Читать книгу Object of Desire - William J. Mann - Страница 9

I headed up our walkway just as the sprinkler system kicked on, a small, insistent hiss under the bushes, a soft spray of mist across the dry purple night.

We weren’t meant to be here. Humans weren’t designed to live in deserts. But we did, anyway. We pumped in water and planted bougainvillea. We built swimming pools and golf courses and laid out vast stretches of grass. We put up shopping malls. We did it because we could. But that didn’t change the fact that we were not meant to be here.

In the air hung the fragrance of dry sage. I paused, looking up at the sky, a vast dome of indigo studded with thousands of stars. At night the desert’s stillness never lost its power to astonish me. A quarter of a million souls resided under that big sky, but at night I heard only the rustle of dried weeds. From somewhere far away came the crackly, impatient whine of a coyote.

Against the sky, the mountains ringing the valley were a slightly darker shade of purple. I stood there, trying to make out the line that separated mountain from sky. From eighty-five hundred feet above, the bright white eye of the tram winked at me. I took a deep breath, pulling the dry, clean desert air into my lungs. Then I let myself into the house, uncertain of what I might find.

“Frank?” I whispered.

The living room was dark. I flicked on a lamp, sending light spilling throughout the room, illuminating the sleek black-and-white tiled floor and the low-slung midcentury-modern furniture. On the wall hung two of my prints: a giclée of the Chocolate Mountains and a close-up of a sunflower, which Frank called his green daisy. They were images that suited our house, a classic Alexander built in 1955, a butterfly-roofed exemplar of rational design and modernist style, with its exposed beams and gabled spun-glass walls. Back in the day, these houses were built on the cheap, snapped up by postwar California’s tail-finned, consumer-happy middle class, eager to snare their own piece of a desert playground popularized by the Rat Pack and other Hollywood elite. Now original Alexander homes fetched millions. From every oblong window, the house offered stunning views of the mountains, and fifty years of stringent municipal policy had ensured that nothing was ever built too high to obscure that scenery. Very few moments in my life were more treasured than my early mornings out by the pool, sitting with my coffee and watching the reflection of a very pink dawn against the blue gray of the mountains.

I set my keys down on the table and stepped through the living room into the dining area. The hallway was dark. No light emanated from the doorway of the bedroom. Might they both have fallen asleep?

I turned and headed through the kitchen. Only then did I notice the light coming from the second bedroom, which we used as an office. I peered around the door.

“Frank?”

He was sitting at the desk, a pile of papers in front of him, his brow creased, his glasses at the end of his nose. He looked up at me.

“Danny. I didn’t hear you come in. How was happy hour?”

“The usual.” I gave him a confused look. “What are you doing in here?”

“Polishing up my syllabi for the start of classes.” He sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I’ll stop if Randall wants to pull out the bed….”

“Randall isn’t here. I assume he’s tricking.”

Frank looked up at me and smiled. “Well, good for him.”

“Yeah. If it gets his mind off Ike.”

Frank nodded.

“But where’s Ollie?” I still couldn’t fathom why Frank was in here, poring over papers, when I’d expected to find him engaged in a very different sort of activity.

“He’s in the casita.” Frank had replaced his glasses and was once more looking down at his desk.

“The casita? What’s he doing out there? And why are you in here?”

He didn’t look up at me. “I really needed to get these syllabi done. I don’t want them hanging over me all weekend. And rather than having Ollie in the living room, watching television, where he’d distract me, I suggested he go out and watch whatever he wanted to in the casita and get comfortable there, and then, when you got home…”

I nodded, following his line of thought. “So you want me to go bring him in, then?”

Frank hesitated. He took his glasses off again and looked up at me.

“Danny, why don’t you just go out to him? I’m exhausted. I’m going to finish this one syllabus and then head in to bed.”

I made a face and folded my arms across my chest. “You don’t want to…do anything with him, like we planned?”

Frank smiled. “He came down for your birthday, Danny. And look, I’m so beat, I’d just end up sitting at the foot of the bed, watching the two of you.”

“That’s all you’ve done the last few times, anyway.”

That came out harsher than I wanted. Frank ignored it and looked back down at his papers. “Really, Danny, it’s fine. I’m exhausted. You go have fun. I’m honestly looking forward to sleeping a good solid nine hours.”

I just stood there in the doorway. There was silence.

“Frank,” I said finally. “It’s my birthday. I don’t want to spend the night with Ollie if it means I spend it without you.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say, baby.” He looked up and gave me a genuine smile. “But, of course, you want to spend the night with him. He has an ass you can bounce quarters off, remember?”

“I’m serious, Frank.”

“Oh, baby.”

He stood, placing his hands on my shoulders. We were nose to nose. Once, Frank had been a few inches taller than I, but no longer. Somewhere over the last two decades, he had settled, like the frame of a house. His joints had retracted; his bones had curled inward ever so slightly. I studied him now at close range, observing the dark circles under his eyes, the mosaic of brown spots etched across his high, shiny forehead.

“Are you really too tired?” I asked him.

He nodded. “You can’t disappoint him, baby. He drove all the way in from Sherman Oaks.”

I leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips.

Frank smiled. “We’ll take a drive up to Joshua Tree tomorrow, go for a hike.” He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Just the two of us. Maybe we’ll even finally spot a bighorn sheep after all these years.”

“Frank—”

“Let me finish this syllabus, Danny. And leave a note in the kitchen for Randall, if he comes back at all, that all he has to do is pull out the bed here in the office. I’ve already put sheets on for him.”

He sat down at his desk again. I remained unmoving in the door frame, watching him.

“Go,” he said, not looking up at me. “Skedaddle. Have fun.”

I stood there for a moment longer, then turned away.

One of the wonderful things about properties in Palm Springs was the casita—the “little house” on the grounds, which could be used for guests. Ours had a Spanish tile roof and beige stucco walls, accessed by a zigzagging stone path through a garden of cacti and creeping rosemary. Passing the kidney bean–shaped swimming pool, I could see the blue glow of the television from the casita’s windows reflected on the water. I looked closely and caught a glimpse of Ollie through the sheer curtains, lying on the bed, shirtless and barefoot and in jeans, the remote in his hands. I think he was watching America’s Next Top Model. I wasn’t sure, because he snapped off the TV as soon as I walked in.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied.

The California king bed was so massive that it took up nearly the whole casita. There was no room for any other furniture except the flat-screen television hanging on the opposite wall. A small bathroom and medium-sized walk-in closet completed the casita. “Perfect for in-laws,” our Realtor had said—or, in our case, our boy toy from L.A.

I leaned over the bed and gave Ollie a quick kiss on the lips.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I got you a gift.”

Indeed, at the end of the bed sat a small box wrapped in blue- and green-striped paper. A white ribbon was tied around it in a clumsy bow.

“You shouldn’t have gotten me anything,” I said.

“Well, I saw it at the mall….”

Ollie worked at a Ritz Camera at a mall in Studio City. He’d worked there since he was eighteen. He was twenty-six now.

I opened the gift. It was a cinnamon-scented candle in a glass jar from Yankee Candle.

“I don’t know if you like cinnamon,” Ollie said. He remained propped against the pillows, turning the remote over and over in his hands.

“Oh, I do. I do like cinnamon.” I opened the lid and took a whiff to be polite. “It’s very nice. Thank you.”

He smiled.

I put the candle aside. There was never much small talk with Ollie. We didn’t have much in common, really, other than liking the way my cock felt in his ass. We had met online, on ManHunt, or maybe it was Adam4Adam. Or Connexion. One of them. That first night, he drove all the way down to Palm Springs in his ’04 Toyota Corolla, and Frank and I took turns fucking his scrumptious ass. Afterward, he fell asleep between us in our bed. The next morning Frank fried bacon and eggs, while I fucked Ollie one more time. And that, we thought, would be that. Sweet ass not withstanding, Ollie wasn’t one of our more memorable tricks. Awkward silences took the place of conversation. Ollie didn’t get our jokes and didn’t make any of his own. He was either painfully shy or incredibly dull, Frank deduced, and yet, for some reason, I was moved to stay in contact with him, getting his number and his e-mail. In the last year, Ollie had been back down to see us half a dozen more times, and I still didn’t know much more about him other than where he lived, where he worked, and that he liked getting plowed.

“Where’s Frank?” Ollie asked as I slid in next to him on the bed.

“He’s beat. He’s got to finish getting ready for his classes. You know they start this coming week. So he’s going to bed, and he told us to have fun out here.”

“Oh.”

I had a feeling Ollie wasn’t too disappointed. I knew the reason he kept coming back out to the desert had more to do with me than Frank. I wasn’t being arrogant. It was just obvious. Ollie would kiss Frank only if Frank made the first move. He would suck Frank only if Frank maneuvered his cock in the direction of his mouth. On the other hand, he was all over me. Frank and I had never discussed this. But I was sure if I’d noticed, Frank had noticed, too. I felt bad, and a little guilty. But I didn’t bring it up. There was, after all, the slightest chance that Frank hadn’t noticed.

Of course, Ollie’s apparent disinterest might have been the reason why Frank, the last few times, had chosen to drop out of the sex and simply play the voyeur. He’d sit at the foot of the bed, watching and wanking as Ollie and I sucked and fucked. I’d try to lure him back up, but he’d resist, staying right where he was, shooting his load before we did. When Ollie and I would shoot soon afterward, Frank would be right there, waiting with a towel, like a dutiful butler offering his young masters a cum rag. It broke my heart.

Frank was fourteen years older than I. In five years, he would be sixty. Once, age had mattered very little between us. But increasingly of late, the disparity in our ages had begun to weigh heavily on me. I saw myself becoming Frank a few years down the road, moving slower, my body settling, shrinking, withering. It frightened me.

I touched Ollie’s smooth, unlined face. He was handsome, in an all-American kind of way, with sandy hair and blue eyes. We kissed. His lips tasted like wintergreen breath mints, and his little tongue darted in and out of my mouth. I moved my hands up and down his back and over his arms. His was the typical body of a twentysomething white boy who never went to the gym. Not thin, not fat, though his waist was starting to get a tiny bit squishy. Largely hairless, except for a happy trail leading up from his crotch to his belly button. Too many hours spent laboring inside an air-conditioned shopping mall had left his skin pale and pasty. He tasted like deli meat—bologna, maybe, or a salty ham. Leaning back into the pillows as I kissed my way down his torso, Ollie let out an almost inaudible moan. Talking during sex was not for him. No “Yeah, that’s it” or “Fuck, man, that feels good.” I only knew he was enjoying himself by the rock-hard six-inch cock that stood straight up in the air, perpendicular to his groin, from start to finish.

I unbuckled Ollie’s belt and slid down his jeans. Sure enough, his cock was spearheading his gray Hanes briefs. I got everything off him, jeans and underwear, then flipped him over to showcase his most impressive attribute, that incongruous bubble butt. I was quickly naked myself, dry humping the deep cleavage between those two delectable mounds. And in the process, I caught a glimpse of what we were doing in the mirrored closet doors. Absurd, really. Two grown men, naked, rubbing body parts all over each other like a couple of dogs in heat. I couldn’t help but smile.

That was a mistake.

Because in my smile, I saw what I no longer recognized. Myself. The man in the mirror looked nothing like me. I felt as if I were in a Twilight Zone episode, where the face looking back from the mirror was someone else’s, a doppelgänger from another world. What was it about my appearance that had changed over the last few years? I no longer looked like photographs of myself. I couldn’t put my finger on the difference. I hadn’t lost any more hair, and Just for Men had kept the gray at bay. There weren’t any new wrinkles on my forehead or around my eyes; Botox had taken care of that. So what was it that was different? Why did my face no longer look like me?

Ollie had wriggled out from under me and was now sucking on my cock. Leaning back into the pillows, I looked down at his body, so white, so soft, so unmarked by time or love or pain. A body not unlike the one I’d once had, before I’d started lifting weights and using creatine and protein and finally testosterone cream to replace what I was losing, a little bit more every year. Hair grew in my ears and fell out from my head, but my body remained hard and toned and supple. The skinny little boy who’d hated taking his shirt off in gym class had buffed up considerably by his late twenties, spending his thirties on the dance floor with friends, reveling in the glances of strangers, if never fully believing they were glancing at him. But, of course, they were: for an intoxicating nanosecond, I had actually been beautiful. And for an equally fleeting moment in time, I had believed it.

Ollie was moving up from my cock to my stomach, licking the outline of my abs. In a moment like that, I could close my eyes and believe that the years hadn’t moved so fast, that I still had a couple of decades ahead of me, that time wasn’t running out, that like the young man who had danced on the box in his thong, I still had plenty of time for sex, for love, for life. Plenty of time left to savor that necessary fiction of youth—that happiness was one’s due. But I didn’t close my eyes. Not that time. I kept them open and fixed on Ollie’s body, a body that I craved, that I needed, that I kept bringing back into this house even when Frank seemed indifferent to it. I grabbed Ollie’s butt with my hands so hard that I’m sure it hurt him. I hoped, in fact, that it did.

I flipped him over. Fumbling for a condom and lube on the floor beside the bed, I felt the blood surge to my cock. This was going to be fast. I felt the heat building up in my body, the pressure growing inside my head. I was going to have him—have every last bit of him—his body, his mind, his soul, his youth, his future. I pushed my cock inside him and clamped my lips over his. Above us the sun shone like a benevolent god, and the waves crashed against the sandy coast of Venice Beach. The brine of the sea was so strong, I tasted it on my tongue. Sand was creeping up my bare legs, scratching its way into my ass, but I didn’t care. I loved him—I loved him so much, I felt as if my whole body would explode, arms and legs strewn across the beach. I fucked him right there on the open sand, kissing him the whole time, our bodies entwined, two dogs in the surf. I finally understood what they meant when they talked about falling in love.

“Fuck!”

I pulled out in time to whip off the condom and shoot ropes of semen across Ollie’s chest. Breathing heavily, I steadied myself with one hand on the bed, accidentally hitting the remote control. America’s Next Top Model suddenly flashed once again on the screen behind me.

Ollie came himself then, a paltry dribble compared to my cannon shot. I was already out of bed, flicking off the TV, hunting for a towel in the bathroom.

“That was hot,” Ollie said as I returned, settling in beside him, pressing the towel against his chest.

“A quickie,” I said. “Maybe we’ll go a bit longer in the morning.” I smiled. “I’m a little drunk. Three martinis tonight.”

Ollie shrugged. “Didn’t affect the performance.”

“Thanks.”

We were quiet, sitting shoulder to shoulder against the pillows. Outside the wind had picked up. The glass in the windows rattled almost imperceptibly, but I could hear it.

I had begun to nod off when Ollie spoke again.

“I’m getting a new job.”

I opened my eyes and turned to face him.

“I’m going to be the manager of Spencer’s Gifts,” he said. “It’s in the mall, too.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“I figured Ritz Camera was pretty much a dead-end job, you know? How many people still take pictures on film to be developed? Even though we’ve started selling digital cameras and webcams and stuff, I really think I’ve gone as far there as I ever can. But people will always need to buy gifts, you know?”

I nodded, closing my eyes again. Yes, people would always need to buy glow-in-the-dark posters of heavy metal bands and mugs made in the shape of women’s breasts.

I felt immediately guilty for being judgmental. How different was I, really, from this kid? I’d never gone to college; I’d never had any great-paying job. But I was different from him. I’d had one very important thing that he didn’t have.

Ambition.

Even if it had almost killed me.

We dozed off, but I woke up quickly; the lights were still on, and Ollie had slumped forward onto my chest. I gently moved him down into a more comfortable sleeping position and got up to switch off the lamp. Climbing back into bed beside him, I lay facing the ceiling, eyes wide open. Ollie began to snore, a nervous little whistle tickling my ear. I turned on my side, willing sleep to come. But even as I tried, I knew it was futile. I wasn’t going to fall asleep. Not here. Not tonight.

I waited until Ollie’s snoring had reached a steady rhythm. Then I slipped out of the casita, padding naked past the swimming pool, the pungent fragrance of rosemary hanging in the dry night air. Through the glass sliders, I stepped into the dining room. The clock on the mantel was ticking off the seconds with a fierceness undetectable during the day. In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and washed my hands and applied a hot, wet cloth to my cock. That would have to do for washing up after sex. I was exhausted. In our room, Frank was sound asleep. His own snoring was far deeper, far more profound than Ollie’s tremulous whistle. Pulling back the sheet, I climbed in beside him, pressing my chest against his back, my lips against the soft white fur on his shoulders. I snaked an arm around him. He stirred.

“Baby,” he mumbled.

“I’m here,” I told him.

In moments, we were both asleep.