Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

Seese was the decoy. Because Beaufrey was as anxious as David was about his masculine image. Eric had laughed the first time he and Seese had ever met at G.’s gallery. “Oh,” he had said, “I was afraid I would hate you!” Seese had been too high to say more than, “Yeah, me too.” They had ended up alone at the punch bowl. David was doing the rounds with Beaufrey on his left arm and Serlo on his right.

Seese could see it in Beaufrey’s eyes, the great hunger, the greed to have all of David. Beaufrey had only kept Seese and Eric around to humor David. Beaufrey had been intent on weaning David from them.

Before Beaufrey had taken him in, before the gallery picked him up, David had worked for an exclusive Malibu escort service — live-in stud, for three to six months maximum, cash in advance, all medical and dental and incidental expenses extra, cash on the barrel head. Rich old queers in Bel Air, their withered vines and grapes shrunken to raisins; layers and layers of grayish, crepelike skin dropping off, flat asses covered with black hairs. David never lost the gag reflex at the sight of dewlap skin on turkeys and lizards. He’d seen too much loose skin during those years. David had a long list of sights he had to avoid. Another had been the thick, yellowish-stained toenails old men had. He had awakened screaming one night in Eric’s bed, wet with sweat, crying because he had been half-buried in great mounds and fields of old men’s toenails.

David had bragged about the old men who had actually taught him “his art” by begging him to pose with them in front of their video and fancy 35mm cameras and lights. David had turned the tables on them. He had gone from art object to artist. He preferred to say he had been a live-in companion. What mattered was that it was clear he was the “companion,” not the male nurse or chauffeur and not the butler.

TEXAS

ERIC HAD CALLED SEESE. His voice sounded choked and hesitant, as if he was so sad he might cry instead of speak. David had given him the word, Eric said. “The straight stuff. Finito. Finished. The end.” “Oh, Eric,” Seese had said. “Don’t try to talk now. I’ll come over right away.”

Eric had always said only the vibration and motion of the automobile around him calmed the roaring, surging feeling in all his blood vessels. He needed to see the southern-California coast at sundown with lovers parked at every scenic-view loop. At the edge of the water an old man had been walking an arthritic Great Dane and watching intently as the dog shit a load the size of a wedding cake. “Wedding cake?” Seese had said, starting to laugh. “Yeah, a wedding cake,” Eric had said, and then they had both laughed and laughed, and Seese was glad Eric had telephoned her.

They had not talked about David or about the pregnancy. Eric had been thinking about leaving. He had lived on the West Coast — San Francisco then San Diego — for twelve years. He had been thinking about Texas again. Seese was not sure what to say because even when they had been laughing and joking together, Eric had seemed restless and distant. Seese had suggested a walk along the edge of the water. They could watch the sun go down. As the sun slid through colored bands of coastal clouds into the sea, Seese glanced at Eric, but he had been intent on his own bare feet, watching the thin sheen of seawater that oozed up between his toes and around the edges of his feet.

The marijuana they’d smoked in the car was coming on full force. Seese had laughed and run to meet the waves. “We came here to see the ocean and the sunset, and by God, we will!” They broke into a run then, and raced all the way back to the car. Eric had put a hand on her thigh and pretended to roll his eyes from the thrill. “Marry me. We’ll have a great time!” Seese was laughing. She shoved her head out the window to smell the low, damp ocean smell before the heat of the freeway and exhaust buried it. But when her face was turned into the rush of air, Eric had said, “I’m serious. I mean it.”

Seese turned to him suddenly to see if this was another tease. She pushed away the strands of hair blowing around her eyes to get a good look. Eric wasn’t joking. Waves of dread, cold, night-sweat fear had churned up from her belly to her chest and throat. Seese fumbled in the dark trying to light the joint. Eric had known both Beaufrey and David far longer than she. Eric assumed David was finished with her too.

Eric had detected trouble from her silence and pulled the old Cadillac into an empty bank parking lot.

Seese had nodded as she took a long drag on the marijuana cigarette and glanced over at Eric. He was watching her. “I wish you would come. We talked about it before.” Eric’s voice was calm as he added, “David’s with Beaufrey now.”

The mercury-vapor lights around the parking lot gave their skin a bluish-silver glow. They passed the joint back and forth without talking. Seese had seen how David glowed when he talked about the baby when they were together alone. Eric had no way to know any of this about David. Eric had seen only what a man might see. The dark surge of fear in her chest and throat began to recede a little, like the tide going out. Dry and safe again soon. Seese had patted the car’s dashboard.

Eric was watching her. Seese wanted Eric to take over, to begin telling his West Texas sandstorm stories, his West Texas grandma stories, his ’67 Cadillac Fleetwood stories. But when Eric kept his eyes on hers, Seese could feel herself floundering, then sinking. Eric wasn’t going to let her change the subject.

“David never loved you. He made Beaufrey jealous with you. That’s all.”

After the outburst, Eric had seemed to shrink, to sink into the peeling blue leather seat of the Cadillac. In the dim light, Eric had suddenly looked much older. Nearly as old as Beaufrey. Seese suddenly felt the sensation of falling inside herself. She fumbled in her purse for the vial of coke. While Eric took heaping spoonfuls up to his face in the rearview mirror, Seese glanced around, from habit, to be sure no cops were passing by. Eric let his head fall back on the car seat with his eyes closed. He nodded and smiled at her. While she leaned over to shove the little spoon in each nostril, Eric started talking. “When I was in high school, I used to imagine or pretend — yeah, pretend. I liked to pretend I was an orphan. No living relatives anywhere in the world.” Eric paused and sat up, flexing his shoulders, reaching for the key in the ignition. The streetlights had been on for fifteen or twenty minutes.

• • •

They had spent the rest of the night side by side on chaise lounges by the penthouse pool above Mission Bay, and the city lights. They had finished off a quart of tequila, talking about how they would go back to Lubbock as husband and wife and pick up Eric’s inheritance from Granny, drawing interest these past four years until Eric “came around.”

In one version they had concocted that night, they stayed in Lubbock long enough to get married, picked up the cashier’s check and left town before the sun set. She and Eric had settled on that version as the one that would make everyone — from the Baptist preacher to Beaufrey — the happiest. Eric would have the money, and they would go on together as they had before, except they’d have money. Money might give them a better chance with David.

But a week later, when Seese had mentioned the trip to Lubbock, Eric had shaken his head and laughed. “Oh, I never told you the whole story, darling,” Eric had said, waving a mock limp-wrist at her before he flipped the blender switch on their frozen daiquiris. Eric had seemed cheerful, and he’d been full of jokes the last week. Seese thought he was over his sadness. They had spent almost every day by the penthouse pool where they had enjoyed laughing about having a pool fifteen stories above the Pacific Ocean. Eric pointed out that a pool might be more confining, but at least the sharks couldn’t get him. “Oh, yeah?” Seese said, diving under to grab at his legs. Then David and Beaufrey had returned. David came and stretched out on a lounge chair. Seese could not see if his eyes were closed behind the dark glasses. Beaufrey had stood in the doorway only a moment and then turned away. Serlo slid the glass door shut.