Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Like a butterfly’s,” the man said politely. “All beauties have brief lives. Professional lives.”

Guy wasn’t sure if the man was flirting or just civilized. Guy had been in America too long, where real men were always gruff, might lunch but never dine with another man, and, seated even next to each other, conversed in loud voices as if they were miles apart. They didn’t want to be seen conversing softly, confidingly. Nor would real men sit in adjoining chairs at a table for four, but were always seen facing each other. But in Europe even heterosexuals were refined, at least the educated ones. He’d had a very refined friend, a curator at the Louvre called Titus, and he’d asked him point-blank if he was gay. “ Non, je m’excuse, j’aime les filles ,” he said after their twelfth intimate supper.

The lawyer, Lazlo, took down all Andrés’s details and promised he’d get him out on bail in a day or two. “Does he speak English?”

“Perfectly,” said Guy.

“I’ll have to meet with him to put together our defense. I know a lot about the surrealists — Magritte was my friend, as was the photographer Kertész, another Hungarian in New York like me.”

Guy nodded to show he recognized the names. He thanked Lazlo for taking on the case and the lawyer very politely accompanied him to the elevator. Guy handed him his card. “I’m just the right person for this job,” Lazlo said. “A foreigner, an art expert, somewhat experienced as a lawyer.” He smiled at his own modesty and patted Guy on the back. He was considerably shorter than Guy and his glasses, as Guy could see in the neon glare, were smudged. He was puffing away on his cigarette.

“What will happen to him?” Guy asked.

“He’ll probably spend a few years in prison.”

“Years?”

“Yes, it’s a serious crime, you know. He must love you a lot. We might get him out on parole with two hundred hours of community service.”

Guy shook his head and stared at his own lustrous lace-up shoes below the knife-sharp crease of his trousers. “Yes,” he said, “in love. Foolish boy.”

That evening as Guy was eating unbuttered popcorn with Lucie and filling her in on the whole horror story, Lazlo phoned. “He’ll be out tomorrow,” he said.

“Thank you, thank you,” Guy cried out. He never let himself show excitement (except in bed), but this time his gratitude burst forth. Lucie, puzzled by the astonishing enthusiasm, cocked her head and smiled quizzically, like a hard-of-hearing person listening to an explosion.

“And the … caution , the bail, was it very dear?”

“Not so bad, we’ll talk about all that in the morning.”

After Guy hung up he hugged Lucie and danced around the room with her in a sort of ecstasy-polka. Then he called Pierre-Georges with the good news.

Pierre-Georges said sourly, “That still doesn’t mean he won’t serve time.”

Guy didn’t want to think about that and said, “What are you watching? I can hear the TV.”

“An old movie — horrible color.”

“What movie?”

“ Seven Brides for Seven Brothers .”

“Oh, I like that one.”

“It’s idiotic.” Then, after a pause, Pierre-Georges asked, “Do you think Andrés knew what kind of risk he was running?”

“Yes, I’m sure he did.”

“He must love you very much.” He was the second person to say that today.

Guy’s instinct was to pass that off as a gibe or a joke, but he caught himself and said softly, “Yes. He must. It’s crazy love, but it is love.”

When Andrés was released the next morning at nine, Guy was there to greet him. It was from the federal prison down on Park Row and office workers were swarming around him. Guy had put on a black cashmere turtleneck and black slacks and was wearing his black cashmere peacoat. He thought all the black would highlight his pale face, and the touch of cashmere would be comforting. And it might suggest, as bright colors would not, how grave the situation was and that he was … in mourning ( en deuil ).

Andrés walked into his arms, though normally he was self-conscious in public. All that was behind them; they had so little time together left, Guy felt he was in an opera, the last tragic act. Andrés held Guy’s head between his long hands and covered him with kisses. They were both crying.

“Wanna see my head shots?” Andrés asked with a grin, and showed him two mug shots the police had taken, one straight on and the other in profile. He was wearing a uniform in the pictures, though now he was back in yesterday’s clothes. “My first modeling job,” he said ruefully.

Guy said, “Good cheekbones, bad lighting.”

Andrés said, “They actually call it a booking photo. Isn’t that funny?”

Andrés smelled. They rushed home and went to bed. They made love twice in a row, and for once Guy didn’t keep Andrés from kissing his nipples or his mouth. Guy licked Andrés’s fluffy armpit, which smelled. Guy wanted to memorize his body, soon to be lost to him for years. Andrés had a few dark hairs between his nipples, but in the daylight Guy could see faint swirls of short, almost blond hair across his torso, the fuzz that would turn long and dark by the time he got out of prison. His uncircumcised penis tasted rank. Guy propped himself up and studied it. It was big and ugly, with such a long trunk and such a loose sack — it looked prehistoric but friendly, like some pet lizard relative known to the family alone. As Andrés bit into his nipple he looked up searchingly into Guy’s face. “I guess you’ll be doing this with other men now.”

Guy said, “Hush.” And then he added, “It depends on how many years … we’re apart.”

Andrés burst into tears and sobbed and sobbed on Guy’s chest. Guy kept stroking his hair and wished he’d been more reassuring. The phone rang but Guy let the service pick up. Then it rang again. But Guy was trapped under a sobbing young man. What if it was poor blind Fred? Or a booking agent? He didn’t want to crush this moment under the rolling juggernaut of his career, not now, when Andrés’s life was going up in flames.

“I haven’t even told my parents yet,” Andrés said in a spookily quiet, solemn voice. It sounded like a whisper in a cavern. “It will break their hearts. They were living through me.”

“Have you told Rutgers yet? Your adviser?” Guy asked.

“Of course not!” Andrés snapped. “When would I have told them?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“And now with Interpol, this will follow me around the rest of my life. And I’ll never get my degree. Who would hire a criminal anyway? In the past even a criminal could become a grade-school teacher in the Andes or Angola, but now everyplace is interconnected. Should I just kill myself?”

Guy was suddenly energized. “No, you should call this brilliant lawyer who’s an expert in art and immigration. He says maybe he’ll get you out on parole.”

“No, my contact at Drew Fine Arts got two years, and he’s an American citizen — two years and a fine of three thousand dollars, and he wasn’t forging fakes, just selling them.”

“But Lazlo told me the whole Dalí estate is a mess because the master—”

“Yes, but Dalí’s paper was watermarked with an infinity symbol and was from a particular factory that went belly-up in 1980. There are tons of Dalí products out there — shirts, cognac bottles, gilt oyster knives, ashtrays for Air India — but they’re all authorized.”

“How disgusting,” Guy murmured.

Andrés took offense: “He’s a great Catalan artist and I only worked on lithos of his best work. The Great Masturbator , the Bullfight series, Cosmic Warrior, Caesar in Dalivision …”