong and pulled it away again and moved over the flesh that obsessed him. He drew his head back. His eyes blazed briefly into Charlie’s. “There. For once. The way it should be. Man to man and nobody else counting.” He released Charlie and backed away from him, his eyes on his body. “It happens so quickly. I’ll remember you forever like that. I mustn’t topple that tower.” He uttered laughter that threatened to end in a sob. When he lifted his eyes, they were flooded with his unbearable longing. “Good-bye, Apollo. Good-bye, my lover,” he said softly. He turned and moved quickly to the door and unlocked it and was gone without looking back.

He heard Charlie call his name as he hurried across a room and downstairs and out the front door. Tears slid silently down his cheeks. He dashed them from his eyes so that he could see in the dark and set off at a rapid pace for his next rendezvous. He had known since noon that it awaited him. Without the day with Charlie, he would have gone to it in blind despair. Now he was buoyed by a sense of victory. He had said everything necessary so that Charlie would feel no guilt. When he heard, he would surely know that he had come as close to saving him as anybody could. When Mike heard, he would know the truth. Perhaps it would touch him at last. Perhaps he would understand what he had meant when he said that he loved him more than life. He dashed tears from his eyes again and reminded himself that he would soon be free.

He crossed the quiet port. People waved from a table and he waved back without seeing who they were. He took one of the main stepped streets that led up through the town. He was panting when he reached the upper rim of the amphitheater. The road dipped over a crest and led off on a level between walls toward open country. He passed through a sort of suburb, well back from the sea and high above it. He was breathing easily again as he entered the only bit of pastoral landscape the island offered. Land sloped gently away on both sides of him. There were a few farms here, some fields where grain had been harvested, almond and olive groves. It was one of Jeff’s favorite places, time-haunted, Bibilical in its rustic simplicity, Pan land. He had always felt close to the gods here. The night was vast and luminous around him. He felt totally alone on earth, unfettered by ties to any human creature. Thoughts of Mike could no longer hurt him. There was only a riot of pagan dedication in him.

He turned off the rough road into an even rougher lane, under trees, that dipped down toward a house and rose again and petered out among great boulders. Jeff picked his way over them, jumping from pinnacle to pinnacle, climbing the back of a high cliff face that dropped sheer to the sea. He knew his way.

He came out on a fairly even plateau of rock hanging over the huge panorama of westering sea. The moon was sinking into it. He stood and caught his breath after his exertions and then ventured closer to the edge. When he was a few feet from it, a prickling in his legs and all down his spine stopped him. It must have been like this that the ancients imagined the edge of the universe—an abrupt clean drop into space. He backed away until he felt safe and took all his clothes off and arranged them in a neat pile. It was important that it should look as if he had planned everything carefully and rationally.

He stood with his feet apart and lifted his arms straight out from his body so that he could feel the soft night air on every pore. Standing naked under the sky stirred him. He ran his hands over his body and brought them to rest on his buttocks. He arched his spine backward and stretched all of himself while he recaptured the sensations of being taken by Charlie. His fingers strayed caressingly and his hips swayed as his sex lifted into erection. His hand moved forward and stroked it slowly. This was a familiar ritual. He had consecrated the place with his sperm long ago.

Mental images of the colossal phallus that was part of his experience were more potent than anything he had ever imagined. He could feel it inside him. He threw his head back and stretched his mouth wide to receive it. It multiplied until it seemed to press on every part of his body, a mighty web of hard flesh that held his mind spellbound. He had been loved by Apollo. He had aroused the jealousy of the gods. The discus had been arrested and reversed in its course. He could sense it hurtling toward him.

The movement of his hand accelerated. His body writhed and leaped and drifted in an orgiastic dance of self-hypnosis. He wasn’t mindful of his footing, he knew he hadn’t far to go. His loins were congested with the ultimate experience that his being yearned for. His sex swelled in his hand until it felt as if it would burst.

At the first huge jet of his orgasm, he sprang forward, his knees buckled and his body was convulsed as he hurtled out into space, his legs flailing, his mind reeling with astonishment and ecstasy, until gravity reached out for him and he plunged.

Charlie awoke early from a restless night feeling as if he had been involved in some catastrophe. He wasn’t quite sure he had survived it. Guilt, apprehension, and exhaustion formed a knot in him and blurred his thoughts. He had slept again in Peter’s room because guilt kept him from the bed they shared.

And on the off-chance that Jeff might come back? Yes, he had been able to sleep only after he had talked himself out of hoping that he might. Jeff had understood better than he that they had had all that time permitted them, but he was totally unpredictable. Given the opportunity, he might offer himself again in the days to come. Charlie would have to take care to avoid seeing him alone.

His head cleared as he went through his morning routine. Underlying the guilt and apprehension, sharpened perhaps by exhaustion, he became aware of an odd sense of anticipation in himself. Of what? Of life itself? He was prepared for the unexpected in a way he hadn’t been for years. He collected a spartan breakfast tray from Kyria Tula and took it up to his studio. A glance around him told him that his mood alienated him from his work. The highly disciplined, intellectual cold-bloodedness of it made him want to let loose and fling paint about, get his hands in it and throw away the rules. He finished his coffee hastily and got out a virgin canvas and went to work, the final result he wanted to achieve for once eluding him. When he stepped back to survey his progress, he laughed out loud at what he was doing. Let his public make what they would of it. He felt reckless and inspired. Perhaps he was entering a new Period. This was the area in which to consolidate his new sense of liberation, not with treacherous young lovers. He couldn’t wait to show Peter.

Thoughts of Peter and Jeff hovered on the edges of his concentration. Peter tonight. Feeling it as a constraint, he pulled off his sarong and tossed it aside. This was the way to work, naked, his whole body engaged. He might throw in a few touches with his cock. He laughed out loud again while he worked. Jeff. Of course he wouldn’t avoid him. He loved him, was in love with him in a way he could explain to Peter. He was too young to have deserved last night’s fury. Let him fall into bed with every man in sight. He’d be back, his great eyes yearning. Perhaps then he could give him peace.

He was absent-minded during the midday break with the family. His work was exciting him, as well as other things. When he returned to his studio, he was tempted to masturbate for the first time in more than twenty years; Jeff had accustomed the monumental phallus to constant attention. It felt very much in the way, but he made himself wait. Peter was already en route by now.

He went down to meet the boat earlier than necessary, having told Martha that he wanted to go alone, and was pleased to run into George Leighton as he strolled toward the landing area. They settled down at a café near where the boat tied up and ordered coffee. Charlie noticed that there wasn’t a trace of the alcoholic fumbling that had been characteristic of him lately. He looked cheerful and relaxed. What had taken place with Jeff added warmth to his affection for George. There was the bond of shared love.

“Peter’s due back, is he?” George asked when the coffee had been served.

“Yes,” Charlie said firmly to still any doubt he might have.

“I came along to see if Costa’s aboard.”

“You know Peter. He wouldn’t come back until he succeeded.” He was drawing on the reserve of confidence he had stored up in himself. Something might turn up involving Costa that would delay him. If he had sent a wire, it wouldn’t arrive till tomorrow.