Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“No. We haven’t had lunch. You’ll have to get something.”

“Luke’ll want hot dogs at the deli. Maybe—” She looked excited. “Maybe I can fool Luke into having a good hot lunch here. I could make my crazy lentil soup with the pieces of hot dog in it.”

Eric knew that soup well. “He’ll love it.”

“You’ll have some?” she asked eagerly, pleased at the hope she might succeed with both of them.

“Absolutely.”

She began to get the makings. She moved with the deliberation of age and her natural carefulness: every gesture evaluated first, then executed with slow pleasure.

Miriam and Barry took very few chances. There had been one big risk, and its failure had shut all the windows and doors. They had locked themselves in their little cave in upper Manhattan, hibernating until the cold, wild world came to an end. In everything there was the old look of failure, the old smells: mistakes and regret unventilated. That was his home, and the frightened part of Eric was glad to be back.

But he couldn’t stay in their cave, in their warm misery. To be so doomed, eking out a reasonable but unspectacular existence would kill Eric. Better to take one chance and lose everything than live a slow progress to death.

PETER THOUGHT his legs would buckle. New joints seemed to have been created, a leg of knees, each one bending out of sequence, collapsing his stride. He hoped to get to the couch and sit.

Larry was behind an enormous black glass desk that matched his coffee table. It was the worktable of a man who does no work. The sight of Larry was an immediate shock. He was hairless. Peter couldn’t remember the color Larry’s hair used to be, but he remembered large quantities of it, bushy, thick, waves in conflict, like a romantic painting of a stormy sea.

“Hello, Peter,” Larry’s voice said. He stayed in his high-backed chair. The tall black leather back rose above his bald head like a tombstone.

Larry was real, after all. Not a nightmare. But real.

Peter got himself to the couch. It put him all the way across the room from Larry. There were floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk and to its side; they showed a static, sickening view of glass boxes with no ground in sight.

“You sure have grown,” Larry said with a smirk. A hand went to his hairless pate. He ran his palm from the forehead back, feeling for what was gone. “Would you like something to drink?”

Larry’s socks were too short. Peter could see a stripe of very white skin just beneath the gray fabric of his pants leg. Peter couldn’t speak. He shook his head.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Larry seemed to be smirking. He regarded Peter with amusement and contempt. Peter had expected shame, fear, wariness — certainly not arrogance.

“I wanted to talk,” Peter mumbled.

“Uh-huh.” Larry nodded, encouraging a half-wit. “About what?”

This was impossible. Larry’s sham, his show of ordinariness, made the introduction of the topic—“You were wrong,” Peter blurted.

Larry got out of his chair quickly. He was shorter than Peter expected. The memory of Larry was different, distorted by childhood scale. Larry moved right at Peter.

Peter prepared to defend himself. Peter’s legs pressed against the couch, his arms flexed. But Larry detoured at the coffee table and moved to the open door, shutting it. He stood with his back to it, looking down at Peter.

Is he looking at my groin?

“Look. In my life, that never happened. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to talk about it.” Larry smiled. Regretfully. Sorry, kid, can’t help. He gestured with his hands, palms up, I’ve got no weapons, there’s nothing I can do, call me next week.

“It did happen,” Peter said. He sounded retarded. Questioning and demanding all at once.

“I’ve dealt with it. I’ve been in therapy. That’s in the past.”

Larry walked back to his desk, again with energy, abrupt, leading with his belly, like a toddler.

Peter returned Larry’s expectant stare. His eyebrows were raised, a waiter attentive to a customer’s order. “Why?” came out of Peter.

“Because it was a sickness. I couldn’t face that I was gay.” He quickly put his hand to his forehead, paused, then slowly moved it over the top of his head, feeling the raw skin possessively.

He’s like a giant penis. Fat, reddened, a bulbous head.

Peter sniffed at something. A perfume.

No, Larry’s cologne. It was the same, the same sweet odor, the same languorous smell — He’s lying. He smells the same, he is the same.

“Why me?”

“You were around.” Larry smirked. He looked away and seemed to deliberately remove the sarcasm from his face.

Fuck you. Peter’s cheeks and lips felt thick and heavy with his upset. They were too heavy to support his head. He looked down.

“I mean, I was living at Gary’s, you were there a lot.” With Peter’s eyes closed, the past was now. Larry’s slightly raspy voice, a hard whisper, sneaked into the ear, through the unlocked basement door of his brain. Yesterday was still here.

“And”—this came out with a sigh, weary and bored—“you were lonely. Your parents were splitting up. You needed love. You look like you still do.”

Peter opened his eyes. Larry was an old man. His skin was pulled too tight — a face-lift. He was artificially tanned, even the dome on top; that’s why the leg skin seemed so white. “I wanted it. Is that your excuse?” Peter said. He could say that easily. He had guessed that Larry would try to convince Peter he had been willing.

You like this, don’t you?

“I don’t know what you wanted,” Larry said. “I didn’t think about what you wanted.” Larry shifted his chair forward. He flipped open a thick black leather appointment book. Does he own anything that has color? “I have to go in ten minutes—”

“What did my parents’ divorce have to do with it?” Peter felt sure of himself now. This man had no scruples. He wasn’t pathetic, trapped by neurosis; he was a villain, a theatrical evil man, the kind Peter so often watched onstage and never believed in.

“Well, I knew all about it. Your mother even confided in me one day. When she thanked me for taking you to the theater.” He smirked again.

He can’t mean to be this naked about it. I can destroy him. I can ruin him.

“She was quite a woman. Still alive?”

“I don’t believe she confided in you. I don’t believe she thanked you.” Yesterday was here again. Peter stared at the black glass desk, its sharp edge cold and treacherous. His heart was pounding. Even now, he couldn’t look Larry in the face. Even now, taller, full-grown, strong enough to twist Larry’s perverted hand until he fell to his knees, even now Peter couldn’t contradict Larry without wild terror beating in his chest.

“Oh?” Larry was pleased with himself. “She met your now stepfather at some fund raiser and they started meeting in the afternoons. After two months, he asked her to leave your father. And she did. Just like that. Amazing woman.”

But that’s wrong. Dad had an affair. Mother found out about it and left him. Tell him.

“I was impressed. And I felt sorry for you. She said all the right things about what it might do to you — but she didn’t mean them. Just politeness. Mothers should love their sons. Mine did. She adored me. You were lonely. I was lonely. And after all, all I did was masturbate you. Nowadays we call it safe sex. You shouldn’t worry about it. Doesn’t mean you’re a fag if that’s what you want to know.”

Tell him he’s wrong. He’s wrong about everything. How could he get everything so wrong?

“Or—” Larry put on a new look, thoughtful and soft. “Or — are you? Is that why you’re here?”