Don, tall and fit in his sleeveless, chest-hugging, black tee shirt and tight black shorts cleared away their tea mugs as they pushed their chairs back and got into their robes.
Thank you, he smiled seductively, picking up their tip.
The chlorine smell from the pool pervaded the café
They said thank you.
Mitch went first and Jay followed.
It wouldn't've mattered if you'd told me, Jay said, getting under one of the shower heads attached to the pole in the center of the large, tiled, circular room.
Then it does not matter that I didn't, Mitch said, with a bright smile, shaking the water from the falling spray out of his hair, as if to put an end to the discussion.
No, I guess it doesn't, Jay said, drying himself and stepping into his black mini-boxers.
If his response had provoked anger, that would have been a lot better than its being dismissed as Mitch was dismissing it now.
I'm looking forward to reading your report, Mitch said, smiling, leaving the locker-room and without saying it, indicating that he wanted to leave by himself.
Jay looked after him, crestfallen. Source and strength of his sexual energy, Mitch had just ditched him. He was no longer available emotionally. Sexually, he was gone. The Mitch who just walked out seemed like a different person in the same body. He was holding himself back and would be calmly impenetrable, standing right next to you but not there; unavailable.
Not Mitch nor anyone else at Pinchon & Broadfells looked forward to Jay's new semi-annual report with Picasso's Guernica as the cover, once he or she had read the first paragraphs of the introduction.
Optimism, Henry Pinchon read out-loud in his old-man's baritone, is for people who read only the establishment newspapers.
With market indicators, he continued out loud -- Myra Daley stood at the fire place intently listening -- pointing to an upward spiral of profits for every major corporation involved in energy, armament, telecommunications, aerospace, digital technologies, you name it, including privatized prison facilities, Pinchon continued irately, and privatized armies, how can an investor afford not to be an optimist?
What is he getting at? Daley said.
He's getting at me; that's what he's getting out.
That infuriating paragraph preceded an essay in which Jay carefully constructed a permutable and variable model of four possible forecasts contingent on four major global possibilities. There were statistics and graphs and forecasts.
On the nose! Top notch analysis, Pinchin said -- he was not stupid -- but in anger.
And then there was another essay, The News of the Last Six Months and What It Tells Us.
Iraq, 11 million dollars an hour, 87 billion dollars a week, torture, habeas corpus, violations of the constitution, unbridled corruption. Pinchon jumped from paragraph to paragraph mumbling quickly the most offending phrases. Myra clicked her tongue sharply as if her thoughts were rapidly processing something.
Where the hell do you think you are?
It was Old Henry Pinchon thundering as he strode determinedly right into Jay's office. Daley, was standing beside him, the icy hauteur which always accompanied her out in front now.
And Junior was there, young Henry Pinchon, whose every gesture bespoke the submission to his father which he seemed to have been born into. He was handsome, fit, a good dresser, but a shadow, a pale shadow, at least most of the time.
Now Junior was frightened, frightened that the Old Man would provoke Jay and then Jay would spill it.
Jay looked at him and caught his eye. It was pitiable and supplicating. And Jay knew what Henry was asking him: to forget about what he knew that Henry was remembering: how he'd been when they'd been together. His was the same frightened look of needful longing, which he had given him then.
Henry had been naked then, except for the leather harness, and he had been kneeling.
His head had been bowed, but Jay had pulled it back by a clump of the strong, thick dark hair and met his begging eyes.
My dog, that's what you are like. My dumb, devoted creature. You poor pathetic, cringing bastard. Here we are. What do you want?
You to let me admire and worship you, Henry said in a breathless whisper.
Stand up, Jay said quietly.
He had re-imagined himself. In his mind and in his body he had become Mitch. He felt himself looming like a great marble sculpture, his blazing torso an emblem of what is indestructible, something primary and male that held the truth of identity in it.
He breathed in deeply and felt a vital illumination in his viscera.
May I touch you? Henry asked.
Yes, Jay responded.
Henry put his finger tips on Jay's nipples and felt their hardness. He beat his fists against Jay's unyielding chest and sagged to his knees and bowed low. Jay crouched over him, bestriding him. With a small, triple-strand, black-leather whip that Young Pinchon had given him, Jay stroked him, the slap of the leather hitting his smooth skin, alive with its muscularity exciting them both to solidity.
Jay entered him from behind, laughing.
You, bitch! he said.
Henry groaned: O you are so right.
But the confrontation with Old Henry Pinchon was not about that.
Old Pinchon fulminated like Zeus and Jay watched him do it. But there would only be one outcome, and on it, they agreed. Pinchon did not want him on salary anymore.
This is the Pinchon & Broadfells' Investments and Markets Semi-Annual Report we're putting out here, not The Left-Wing Review, he said.
And Jay did not want to be shackled anymore.
No kidding, Jay said. You could'a fooled me? But not for too long.
What kind of a pornographic story is this? Scott laughed.
Why do you call it pornographic? Jay said, taking back the manuscript of his report on the U.S. government's history in the middle-east beginning with the C.I.A. overthrow of Mosedeq in Iran in 1953
Because everybody is getting screwed in it.
It all happened, Jay said.
You know how admirable what you did was?
Jay laughed and shook his head denying it.
Take your shirt off.
Jay complied without a word?
Do you know what a magnificent chest you have? Scott said.
The better to seduce you with my dear, Jay said drawing Scott's mouth to his.
Are you sad?
About losing Mitch? yes. About the rest? oh no.
Mitch was meaningful for me. He was like an energy source, a real energy source. He still is. And yet. He has always existed more in my mind than in his body. I bestowed his power on him by feeling it, by submitting myself to it. Without me, it is power unperceived.
Old Henry Pinchon is a source of energy too. To oppose, to expose, to depose.
Jay smiled.
I can feel some deep sources in you, he said, caressing Scott's cheek, when we gaze into each other's eyes and when your beautiful, muscled body is pressed against mine.
Jay touched his lips to Scott's and kissed his inner lips with a slip of his tongue.
I like how it feels to push through your hardness, muscle by muscle, and feel like you are the armor I wear.
[When you write, please put story name in subject slot. Thanks.]