Plague

Gaines' mouth turned down at the corners in bitterness. But he still refrained from answering.

'I sometimes think you want to fight,' said Nicholas. 'I sometimes think you take umbrage on purpose, just to get me upset. Well, it won't work, Herbert. It won't. I'm not the vicious kind. But damn it all, I'm the kind that gets tired of fights.'

Herbert Gaines listened to this, and then took the burned-out cigarette from his ivory holder and replaced it with a fresh one. He lit up, watching Nicholas with one limpid eye.

'When you're tired of fighting me, Nick,' he said, in a rich, hoarse, cancerous voice, 'then you're tired of loving me.'

Nicholas finished rubbing his hair and threw his towel on the floor. Herbert Gaines smoked listlessly, with his holder clenched between his teeth.

Nicholas paced from one end of the room to the other. Then he stopped beside Gaines' chair — tense and exasperated.

'You won't understand, will you? You're too busy wallowing in forty-year-old memories and uneasy nostalgia. Why don't you try looking outside yourself for a change? Open up the drapes, and realize what year it is? Christ, Herbert, I wasn't even born when you made those movies!'

Herbert Gaines looked up. 'You were there though,' he said, in his throaty voice.

Nicholas was about to say something else, but he stopped and looked quizzical. 'What do you mean?'

'Precisely what I say. You were there. Haven't you seen yourself?'

'Seen myself? I don't — '

Herbert Gaines put down the cigarette holder and laboriously got out of his chair. Nicholas watched him uneasily as he walked across to the bookshelves, and took down a large Film Pictorial Annual for 1938. The old man put the book on his desk, and opened it out. Then he beckoned Nicholas over.

'Look,' he said, pointing with his pale, elegant finger to a large black-and-white photograph. 'Who does that remind you off?'

Nicholas took a cursory glance. 'It's you. It says so, underneath. 'Herbert Gaines plays young Captain Dash-foot in Incident at Vicksburg'.'

'Cretin,' said Herbert Gaines. He gripped Nicholas by the back of the neck, and forced him over to the large gilt Victorian pub mirror that hung on the wall beside the desk. Then he lifted the open book and held it up beside Nicholas' face.

'Well,' said Nicholas. 'I guess there's a kind of passing resemblance. But we're not exactly the Wrigley Double-mint twins, are we?'

Herbert Gaines let him go, and tossed the annual back on the desk.

'You don't think so? You don't even know. The first time I saw you, down in the Village, I felt a sensation like I'd never felt before. At first, I couldn't understand it. I stared and stared at you, and still I couldn't grasp what it was that made me stare. Then I saw myself in a bookstore window. I saw myself. And I realized what it was about you that attracted me so much. You, Nicholas, are the spitting image of me, when I was in movies.'

Nicholas looked uncertain. 'That's not why you like me, though, is it? I mean — that's not the only reason?' Herbert Gaines walked carefully back to his chair, and sat down. It looked as if his jumpsuit was filled with nothing more substantial than bent coat-hangers and odd bones. When he was comfortable, he fixed his gaze on Nicholas again — those deep, disturbing eyes — and he spoke in grave, sonorous tones. 'Nicholas,' he said, 'I love you.'

Nicholas scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. 'I know that, Herbert, but — '

'But nothing,' said Herbert. 'I love you. Does it matter why?'

Nicholas lowered his eyes. 'I guess not. It was just that I wondered if you loved me because I was me, or because, well… '

'Because what?'

'Well, because I was you. I mean — is it me you love, or your old self?'

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then, unexpectedly, Herbert Gaines nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'It is me that I love. You are the personification of what I once was, and what I could be once more, if they would give me a chance. That, and that alone, is why I love you.'

Nicholas stood there, biting his lip. He watched Herbert Gaines for a while, but Herbert didn't look back. The old actor sat in his Victorian chair, smoking steadily and staring at the floor.

'Well, fuck you,' said Nicholas.

Herbert Gaines said nothing.

'Do you think I can take that?' said Nicholas, his eyes filling with tears. 'Do you think I can just stand here and take that? What do you think I am? Just one of your goddamned celluloid images? Just one of your old movies? Well, fuck you, Herbert Gaines!'

Gaines shrugged. 'Please yourself, dear boy.'

Nicholas wiped his eyes with his arm. 'Oh, that's great, that is. That's just too fucking neat for words. You spend your whole time sulking and moping like an over-age Shirley Temple, and when I tell you the truth about it, you come out with a charmer like that. Well, I can tell you here and now — I'm packing.'

'Packing?' said Gaines. 'What for?'

Nicholas bent forward and hissed the words at him. 'To leave you, my withered darling, that's what for.'

Herbert caught his wrist. His mouth twitched for a moment as he searched for the words. 'You leave me, you young bastard, and I'll break your neck.'

Nicholas pulled himself away. 'You might have been a muscle boy in 1936, but there's not much chunk left on the old bones now, is there, Herbert?'

He turned and walked towards the bedroom. Herbert Gaines, with a curiously intense expression on his face, heaved himself out of his chair and went after him. Hobbling as quickly as he could, he caught up with Nicholas in the doorway, and snatched at his arm.

Nicholas shook himself free. 'Herbert, it's no fucking use!'

Herbert clutched his young lover again. 'You're not leaving, Nicky. Not really.'

Nicholas turned away. 'What do you want me to do? Stay here and listen to your ramblings about the good old days for the rest of my life, and how fucking wonderful I am because I look just like you used to look, in one of those two dreary old pictures of yours? Jesus, Herbert, I don't know which is more boring — you or your second-rate movies.'

Herbert slapped him, quite hard, across the face. Nicholas stared at him, more in surprise than in pain. A red bruise spread across his left cheek. He lifted his hand and dabbed it.

Without a word, Nicholas punched Herbert in the stomach. Herbert gasped, and collided with the door-jamb. Nicholas hit him again, with his open hand, and he fell to the floor with his nose bleeding.

Herbert didn't cry out, didn't even raise a hand to protect himself. Viciously and systematically, Nicholas punched him in the face and chest, lifting him up each time he dropped to the floor by tugging his pale blue jumpsuit. There were speckles and splashes of blood down the front, and Herbert's face was a mass of bruises.

Finally, with his rage exhausted, Nicholas let him fall on to the pink Wilton carpet, and stumbled unsteadily into the bedroom. He collapsed on to the bed, and lay there panting and sobbing, his legs curled up in a foetal crouch.

After a few minutes, he became aware that Herbert was standing at his bedside, his white hair awry, his Jumpsuit dark with blood. Herbert reached out with a wrinkled and trembling hand and touched his bare shoulder. Nicholas recoiled.

'Nick,' whispered Herbert Gaines. 'Nicky.' Nicholas turned his face away. 'Nicky, listen,' said Herbert thickly. Nicholas shook his head. 'Nicky, you still haven't punished me enough.' Nicholas turned, and lifted his head. The handsome, wrinkled face was swollen and red. The bony shoulders were bowed.

'Not enough?' said Nicholas, unbelievingly.

Herbert Gaines, the one-time movie hero, dropped to his knees. 'I have sinned against myself,' he said hoarsely. 'I have grown old, and unappealing. You must punish me.'