And if, Giovanni said in a whisper, if I succeed now, despite having put myself at a disadvantage, if I succeed now in getting you back despite your resistance, that won't be something to spit on.
No, Ted answered, it won't be something to spit on. But look at you. You are not the same man who transformed me, who changed my life...twice. When you disciplined me and enslaved me so completely that you could transform me. And when you threw me out. That was the real test. I was a credit to you then because I got through it. I proved that I was worthy of the interest you took in me. I went all the way down and I came back up. If anything was, that was proof that there must have been something about me originally that made you want to have me, even if just to reshape me. You saw something valuable in me that I was suppressing and you gave it life.
What did you giving me in return?
I had nothing to give but whatever you could take. And then you stopped wanting to take anything. That made me feel I was nothing. Then it was not you but me that had to bring me to life.
And now?
Now, friendship, if you are equal to it.
I'm not ready for this, Giovanni said.
Ted shook his head. Everything turned out differently from what you bargained for.
Giovanni nodded in painful recognition.
It doesn't matter, he said.
Ted said nothing.
•
Giovanni did not succeed in mastering Ted. He could not reassert the dominance he once had. Had he been able to, he could have basked in pride and self-contentment and preserved the idea of himself that generated the power he exerted. He would have felt confident again, especially if he been able to deliver Ted and consequently gotten free of Bud Hournet.
Giovanni did not, actually, care much about Ted. He would have given him to Hournet to keep, gratefully, with no hesitation, if that ended it, as he believed it would -- just as once he had replaced Ted, at Farrell's insistence, with a boy Farrell wanted Giovanni to train. But it went wrong and Farrell took the boy back.
Ted's progress since Giovanni had turned him out, in fact, bothered Giovanni. It made him jealous. He was jealous of the person Ted had become. He was his successful rival and the force that disempowered him. Giovanni was frustrated at his own growing lack of power, at his own fall. He had overreached.
•
They were gathered, the three of them along the shore of the Hudson in Riverside Park, Ilia, Ted, and Philip. The late winter snow that comes always as a surprise during the latter half of March in New York City was just beginning as heavy flakes began to tumble earthward.
What a strange way for that to end, Philip said.
I doubt it has ended, Ilia said as they began walking out of the park.
My guess is you are right, Ted nodded in agreement.
Giovanni is not the colossus that he was, he continued. It's sad. His skin has lost the copper glow with which it used to burn. The force of his muscles does not break through his clothes anymore. Taxi! He's struggling not to be unsure of himself. He longs for me in a way he never showed before. He is ashamed, Taxi, that he does not project the image he once did, but he is unable to acknowledge the reality of his fall, so the shame is inadmissible and it stays bottled up inside him.
One stopped, and as the three of them climbed into the back, Ilia asked Ted, How do you feel about that?
Ted bobbed his head forward birdlike and compressed his lips. Philip sat between them.
About what?
His interest in you.
I would not send him into exile, Ted said, turning to look at Ilia, but I'd have to be convinced he was sincere and trustworthy.
And you're not?
Not so much. I don't think Giovanni has much control over what he can do anymore, if he ever really did. He is not a free agent. I don't know how much of a hold Bud Hournet has on him or what it is exactly. But Hournet is a guy who likes to have a hold on as many people as he can. That's why we got him mad.
And still do, Philip said.
By the time the cab let them off there was a thick fur of snow draping everything and carpeting the now deserted streets of lower Manhattan.
Once they'd gotten inside and stomped the snow off and gotten out of their over clothes, Ilia brought some rum to a simmer and tinkered with it, adding cloves, lemon slices, pieces of cut up apple, and brown sugar. They warmed their palms around the cups and inhaled fiery fumes. They sipped and held the sweet, tart, tongue-teasing taste of the hot liquor in their mouths. They swallowed. Fire spread from the heart. They embraced each other and did not let go.
•
If you don't like it, you can leave, Bud Hournet told Giovanni. What a lot of fucking nerve. I ask kindly for a favor and you get miffed, begrudging me what you owe me.
I owe you?
Goddam right you owe me.
It's fair payback, Hournet explained. You are bound to do it after what I was able to do for you after...your fall.
He spoke the words with an ironic dismissal of their very subject.
You have contempt for me, Giovanni said.
I always have, even when I was bailing you out following your bust up with Malcolm Farrell. You were a fool who thought he was hot shit.
When things got really bad, maybe going-to-jail-for-cooking-the-books bad, I remind you, I made a couple of phone calls on your behalf and all the potential...pressure – that really is not the right word -- that you might have experienced was vaporized.
Why did you do it? Giovanni said.
I thought you understood power, but, apparently, you don't. Power is not a blow job. Start with that and maybe you can get somewhere.
•
I personally don't like rejection, Hournet said, and don't want to be around people who are into it.
Giovanni looked at him stupidly. He had allowed Hournet to strip him to the waist and he stood at attention as Hournet spoke.
What I mean, Hournet explained, was that it has never sat well with me that your friend, Blum, refused his help when it would have been of great use to the company.
Hournet clenched his teeth when he thought of Ted.
And then this kike goes and writes about it and becomes a national figure because of his piece in Rolling Stone, and then does a book about environmental damage – he said the words as if there were no such concept in reality -- with some fucking pornographer.
It is more than I can stomach.
Giovanni maintained his posture and stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a large kodachrome of an imposing pelican flying gracefully in a bright sky over a dazzling bay, to the right of an oil rig.
Why am I telling you this? Hournet said. Because you are my agent! I want Ted Blum to submit knowingly and voluntarily and obediently to public humiliation. You got him to that point once; you can do it again.
Giovanni spoke without breaking his pose.
He's not the same, he said, strongly but without expression.
Bullshit! People are always the same. The essential person does not change. I want his life messed up. I want it made unbearable. I can make that happen by thrusting you back into his world. I want you to make everything distasteful that had been satisfying to him. I want you to bring him confusion; I want you to blight his joy; I want you to make him long for something that he will wish he did not want. I want him groveling.
He never groveled, Giovanni said. When he belonged to me, he worshipped me. I did not destroy him. I gave him my power. He returned it by his devotion. He never groveled.
Your power, Hournet scoffed.
Power does not come, Giovanni continued, emboldened by derision, from seeing someone grovel. It comes from seeing somebody becoming stronger, prouder, more handsome and more intensely attractive because he worships you.
The way you worshipped Malcolm Farrell and did whatever he told you, including sacrificing Ted for the sake of a boy he was fixated on and wanted to impress.
I cringe when I think of it now, Giovanni reported, but without a hint of cringing as he continued to stand at attention.
Well, I want to see him, Hournet said in regard to Ted, cringing, groveling, frightened, humiliated, and debased.
•
He never did see that. The erotics of Ted's desire had been sublimated.
Ted was at liberty because he had found his work. Work called to him with unrelenting and irrefutable insistence. It was a force beyond him, and he could not live without it. It was like love. It gave him something to live for. It flooded him with power. It allowed him the pleasure of extending himself and fulfilling himself by effecting things.
There were things to protect, things belonging to nature and to culture. He was impelled to champion honest words inside a torrent of lies. He had to oppose every calumny of the spirit with a humane vision.
I have not stopped being worshipful, Ted explained when Giovanni asked him why he had.
But I cannot get you to worship me as you once did?
A force in his soul would be missing if he did that, Ted explained.
•
You failed me, Hournet said quietly but with a biting intensity.
Giovanni could not answer.
There was a live band playing middle fifties music and couples dancing in the larger room that was part of a double living room.
Hournet stood by the window holding Giovanni by the shoulder, looking out as night caressed the east side skyline across the way beyond the rolling landscape of Central Park.
Anyone casting his eyes towards them would have thought they were lovers restraining themselves, because in public, from the private embrace they were both keeping at bay.
He is not important, Giovanni replied.
How do you know?
He's a media personality, one more voice in a torrent of voices. All the words broadcast every day cancel each other out at the end of the day.
It makes a lot of noise, unpleasant noise, and I don't like noise.
Isn't that what public relations is all about? Making as much noise as possible?
No, it is not, Hournet said, taking a sip of his vodka martini. It certainly is not. It is about reducing noise to information.
I did some stupid things, Giovanni said, and I've never gotten it together the way I once had it.
You lost confidence in yourself.
Giovanni looked at him with a hazy sense of longing in his eyes, as if with just the right adjustment everything could be made right again.
And maybe you were right to.
Right to, Giovanni repeated the words without understanding them.
Maybe you were right to lose confidence in yourself.
Don't say that, Giovanni said smiling.
You ought to be punished.
[When you write, put story name in subject slot, please. Thanks.]