For the next several days, he walked around feeling ravaged by Brian’s kiss-off letter—from Ithaca, New York, of all places (Ithaka!)—and the nights were almost unbearable in their loneliness. His intake of red wine doubled, and on two consecutive nights he vomited into the sink. Vivian, who had a good pair of eyes in her head to go along with a keen, observant brain, looked at him carefully during their first one-on-one dinner since the arrival of Brian’s letter, hesitated for a couple of moments, and then asked him what was wrong. Ferguson, who felt confident she would never betray him as Sydney Millbanks had on his disastrous trip to Palo Alto, decided to tell her the truth, since he needed to talk to someone, and there was no one else but Vivian.
I’ve had a disappointment, he said.
I can see that, Vivian replied.
Yes, a ton of hurt landed on me the other day, and I’m still trying to get over it.
What kind of hurt?
Love hurt. In the form of a letter from a person I care about very much.
That’s hard.
Extremely hard. Not only have I been dumped, but I’ve been told that I’m not normal.
What does normal mean?
In my case, an overall interest in all kinds of people.
I see.
Do you really see?
I assume you’re talking about girl people and boy people, no?
Yes, I am.
I’ve always known that about you, Archie. From the first time we met at your mother’s opening.
How could you tell?
From the way you were looking at the young man who was serving the drinks. And also from the way you were looking at me, from the way you still look at me.
Is it so obvious?
Not really. But I have a good sense of these things—from long experience.
You’re saying you have a nose for two-way people?
I was married to one.
Oh. I had no idea.
You’re so much like Jean-Pierre, Archie. Maybe that’s why I wanted you to come here and stay with me. Because you remind me of him so much … so much.
You miss him.
Horribly.
It must have made for a complicated marriage, though. I mean, if I go on being the way I am, I don’t think I’ll ever marry anyone.
Unless it’s to another two-way person.
Ah. I never though of that.
Yes, it can be a bit complicated at times, but it’s worth the effort.
Are you telling me that you and I are the same?
That’s right. But different, too, of course, in that I, through no doing of my own, am a woman, and you, dear boy, are a man.
Ferguson laughed.
Then Vivian laughed back at him, which induced Ferguson to laugh again, and once Ferguson laughed again, Vivian laughed back at him again, and before long the two of them were laughing together.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, January twenty-ninth, two guests came to the apartment for dinner, both of them Americans, both of them old friends of Vivian’s, a man of about fifty named Andrew Fleming, who had been Vivian’s American history professor in college and now taught at Columbia, and a young woman of about thirty named Lisa Bergman, a transplant from La Jolla, California, who had recently moved to Paris to work for an American law firm and whose older cousin was married to Vivian’s brother. After Ferguson’s talk with Vivian earlier in the week, which had led to the startling double confession of their equal but opposite two-way proclivities, Ferguson wondered if Lisa Bergman might not be Vivian’s current flame, and, if so, whether her presence at the table that evening was a sign that Vivian had cracked open the door a bit and was allowing him to have a glimpse of her private life. As for Fleming, who was in Paris on a one-semester sabbatical to complete the final draft of his book about what he called the American old boys in France (Franklin, Adams, Jefferson), he was so obviously not a man cut out for women, so obviously a man interested only in men, that after twenty or thirty minutes it flashed through Ferguson’s head that he was taking part in his first all-queer dinner since that horrible night in Palo Alto. This time, however, he was having fun.
It felt good to be with Americans again, so comfortable and unforced, so pleasant to sit down with people who shared the same references and laughed at the same jokes, all four of them so different from one another and yet chatting away as if they had been friends for years, and the more Ferguson studied how Vivian was looking at Lisa, and the more he looked at how Lisa was looking at Viv, the more certain he became that his intuition had been correct, that the two of them were indeed involved, and that made Ferguson happy for Vivian, since he wanted her to have anything and everything her good heart desired, and this Lisa Bergman, as in Ingrid and Ingmar, a Swedish Bergman as opposed to a German or Jewish Bergman, was nothing if not a fascinating character, a vivacious and vivid match for the all-deserving Viv.
Big. That was the first thing you noticed about her, the bigness of her body, five foot ten and large-boned, a burly girl without a touch of fat on her, solid and broad-shouldered, thick, powerful arms, large breasts, and extremely blond hair, a southern California blonde, with a round, pretty face and pale, almost invisible eyelashes, the kind of woman Ferguson could have imagined winning medals as a shot-putter or discus thrower at the summer Olympics, a Swedish-American Amazon who looked as if she had stepped from the pages of a nudist magazine, clean-cut, health-conscious nudism, the champion female weight lifter of all nudist colonies throughout the civilized world, and funny, devilishly funny and unconstrained, laughing between every other sentence she spoke, delicious American sentences spiced with words that made Ferguson understand how much he had missed hearing them since he’d left New York, two-syllable standbys such as dinky, dorky, grotty, snazzy, goofy, snooty, crummy, cruddy, crappy, gunky, and wicked, as in wonderful or marvelous, and whatever kind of law Lisa was practicing in Paris, she said not a word about it.
By contrast, the middle-aged Fleming was small and chubby, five-six at the most, with a waddling sort of walk and a sizable paunch protruding against the V-neck sweater under his jacket, small, fleshy hands, a chinless, sagging face, and an unusual pair of horn-rimmed owl glasses perched on his nose. A young professor who suddenly and irrevocably was no longer young. A veteran academic with a slight stammer and a head of fewer and fewer thinning gray hairs, but also alive and alert to the three others sitting at the table, a man who had read much and knew much but didn’t talk about himself or his work either, that was the game they were playing that night, Lisa the lawyer not talking about the law, Vivian the art writer not talking about art, Ferguson the memoirist not talking about his memories, Fleming the historian not talking about the old American boys in Paris, and in spite of occasional lapses into stuttering, Fleming expressed himself in clean, smoothly articulated sentences, actively participating in the general conversation about all things and no things, politics for one, bien sûr, the war in Vietnam and the anti-war movement at home (Ferguson was receiving twice-monthly reports about it from his cousin Amy in Madison), de Gaulle and the French elections, the recent suicide of a man named Georges Figon just before he was about to be arrested for the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka, the Moroccan politician whose whereabouts were still unknown, but also trivial digressions into such matters as trying to remember the name of the actress in the movie with the title no one could remember or—Lisa excelled at this—reciting the lyrics of obscure pop songs from the 1950s.
The dinner lumbered on slowly and enjoyably, a languorous three hours of food and talk and large quantities of wine, and then they were on to the cognac, and as Ferguson and Fleming raised their glasses to toast each other, Vivian said something to Lisa about wanting to show her something somewhere else in the apartment (Ferguson had stopped listening by then, but he hoped they were going off to neck in the study or in Vivian’s bedroom), and just like that the two women were gone, which left Ferguson alone at the table with Fleming, and after an awkward moment in
which neither one of them said anything because neither one of them knew what to say, Fleming suggested they go upstairs to visit Ferguson’s room, which earlier in the evening Ferguson had described as the smallest room in the world, and although Ferguson laughed and inanely commented that there wasn’t much to see up there beyond a messy desk and an unmade bed, Fleming said it didn’t matter, he was simply curious to see what the smallest room in the world looked like.
If it had been anyone else but Fleming, Ferguson probably would have said no, but he had come to like the professor over the course of the evening and felt drawn to him because of the kindness he saw in his eyes, something tender and compassionate and sad, an ache of suffering caused by what Ferguson imagined must have been a constant internal pressure to hide who he was from the world, a man from the generation of closet-men who had spent the past thirty years skulking around in shadowy corners and dodging the suspicious looks of his colleagues and students, all of whom had surely and always pegged him for the sissy he was, but as long as he behaved himself and kept his hands off the innocent or unsuspecting ones, they would grudgingly allow him to go on tending the grass at their Ivy League country club, and all through the dinner, as Ferguson had sat there contemplating the grimness of such a life, he had begun to feel sorry for Fleming, perhaps even to pity him, which was why he said yes to the journey upstairs instead of no, even if it was starting to give him the old Andy Cohen sensation of being with a person who said one thing and meant another, but what the hell, Ferguson thought, he was a big boy now and didn’t have to accommodate anyone he didn’t want to, least of all a sweet, aging man for whom he felt no physical attraction whatsoever.
* * *
OH MY, FLEMING said, when Ferguson opened the door and switched on the light in the room. It is indeed very, very small, Archie.
Ferguson hastily pulled the quilt over the bare bottom sheet on the bed and gestured for Fleming to sit down as he swung around the desk chair and sat down as well, face to face with Fleming, so close to him in the cramped room that their knees were almost touching. Ferguson offered Fleming a Gauloise, but the professor shook his head and declined, suddenly looking nervous and distracted, not at all sure of himself, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t quite know how to say it. Ferguson lit up a cigarette for himself and asked: Is everything okay?
I was just wondering … wondering how much … you would want.
Want? I don’t understand. Want what?
How much … money.
Money? What are you talking about?
Vivian tells me that you’re … she tells me that you’re strapped for cash, liv … living on a tight budget.
I still don’t understand. Are you saying you want to give me money?
Yes. If it would please you … to … to be nice to me.
Nice?
I’m a lonely man, Archie. I need to be touched.
Ferguson understood now. Fleming hadn’t come upstairs with any plan or expectation of seducing him, but he would be willing to pay for sex if Ferguson was willing to go along, pay for it because he knew that no young man would ever want to touch him without being paid, and for the pleasure of being touched by a desirable young man, Fleming would be willing to turn that young man into a whore, a male Julie to fuck him up the ass, although he probably wasn’t thinking about it in such crude terms, since it wouldn’t be the anonymous sex of whore and client but sex between two people who already knew each other, which would turn the transaction into a gesture of charity, an older man giving a younger man some much-needed money, for which the older man would be repaid by a different kind of charity, and as Ferguson’s thoughts spun around in his head, arguing back and forth about how his small allowance couldn’t be counted as a hardship because of the free rent and free food and free clothes that came from living under the protection of his wealthy benefactress, and yet, still and all, living on what amounted to ten dollars a day for all the rest wasn’t easy, not when there were so many film books he wanted to buy and couldn’t afford to buy, not when he longed for a record player and a collection of records to listen to at night instead of the broadcasts on boring France Musique, yes, more money would help him out, more money would make life better in dozens of different ways, but was he willing to do what Fleming wanted him to do in order to get that money, and what would it feel like to have sex with someone who was physically repellent to him, how would that feel, and once Ferguson asked himself that question, he suddenly imagined how rich he could become by indulging in such activities as a side occupation, sleeping with lonely, middle-aged American tourists for money, a studly young rentboy for the men, a charming young gigolo for the women, and even though there was something morally wrong about it, he supposed, something wicked, to use the word Lisa had used several times that evening, it was only a matter of sex, which was never wrong when both people wanted to do it, and beyond the money there would be the additional reward of experiencing many orgasms while working for that money, which was almost comical when you stopped and thought about it for a moment, since an orgasm was the one indisputably good thing in this world that money couldn’t buy.
Ferguson leaned forward and said: Why did Vivian tell you I was hard up for cash?
I don’t know, Fleming replied. She was just talking to me about you and … and … she mentioned that you lived … what were the words?… close … close to the bone.
And what made you think I’d be interested in being nice to you?
Nothing. Just a hope, that’s all. A … a feeling.
What sort of money do you have in mind?
I don’t know. Five hundred francs? A thousand francs? You tell me, Archie.
How about fifteen hundred?
I be … I believe I can do that. Let me have a look.
As Ferguson watched Fleming slide his hand into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pull out his wallet, he understood that he was actually going ahead with this, that for the same amount of money he received from his parents for his monthly allowance he was going to take off his clothes in front of this fat, balding man and have sex with him, and as Fleming began counting the bills in his wallet, Ferguson realized that he was scared, scared to death, scared in the same way he had been scared when he had stolen the books from Book World in New York, a hotness under the skin caused by what he had once described to himself as the sear of fear, a burn that was spreading through his body so quickly now that the pounding in his head bordered on excitement, yes, that was it, the fear and excitement of going past the edge of what was allowed, and even though Ferguson had been found guilty and could have spent six months in jail, which theoretically should have taught him never to go near the edge again, he was still taunting the no-God impostor-God of his childhood to come down and smash him if He dared, and now that Fleming had extracted twelve one-hundred-franc bills and six fifty-franc bills from the wallet and had put the wallet back in his pocket, Ferguson was so angry at himself, so disgusted by his own weakness, that it shocked him to hear the cruelty in his voice when he spoke to Fleming:
Put the money on the desk, Andrew, and turn out the light.
Thank you, Archie. I … I don’t know how to thank you.
He didn’t want to look at Fleming. He didn’t even want to see him, and by not looking and not seeing he was hoping to pretend that Fleming wasn’t there, that it was someone else who had come up to the room with him and that Fleming himself had not been at the dinner that night and Ferguson had never met him, had never even known that such a man as Andrew Fleming existed anywhere on the face of the earth.
The operation would have to be carried out in darkness or not at all—hence the command to switch off the light—but now that Ferguson had risen from the chair and was beginning to take off his clothes, the light went on in the hall, the minuterie (one-minute light) that was turned on again and again by different people throughout the day, and because there were gaps between the door frame and the edges of the ill-fitting door, light was sudd
enly coming in, just enough light to make it not dark enough now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, enough light for him to make out the lumpy contours of Fleming’s now naked body, and consequently Ferguson looked down at the floor as he lifted himself onto the high wooden platform bed with the deep built-in drawer under the mattress, and then, once he was on the bed, he turned his eyes upward and looked at the wall as Fleming began kissing his naked chest and sliding a hand onto his slowly stiffening cock, which, after some intense fondling, was eventually inserted into Fleming’s mouth. Further on, when the unresisting Ferguson found himself on his back and was no longer able to look at the wall, he turned his eyes toward the window instead, thinking that a view of the outside might help him forget he was inside, trapped inside his too-small room, but just then the light in the hall went on again, turning the window into a mirror that reflected only what was inside, and there he was with Fleming on the bed, or rather there was Fleming on top of him on the bed, with the old man’s flat, flabby ass thrust into the air, and the instant Ferguson saw that picture in the window that was a mirror, he shut his eyes.