Monkey Suits (3 page)

“Well, honey, where are you off to?” Marcos asked Lee, while stealing glances at the bent-over Calvin Klein-wrapped butt of a hunk he’d had his eye on since that afternoon’s chat at the napkin-folding table.

“Um, home, of course.” Lee said.

“Yes, dear, but where?”

“Um, Jersey City.”

Marcos regarded his answer as a verbal fart. “Oh.” He pulled his bag over his shoulder, considered leaving to hit on the crewcut hunk, then felt a dash of sympathy that outweighed his craving.

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Lee admitted, as he tied his worn out Pumas.

“Well, c’mon. Let’s go.” Marcos was a bit excited, having managed to sneak off into a stairwell after the dinner break for a third rushed cup of coffee.

“But, I’m gonna wait for ...”

“Who dear? I’ve got my eye on that one,” he nodded at his choice. “So take your pick.”

Lee scanned the room. Brian had disappeared.

“Never mind.”

After a brief baggage search at the desk by the loading dock (“I’ve got a Monet in here!” Marcos teased the guards), the two headed up the side driveway and onto Fifth Avenue. The grand steps of the museum glowed a silvery gray in the night.

“You need to get downtown. Let’s share a cab.” Marcos raised his hand. A yellow cab stopped beside him.

“That’s okay,” Lee stuttered. “I’ll walk to the PATH.” He actually didn’t know if he had enough money to share a cab.

“Oh, then I’ll share with someone else.” Marcos waved the driver off.

“Hold it! Taxeee!” A familiar voice shouted behind them. The car again lurched to a halt. Marcos and Lee turned to see Brian and Ed running to catch their ride.

“It’s Ozzie and Hairy Ass!” Marcos hissed as they ran up.

“Watch it, girl,” Brian teased. Ed waved goodnight and hopped into the cab.

“Say,” Brian leaned to Lee. “Have you had your shots?”

“My shots?”

“You better.” Brian nudged Marcos. “’Cause this girl bites!”

“You go play house, Miss Fuck-anything-on legs!” Marcos snapped back.

Brian ignored this retort, and ducked into the passenger seat, waving blithely at Lee and Marcos. The yellow cab, with Brian and Ed in it, receded down the street.

“Don’t you mind that whore,” Marcos sniffed. “We joke around, but we’re old girlfriends. Although, I can’t understand how they stay together. Ed’s an angel and Brian is a total monster. I just don’t get it.”

“He has a certain charm,” Lee said.

“Oh, that’s right. You were ... oh, faux pas, faux pas. Do forgive me. You too are a member of the Survivors of Brian Burns 12-Step Program.”

Lee grinned sheepishly, amused that his ‘summer of love’ could be so quickly reduced to a two-month fling. He felt insignificant, like a cipher, especially after Brian’s swift departure.

“Opposites attract, girlfriend,” Marcos said.

“Are you one of those guys that calls other guys by girl’s names?”

“Not always,” Marcos huffed. “But you would definitely make a fine Loretta.” They laughed and continued strolling down Fifth Avenue. The open air, the scent of dying leaves and bus fumes took Lee a little higher than the two glasses of champagne he’d managed to sneak during dessert.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to rip those girls. I don’t wanna make enemies. I get enough freeze attitude at my day job.”

“Which is?”

“I work at the Wiz on Sixth Avenue. So naturally, I prefer to hang with fun folk in my spare time. You see, I pay homage to the benevolent gods. Bacchus, Dionysus. Pan.”

“You don’t seem like the type who’d be interested in stuff like that.”

“You’re surprised a mere cater waiter such as myself might have such lofty ideas?”

“Well, it’s not that. It’s just that they don’t seem to have ideas about anything. I mean, did you hear about them firing that guy?”

“It happens.”

“But the way they were so smooth about it. It was like, like they just made him disappear.”

“This whole line is all show biz, dear. We serve stupidly simple food in an elaborate manner.”

“It gave me a headache.”

“The cater waiter is the ultimate illusion,” Marcos sighed. “Queer posing as straight, liberal and radical posing as conservative, hedonist posing as eunuch.”

“Are you a hedonist?” Lee asked, not that he wanted Marcos to prove it to him that night.

“I enjoy my life.”

“Oh, well, I just thought I’d give you some options in case you felt like going out.” Lee didn’t want to go home. He wanted to try and forget Brian’s immediate dismissal as quickly as possible and Marcos seemed just the person to do it with.

Marcos’ face brightened. “Oh! Well, that’s a horse of a different zip code! Why don’t we hop down to my place, dump off our prison garb and make a game plan?”

The moon hung over Cleopatra’s Needle like a balloon waiting to be burst.

5
“We have to go now.”

After sharing the last of his orange juice and a dry bran muffin, Pete, who worked at F.I.T. and lived in SoHo, was suddenly in a rush to get Lee out of his apartment. They had met at Uncle Charlie’s. Marcos had kept the chat going, then benevolently excused himself, allowing Lee to dive into the first of what would be many quick rushes into one-night romance, as if he could fuck away the lingering aftertaste of Brian.

After checking his datebook, hidden in his bag under a pair of smelly black socks and a crumpled white shirt, Lee realized that he was booked to work an East 84th Street luncheon which began in less than an hour. Working sporadically for Fabulous had yet to train him in the art of being constantly prepared. It didn’t help that Marcos kept dragging him to one club after another, usually after they’d secretively guzzled a few glasses of Veuve Clicquot and were feeling a bit cocky.

“Shit. Can I use your phone?”

“I guess so.”

He called Marcos, whose machine clicked on. Lee hung up, not leaving a message. Going home and back again and then uptown would take over an hour and a half. The Jersey curse.

“Can I borrow some clothes?” Lee asked Pete, who was rolling up a jacket sleeve just so.

“Is this one of those co-dependent things?”

“No, I just need a clean shirt and a pair of socks for work.”

“Alright,” he said heading toward his closet. “But this is a funny way of making sure you’ll see me again.”

“I’ll mail them back if you prefer.”

“Here,” Pete handed him a laundry-folded white button down and a pair of socks. Lee sighed in relief as Pete betrayed a slight grin. “Think of last night when you wear it today.”

He did. Sex with Pete had been a lot like Lee’s new job; slightly glamorous, occasionally exhausting, and a bit too efficient.

An hour later, as he served the luncheon (he’d splurged on a cab and arrived fifteen minutes early), the lingering chafe of Pete’s stubble grazings and the terrific view of Central Park kept Lee distracted from the arguments between the Iraqi dress designer and the French diplomat’s son. They could not agree which country was best for a summer home, since so many were being invaded these days.

Exhausted from the day’s work, the pleasures of Pete’s hard body and the agony of Pete’s futon, he trudged up the Grove Street exit of the PATH train into the late afternoon rush and headed for home.

Lee Wyndam was a closet bridge and tunnel kid.

His neighborhood, a usually quiet residential section of downtown Jersey City, was nice enough, even better than the Manhattan areas that he’d heard were considered ’cool.’ He didn’t mind living in “the burbs.” The problem was how other people, specifically Manhattan residents, minded it.

Lee had no excuses. He hated the PATH trains, which were as messy as New York’s subways, but were slower and released ear-piercing squeaking noises when rounding the bends in the dank tunnels. His only true reason for living in New Jersey was his private sense of attack and defeat. He could escape the pressure of the city by crossing a state line under the river. He thought of himself as a soldier in a medieval battle, daily assaulting the fortress for entry, daily retreating to the outlying camp to plan a new strategy.

Although mostly Latino, some of the white residents had snagged pricey brownstones, renovating them into modern Formica-layered kitchens and expansive wainscoted dining rooms. The streets lined with squat brick tenements usually housed Puerto Rican and Dominican families, with a sprinkling of struggling artistic white kids. Lee’s studio lay tucked away on a side street, where children played in driveways and handsome men could occasionally be seen through bedroom windows painting walls in faux-marble. With a little more lawn space, the serenity of the block reminded him of his first home in Bloomington.

Lee stopped by a bodega for some bananas and orange juice. The smaller of two men watching a TV ambled over to the counter.

“Cuanto tiempo los platanos?”
he asked his co-worker.

“Cobra el maricon uno cinquenta.”

Lee paid, and the man counted the change, leaving it on the counter, despite his open palm. He thanked them in Spanish and walked toward home, dodging a trio of children on roller skates. They glared up at Lee, giddy and fearful. No, it wasn’t exactly Bloomington, but it was quieter and cheaper than any of the neighborhoods in Manhattan he’d apartment-hunted.

He turned the corner where Las Americas Funeraria stood, a solemn brick building painted white with a Kelly green awning and matching green shutters. Several people stood near the steps. Someone had died.

In his younger years, Lee would have been haunted, even frightened by the sight, but out in the open air, with friends and family chatting away as if they were at a picnic, the service had an almost perfunctory calm, a necessary tone. It served a purpose, like the small real estate office, the Catholic Church and the C-Town grocery, each at adjacent corners. Live, pray, eat, die.

Once home, he set his groceries on the kitchen counter, walked over to the bed area (the studio was much too small to have a bedroom), stripped down to his boxer shorts and carefully hung his tux in the closet. The phone machine eagerly blinked for a response. No, that could wait. Right now, he had to lie down.

He thought of the previous night’s escapade with Peter. While feeling unusually horny again, he considered masturbating. He also considered throwing away the guy’s phone number. It was a sort of test. If he really likes me, Lee thought, then he will be the one to call. Not like last time. Not like Brian.

In the year and a half he’d lived in Jersey City, only two guys had had the bravery (or desperation) to sleep over at Lee’s place, one of them Brian. Although it was always clean, well lit, and presentable, the response was always, “Isn’t that far away?” or “Why don’t you just come over to my place?”

Lee would always convenience him, whichever him it was at the time. He learned to bring a change of underwear, socks, and a toothbrush on every date, always playing the guest, always giving the upper hand. On nights when sex didn’t turn out, clipped on a doorstep by a goodnight kiss, he left feeling quietly foolish, his extra clothes sitting in his bag like the remnants of a thwarted vacation.

Brian was different. He had liked visiting, not just because it was Lee’s place. It seemed Brian had liked to fuck someplace different every time. Lee glanced around the small studio. There on the window sill. There on the chair. Around the corner in the tub. In the kitchen. The place was an invisible monument to Brian’s gymnastic versatility. Why couldn’t anyone else be as much fun?