Diamond Shadows
3
What did happen last night? Robertson finally asked, scratching his head.
Magnus had gone slowly through the room, laying the silver coffee service on a bedside table, bringing robes, opening the curtains, a plush damask, to let floods of sunlight tumble into the room, stain the carpet yellow and creep across Robertson's face, peaceful slumbering. His eyelids fluttered in the light and revealed themselves nearly diaphanous.
The sudden flood of light into the room stunned Robertson awake. It dawned on him that he had stayed the night, something that was not common for him.
Robertson sat up, turned and saw Julian lying awake, naked, beside him, hands clasped behind his neck.
He smiled, quivered with delight, leaned over and in the throaty whisper of a voice that has not yet attained its daytime character, he said, Good morning, Master, and showered Julian with kisses.
And then Robertson pulled back. Like the taste of a winter's snowflake on the tongue, the memory was there, and yet it was not.
He remembered being frozen. And after that of being comforted.
Their limbs entwined; Robertson fell into swirling rapids of pleasure each time Julian entered him; each time Julian pressed more deeply into him and possessed more and more of him; he absorbed him entirely and was absorbed in him. The rapids rushed round him and pulled him out beyond himself into a vast sky blue and gold and rendered into immensity by the cumulus clouds towering behind wisps of cirrus.
You brought me rainbows in the night....and YOU are my pot of gold.
Who knows what today will bring Robertson mused as he went back to nuzzling Julian's long neck.
But he did not puzzle long or wait for an answer.
The feeling of Robertson's soft lips and warm breath on Julian's neck and the bristliness of a muzzle that needed shaving roused him, and he lay still, arms above the pillow, palms under his head, and just let Robertson keep nuzzling. Excitement rippled through his frame. Robertson was lost, caressing the side of Julian's neck with his lips and blowing a warm breath over it. Julian reached for him and put his palm around his scrotum and turned his head toward his bedmate.
There is a day ahead of us calling, and for me it is tyrannical, for it pulls me from this bed to a desk in an office overlooking the city, when I would prefer to lie here with you gazing at the ceiling as you snuggle against me.
You are my world, Robertson responded.
The world is a difficult and uncertain place.
I defy uncertainty.
That remains to be seen, Julian smiled.
And it also remains to be seen, he added with a sly but friendly and even complicit, laugh, suddenly pushing Robertson away and sitting up, whether you will be at the board meeting in Washington at 14 hundred.
You know about that!
I may say without boasting, or exaggerating, that I know about nearly everything. It is essential if you want to stay alive.
Robert looked at him pained, perhaps, at the force of those words.
Indeed, Julian said, remember, that with regard to everyone else, you are number two, and if there is sacrificing to be done...
Robertson stopped him.
Julian, Julian, you are severe. But I may be number two to all the world. As long as I am number one to you, it is of no matter to me, no consequence. And in my eyes, you are higher than number one.
Would you lay down your life for me, Townsend?
Just give the command, Master.
Up, to the shower, a shave, some coffee, and get dressed, that is the command.
Breakfast: on the balcony, a warm, sunny morning; rose bushes, amazingly alive with a profusion of flowers; espresso and a square of dark Belgian chocolate.
You are flying to Washington today, aren't you? Julian persisted.
Yes, but it is so dispiriting.
Explain.
Have you ever spoken to the president or to the vice president?
Wouldn't want to.
That's just it. They know what they are going to do beforehand, and whatever you say doesn't matter. And they really don't care how they do it. They get what they want. They don't talk to you. They repeat the program. They don't care about the truth. Pragmatic for them means doing whatever you have to do in order to do whatever you want.
So what are you going to tell the board?
That militarism only gives rise to militarism and that what they're calling terrorism is simply another form of militarism which their prior militarism bred, and they're not going to do away with murder and mayhem using countervailing murder and mayhem. But they are blockheaded and have neither principles nor humanity. War excites them, the poor bastards. And they are sure not to listen to me. I will then put a moratorium on further business.
Wins you a lot of friends.
I don't need friends.
What do you need?
To devote myself to you, to serve you, to obey you -- and after a long slow kiss tasting of sweet coffee -- to please you.
There will be time, Julian said, gently withdrawing. But now you must please me in another way and take your place in the world.
When are you going to Paris?
I will be in Paris...two weeks from tonight.
That means we only have...
But I will spend four days at my home in Mykonos first, Julian said.
You leave this Thursday then? Robertson said, crestfallen.
Thursday.
Mykonos?
It's lovely in September. The Mediterranean is warm and the swimming is fine, and the men are divine.
You will forget all about me.
I will add you to my list of friends.
I am more than a friend, Sir.
Are you? Julian said teasingly.
Part Two
4
The blue waters of the Mediterranean gleamed with luster beneath an intensely blue sky. The sea wind broke on their faces.
Townsend was wearing a skin-tight black t-shirt with tiny sleeves, a washed out pair of right-fitting Lees, calf-high boots of dark brown cowhide from his boot-maker in London, and a chocolate brown velvet three button jacket tapered at the waist. Right now the collar was up.
This is unbelievable, he grinned brushing hair out of his eyes.
Julian smiled at him, at his enthusiasm. It had taken quite a bit of work to restore his cheer after he returned from Washington quite shaken and hardly able to explain what had happened.
Essentially, someone had pulled a fast one, had pulled the rug out from under him, and he saw nearly his whole fortune vanish from sight, slip out of his hands, go up in smoke, disappear. What expression you use doesn't really matter. His life had been kicked out from under him.
This is what happened:
The Robertson fortune was made in the twenties. Old Harbinger Robertson was a bootlegger, a rum runner who worked off the coast of Montauk and had connections at the highest levels and filled orders that no one else was able too, and was paid very well, very, very well for his services. Shrewd investment and an uncanny instinct to pull out of the market late September 1929 brought him into the thirties with none of the worries so many wealthy adventurers of the twenties faced.
Nor was he hurt by the repeal of prohibition. He diversified, bought up as much scrap metal as he could -- was involved in selling New York city's Third Avenue El when it was torn down to the Japanese -- and also went into supplying freezer cases for supermarkets. So he made two more fortunes, one from the supermarket supply business and one from dealing in scrap metal during the Second World War.
Harbinger Robertson not only made money; he married money, Dinah Riversoe, the daughter of Hubert Riversoe, the founder of Riversoe Scales and Balances. He made his fortune selling scales to supermarkets. It was, in fact, through his father-in-law that Harbinger Robertson got into supermarket supplies himself.
Harbinger and Dinah had a good life together. He had the rakish energy of the successfully rich, and she had an impulsive streak that made their travels to Europe -- where she passed herself off as a man -- before and after the war so exciting. And for a number of years they were really in love. But Dinah died in childbirth, along with the baby, and Harbinger buried himself in his work, often wondering why he bothered, but never able to stop. Empire building was an end in itself for him and as inevitable as hunger in the evening.
In 1961, at the age of fifty-six he met Desiree Harrison, a chorus girl in My Fair Lady, one night as he was walking home to the Apthorp on Broadway from a dinner in his honor given by the National Grocers Association at the Tavern-on-the-Green. Crudely put, it was a pick-up. Something passed between them at the newspaper stand on Seventy-second Street as they both were buying The Times, a look, a feeling, and they began walking together and she told him how tired she was of backing up Julie Andrews eight times a week as she sang "I Could Have Danced All Night."
Harbinger was gallant, cited his age as her protection, and invited her up to his apartment.
What makes you think I need or want protection? she said taking his arm as they rode up in the elevator, and - boom -- as if he were young again, a bolt of sex energy shot through his cock.
Did she hypnotize him that night? Certainly all his friends and business associates thought so. Or did they just find that despite the difference in their ages, there was a similarity in their hearts which was irresistible? That's what Harbinger believed.
Hubert Townsend was born a year later, and Jonathan followed fourteen months after his brother. When Harbinger died in 1994, at eighty-nine, the Robertson Foundation was giving away millions of dollars yearly. Hubert and Jonathan had moved the lion's share of the business to military supplies and were amazed to see the profit margin soaring.
When Robertson Townsend flew to Washington, after his night with Julian, expecting to withdraw from supplying military transport and weaponry to the United States government, and prepared to absorb the loss, he was dumbfounded when a former British prime minister and a former U.S. president, now partners in the Dalwhympl Group explained to him that they had bought Townsend Enterprises out from under him and that the business and the foundation and all the real estate attached to it were no longer in his control but theirs.
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