The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [130]
Keith nodded and did not laugh. “But not like friends …”
“No, not like friends,” Martin admitted and knew that he had finally crossed a certain line for the first time in his life.
Keith shrugged. “So what do you want to do?”
It was too late to go back, and Martin felt possessed by a new urgency to make himself clear. “I guess kiss you.”
“You guess?” Keith put his hand on Martin’s shoulder, and for a delirious second Martin thought that he was going to lean into him, that it was actually going to happen the way it always had in his dreams, but then he pulled back. “I’m sorry, Marty—I can’t.”
Martin froze.
Keith’s expression was distant, if not inconsiderate. “I can’t—you know—fuck around with a guy I’m friends with …”
“But …” Martin struggled to express the fear and betrayal he felt as his teeth began to chatter and his knee bounced up and down.
Keith’s demeanor had completely changed. “Relax, Vallence, it’s not the end of the world,” he said as he pulled at his scruffy beard, as if pondering a painting. “I’ve been with guys, so I know what it’s like—”
“You have? Since when?”
“When I first moved to New York—you know, there’s a certain class of men who will pay a lot of money to get their cock sucked by a twenty-year-old Harvard dropout.”
“You hustled?” Martin’s disbelief, as he considered it, was soon replaced by a certain perspective that made the fact that Keith had done this no less plausible than, say, sitting in an apartment in the East Village at four in the morning, surrounded by empty beer cans, posters of SST bands, and cigarette butts.
“I hope you’re not disappointed in me,” Keith said, in a somewhat mocking tone that Martin did not appreciate.
“Fuck you, Loris.”
“It was only a few times.” Keith shrugged as his eyes returned to a soft familiarity, which despite everything still tugged at Martin. “I was kind of curious, you know, to see what it was like.”
Martin felt mildly appeased by this, despite the continuing turmoil in his stomach. “So what was it like?”
Keith looked through Martin. “You’ll try it sometime, and then you’ll know.”
“Right,” said Martin, again angry.
“I don’t mean hustling, Marty—I mean sex with a guy.”
“I don’t want to have sex with a guy,” Martin said, as his annoyance gave way to paranoia. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“What’s to tell?” Keith responded. “Look, Vallence, don’t be a fucking girl. We’re still friends—I just wanted to clear the air.”
“Yeah, we’re still friends,” Martin agreed, but knew he no longer meant it, because he now hated Keith more than anyone he had ever known.
The next night, when they ran into each other at Lucy’s and Keith wordlessly offered him a beer, if a part of Martin felt nothing but dismay at the oily humiliation oozing through him, he found it wasn’t too hard to put that part in a box and toss it into the mental attic. Besides, he reasoned, Keith wasn’t egging him on; neither of them referred to the incident, and after a sufficient number of drinks, he felt the weight in his stomach dilute, until he was barely disturbed at all, as if it truly had been a nightmare with no connection to the waking world.
BACK IN HIS house—Leo’s house—Martin stared at the mutating clouds as if the sky were a map. Dante brushed past his leg as Beatrice—just emerging from the shadowed perimeters—skirted by like a wisp. Although he rarely saw her for more than a few seconds at a time, just the night before, as he was going to sleep, she had jumped up on the edge of the bed and Martin had reached for her, so that his fingers had for the first time passed through the silver halo to her plush coat. It lasted only a second, during which he detected the frantic beat of her heart, before she grew claustrophobic and in her characteristic low crouch slipped away. Later, in an even more remarkable development, he had woken up to see her disappearing over the hilly terrain of pillows and blankets, while a slight coolness on his face led him to suspect that she had just placed a