Michael Nava - Goldenboy

I stopped. “Zane,” I replied.

The skinny bartender jerked his head toward me, his long earring dangling against his cheek.

“You say something?” he asked me.

I shook my head and walked back to where I had been standing. The man in the mirror was still smiling. He wore a plaid shirt beneath a black leather jacket. He had dark hair and a moustache. His eyes were brown.

Holding his eye in the minor, I stepped forward until I stood directly behind him. His smile widened.

“Zane?”

“Ambassador,” he replied, and swung around on the bar stool until he faced me.

“I didn’t recognize you at all.”

“Were you trying to?”

“As a matter of fact, I was. Rennie sent me to find you.”

He frowned. “Rennie?”

“There was a call tonight, threatening you. She brought your matchbook collection to me and sent me looking for you.”

“Goddammit,” he breathed. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She was worried, Tom. The caller was Sandy.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What did she tell you about Sandy?”

“That you had a fight and kicked him out of your house.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. He dropped a ten dollar bill on the bar and we went out to the street. It was drizzling. The bar was in a warehouse district and, as we headed down the street toward Cahuenga, a Doberman sprang out from a fenced- in lot and barked. A woman in the tatters of a coat hurried by, stopped, and screamed invectives at the dog. We reached Cahuenga and Tom’s car, a red Fiat Spider with a plate that read “Drifter.”

“Where are you parked?” Tom asked.

“Just down the street.”

“I think you should forget any of this happened,” he said, reaching to the moustache and pulling it from his face. I watched, fascinated.

“What about the eyes?” I asked.

“Brown contact lenses. The hair’s just a colored mousse. Washes right out,” he smiled. “It’s Hollywood, Henry.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble just to have a drink at a place like that.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to be invisible, Henry?’’ he asked, opening the car door.

I shook my head.

“No,” he said. “I guess you wouldn’t miss what you haven’t lost. Me, I can’t walk down the street without some girl throwing her tits in my face or some fag groping me. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m down on sex, but I like to choose the time and the place.” He got into the car and smiled. “You heard what I said about forgetting about tonight.’’

‘‘I heard,” I said, “but Sandy’s about to have some other problems.”

“Don’t tell me anything,” he said, starting up his car. “I’m finished with Sandy.”

I looked at him. “Then you know,” I said.

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything. See you around, Henry.” He put the car in gear and skidded off down the wet black street toward Sunset and, I hoped, home. I stood there for a minute, as if on an empty stage, and then started back to my car.

It was two-thirty-five when I knocked at the door to Josh’s apartment. There was some noise from within and then he opened the door, drawing his robe around him. His hair was a sleepy tumble and his eyes beneath his glasses were tired.

“Hi,” he said as I stepped into the warm room. There was a lamp on over the sofa and an open book on the floor.

“I’m sorry I’m so late.”

“That’s okay,” he said and kissed me. “I’m happy you’re here. I was just reading.”

I took off my coat and tossed it to the sofa. The day had begun in the Mandels’ kitchen, included Larry’s revelation that he had contracted Kaposi, took in Tony Good’s allegation that Blenheim killed Brian Fox, and ended in a Hollywood bar where a man with brown eyes watched me in a mirror. Images drifted across my brain with a lot of darkness between them.

“I’m exhausted,” I said, smiling at Josh who watched me with dark, serious eyes. “How are you? How did things go with your folks after I left?”

He smiled, wearily. “As soon as you left they started in on me.”

“I’m sorry, Josh,” I said, and held him.

“It’s okay,” he replied uncertainly.

I kissed his warm cheek, feeling the faint stubble there against my lips. “Do they think I corrupted you?”

“It’s not fair. I was gay before I met you.”

“You can’t expect them to be fair.”

“Don’t defend them,” he said, momentarily annoyed. “Sorry, Henry. I’m just tired.”

“Let’s go to bed then.”

He yawned in agreement and we went into the bedroom. He got into bed while I undressed and washed my face and mouth at the bathroom sink. I slipped into bed beside him and we reached for each other, pressing the lengths of our bodies, one against the other, everything touching, foot, groin, belly, chest. In my mind — my relentless mind — I pictured our embrace, my exhausted thinness against his young sumpture, like a Durer etching of the embrace of youth with middle age. Thirty-six: that’s middle age, isn’t it? Midway down the road of life?

“You’re thinking again,” Josh whispered into my ear. “I can tell because your whole body gets stiff except one part.”

I relaxed.

This dream I entered unwillingly because I knew where it would take me. I was sitting at the bar of The Keep, as thirsty as I had ever been. The bartender with the dangling earring refused to serve me because he said that I had stopped drinking. I looked into the mirror behind the bar. A stage illuminated by three blue lights formed in it.

As I watched I saw Tom Zane, naked, doing the last scene from Edward the Second, but instead of the black actor, Sandy Blenheim played the part of Lightborn. Blenheim was hugely fat, flesh almost dripping from his body, and wore only a jock strap. The scene was so grotesque I began to laugh.

“You think I’m funny?” Blenheim shrieked. “Then watch.”

Suddenly he was holding a poker, with a red hot tip. He began to insert it into the anus of the body lying on the pallet on the stage. It should have been Zane, but it wasn’t. It was Jim Pears, comatose and unable to protect himself.

“Stop it,” I shouted. “Stop it!”

“Isn’t this funny, isn’t this funny,” Blenheim yelled back.

I turned away from the scene to another part of the mirror. There, instead of my own reflection, I saw Larry’s cadaverous face.

“Why is this happening?” I demanded of the bartender.

He looked at me. Now he had Mr. Mandel’s face and he said, “Because you’re a queer. A queer. A queer.”

The last thing I remembered was ordering myself to wake up.

I opened my eyes. Josh, wide-eyed, had lifted his face above mine.

“Henry,” he said.

I expelled a gust of pent-up breath. “It’s all right. Bad dream.”

He held me. I smelled his smells, felt his skin beneath my fingers and his hair against my face. At that moment, he was the only real thing in the world.

I left Josh the next morning and returned to Larry’s house. I found him sitting at his desk writing checks.

“Did you see Tony last night?” he asked in response to my greeting. In the watery morning light he looked haggard but formidably alive, not at all the cadaver I had dreamt of the night before.

“Yes,” I said, sitting down across from him. “He says Sandy Blenheim killed Brian Fox.”

“That’s unbelievable,” Larry said.

I recounted for Larry the story that Good had told me. When I finished he nodded but his face remained skeptical.

“It sounds plausible,” he said, finally.

“A plausible lie?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Tony only lies to his advantage. I can’t see how this would help him.” He looked thoughtful. “And it’s true about Sandy’s taste for young boys.”