The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [50]
"Well, there's the Shaftesbury," Nick said, naming a pub that Polly Tompkins had described as the scene of frequent conquests.
"You're not so much of a pubber, though, are you?" Leo said.
"He wants to get down the Lift," said Pete, "if he's a bit of a chocoholic."
Nick blushed and shook his head dumbly. "I don't know really." He was very embarrassed, in front of Leo, but undeniably fascinated to have his taste guessed at and defined. He felt he had only just guessed at it himself.
"When did you meet Miss Leontyne?"
That he knew exactly, but said, "About three weeks ago," feeling more foolish with his quick straight answers to chaffing questions. He didn't flinch at the girl's name for Leo, and he had sometimes laboured through whole conversations calling Polly Tompkins "she," but he'd never found it as necessary or hilarious as some people did.
"That's what I call her," said Pete, "Leontyne Price-tag. I hope you've got your chequebook ready."
There was nothing to say to this, but Leo muttered dutifully, "There's not much you don't know about price tags, is there, Pete."
Nick tittered and watched the affronted look fade from Pete's drawn features as he smoked and gazed at the dreary tapestry. It could have been one of those items which never sell, which the dealer ends up almost giving away because they seem to bring bad luck on the whole shop. He remembered that Pete had been ill, though he didn't know in what way. "I've got this fucking great bed," Pete said. "I can't shift it." The phone rang, and he went off into the back room. "Have a look at it."
The bed had been taken apart and the fluted poles, the ornate square frame of the canopy and the head- and footboards inset with painted rococo scenes were leaning up against the wall. "Let's have a look at this, then," Leo said, wandering over and briefly stroking Nick's arm as he passed; he was being sweet to both of them, he surely didn't really want to look at the bed. They didn't want to move anything in case it all fell over. Nick peered at the faded gilt and the unpolished inner edges that would normally be hidden. All his life he'd looked at furniture from odd angles, and he still had his childhood sense of tables and sideboards as elaborate little wooden buildings that you could crawl into, their bosses and capitals and lion-heads at face height, their rough under-surfaces retaining a dim odour of the actual wood. This was a very grand bed, but there was worm in the frame and apparently it had no hangings with it. He felt the old impulse to put it together and get into it. Leo squatted down to look at the picture on the footboard. "This is nice," he said. "What do you think?"
Nick, standing behind him, gazed down on him as he had on their first date, when he was fiddling with the bike. Then he looked away, almost guiltily, at the wide-skirted ladies and their lovers in doublets, plucking at lutes; the trees that were blue and silver. Then he looked down again, at where Leo's beltless jeans stood away from his waist. He had lived and lingered through that glimpse a hundred times since their first meeting, it was almost more powerful and emblematic than the sex that had followed: the swell of Leo's hardened buttocks, the provoking blue horizontal of his briefs. So to be offered a second look had a double force, like the confirmation of a promise, and Nick's hesitation was only the twitch of wariness he felt at any prospect of happiness. "It's very nice," he said.
Leo shifted slightly on his heels. "Can you see?" he said.
Nick was grinning and sighing at the same time. "Yes, I can see," he said, in a murmur that shrank the conversation away from Pete into heady subterfuge.
"And what do you think?" asked Leo brightly.
"Oh . . . it's beautiful," Nick whispered. He checked the open door to the back room before he stooped and slid his hand in and verified that this time there was no blue horizontal, there was only smooth, shaved, curving Leo. A second or two, and then Nick straightened up and put his hands gently round Leo's neck—who tipped back against his