How We Touch 7
A Finishing Touch
Leaning against the fireplace in the music room, as if he were a spectator at the gathering rather than a part of it, an older gentleman, standing alone, sipping champagne, his hair, graying, his body, still trim and youthful watched Julia as she went from one group of guests to another, drawn to watch her, fascinated by her – against all odds, desiring her. She combined youth and poise, elegance and sweetness. She was beautiful. She was graceful. She swept through the room effortlessly, talking, listening, laughing, touching, never teasing -- warm but not familiar.
He gazed and longed with ardor and resignation -- no longer a young man, no longer in the running, no longer confident. Desire all the more poignant. The time that had been -- that was gone -- that was his true time: it had passed. It was lost, except as a series of sensations -- if he could hold on to them, crystalize them. He was keen with melancholy. He had not become the man he might have been, that he dreamed he would be.
Julian broke his brown study, surprised him, approaching him, and interrupted his maunderings.
"You've been looking at me," Julian said.
"You saw me?" the man said.
"That's what a host does...stays aware of all the guests and makes sure they are enjoying themselves."
"Are you one of the hosts?"
"Yes," Julian said. "Are you enjoying yourself?"
"I'm...I'm not sure."
Julian looked at him and waited for him to continue.
"You're very beautiful," finally the man said without answering the question."
"Does that make you sad?" Julian responded.
"Melancholy," the man said, "not sad."
"Why?" Julian said, tenderly.
But the man shrugged without answering. "I'm being foolish," he said. "Forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive," Julian said.
All this while the man had been sipping champagne, and melancholy had become pleasure to him.
He took Julian's hand and held it as he traced his thumb over Julian's glossy red thumbnail. "I shoul' let you go," he said.
Julian took him around the neck and brought his lips to his and kissed him, not demurely, but with a big, open-mouth, tongue-in-his-champagne-cold mouth, long, wet kiss. He smiled, squeezed the man's hand, and left him.
"If there were a heaven with angels they would kiss you like that," the man muttered to himself, and knew a thing like this would never happen again.
"Where have you been?" James spotted Julian refilling his champagne glass. Before Julian could answer, James took him by the hand. "Our song," he said.
"Now?" Julian said.
"Now."
James played and Julian sang, first "The Silver Swan," by Orlando Gibbons:
The silver swan, who living had no note, When death approach'd, unlock'd her silent throat; Leaning her breast against the reedy shore, Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more. Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes; More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
Then they performed the song they had written together:
Like a current in the sea --
Like a whirlpool pulling me --
Take me deeper,
Deeper draw me into you.
Only when you do
I am alive, because I live
Inside of you.
Following the tumult of applause there were calls for an encore, and they performed Francesca's air from the unfinished Dante Cantata. The guests were stunned by it beauty, and silence hovered in the room before the thunder of clapping broke out. Chrissie approached Julian and handed her a long stem rose. Julia bowed, took James' hand. They bowed together. She kissed him. He embraced her. Todd brought them both champagne, and then, the lights dimmed and the evergreen glowed in the darkness – until lighted candelabras were brought in and the guests were led, as if in a Renaissance court or an eighteenth-century mansion, to buffet tables furnished richly in the dining room.
Todd's bow tie hung open in two long strings down his chest. He yawned and stretched and looked around the room. Julian had stripped down to his panties, as had Chrissie, their gowns in puddles by the fireplace, and they lay asleep on a sofa cuddled in each other's arms. James covered them with a fur blanket. He put a finger to his lips and drew Todd's attention to them.
"They are beautiful," Todd said, knowing that was what James was pointing out.
They blew out the last candles still burning. The moonlight shone through the bay windows. Hand in hand they took their happy way upstairs and fell asleep, wrapped in each other's arms.
Outside, the streets were cold and quiet. With hardly any traffic, and a full moon in a clear sky, the city took on the forgotten appearance of the urban bucolic. Recalled was the feeling of the city before it was overbuilt, before it was sacrificed to congestion, chaos, and anxiety. Here and there a person hurried alone quickly through the cavernous streets hunched against a bone-deep chill.