After Earl Mellon died, his wife emptied his closet and made a fire in the back yard. She burned all his clothing as well as the reams of unpublished manuscripts, tawdry novels, half-executed screenplays, barren dramas, and boilerplate poems he had written and stuffed into cardboard boxes and left in the basement until some of the papers had begun to mildew and rot.
She worked quickly as if afraid to be seen, although not by her neighbors, but by some cosmic evil eye always on the lookout to avenge acts of self-assertion. But she was not superstitious enough to be deterred. She was sufficiently pent up with twenty-five years of resentment to have the energy for her project.
The fire smelled like him, and she shivered in its heat. When she finished, she walked around the little forest that bordered their land and filled her lungs with the morning air.
Nick was eighteen and was not surprised at what she did. He knew that it was not love that had kept his parents together but some mutual attachment to a bitter quarrel they shared and could not end.
It took death to do that. At Earl's death, Anne had felt something heavy and stifling burst out of her bosom with such eruptive force that she felt, at first, a recoil from it and then she felt something like emptiness. But it wasn't emptiness, really. Everything was always filled with emptiness. This was uncommon. It was a feeling of spaciousness, really, the spaciousness that one feels early in the morning as one stands outside in the fresh air, when the streets are still and there is no traffic. She felt the spaciousness of emptiness and was exhilarated by it.
Within a month, the insurance was settled, the house was sold, and she told Nick she was moving to Barcelona, without him, gave him fifty thousand dollars, which was one twentieth of the fortune she had managed to assemble from the liquidation of their past, and told him he was eighteen, adult, and on his own.
Seek your fortune, she said.
He took an early morning bus to New York after he said good-bye to her at the airport.
New York was wet, chilly, and mostly shut down when he arrived Christmas morning. He walked the mile from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to Chelsea and was lucky to find a small room in the Y across from the hotel on Twenty-third Street.
Snow would have been good, beautiful and invigorating. But there was no snow. The chilly winter rain drizzle made the world gray and depressing. Such weather demanded you have some place snug, heated, and friendly to be.
Nick wandered through the gloomy streets, along Eighth Avenue in the twenties, baffled by the change the last few weeks had so swiftly wrought.
He was not worried. A boy from farm country, although his parents had been high school teachers, he was skilled in a number of crafts, particularly wood-working and fine carpentry. It was a knack with him. He turned raw wood into elegant pieces and was confident he'd find work through newspaper advertisements aimed at all the householders in Manhattan and Brooklyn who were gentrifying old residences and furnishing them with hand-crafted work.
You look cold.
It is chilly, Nick said in response to his sudden interlocutor, a good-looking fellow his own age in dungarees, motorcycle boots, and a leather jacket; like Nick, no hat.
I'll take you for a cup of Christmas coffee. I know a place that's open.
Benny had a fire going inside and served them Greek coffee with brandy in china cups on saucers.
Eliot listened with concern as Nick told him of his father's death, his mother's indifference, and his own emancipation.
Eliot was born in the city, had gone to private schools and then surprised his parents when he declined to go to college but instead got a job as a photographer at Vanity Fair. But they were not fazed. He explained to Nick that they recalled for each other John Lennon's lines that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
You're not going home after this, Eliot said, putting his cup down. Are you?
What do you mean?
I mean, it's Christmas day and I have the feeling you have nothing to do, and I don't want to picture you alone in a room at the Y.
It's ok, Nick said.
No, it is not, Eliot said.
I want you to go home with me and then to a Christmas dinner I'm invited to.
That's very nice of you, Nick said, but what about the person who's giving the dinner?
There's always room, Eliot said. You're coming.
Sure, Nick said giggling gratefully.
Here's a towel, Eliot said, tossing it to Nick after they had pulled off their jackets and taken off their boots.
And what do I do with it?
Strip and we'll take a shower.
Eliot took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.
You are beautiful. Do you know how beautiful you are?
Nick looked sheepish and Eliot kissed him and he responded with floods of desire to surrender himself entirely to this man whose breath had forced itself all through him and traded it for his own.
It was with joyfulness that they admired each other and slipped soapy hands along each other's bodies as the hot water fell on them. They kissed and the beating blood of desire drew them irresistibly into each other.
Robin Cutler worked in the art department at the magazine and lived on the top two floors of a brownstone off St. Luke's Square going west to Hudson Street.
Eliot had met him when they took a taxi together to cover a crane's collapse at Madison and Sixty-eighth.
Afterwards, they went out to eat. They compared their schedules and arranged to meet the next day at four in Robin's office. Since then they had worked on a number of stories together.
One night in Robin's office, as Robin finished a sketch and had sorted through, chosen, and laid out Eliot's photos, Eliot stood over him and caressed his hair.
What are you doing? Robin said smiling.
Caressing your hair, Eliot said.
Do you like it?
Yes.
Robin took his hand and stood and faced him and they gazed at each other with an understanding founded on a mutually shared passion, and, realizing that, waited no longer. They touched and embraced. As their chests pressed against each other, their mouths touched, their lips parted, their breaths joined, their tongues caressed.
Not here, Robin said drawing back. Come home with me.
That was the first time Eliot had ever seen anything as sophisticated and bohemian as Robin's apartment.
Now, Eliot kissed Robin. With outstretched arm, holding his hand, he presented Nick to him. Nick blushed, giggled, and bowed slightly as he said hello.
You're a beauty, Robin said. Where do you come from?
Connecticut, Nick said, looking at him full-face.
Connecticut, Robin said, tousling his thick, golden hair and sighing with a smile.
Robin winked and withdrew to greet another circle of guests.
You've made a conquest, Eliot said to Nick as they walked from the bar with fresh glasses of champagne. Robin adores you.
He touched his flute to Nick's and they drank.
I don't understand.
Robin wants to sleep with you.
Oh, Nick said.
He will offer to pay you.
What?
He will offer to pay you.
Why?
He likes to keep things impersonal and under control, Eliot explained.
I like things to get personal and out of control, Nick said. So I don't know that it would work.
Nick saw, when he looked in at the French doors that separated the living room from the dining room, that Robin was rearranging the place cards. And he knew ten minutes later when they sat down and his place was at the top of the table at a right angle next to Robin at the head, that it had been his place card that had been re-situated.
What did I do to merit this? He said smiling, flirtatious, to Robin.
Nothing yet, Robin answered with satiric menace.
What do you do? an attractive, fit, silver-haired gentleman on his left said, interrupting their exchange and gently caressing Nick on the back of his neck.
Nick turned and looked at him and smiled as if puzzled.
I'm Howard the man said, offering his other hand.
Nick took it and said, Nick.
Howard Mergulies, he said, intent on seeing the reaction to his well-known name. But Nick showed no sign of recognition and began to answer his new interlocutor's first question.
I'm a carpenter, a wood worker.
Do you do sculpting, too?
With the typical prejudice of a white collar professional who lived by his composure, his strategies, and his mellifluous vocal chords, he had Ruskinian reverence for men who could work with their hands.
In idle moments, Nick laughed.
I would like to see your work, Howard said.
I'd like you to, Nick answered.
I would like to see your idle moments, too, Howard said with a campy leer.
Nick blushed.
I'm new in the city and I need to establish myself here.
I understand, Howard said. This is my card. Call me. I want to get to know you.
With that, he turned and began speaking to his neighbor on his left, and after a few moments, stood, turned to Nick, repeated, Call me. I can't stay, now, he said pointing to the young woman who was at that moment pulling him away from his seat at the table.
Dad, she said, I've got to get back to Brooklyn and you promised to drive me.
She doesn't like it when I... But she succeeded in dragging him away with his sentence hanging incomplete.
A few days later Nick did call him and brought his portfolio to the restaurant Howard invited him to lunch at.
I shall stay long enough to share an entire meal with you this time and not disappear 'in medias res,' he said as they sat down.
During the course of their meal and a bottle of champagne, Nick showed samples of his designs and photographs of his work.
When they finished and walked out of the restaurant, Howard put his arm around Nick.
Come back to my office now and I'll write you a check?
What, Nick said, for?
Down payment on the loft you'll need to have as a workshop and a place to live.
A loft!
I have a friend on Wooster Street who is looking to sell.
It was a beautiful loft: walls of windows and tiled glass, old plaster walls, one wall, exposed brick, old board oak floors, tin ceilings embossed with corrugated vine leaves, three large skylights, a panorama of the city.
Well? Howard said, laughing.
Well, what?
Do you like it?
Nick turned from staring out over the roofs of the city, and said to him, It's like the movies, but...
There are no buts, and there are no obligations.
Still, Nick said, I do feel under obligation. People just don't do things like this.
I do. It's my money, I control it, and I can do whatever I choose with it.
I don't know what to say.
Say thank you.
Thank you, Howard, Nick said and approached the other man and they embraced.
How long are you going to mark time? Eliot said.
Don't worry, Nick said. I know what I'm doing. I'm gathering my forces and then I will become like a mist.
Porter Robinson was the first to commission him for a desk and after several nights of discussing Greek mythology, Hollywood camp, Jacques Lipschitz, Henry Moore,Henri Matisse, and Brancusi, he commissioned an abstract sculpture he wanted to be called A Young Man Turning into the Idea of Himself.
It was a year later that Robin saw them, the desk and the sculpture, at a small dinner party at Porter's when Howard, Eliot, Nick, and a friend of Porter's from Malaysia, a smooth-skinned, silken-haired young man with a porcelain beauty that shone in his skin, were there, too.
As he cut a piece of Comte de Savoie and played idly with a bunch of purple grapes, Robin said, You know, Eliot, I think we've got a spread here.
Come again, Eliot said.
I'd love to, Robin said, but first, unfortunately, things first.
Eliot, looked at him.
Speak, my love. Have no fear. These people will not harm you.
It's this way, Robin said. Nick's ready for a spread.
I beg your pardon, Nick said blushing.
Don't flatter yourself, Darling. I only mean in the magazine.
There was a silence. So he continued.
There was a feature in the November issue of Vanity Fair. From then on, Nick was never unemployed.
Howard sat on a stool as Nick worked, watching him and making idle conversation, admiring the way his muscles poured into his movements as he worked.
My mother and father hated each other, Nick was saying in answer to something. And it got to me. I don't know that I want to enter that territory.
Why does it have to be like that? Howard said.
It doesn't, Nick said. It doesn't have to be, but there's always a good chance that it will be, anyhow.
Well, if you expect it...
It's not that I expect it, but I just know it's coming.
You know what's coming?
The breakdown, Nick said, bearing into the wood he was violently transforming into a rapidly metamorphosing shape.
What breakdown? Whose breakdown?
The breakdown of your knowledge of who you are, of that uninterrupted connection you could have with yourself.
I think you have it now, Howard said, walking around the twisted, polished, oak wood that Nick had made, that made him think of a fawn in the forest, although there was nothing materially in the sculpture to suggest it.
Nick turned to him and put his arms round his neck and kissed him delicately, lingering upon his lips and feeling his breath.
You taste good, he said.
You are hungry.
For you.
Why didn't you tell me.
I'm telling you now.
They kissed again and Nick drew Howard to him.
I must go, Howard said.
You don't have to.
I do. I don't want to take advantage of...
Of what?
I can't help obsessing about the fact that I'll never know if you yield out of desire or gratitude.
Nick was insulted and would say nothing. He swallowed his resentment and remained quiet.
I'm sorry, Howard said.
It's ok, Nick said. You underestimate me,
Maybe I underestimate me.
But he would not stay even after Nick drew him into further kisses and caresses.
The thing he won't let get through his head is that I'm really attracted to him and that I want him with a passion.
Have you told him that? Eliot said softly mingling the words with the kisses he was blowing up Nick's neck from the shoulder to the ear.
He won't hear it, Nick replied. You're nice, you know, he added, grasping the back of Eliot's neck as Eliot looked down at his adoring face, the face that always shone upon him as he was being fucked.
I wish I loved you that way, he said, his breath heavy with his excitement, and as he did he shook his tail and squeezed Eliot in him, each time with increasing allure.
They kissed as their craft bucked through storm-tossed seas, and their voices flew off together when the explosion was over and the sun-spotted sky reappeared in a symphony of blue.
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