‘No,’ said Billy. ‘She said that?’
‘Oh, you got to love Celeste,’ said Greg, and Billy glanced over at Jessie, who forbore.
Billy’s heart did not start to break until the day he knew that Dan was back in town after the wedding in California, and that he would not be in touch. And Billy’s heart did not break properly for a week or two after that when he realised it was not disappointment he had been feeling, but hope, and that this hope was fading with the turning weather. Soon, soon it would be true. Dan would not have called. Besides, if Dan missed him, then he could just go out and find a guy who looked a bit like Billy, and pull his damn zipper down. And that was supposed to be fine. Because if Dan came out, he would be happy, and every gay man in New York would be happy, and the world would be, by so much authenticity, improved.
But Billy did not care if Dan was out or in, any more. All he felt was the weight of Dan’s head on his solar plexus, there on the beach, the waves dumping their heavy load of water, and the sea pulling it back, over and over. And he wanted Dan to meet Greg again, before he died.
But September passed and Dan did not call.
Various things happened. Massimo went off with Mandy to her family bolt-hole in the Caribbean, Billy held a dinner party which was a qualified success. Arthur published his book on Bonnard and wept for Max (who had detested Bonnard: who spat at the mention of Bonnard) at the launch. Then Emily von Raabs came to town and she hosted a large and informal supper in her wonderfully ramshackle house on East 10th. Emily had loved Christian, back in the day, so Greg brought Billy along as a kind of protection from all that, but the Countess had a new favourite young man now, an Irish dealer called Corban, who was the most charming man you could hope to meet. And Corban brought his old friend Isabelle, and Isabelle brought her interesting boyfriend Dan.
Emily Gräfin von Raabs (originally from Ohio, now from everywhere) sat sixteen around an old oval table and kept everything simple. A main course was set, buffet style on a sideboard at the top of the room, salad was passed from left to right; it was very homely and hands-on with just one server topping up the wine.
She had Richard Serra next to her, and he was incredibly handsome and, dare one say, monumental. And Kiki Smith was there, which always improved things. Artists, Greg said, are like wild animals in a room like that; it is like being in a a forest, suddenly, instead of a zoo.
As for the rest of us, the wine went down and the volume went up and the question that idled around the table was: Who has slept with whom? And of course it does not matter, because past sex is not as exciting as future sex, it is just a low hum under the melody of what is yet to come. Billy looked Isabelle over, when they moved through the double doors for coffee: the unreliable little ribcage, with a pair of those flat little triangular breasts like flesh origami: also lumpy bits from waist to hip where her underwear was a bit too pragmatic — she would look better without, he thought, though Isabelle was not the sort of girl who would ever go without. The most surprising thing about her were the shoes, which were black to match the rest of the outfit, but with fabulous, bloody red soles. She walked in them like a child playing dress-up.
Well, each to his own, Billy thought and he met Dan’s eye with the easy lack of interest he had learned all his life to show. He said, ‘You know Gregory Savalas? Greg does the Clements’ estate. And now Max Ehring’s, am I right?’
They might as well have never met, never kissed. That was the code.
‘Oh no,’ said Greg. ‘That’s legally all very. That will take a while. I’m just, literally, collating what’s there.’
‘So sad,’ said Dan. ‘I am one of Ehring’s biggest fans.’
‘You are? That’s nice to hear.’
‘I am. I just think the work has such vitality, you know? So hard to believe he is gone.’
‘Yes,’ said Greg. ‘He was a dear friend.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dan.
They stood there. Greg who loved Billy Walker and Billy who loved Dan Madigan and Dan who loved Isabelle McBride. He really did.
And Isabelle, who felt self-conscious for some reason she could not identify, took another slug of wine.
‘You know he left hundreds of uncatalogued pieces, just thrown about,’ said Greg. ‘Of course we left the main studio just exactly as it was.’
‘That’s amazing,’ said Dan.
Billy couldn’t stand it. He had slept with both these men, and they were talking horse-shit: they were speaking some kind of non-language to each other.
‘I can’t help wondering,’ he said, ‘if dying wasn’t the best thing to happen to Max. As an artist, I mean. Is that a terrible thing to say?’
Greg blinked, slowly. He turned to Dan. ‘You know, sometimes I think I am in the wrong business,’ he said. ‘Because I would prefer if Max painted nothing and was still here. Alive, I mean. I would prefer him to be alive. Even if he was just, you know, serving the wine.’
‘You do? I mean, you would?’ Dan seemed genuinely surprised.
Isabelle, as though used to this slight gap between her boyfriend and the world, reached over and pressed Greg’s hand.
‘You are so right,’ she said.
‘Is he?’ said Dan, persisting.
‘Yes he is,’ she said.
And Greg turned aside, briefly, to hide his tears.
It was two days after this encounter that Irish Dan turned up at young Billy’s door — ashamed of himself, clearly. They had sex but didn’t like each other for it, and afterwards Dan went home.
‘Everybody dies.’
This is what he had said in Emily von Raab’s drawing room, after Greg had pinched the tears back with finger and thumb.
‘You die of something,’ said Dan. ‘You die young, you die old, it is not the fact that you die that matters. It is what you do that matters. What you make.’
It was not clear who he was trying to convince.
‘I didn’t know you liked his work so much,’ said Isabelle.
And Greg thought about the corpse, laid out on a trestle table in the studio, in his working overalls and boots, how it looked nothing like Max, because Max was all movement and annoyance. Max was a constant pain in the ass.
‘I respect the work,’ said Dan. ‘The work is not beautiful, and I would prefer if it were beautiful. The work is violent and garish and he put everything he had into it, and I respect that.’
‘Right,’ Isabelle said.
‘Also, you know, the work is of the moment. This moment. I like that. I need that. I think if we don’t have that we are just travelling blind.’
Dan’s hands were in the air, he was making the big gestures, and there he was again, the priest, offering it all, demanding it alclass="underline" truth, beauty, everlasting life.
Or six months on a wall at MOMA, Greg thought, followed by a thousand years in storage, somewhere undisclosed.
Two nights later, at eleven forty-five p.m., Dan the spoilt priest was outside Billy Walker’s door, looking for sex. Again. And sex is what he got. At midnight, he was back out on the street and heading home.
That was the 5th of November. Eight days later, he came back for more. Then a short two days after that. He managed to stay away for another week. On the 21st of November, Billy picked up the intercom and said, ‘Fuck you, Dan.’ But he buzzed him in anyway. Three nights later, he came down the stairs to the front door, and said, ‘Let’s walk.’
The streets were wet and the air clear after rain. The boys’ winter coats were both open to the mild night, their long scarves hung down, blue and green. Dan said he was fighting with Isabelle. That was one of the reasons she had gone to Boston, they had been fighting for maybe two years. Also she had met someone up there, a guy, who was, incidentally, as queer as all get out, which was not the outcome he had wanted for Isabelle, but it was her choice, so maybe it had been a terrific waste of time, his feeling guilty all those years.