Tell Them Katy Did Page 6

  “That one,” Jack pointed, breaking the silence. “It looks like a boat, doesn’t it? A canoe, maybe, or a rowboat.”

  Larry squinted, took a minute to think about it. “It looks like a dick to me.”

  “You know, you’re the only person I can think of who would see that.”

  “What?” Surprised, wanting to be offended, but not quite. “You don’t think it does? Look at it. It’s uncut, and there’s the balls, even, hanging below…”

  Jack wanted to be agreeable. Wanting to be done with quarreling, he looked long and hard at the cloud, till the bright sunshine began to hurt his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. A little. I guess if you have that on your mind to begin with…”

  Laughter, sounding not altogether amused. “What, you think that’s all I think about…?”

  “Um, not all, no. But you do think about it a lot.”

  “But I don’t, really, not the way you’re implying. You’re just, you know, saying that because of, well, what I asked. And you still haven’t said if…”

  A deep sigh. “Larry, I can’t. I’ve already told you. I just can’t.”

  “You mean you don’t want to.”

  “Fine, put it that way, then. I don’t want to.”

  A long silence lay between them, an awkward silence, each of them thinking out their position, marshalling their arguments. Jack wished they could just drop it altogether, but he knew Larry wasn’t ready yet to give up on the idea. He could be so damned stubborn when he got something stuck in his craw. He could never just let anything go. Let things be.

  “Okay, look,” Larry said finally, running the tip of one finger lightly along the shell of Jack’s ear, “so the idea doesn’t turn you on. But it turns me on. I’m being honest with you here. We agreed from the beginning that we’d be honest with one another, so I’m telling you how I feel. Don’t you think you could do it for me? To make me happy?”

  “And what about me? Doesn’t it count for anything if I have to do something that makes me unhappy?”

  “I don’t see why it should make you unhappy.”

  “It just does. That’s not how I am. That’s not how I meant for our relationship to be.”

  “This doesn’t change our relationship. This isn’t about you and me, as a couple. It’s just…well, something to spice it up, if you want to look at it that way. I mean, fuck, it makes me horny just thinking about it. Look.”

  Jack looked, almost against his will, briefly—and unnecessarily. He already knew what he would see. The sight was not uncommon. “It doesn’t make me horny. It makes me feel creepy, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I don’t see why. Come on, you said yourself, he’s hot. If you were single…”

  “If I were single, I’d jump in bed with him in a minute. Who wouldn’t? Hey, he’s like something out of a porno film. I’m not saying he’s not hot.”

  “So?”

  “But I’m not single. That’s the whole point. And even if I were, he’d never ask me. I’m not in his league.”

  “Sure he would. He wouldn’t have suggested this if he didn’t think you were cute too.”

  “Oh, come on, this is all about him and you. I’m just, well, someone to be accommodated.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, there’s a lot of guys who would really like being accommodated by him. A hell of a lot.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  Another silence, longer this time. “You know, maybe you’re the one who’s not being honest.”

  “I’m telling you exactly how I feel. You asked, and I’m being honest with you.”

  “I mean, honest with yourself. Look, you admit he’s hot, you say you’d go to bed with him if the circumstances were different. Plus, you know I want to do it.”

  “And you know I don’t.”

  “Why are you being so stubborn? It’s not like we’re going to move him in with us. He doesn’t even have to come to our apartment, we’ll go to his. For one night. Or an hour, even, maybe two, we’ll leave whenever you say. We go home, and that’s all there is to it. It’s over, done. We don’t have to talk about it ever again, if you don’t want.”

  “But we will.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Even if we don’t, even if neither of us ever says a word about it, it will still be there. It’ll be in my mind. It’ll be in yours, too, whether you admit it or not.”

  “Look, it’s not like we’re picking somebody up in a bar. I’ve been hot for him since college. We were on the swim team together. I used to fantasize. I just never knew, I never imagined he felt the same way. If I miss out on this opportunity…” He paused, let the remark dangle, like a spent member.

  “You’ll hate me forever? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No, shit no, I won’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you. But, well, yes, the truth? I’d resent it. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t. I told you I’m being completely honest.”

  “What happens the next time?”

  “What next time? You mean, if he wants to do it again? He won’t. He’s a come and go sort of guy, always has been. Anyway, even if he did, say he suggested it somewhere down the line, say he called even and said, ‘let’s do it again,’ I wouldn’t, I’d say no, I can’t, I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  “But you’ve got a boyfriend now.”

  A pained sigh. “Ah, come on, I just want to get him out of my system. That’s all.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t mean, the next time with him. I think you’re right, he’s the type, well, it’s all about conquests, I got that vibe from him right off the bat. Fresh meat, that’s all they’re after, that kind. What I actually meant was, what about the next hot guy who wants to do it with us. There are a lot of guys out there who play that game. Every couple runs into it sooner or later. It’s messed up a lot of relationships.”

  “It won’t mess up ours. And there won’t be any next guy, either. I mean, sure, you’re right, a lot of guys are into that scene, and somewhere down the line someone may float the idea, but it wouldn’t be the same for me, can’t you see that? This is a special case, a one-time-only thing. I wouldn’t ask you to do it otherwise. It’s not like I need other guys to make me happy, like I’m out trolling or something. You make me happy, you’re what’s important to me. I mean, like, I wouldn’t go to bed with him without you.”

  “I guess he suggested that too.”

  “Uh, not exactly. Well, yes, sort of. He hinted, you might say. But I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize what we’ve got. You know that. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Well, then…?”

  Jack put his head back, looked up at the sky, at the barely drifting clouds, wishing the conversation was over, knowing it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be until someone gave in, knowing who the someone would have to be. “That one,” he said after a minute, pointing, “it looks like a fish. One of those long, thin fishes—a barracuda, maybe. Or an eel.”

  Larry laughed.

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to say it.”

  “No, go on. What do you think it looks like?”

  “It looks like a dick to me.”

  Jack laughed too, and shook his head. “You’re hopeless, you know that.”

  Larry raised himself on an elbow, loomed above him, blotting out the clouds, the sun, the sky, his face a silhouette. “So, what do you say? I told him I’d call him back.”

  Jack turned his head. They looked into one another’s eyes, each of them trying to read the other’s mind.

  “It’s just this one time?”

  “I swear it. I’ll never bring it up again.”

  “And it won’t change anything? Between the two of us, I mean.”

  “Nothing. It’ll be for tonight, and tomorrow we’ll be exactly the way we’ve always been. I give you my word. Just you and me, against the world.”

  “We’ll always have Paris.”

  “Exactly.”

/>   The odd thing was, he thought Larry meant it. Or, he meant to mean it. He really believed that nothing would change. Or he wanted to believe that.

  But it would. Of course it would. He didn’t completely understand it, but Jack knew that it already had changed. Everything. They weren’t the couple they’d been a day earlier, not even what they had been an hour earlier, before this conversation had begun.

  Whatever damage this might do to their relationship, it wasn’t about the future, either. The damage had already been done, had been done he supposed, last night, when Larry ran into an old acquaintance from school, all that, “Hey, look who’s here, gosh it’s great to see you, how’ve you been?”

  The world, their world, had shifted then, in that instant when the two of them exchanged those looks, those unmistakable looks, every man, straight or gay, knew them—the quick surprised smile, the flicker of an eyelash, the flare of a nostril, like an animal catching the scent. You could all but smell the testosterone, see the sparks flashing, hear the jungle drums.

  In a sense, the rest of it probably didn’t matter so much. Once you’d done it in your heart—in your balls, probably Larry would say—it was done, and that was it. Once you struck the baseball, the arc of its flight was inevitable.

  Larry saw in Jack’s eyes when he’d won the argument. He grinned and kissed him lightly, gratefully, and lay back down again beside him. At least he had the good sense not to gloat. To let the rest of it just happen. As it would.

  Jack watched the fish cloud become a shoe, a woman’s shoe. He didn’t mention this to Larry, though. Larry wouldn’t see it as a shoe. That much he understood.

  The Princess of the Andes

  The Princess of the Andes was registered in Ecuador, but her owners and her crew were German. She was a freighter, and although the heyday of the ocean freighters was long past, The Princess managed each year to make a modest profit for her owners by trundling endlessly up and down the coasts of North and South America, carrying from port to port at modest rates whatever cargo she could gather—cattle or potatoes, cheap rum and tin-ware, dates and palm oil. So long as it was legal and paid an honest penny or two, anything was welcome.

  She carried some passengers as well in a dozen cabins, six on the upper deck and six below. These accommodations were not of the sort to be found on the more luxurious ships that cruised the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, but they were adequate and the food, though plain, was plentiful and well prepared. Perhaps best of all, the fares were cheap, which had been a deciding factor for Randolph Letterman.

  Randolph liked to take a cruise each winter, when the tourist business fell off at his little shop just off Hollywood Boulevard. Generally, he closed down for the months of December and January. He had come on board the Princess at the Port of Los Angeles, when the ship was filled with Mexicans and Central Americans taking advantage of the modest fares to return home for the holidays.

  Randolph was placed at the chief engineer’s table and did not really get acquainted with Captain Herrman until after they had discharged most of their passengers at Mazatlan. Indeed, for the first week of the trip Randolph found himself sharing a cabin with a Mexican gentleman who was coal black, but Randolph, who was sixty and said of himself that he had been around the dance floor a time or two, was fond of declaring that one had to make the best of things and take things as they came. He was no snob, which had enabled him to make a success of his little shop, and he was a good mixer who fancied he could find something of interest to talk about with anybody.

  “If you take an interest in others,” he liked to say, “others will take an interest in you. Practice makes perfect.” And, “It’s an ill wind…”

  After Mazatlan, there were only a few passengers continuing on, some getting off in Nicaragua and a handful more in Costa Rica, so that by the time they reached Panama City, Randolph was the sole passenger on the rest of the journey, through the Canal and as far as Haiti, where the ship turned about for the return voyage.

  “I hope you won’t be uncomfortable with no other company but ours,” the captain said when he seated Randolph at his table for dinner. “We’re only rough sailor men.” They were joined there by the first mate, the chief engineer and the ship’s doctor.

  The captain turned out to be a hearty fellow, short and thick-built. When he talked, he bellowed more than not. Randolph thought him a rather peculiar specimen but he was prepared to make allowances. Because he found that the men at the table with him were inclined to be taciturn, which he attributed to shyness, he quickly made it his business to take charge of the conversation. Before he had opened his shop, he had been by turns a schoolteacher and a librarian, and prior to embarking on this journey he had made it a point to learn as much as he could about their various ports of call. By the end of their first dinner together, he had shared with his tablemates no end of interesting information about the history of Panama, the building of the Canal and its importance to world shipping. When at last Randolph retired to his cabin he said to himself, “There’s no question about it, travel is the best kind of education. For everyone concerned.”

  He lay alone in his cabin and listened to the captain and his mate chatting on the deck. Because they spoke German and Randolph knew not a word of that language, he could not know that the captain was expostulating on “what a bore that little man is. At this rate, I am going to toss him into the sea.”

  Sadly, this was the truth of the matter. Randolph was a bore, an excruciating bore. He traveled alone because none of the friends who had traveled with him in the past could be induced to share another journey with him. He talked without ceasing in a steady monotone. Interrupting him was folly, because he would then only start all over again from the beginning. He had a cliché for every situation. When the men at the table with him were silent, Randolph racked that up to their loneliness, and set himself all the more assiduously to amusing them. Nothing stemmed the torrent of his words. They were like a force of nature.

  Once, the captain began to talk with his shipmates in German, but Randolph would have none of that.

  “We speak of technical matters which could only bore you, Mister Letterman,” the captain said, but Randolph only tut-tutted at the suggestion.

  “I am never bored,” he said, “which is why, if you’ll forgive me a slight immodesty, I am never boring. I like to know everything. You never know when some other dear soul will want to hear something on the very subject you were about to discuss with your crew.”

  The captain said a silent prayer for that dear soul of the future. He would like to have told his passenger in the bluntest terms to please shut up, but he could not. Even if his position as master of the ship had not forbidden it, he wouldn’t have had the heart to be so cruel. He sighed and found some trivial matter to discuss with his mate—not so trivial, however, that Randolph could not chat about it at great length.

  * * *

  They were a day or two out of Haiti, on their return voyage, when the doctor took ill. This was an old intestinal malady that troubled him sometimes. He was used to it, and never unduly alarmed, but he did not care to discuss it with others. When his bowels troubled him, he wanted nothing so much as to be alone.

  Because his cabin was small and inclined to be stuffy, the doctor settled instead on a long chair on deck and lay back with his eyes closed. He was aware that Mr. Letterman liked to walk up and down the deck morning and evening, for exercise, but the doctor thought that if he pretended to be sleeping the passenger would surely leave him alone.

  Randolph passed him by half a dozen times, to and fro, and finally stopped dead in front of him.

  “Is there anything I can do to help, Doctor?” he asked.

  The doctor had continued to pretend to be asleep, but he was so surprised by this question that his eyes flew open of their own accord.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “You look quite ill.”

  “I am in some pain. It will pass shortly.”


  Randolph went away but he returned in a short while. “You look so uncomfortable there,” he said. “I’ve brought you my own pillow. I always travel with it. Let me put it behind your head.”

  At the moment the doctor felt too ill to decline and he let Randolph lift his head gently and place the soft pillow behind it. Really, he thought, it did feel a great deal more comfortable.’

  “I know what doctors are like,” Randolph said. “They haven’t the foggiest notion how to take care of themselves.”

  He left again but returned after a few moments and brought his own chair next to the doctor’s. The doctor groaned inwardly, but Randolph said, “Now, I don’t want you to talk, you just rest there. But I do think that when one is feeling under the weather it is comforting to have someone close at hand. I’m only going to sit here and read.”

  To the doctor’s amazement, that is just what he did. It made an odd impression on the doctor. The rest of the crew were used to his idiosyncrasies and didn’t notice at all any more when he took ill. He could not but be touched that the funny little man, usually such a monumental bore, had noticed, and he did indeed find it strangely soothing to open his eyes from time to time and see his companion sitting reading in silence. After a time, the doctor fell asleep. When he woke some while later, Randolph was still there. He gave the doctor a smile but said nothing. The doctor found that he felt much better.

  When he went into the dining room a bit later, he found Captain Herrman and his mate, Hans, drinking a beer together.

  “Join us, Doctor,” the captain greeted him. “We’re just holding a council of war. You know that Christmas Eve is only three days away.”

  “Of course.”