Paul lay back facing the sun, his perspiration joining mine on the mat. “Come on, man,” he chided me. “You know fucken well that’s not what I meant.”
Of course I had known that was not what he meant. At the very beginning of our conversations, he had lunged into accounts of his tumultuous marriages. “Yeah, man,” I said, “I do know what you meant. But why would a big-time hustler like yourself—”
He laughed, appreciating my designation of him.
“—want to hear about the streets I prowled at midnight, and later, sometimes till dawn? Why would you want to hear about sex in dark alleys, hurried encounters in squashed rented rooms?—even mansions that reeked of paid sex and alleys, and at times it was only sex, just sex, only sex.”
“You’ve convinced me that I want to know,” he said. “Tell me about all that, everything. Your turn, man.” He seemed excited; his words were urgent, pitched low, a demanding, intimate whisper. “What was it all about for you?”
“Hustling?”
“Yes! Being paid for sex with men.”
“It was never about the money; at times no money was involved, just sex.”
“Then what?”
“It was always about—” I had never asked that question of myself. “It was always about—” No word came, no answer.
“Power.” He shoved the word at me; more words: “Power, of course, man, sexual power. You wanted power over willing victims.”
10
Power over willing victims. I had winced at his words, which continued to echo, unwelcome. But why? They were his words, not mine; his deduction, not mine. Not mine? Had I trafficked on that dark street? Paul’s words—uttered in admiration—kept resonating in judgement.
“—the blue hour.”
“What?” I was startled by Sonya’s words. She had walked onto the sundeck when Paul and I had been ready to leave—the heat had become unrelenting. I had been so immersed in the reverberations Paul’s remark had set off in my mind that I had heard only a few words of her announcement. Standing before us waiting for us to respond, she looked like an apparition, rivulets of water like sequins on her darkened flesh.
“You said—didn’t you, beauty?—that Stanty has a surprise he wants to reveal during the blue hour.”
“Yes, after dinner,” Sonya said.
Paul laughed, surely at Stanty’s dramatic presentation of his supposed surprise.
I was sure the “surprise” would be another exaggeration of his ventures into the neighboring island, graver intimations of looming dangers.
At the announced time, as we sat on the deck trying to ward off the sullen heat with chilled wine, we learned Stanty’s surprise as the bluish cast of evening brought down the night.
“If the blue hour is when everything is the way it really is”—standing assertively before us—“then we should take advantage of it, shouldn’t we?”
“How do you suggest?” Paul indulged him.
“By telling secrets.”
“How do you play that?” Sonya said.
“Very simple.” Stanty remained facing us, taking command.
I resented his demand that we attend to what would surely be a disappointing revelation. I resented Paul’s—and Sonya’s—permision of his brazen charade; and yet, annoyed, I was curious to hear what he would say.
“Everyone has to tell a secret,” Stanty instructed.
“Oh, Stanty—” Sonya dismissed, but in a kind tone.
“Please!” he said. “Father?”
I hoped Paul would reject the suggestion. He didn’t, watching his son intently as I now expected he would when Stanty “performed,” studying him.
“First you’ll have to tell us why you chose that game,” Paul said.
I needed to ambush their alliance before this proceeded. “I think Stanty is eager to reveal his own surprise and so he’s made this game up. Why not get to that first?”
He answered Paul: “Because it’s getting to be the blue hour, and that’s the time when everything is revealed.” He turned to me: “Isn’t that so, John Rechy? Remember what you said?” He was adjusting his game. “You first, Father. Please, Father, please.”
“This is my secret,” Paul said, “I love—”
The word jarred me, so incongruous for him not only now but at all. When he had spoken those words, he had fixed his stare on Sonya, a locked stare, with a smile.
She answered back, an unwincing stare, a challenge—I sensed it—between them.
“I love … Stanty, very much,” Paul finished, and broke the stare. “And—”
“That’s no secret, that you love me, you’re my father, you have to love me, and I love you, so much, Father. You have to go again.”
Paul said, “You can’t change rules in the middle of the game.”
“And—?” Sonya goaded Paul to finish his declaration.
He shrugged, silent.
She had risked Paul’s dismissal, prodding him to add her name to his declaration.
“You have to go again, Father,” Stanty insisted. “You have to reveal a real secret.” He assumed a rigid pose, adding to his insistence: “Father!” The pose broke. “Father?” he pleaded, staring at Paul, Paul looking back at him, silent; and silent intense moments passed.
There was a clear purpose in Stanty’s game, I was sure. There was something specific he was calling for from Paul while disguising it by bringing the others into his game. Sitting next to me, Sonya sensed that; her hand on mine was tense.
“Father!” Stanty demanded. “Who is—?”
“It’s John Rechy’s turn,” Paul interrupted sharply.
The first time he had used that tone with Stanty. Whatever had occurred between them remained like an echo without discernible origin.
Stanty regained control. “Okay, then. John Rechy, you’re next,” he proceeded.
Did he want to prod me into the embarrassing announcement that I had withheld, that I didn’t know how to swim? He had implied asking that before. Fuck the little bastard. I would make this my opportunity to assuage Sonya, get back at Paul for his rejection of her.
I said. “This is my secret: I love Sonya.”
“Your magic powers reign, beauty,” Paul dismissed my comment.
“Love? Or in love?” Stanty pushed on.
“I meant love,” I said. I should have said “in love.” That’s what Sonya would have preferred, to counter Paul’s omission of her.
“Sonya,” Stanty called on her.
“My secret? My secret is that I have no secrets.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Stanty said softly.
“It does,” I said, to ward him off. Her hand on mine was gentle.
She said: “Now you, Stanty, what’s your secret?”
“He has so many he won’t remember just one,” I said.
Whatever “secret” he had, he didn’t seem ready. The game had run away from his intentions.
“Game’s over!” he announced, and he jumped upon the wooden border that enclosed the deck; and, with his arms up, hands pointing in the stance of a champion swimmer, he lunged into the dark water.
“Stanty!” Paul shouted.
“Stanty!” Sonya echoed.
Both jumped up to look over the railing, aware of the boats bound beneath us, the possibility that he would fall on one of them, hard.
We heard a splash, the gurgle of water, and then words over the splattering as he swam outward:
“Island! Island!”
11
Yesterday or the day before—time is fluid on the island—I woke up late to find a note under my door from Sonya. They—I assumed she and Stanty and Paul—were driving into the village early in the morning to check on some electric fans that Paul had ordered, fans necessitated for the first time on the island because of the relentless heat.
I decided this was an opportunity to teach myself how to row, surely not difficult. I didn’t want to expose myself to the awkwardness of being taught. I pushed one of the boats a short dis
tance into the lake. As I began to board, the boat seemed to pull me in, and then it began to rock and push forward as if to take control and of its own volition direct me to the vacated island, which, each time my eyes involuntarily sought it out—like now—appeared more dour than before. I postponed my attempt at rowing for another time.
I am looking for Paul to continue the suspended account of his and Elizabeth’s competing for Corina. During our latest conversation when he had expressed his desire to know about the aspect of my life that intrigued him, I had contributed nothing after he had interrupted my words with his disturbing evaluation.
I am becoming aware that events that assume importance when they occur are assigned a finality on this island. That was so with Stanty’s dangerous jump into the dark water. Not a word about it had followed.
I ran into Sonya outside. “They’ve gone into the village to see whether the fans have finally arrived,” she told me when she assumed I was looking for Paul. She held my hand playfully and moved me along with her. “Let’s go rowing, we’ll be alone on the boat, you and I, on the beautiful serene lake.”
It delighted me to believe that she had stayed behind in order to be with me; but, concerned about the possibility that she would sense my awkwardness at rowing and attempt to teach me, I said, “Let’s take a walk instead.”
It was near noon, and Sonya and I wandered among the trees and the flowers miraculously surviving the heat. Sonya’s thin caftan drifted behind her like colored wings as she walked and then it quickly wrapped intimately about her body. As she became darker from the steady sun, she was even more beautiful. (I was fascinated by her lips, which even without makeup were deep red, sensual, as glossy as fresh blood.)
Too hot even for a walk, we lay under a cluster of shading trees on towels she had carried from the sundeck. The slight awkwardness that followed reminded me that this was the first time we had been alone without the expectation that either Paul or Stanty would appear.
Sonya spoke about her family in France, where she was born; how she was “discovered” by the famous designer Julian Arvayon and became a fashion model, a fact that did not surprise me.
“And then I met Paul.”
“And—?”
“And then I met Paul,” she repeated, as if that was all she needed to define her recent life.
Her abrupt reticence annoyed me, as if she was withdrawing her trust; I wanted to consider her an “ally” although I wouldn’t be able to identify opposing parties. Too, she had introduced an essential subject, how she had met Paul.
Interpreting my silence as annoyance with her seeming evasion—a long silence that seemed laden with stagnant heat—she said: “Paul was divorced from both women, or about to be, I forget. I was modeling for Arvayon, an imperious fashion designer—and an infamous unpaid pimp. He introduced men and women—and, yes, he was a friend of Paul’s. Paul knew everyone. Julian was having an important show. Paul asked to attend. I did not know I was for sale. He was there to choose from the line of women on the runway. He asked Julian to introduce him to me. Julian did. That was it. We traveled, we made love—oh, no, we had sex, a lot of sex. We traveled more, we had sex, more sex, and here I am.”
She had felt bought, but apparently she had lasted long enough to feel confident of enduring. “Now, you must tell me how he summoned you.”
Summoned? Had he referred to his inviting me here as “summoning” me? “He read something I had written, and he admired it. He invited me here.” What more did she know than I did about how he saw me? I moved away from the subject she had deliberately or inadvertently introduced. I told her about my background in Texas.
“How erotic Texas must be!” she said.
I was sure she had meant “exotic,” but I followed through: “Maybe, if you find cactus and deserts erotic, sensual.”
“I do,” she said, miming a tremble of excitement. “I find it very … sexual, especially since that’s where you’re from. What do you think of Paul?”
Like that, she ended the prattle, not allowing me to respond to her flirtatious remark. “I think he’s a fascinating man. He’s certainly intelligent, I enjoy our conversations.”
“I love him very much,” she said.
Considering the way Paul had spoken about his wives, I wondered how he would describe his feelings for her. I was beginning to feel protective of her.
Sonya closed her eyes as if that enabled her to continue: “He’s a fantastic lover.” She turned her head away from me, briefly, an unexpected reaction of shyness. “But,” she continued as if she had rehearsed the words but had kept them to herself until now, “not once has he spoken a word of true affection—and never the word … love. I spoke it myself finally, and he pushed me away from him, furious.”
Although I winced at the evoked rejection, I could understand an aversion to the word “love.” It was difficult for me to reconcile sex and love. They existed separately; one interfered with the other. Love neutered desire. I had fled Los Angeles in part because of such contradictions.
“I’m exaggerating my feelings.” She laughed. “He accuses me of that, when I’m able to mention feelings at all. I’m telling you this because I need to put it into words, speak it, and because I feel a closeness with you.”
She, too, needed an ally in whatever she might be considering. The enraged kisses with Paul that I had witnessed—they recurred as if on irresistible impulse, a violent impulse; he would clasp her to him to kiss her, a devouring kiss asserting ownership.
“I’m glad you’re telling me this.” I wanted to reassure her that I, too, felt close to her, but I couldn’t say that, not now—not yet—although she seemed to be waiting for me to speak.
“Is it true that you have been a prostitute?” she asked me.
I was startled by the question. I wasn’t ready to discuss that part of my life with her—not now, perhaps another time. Apparently Paul had mentioned this to her, and perhaps given her my stories to read.
“I never considered myself that,” I said. “It’s somewhat different, between men—”
“Only men were involved?”
Surely Paul would have told her that. “Yes—only men, and I never felt like a prostitute. We call it hustling.”
“But you were paid—by men—for sex?” she pursued.
“Yes. But not always. Sonya—” I wanted to end this conversation.
“But I find that so exciting!” she said.
“I don’t want …” It wasn’t shame or embarrassment that made me reticent—I saw no reason to feel either; I just didn’t want to move away from information about Paul and their relationship.
“I suppose you could say that Paul is a … hustler? His rich wife Corina paid him grandly when they divorced, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s called alimony,” I laughed.
“I believe Paul is the first man who ever collected alimony. The statues, the paintings. And this island—it was her father’s retreat, then hers.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Corina! The notorious heiress to one of the great American fortunes. Perhaps it was payment that she gave him.”
“Island! Island!” It was Paul’s voice, distant, calling from the shoreline.
Then Stanty answered with the same two words, startling me because Sonya had indicated he had gone with Paul. Then we were not alone.
“Paul’s signal that he’s back,” Sonya said, noticing the direction of my attention. “That call binds them,” she went on; “a place entirely theirs, a world they both rule.”
“Paul seems to study Stanty, almost in fascination with his own son,” I said, taking the opportunity to know whether she noticed that, and perhaps why; or was that only in my imagination? “He supports Stanty’s lies, like about the other island.”
“Stanty is a creative boy, and very smart. Most of his stories are exaggerations; we accept them as such, and I believe he knows that. Telling adventurous tales, that’s not exceptional for a boy his age, is it?—to fantasize a mystery???
?
“No, it isn’t.” Truly, the murky atmosphere that surrounded the unoccupied island did invite heightened conjecture. Though his versions of his treks to the neighboring island might change, the fact of his having gone there remained.
“Stanty’s closeness to his father comes from the fact that his mother—”
“Elizabeth—” I said.
“Or Corina, I’m not sure, and Stanty doesn’t—”
She stopped abruptly. She seemed to have surprised herself with the blocked words. I waited for her to go on. “Sonya?”
“They may both come,” she said.
“Do you resent that?” What did she withhold about Stanty’s mother? Something that echoed Stanty’s halting demand of Paul on the night of “secrets”?
“Paul asked me whether it upset me that they might come, and I said it did not, because I know he fears being possessed in any way, owned.” She held her breath, preparing, I knew, to speak a painful truth: “I know that if I opposed his wishes, he might even— His anger, it’s overwhelming when he’s opposed.”
He might even leave me? Whatever she had intended to say, it was a suspicion so painful that she couldn’t enunciate it; and I didn’t want to hear it.
I’d had relationships with women that I thought of as “love affairs,” love affairs without sex. They were much closer than friendships—stronger and more lasting—and more intimate than the few brief relationships I had allowed with men, gay or not. With Sonya there might be—I thought at some moments—even more.
She moved close to me as if sensing a need for protection. I was keenly aware of her, the bronzed body glowing in the shade. I wanted to draw even closer to her. But I did not.
What she had just revealed, the anger in her love of Paul, and something withheld about Stanty’s mother, and the possibility that both of Paul’s ex-wives might come to the island—all added to the perception of secrets waiting for revelation; and those pressurized revelations might come—the startling image invaded my mind—in a burst of darkness and heat; and at the same time as the violent vision I had conjured came, I knew I was waiting for something—as vague as that, “something”—that might explain why I had been “summoned” here.