The Whole World Over (7 page)

The first week of October—the week between his first and second
meetings with Gordie—had been agony undistilled, bliss transcendent.
Every night, in vain, Walter had hoped that Gordie and what's-his-name
would return to the restaurant so that he could assess the surely obvious
cracks in their conjugal veneer. Finally, having tucked his homework in
a new manila folder, having changed his clothes twice, Walter walked to
Union Square. The sky was a moody rush of lavender clouds, reflecting
the state of his nerves.
Voolishness, voolishness, voolishness,
he heard
Granna say in her small but confident voice with that shameless Wagnerian
accent.

Nothing is going to happen, you idiot: that from Walter himself.

But all it took was the onset of the storm. They had been at their
places on either side of the desk (and yes, he had brought T.B. along this
time; the dog lay firmly ensconced in a sofa cushion) when the first
crack of thunder sounded and the first flash of lightning lit the room like
an opalescent strobe. A wind, out of nowhere, lashed at the sycamores
in the park. The branches thrashed frantically, as if the trees were
attempting to flee, and their leaves tore away in swarms. A spectacle
of nature the two men had certainly seen before, but it drew them to
the window like children. "Oh!" Walter cried out when a large limb
cracked off and fell to the ground. Gordie turned toward him, and they
stared at each other, neither laughing nor solemn, mutually strange in
that strange green light. Puzzled, perhaps, but then they were in each
other's arms—their mouths fervently joined—and then on that welcoming
couch (rudely displacing The Bruce) and then on that parking lot of
an oriental rug.

Gordie's skin was as smooth and hot as an oven door. With a distant
surprise—irrelevant to the turmoil of their abrupt entanglement—Walter
noticed, in glimpses, that Gordie's back and arms were manically freckled.
If they had revealed their bodies more slowly to each other, this
might have put Walter off, but his desire, returned so swiftly, could only
gain momentum.

Gordie issued terse questions, but softly, about just what Walter
needed: "Like that? Tell me . . . there, just there? Yes, baby,
there
. . ."
Walter was quite beyond words yet touched by all this urgent thoughtfulness.
The only words he could summon, and only in his mind, were
those for body parts: knee, elbow, shoulder, thigh . . . and several others
for which Granna would have to forgive him. He would later reflect on
how
courtly
Gordie had been—if you could be courtly, hot, and aggressive
all at once.

Walter fell asleep after he came—perhaps for just a fraction of a second;
he knew this only by the instant of waking, of feeling his slippery
skin against Gordie's. Walter lay on his back, with Gordie's face against
his neck, a wide smooth palm across Walter's left nipple, as if to shield
his heart.

I will not be the first to speak, thought Walter. If I open my big Teutonic
mouth, I will say something completely doltish.

They lay there, breathing audibly, listening to the rain and the retreating
thunder, for several peaceful minutes.

"I'm sorry," Gordie said at last, clearing his throat because he was
hoarse, "but I'm afraid I have to know what time it is. I wish I didn't."
He climbed carefully across Walter's body. "Yikes," he said. "We have
to get dressed."

As Walter collected his clothes, he remembered The Bruce. Looking
every well-fed inch the martyr, T.B. lay against the office door.

"I don't know—God, I don't—listen . . ." Hastily, Gordie tucked in
his shirt, smoothed its front, ran his fingers through his hair, touched a
folder on his desk. Finally, thank heaven, he smiled at Walter, who sat
on the sofa, stunned, dressed except for his feet. The smile was warm,
not guilty or evasive. "Can you come tomorrow afternoon? I mean, at
least to finish up the terms of your bequest to Scott."

Walter said, "I like the 'at least.' "

"God," Gordie said, "I don't know. I just—"

"Oh sure you do," said Walter. "No 'just' about it." He stood and
leaned across Gordie's desk. He grasped Gordie's arms and pulled him
toward an embrace. The desk was wider than he'd thought, so their
faces barely touched, but Walter could feel it: that Gordie still ached to
kiss him, that it wasn't already a thing in the past, an impulse spent.

Gordie pulled away. He said with delight, "Whatever you do, don't
come around this desk. You have to go now. I've got someone coming in
five minutes. I have to . . ."

"Calm down?" said Walter, and they laughed. At the door, The Bruce
looked tremendously annoyed, as if their joking were infantile.

"No Jiminy Cricket from you," Walter said in a low voice after
Gordie had closed the door behind them. "I will not own a dog who
thinks he's my conscience, got that?" He paused to scratch The Bruce on
his neck and behind his ears. T.B. pushed back against his fingers. So
kinetic with joy that he could not bear to wait for the elevator, Walter
clipped on T.B.'s leash and made for the stairs. They trotted down all
seven flights.

In the square—it was market day again—he led The Bruce down the
lane between the vendors' tents. For the dog, he decided on a beef
empanada from the pastry man (T.B. consumed it in two noisy gulps);
for himself, roses.

"Those," he said. "I'll take those."

"How many?" said the girl.

"The whole caboodle. I'm feeling rich today."

Wielding twine and scissors, the girl hoisted the roses from the bucket
and bundled them together. Before she hooded the blossoms with tissue
paper, Walter leaned in quickly and touched his face to the petals.
Plush and blousy, the roses smelled like a church prepared for a fancy
wedding—potent, ecstatic, sacred—but they were a radiant orange, the
color of torches, not of veils and modest lace gloves. Quite a different
kind of vow.

The affair—that's what it had been, after all, though thinking in such
terms made Walter wince—lasted two and a half months. It took the
claustrophobic shape of passionate meetings in Gordie's office (without
that prudish chaperone of a dog) and furtive weekday lunches in Chinatown,
Hoboken, Yorkville, Long Island City—places where Gordie was
convinced nobody would know them. Walter didn't care; he liked to
think he'd be happy if they were "discovered." For most of that time,
neither of them mentioned Stephen, and Walter began to let himself
hope that Stephen had decamped (perhaps Walter was the grand consoler!)
or been dismissed (Walter was the love of Gordie's life!).

Such wishful oblivion lasteth not forever; Walter knew that. He had
been determined, however, that the breaker of the pact would be
Gordie—and it was, though Walter was the one who blew his cool. It
was the week before Thanksgiving week (the biggest week in the year
for guilt trips). They were holding hands under the table at a romantic
but oddly macho restaurant on the New Jersey side of the Hudson; out
the window, from afar, they could see the rump of the
Intrepid.
The
food was Low Italian, so dependent on bread and pasta and cheese that
it made Walter's Place look like a Weight Watchers clinic. The clientele
were mainly men, most of them wearing polyester shirts, wide shiny
ties, and navy blue suits with garish buttons.

Gordie poked his lasagna as if it might contain a booby trap. Walter
was contemplating his veal chop with ardor, though he did not want
to remove his hand from Gordie's, which he'd have to do to cut the
thing. He was wishing that he, too, had ordered pasta just as Gordie
said, "Stephen wants to do pheasant this year—pretentious, if you ask
me, but he's bored stiff with turkey. I know you mentioned Hugo does
pheasant; do you think he'd share his recipe?"

So there it was: cuckold out of the bag.

"I'm sure he would." Walter was careful not to sound petulant.

Gordie didn't thank him or say,
How great!
Or,
What a relief!
He
continued to perform a postmortem on his lunch. "Well, that was sensitive,"
he muttered.

"What?" said Walter, almost breezy.

"I don't know why I did that."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Mentioned Stephen. Mentioned Thanksgiving. For all I know, you
have no family, no . . ."

"Friends?" Walter laughed. "Flatter me some more, darling."

"No, no," said Gordie. "No
plans.
You know, Thanksgiving's the big
do for Stephen—he loves having friends with kids, letting them decorate
the table with dried leaves and felt Pilgrims' hats, make place tags, all
that. It's really very down-home, and I like that, I always have. But this
year I'll be thinking about . . . about you, too. I guess I just assumed that
because you have the restaurant—"

"Well, exactly so!" Walter interrupted. "After the crowd of lonely-hearts
and can't-open-a-can-of-cranberry types go home, we're having
our own family fling: Ben and his lover and Hugo and June and her husband
and brother, maybe a few orphans yet to be determined—we're
doing a late-night thing with paella and six kinds of wine and chocolate
bread pudding. Don't you feel sorry for
me.
"

Gordie smiled at him, the rapturous, admiring smile to which Walter
had become addicted. "I don't. Forgive me for even implying I did."

"Nothing
to
forgive." Walter beamed. And perhaps there wasn't.

But Gordie had little to say as he drove them back to the city, and
Walter decided that something had to give; they had to break the constraints
of their ossifying routine. Gordie had to see more of Walter, had
to have a taste of what it might be like not to watch the clock or the
faces passing them on the street.

So Walter did the foolish thing, the fatal thing: He reserved a room at
an inn on Cape May, for the weekend before Christmas. Once Stephen's
name had been spoken, it came out again, every so often—and one day
Gordie happened to mention that lucky Stephen was off to Santa Fe for
nearly a week, to hobnob at a benefit for the opera company, one of the
artsy clients for which he apparently harvested money. Walter took the
revelation as a hint.

How happily he had sealed the inn's brochure, with its pictures of
tourmaline ocean and canopied beds, in a plain white envelope and
placed it inside a necktie box from Barneys. He wrapped the box, tied it
with a big red bow, and presented it to Gordie while they were sitting
naked on the great fluffy couch in their aerie (office? this was an office?)
above Union Square.

"Early Christmas!" Walter exclaimed.

"But I didn't—"

"Of course you didn't. I'm being impatient, that's how I can be," said
Walter. "As you well know."

Gordie stared at the gift. He hesitated, but he was smiling like a child
seated at the foot of the family tree. "I thought you hated the knee-jerk
fashion thing," he said as he took the box from Walter.

The ribbon slipped across Gordie's thigh, down the velvet slope of the
sofa cushion, and pooled on the floor. "Fooled again," said Gordie
when he saw the envelope. He opened it slowly, not as eagerly as Walter
would have liked.

Gordie unfolded the brochure and examined it, front and back. "I've
heard of this place. I've always wanted . . . I've heard it's incredible." He
looked up at Walter, and there were his easy tears again, but what did
they mean?

Walter decided they meant that he was deeply moved. "Two weekends
from now. I have a car lined up, first thing Saturday morning. I'll
get Hugo to pack us breakfast for the road. Order whatever your heart
desires."

Gordie folded the brochure back into the envelope. The gift box had
fallen to the floor, its two halves face down across the spill of red satin
ribbon.

"Oh Walter, I can't do that. I'd love to, but I can't."

"Don't tell me you have work—and I know you haven't got pets!"

Gordie leaned away from the couch to retrieve his pants. He pulled
them on. "I've been a complete ass—to Stephen, but mostly to you—
and I kept telling myself that by Thanksgiving . . . and then by Christmas
. . . I'd . . ."

"You'd dump me." Walter said this so that Gordie would object. He
wanted to be told he was wrong, so wrong; after all, he was not the
intuitive type!

"Walter, I'm . . ." The tears were now mobile, making their way
down Gordie's cheeks.

"You're crazy about me," whispered Walter. He couldn't touch
Gordie, because Gordie was standing some distance across the room
now. He was looking down at his shirt, which he held uncertainly in
both hands, as if he'd forgotten what it was for.

"I am," sighed Gordie. "But that's not—that can't be something I
turn my life upside down for."

"It can be that for me!" Walter stood; he was the taller man here, and
he would not be looked down upon. Defiantly, he did not reach for his
clothes.

"But your life . . ." Gordie shook out his shirt, almost angrily, and
started to put it on. "I thought you always knew this had nothing to do
with Stephen."

"How could it have nothing to do with him? Everywhere we go—all
these hinterplaces where garment workers and Mafiosi hang out!—all
that hiding was precisely about Stephen, wasn't it?"

"Yes!" said Gordie with unexpected fury. "Okay, you're right! Okay,
I have a vice a little messier than delicious cookies!" He gestured toward
the shelf holding tea bags, mugs, and plates. "I'm sorry."

"So, is it over?" said Walter. Surely
this
would elicit a denial.

Gordie came toward him, stopping just short of where they might
touch. "It has to be, Walter. It just has to be. I'm such a spineless ass."

"Gordie, dear, the only bit of spine in an ass is the tailbone, that useless
vestige of when we used to swing from the trees. Yes, that would
describe you exactly, right at this moment." This insult made no sense,
but never mind. Breathing through his mouth to keep from crying, Walter
finally reached for his clothes. There seemed to be so many pieces
to button and zip; oh for a jumpsuit and shoes that would package him
up, neat and ready to go, with just a few tidy straps of Velcro. He was
glad The Bruce was safely, ignorantly at home, no witness to this dreadful
scene.