Page 7 of We Could Be So Good
Of the three men, one is a friend of Andy’s from prep school who is currently going to law school at Columbia and hating every minute of it; he is, therefore, sauced. Another of the men is a banker who spends the evening doting on Jeanne.
And the third man. Well.
“Nick, right? Emily told me I’dparticularlyenjoy meeting you.” His voice goes all singsongy onparticularly. His name is Ted and he’s a few years older than the rest of them, a bit over thirty, and apparently he works at an art gallery where Emily’s boss did a photo shoot.
“Did she?” Nick raises an eyebrow.
“She said we might have some friends in common.”
Nick would put the odds at zero that they know a single soul in common. Which means only one thing. “I suppose we go to a lot of the same places,” he suggests blandly.
“I bet we do,” Ted says, a grin spreading across his handsome face.
Nick is going to kill Emily. Or thank her, possibly. This guydoesn’t look like an undercover cop, at least. There’s no way Emily Warburton knows anyone so lowly as a cop, so that’s some comfort. How, though, did Emily figure it out? Andy doesn’t even know.
When Ted talks to Nick, he’s flirty and camp and not making any secret of who or what he is. But when they sit down at the enormous linen-draped table and eat honest-to-God pheasant, he reins in his whole demeanor and becomes only a little bit camp.
Nick has always counted himself lucky for being able to blend in with everyone else. He can pretend to be like any other man, and he’s fortunate that it’s even an option for him. But he’s twenty-five and he’s already tired. He’s so careful, all the time, about everything, from not letting himself look too long at other men to being almost paranoid about who he picks up.
But the stakes are too high for anything else. He’ll lose his job if he gets arrested or if theChroniclefinds out he’s queer. He’ll never get another job at another newspaper. The situation with his family will be unbearable. He’ll wind up waiting tables on Mott Street or knocking heads together outside a bar.
He knows things are different for artists and maybe they’re different for people who work in art galleries, too. He tries not to think too hard about it, because otherwise he starts to feel penned in.
After dinner, everybody goes back out to the living room and drinks disgusting things out of little glasses.
“You’re scowling,” Andy says, coming over to sit on the arm of the sofa nearest to Nick.
“It’s the crème de menthe,” Nick says, eying the green liquid distastefully. “It’s like drinking toothpaste, if toothpaste got ideas above its station.”
Andy takes his glass, empties it into a potted plant, and hands it back to him.
“You’re very drunk,” Nick observes.
“Absolutely pickled,” Andy agrees, enunciating every syllable. “But what’s the matter with you, for honest this time, Nicky.”
Nick gives it slim-to-none odds that Andy will remember any of this tomorrow, so he can give him something like the truth. “Sometimes it’s a tightrope walk, you know? And it’s not fair that I have to be on the tightrope when other people just go for a stroll down the fucking sidewalk. And some people have decided that sharks aren’t so bad. Or maybe they decide to say fuck the sharks, you know?”
“There are sharks on the tightrope?” Andy asks seriously.
“No, there are sharks in the water underneath the tightrope. Keep up. But me, if I fall off, I get eaten.”
Andy nods. “It’s not fair,” he agrees. “I don’t want you to get eaten by sharks.”
A minute later, Ted comes over, a little too casual, a little too close. “I’m afraid I have to make it an early night. I’m heading in the same direction as you, Nick, if you want to split a cab.” He holds Nick’s gaze as he speaks.
“Thanks,” Nick says, and gets to his feet. But before he can follow the other man out of the room, Andy is hugging him.
“What’s this for?” Nick asks, letting his hands rest on his friend’s back and trying not to think too much about it, keeping his body rigid so he doesn’t sink into the touch.
“It’s the wine,” Andy mumbles into Nick’s shirt.
“It sure is,” says Emily, coming up beside them. “Let the nice man go, darling.” Then she turns to Nick and winks, mouthinggo.
Nick goes. He catches up with Ted at the door and they take a cab to Ted’s apartment on University Place. He pushes the man onto the bed and gives him what he wants, but keeps his own clothes on, smelling Andy’s aftershave on his collar.
***
October1958
