“You’re home early.”
He lit a cigarette. “Yeah. I was having a terrible day — about the two millionth since I passed the bar, and then it occurred to me, what the hell am I doing?” He smiled and drew on his cigarette. “I’m not into terrible days anymore.”
“Maybe you should just quit.”
“And do what, die?” He looked at me and smirked. “Was that tactless?”
“Yes,” I replied. “A sure sign you’re getting better.”
“Did you see the waiter?” Larry asked, putting out his cigarette. I noticed that he had only smoked it half-way down.
“Yeah.”
“And was he a rabid queer-baiter?”
“Didn’t seem the type,” I said, thinking of Josh Mandel’s eyes. “I could be wrong, of course. He did lie to me.”
“About anything important?”
“It was about what he was doing the night Brian was killed,” I replied. “I don’t know yet if that’s important. On the other hand, I’ve figured out why Jim insists he didn’t kill Brian Fox.”
“Why?” Larry asked.
“Because they were lovers.”
10
“Really?” His eyebrows flicked upwards.
I told him what I had learned about Brian Fox’s sexual escapades. A penchant for voyeurism, and budding pedophilia was of a different order than fumbling in the back seat with more-or- less willing partners of the same age. Yet how different were these activities from Jim’s excursions into bathrooms and parks? To me, they revealed a kind of sexual despair. I could understand that in Jim’s case; he was gay and his fear drove him underground. But what about Brian Fox? Maybe it didn’t matter. What was important was that Brian was unusually sensitive to Jim’s sexual secret. My guess was that what drew Brian to Jim was not antipathy as much as fascination — one sexual loner’s recognition of another.
“I don’t think Brian followed Jim out into the parking lot because he wanted to embarrass him,” I said. “I think he wanted to know for sure whether Jim was gay.”
“Are you saying Brian was gay, too?” Larry asked.
“God, I hope not. Let’s just say he was — “
“A pervert?”
“That’ll do for now.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle beige.”
I walked to the window and looked past the terraced garden to the shimmering lake. “Jury trials demand a sacrifice,” I said. “And if it’s not going to be Jim, it has to be Brian.”
“You still haven’t explained why you think they were lovers.”
“The first thing is why Brian didn’t tell anyone about Jim.”
“Didn’t he tell Josh Mandel?”
“But not Jim’s parents,” I replied. “The obvious reason seemed to be blackmail, but there’s a limit to how much you can extort from an eighteen-year-old busboy.”
“To how much money,” Larry said, revelation in his voice.
“Exactly. But the other thing that might’ve interested Brian was sex. Sex on demand.”
“You think it didn’t matter to him that it was another guy?”
“A blow job is a blow job is a blow job.”
“Pace Gertrude Stein,” Larry murmured and leaned back into his chair. “You said lovers, Henry. This scenario is not my idea of a romance.”
“Agreed, but then — what did Auden say — ‘The desires of the heart are as crooked as the corkscrew.’ Josh Mandel described the scene where Jim supposedly threatened to kill Brian.” I related Josh’s version from that afternoon.
“Puts things in a different light,” Larry said, extracting a cigarette from his pack of Kents.
“Doesn’t it,” I agreed. “It sounds like post-coital banter.”
“Who have you been sleeping with?”
“You know what I mean.”
Larry lit the Kent. He blew out a jet of smoke and nodded. “You think some affection developed between those two.”
“It adds up.”
“So am I to infer that Jim didn’t kill Brian?” Larry asked, tapping ash into a crystal ashtray.
“No, the evidence is inescapable. It only explains why he can’t bring himself to admit it. He didn’t hate Brian.”
“Then why kill him?”
“It was still blackmail,” I said. “Brian had power over Jim. At some point Jim must have realized that Brian was using him and would go on using him whether Jim consented or not.”
“That must’ve been hard if he cared at all about Brian.”
“And it added to his guilt about being gay. Being gay meant being a victim.”
Larry put out the cigarette and rose from behind his desk. “What are you going to do?”
“Go back to Jim. Let him know that I know.”
“I suppose you have to,” Larry said, gathering his cigarettes. “You think I shouldn’t?”
Larry shrugged. “He hasn’t told you because he wanted to keep it a secret. Think of his pride.”
“That’s a luxury he can’t afford,” I replied.
Jim came out and sat at the table, focusing on my left ear. His face was slack and tired.
“Were you asleep?” I asked.
“Who can sleep around here,” he muttered.
“The tranquilizers don’t help?”
His shrug terminated that line of conversation.
“I wanted to talk to you about Brian.”
“Okay,” he said, indifferently.
The indifference stung. “You were lovers,” I said.
He gave me a hard look. “Guys don’t love each other,” he said.
“But you had sex with him.”
His face colored but he didn’t look away. “He wanted it,” he said slowly.
“Did you?”
His narrow fingers raked his hair.
“Was having sex with him the price Brian charged for not telling your parents about you?”
He nodded. He looked at me again, his childishness gone. “Brian always wanted to make it with me,” he said, knowingly. “He just needed a reason-”
“An excuse, you mean.”
“ — so he wouldn’t have to think he was a faggot.”
“How did you feel about being with him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, out of the side of his mouth. “Sometimes he was a jerk about it. Sometimes it was — okay.”
“Did you like him?”
“Once when his parents were gone, we slept at his house,” Jim said. “That was really nice, in a bed and everything.” “Where did you usually meet Brian for sex?”
“His car,” Jim said. “The park. The locker room at the restaurant.”
“The wine cellar?”
His eyes showed fear.
“Was that why he was there that night?”
“I don’t know why he was there,” Jim said. His voice trembled.
“But you assumed that’s why he was there,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
After a moment’s hesitation he said, “Yeah.”
“Did Brian like you as much as you liked him?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head slowly, surprise in his face. “He never stopped calling me a faggot when other guys were around. Even after we made it. He told Josh Mandel about me.”
“And you still liked him?” I continued.
“He was different when we were alone,” Jim said, almost mournfully. He sounded less like the jilted lover than the slightly oddball child other children avoid; the mousy-haired boy lingering at the edge of the playing field watching a game he was never asked to play.
“So,” I said, in a matter-of-fact voice, “one part of you really liked him and another part of you hated him because he was using you, Jim. Isn’t that how it was?”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He nodded. “Part of you loved him-” I waited, but he didn’t react. “And part of you wanted-”
As if continuing a different conversation, he broke in, “Everything was so fucked up. I was tired.” I heard the exhaustion pouring out from a deep place. “I wanted to kill — “ “Brian,” I said.
“Myself,” he replied. “I wanted to kill myself. Not Brian. I didn’t kill Brian.”
“But Brian’s the one who’s dead, Jim.”
“No,” he said, his face closing. “You think I killed him, but I didn’t. I wanted to kill myself.”
“That’s what you wanted, Jim, but think about it,” I said, quickly. “Wanting to kill anyone means that there’s violence inside of you. You can’t always control that violence or direct it the way you planned. It’s like a fire, Jim.”