Ted was not back yet, although it was nearly midnight.
Philip was at the sink.
I don't know if I would really like to fly again, he said. Maybe I've had it in the service industry. Enough waiting on people, smiling and being congenial to strangers you don't like and having to keep a professional distance from anybody you might want to get to know.
But I have to admit, he continued with a smile, hoping to charm Ilia out of his funk, the uniform looked good on me.
Ilia picked up a cookie from the box open on the kitchen table. He was restless without knowing why.
I bet it did, he said.
What's the matter? Philip asked, turning from the sink, a dish towel in his hand with which he was drying a crystal tumbler to a sparkle.
The matter? Ilia looked at him blankly.
With you, Philip said, standing the glass beside others like it in the sideboard across from the sink. You are not yourself.
Who am I? Ilia said daring him with a grin. Breaking a fragment of the cookie away from the mass, rather than bringing it to his mouth, he crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger.
Damned if I know, Philip said. But it's obvious that you are on edge, as if you're expecting something and can't focus on anything but waiting impatiently.
You're right, Ilia said, but I don't know for what, either.
Premonitions are eerie. People often sense something before it happens. Not necessarily in its exactitude, but it can be perceived as if hidden inside a haze. Try no matter how strenuously one may to penetrate the nebulous sensation with tearing eyes, it remains obscure, a troubling absence.
For Ilia, it had become a sense of dread hovering uncertainly in a place he could not grasp.
Come here, Philip said, gently, embracing Ilia, drawing him near and kissing him sweetly on the lips.
It's no good, Ilia said, backing away but without unfriendliness.
Don't be too sure, Philip said with a devious grin and a forward advance of his hands to Ilia's chest.
What are you doing? Ilia said.
I am taking advantage of your uncharacteristic melancholy vulnerability to make you submissive to the desire I am arousing in you.
And he was arousing Ilia to an incendiary rapture by the gentle way his fingers caressed Ilia's nipples and explored the hard mounds they topped.
It worked and Ilia sighed letting out a long-held breath that had been imprisoned in his ribs but now was escaping. So emptied, he collapsed. His body did; his knees and his chest, his chin and his whole head gave way. Everything fell in an unjointed looseness into Philip's embrace. Ilia smiled back at his smile and kissed him.
They took each other in, exchanged breath, melded, and lay apart delighted afterwards in each other and embraced again.
•
Ted returned home after two. The sky, which had been clear and sprayed with stars had become congested with storm clouds. The recurrent sounding of a horn throating its warning of fog across the waters of the Hudson River and beyond its docks into the gridded streets of Manhattan seemed the eerie accompaniment of his entrance.
They heard his key turn in the lock and saw the echo of the amber light from the foyer reflecting palely on the ceiling in the living room through the open bedroom door.
They expected Ted would join them soon in their common bed and were surprised enough by his continuing absence and the sounds of pacing. It seemed there was someone with Ted.
He's brought somebody home, Ilia whispered.
Aren't we good enough for him? Philip said.
He's feeling his oats, Ilia answered.
Ted heard the whispering in the bedroom.
You guys awake? he said, coming to the doorway.
You brought someone home? Philip said.
Ozzie Kelly. Come and I'll introduce you.
They pulled on jeans and tee shirts and came into the living room barefoot.
I came back from Michigan, Ozzie Kelly said, swallowing a scotch, because I realized that I couldn't get away from the responsibility I felt to keep the earth healthy. I tried to withdraw into a very simple life and to live in accord with and with respect for nature. But I realize now that it can't be done individually and that even if I'm living healthily and treating the environment, the world around me, like an organism and not a machine, I still live in a world where so much of the rest of the earth is being killed.
Philip made coffee and they did not get to bed until six.
Ilia said, frankly, he was beat and had no idea what to do, everything was terminally messed up.
But you've got to do something, Ozzie Kelly said. You can't just let them get away with it.
They have already gotten away with it, Ted cut in. Once the oil is gushing up into the gulf, he said, and finished the sentence with a quizzical shrug. Once it's been squeezed out, as Bob Haldeman used to say, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
You guys are too defeatist, Kelly said. You can't let yourself think like that.
They slept until noon, the three of them in their bed, and Ozzie Kelly on the leather couch on a sheepskin in the living room. They had encouraged him to bed with them, but he said he would feel more comfortable on the couch.
He says he's straight, Ted taunted him when he declined to sleep in their bed with them.
I don't say I'm anything, Ozzie Kelly said defensively and with a tone more combative than he had intended.
You did, Ted said. You used to.
That's true, he admitted. But these things take thinking and rethinking, he said.
No one spoke and the silence itself seemed to be demanding that he say more. But he didn't. He grinned sheepishly. They laughed and Ted made up the couch for him.
He left them the next afternoon. He said he was staying with a cousin on Staten Island -- Staten Island! – and that he had to get home because it was her birthday and that he would call them when he had a better sense of what he wanted to do, hoping that they might want to join him, if they could get over their defeatism.
•
That evening, before dusk, as the three strolled northward through Central Park and lingered in a shady glade around the West Nineties, where a small brook slipped over flat stones and broke now and again into white bubbles when the water hit a stone standing obliquely, the tranquility was disturbed by the ringing of Ted's cell phone.
How did you get my name? he asked.
The reports and brochures you did for some of our clients, the woman's voice, soft and strong, on the other end explained. It's just that sort of mix we need. Real understanding of the challenges that face the industry and a real ability to connect with readers. We'd love to talk with you and retain you as a special consultant for a series of responses we need to make regarding the environmental situation off Louisiana.
He told her he could give her no answer immediately. He had to sleep on it and he had to look at his schedule. He was not home. He would call her back in the morning.
Please, she said. We have to work swiftly and restore normality. You understand. It'll be worth your while.
Ted asked directly what the pay would be and was floored by the amount they were willing to spend.
When he told Philip and Ilia that a leading Public Relations Firm wanted to meet with him about working on a special project regarding the monstrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and what they were willing to pay, they said he ought to go to the interview.
•
Ted's mother scratched a recurrently itchy spot on her lower back as she spoke.
I did not want to call you, she said, simultaneously mollifying and scolding, but I said to myself that enough is enough and if you want to be a jerk that has nothing to do with me.
Thanks, Ted said laughing.
Don't be sarcastic. You really did not come to the wedding. Remember that! I had to make up excuses for everybody. Some things never change. But at least I used to hope that they would. I know better now.
What do you want?
I have to want something to talk to my son.
You never did anything but want. You wanted me to be the way you wanted. You can't even help it. You don't see it that way; you think of it in terms of how things should and should not be, and then I've got to be the way I am supposed to be according to what you want.
Ted felt the anger rising in him, a residual tribute to the power she had once been able to wield and which it was essential for him that she not regain.
You really ought to see a psychologist. Lou says that your avoiding us is really an indication of how much you are still really attached to me. He says it's not healthy and I have to agree.
Ted bit his tongue.
I gotta go. I have an appointment.
What kind of appointment?
An interview.
For a job? It's about time.
I'm going to say goodbye, was his answer.
Evelyn felt her advantage and grabbed at it.
The truth hurts, huh? she said.
Painfully, he said, and snapped the phone shut.
He had gotten away and she had ceased to exist for him.
She held the receiver for an instant after he had gone. She heard the silence and felt agitated in her heart.
Lou smiled as he watched her standing in sorrowful perplexity. He was continually being vindicated.
You say something he doesn't want to hear, even when it's the truth, and he hangs up!
I told you, Lou said. After a while, there is no point – it is counterproductive. He wins if you are hurt.
Yes, she said. Of course.
•
The sun was caught in sheets of blazing orange-copper light aglow on the glass walls of the new office towers and at Thirty-Seventh Street, Ted walked into the World Industrial Center lobby, showed I.D. to a guard at the door and told him where he was going and took the elevator fifty-eight floors up to the offices of International Publics.
Germaine, a red-headed beauty tall in red paten leather heels, a tight black skirt, a white blouse with a ruffled bib, and a simple black spencer, delicately perfumed and her lips a fire engine red to match her shoes, welcomed him.
We spoke on the phone, she said. Mr. Hournet and Mr. Farrow will be ready in a few minutes. Please have a seat, she added, pointing to a red leather couch of the same shade as her lipstick and shoes and offered him an espresso.
Ted thought she had said Farrell when she said Farrow.
Wondering, as he sipped the coffee, if it was Malcolm Farrell and how he should act if it were, Ted was relieved when Germaine led him into an art deco conference room and saw that it was not.
This is not being recorded, Hournet said, but Germaine will take notes, just for our sake. They're easier to shred, he said, as if joking and careless not to say easier than what?
What is it you'd like me to do? Ted said.
Ah, yes, said Hournet. I have heard that you are very well organized.
Ted waited quietly for something more, but Hournet let the silence hang and Farrow smiled at him and said that he admired the necklace Ted was wearing, a thin but intricately wrought silver chain Ilia had given him.
Ted nodded and smiled but waited for someone else to begin.
It's not really a very pleasant subject, Hournet said, but it must be faced, and, with your expertise and skill, perhaps we can face it without losing face, he said, delicately pleased with what he thought was the grace of his formula.
I don't understand.
You've got to make it disappear.
Make what disappear? Ted said
The oil spill for one and the focus on us as the devil's agent.
How can I make it disappear?
Make its unrelenting negative presence in the public's perception disappear.
You mean pretend that the thing is not the way it is?
If you want to put it brutally, but I'd rather say to try to see everything from another point of view, one that's not distorted by politics and emotion. Perception of reality is a very big factor in determining what reality is.
Ted listened and looked at him as he spoke. He was not a bad looking man, obviously impelled by vanity. He undoubtedly visited a gym and read post-modern philosophers.
He offered Ted a position as crew leader developing a publicity campaign that would put a spin on the spill that would redefine it as a step in mankind's inexorable adventure deeper into the unknown and deeper into a mastery of nature and circumstance. Without mistakes and without accidents there could be no advancement of learning. Retreat from further exploration and technological experimentation would lead us back to the middle ages. Without the kind of economic and intellectual daring, we'd be no better than the Taliban.
Ted, he explained, was to turn a calamity into an adventure story to be set in a complex underwater bio-ecosystem whose scientific laws we were just leaning. It was another dimension we had to master, just like outer space. They would write informational brochures for print and scripts for nature videos that would be posted all over the web. (1)
Ted was right for the job, Bud Hournet said. He was a good fit because knew natural resources, the technology and the politics of oil extraction -- from the desert or the sea bed all the way to the pump, from the ground up, and he could write a lively and compelling prose full of interesting anecdotes and clear and painless explanations. He would craft a series of strategies to get the message into the ether: we revere nature and work with nature for the sake of mankind, Hournet said, and smiled as he lightly waved the fingers of his right hand, as if taking hold of the ether.
Ted looked at him but said nothing.
Mike, Hournet said turning to Farrow; Germaine, he said addressing her, too; I want to speak one on one with Mr. Blum.
They gathered their papers, smiled, shook Ted's hand, saying how much they enjoyed meeting him and hoped that they would see him more often now. They left the two of them alone in the deco room just as evening was overcoming day.
•
The way that you're thinking about it right now, you're going to turn me down, Hournet said.
I don't know what I'm going to do, Ted answered.
But I do, Hournet said. You are going to do what I want you to do.
How do you know that? Ted said nonplused by his presumption.
Because you like being told what to do.
Is that why you locked the door?
I locked the door because I hoped we could come to an understanding.
That depends on having the door locked?
It depends on you. You're awfully sexy, you know.
Is that what our understanding is about?
It might be, Hournet said with emphasis.
Ted looked at him waiting for him to speak again.
I'm very patient, he said, and I know you'll come around.
By this time Hournet had risen from his chair and was leaning over Ted and whispering these words near his ear. Ted shivered with pleasure feeling the breath with which this man caressed his neck and touched him with his whisper.
You have lived life enough in discontent, he said coaxingly. It is time to get some satisfaction.
He nipped gently at his ear bit his neck with gentle bites, and then touched his lips with his. Ted responded. He returned his kisses.
Hournet snaked his hand under Ted's trousers at the waistband and stroked him and touched him where he would take him, feeling Ted opening up to him.
(1) This footnote, by its nature, intrudes uncomfortably into my story. It is formally inappropriate. especially for the genre of fiction that this narrative purports to be and for the feeling of an unbroken spell upon which so much depends.
The way this footnote undermines the story, so actual events intrude into my fable. After writing this section of the story, I discovered that the oil company now branded, to use terminology in fashion, with the logo bp and an ecological sunflower, is in fact producing such material.
See http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/bp-reporter-flies-over-gulf-without-noting-slick/?hp
BP (for British Petroleum) was once, in the early 1950s, known as Anglo-Iranian Oil, in which vestiture it successfully petitioned the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohamed Mosadeq. Mosadeq was a socialist who nationalized Iranian oil, and compensated Anglo-Iranian Oil at then-current market value for their nationalized property. The CIA succeeded in toppling the government and re-installing the Shah. The oppressive climate of his regime led to the Revolution of 1979 and all the subsequent bloody turmoil and international tension.
It seems appropriate for bp to figure in a story appearing under the Authoritarian rubric.
[When you write please put story name in subject slot. Thanks.]