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“My name is Herbert Greenleaf. Richard Greenleaf’s father.”
intelligent, levelheaded, scrupulously honest, and very willing to do a favor. It was a slight error.
drink. “How old is Dickie now, by the way?” he asked. “He’s twenty-five.” So am I, Tom thought,
the good-egg type.
Medoc
rugs in front of the fireplace, and it was another of the wonderful things about Cleo that she never wanted or expected him to make a pass at her, and he never had—
began to play a role on the ship, that of a serious young man with a serious job ahead of him. He was courteous, poised, civilized, and preoccupied.
He swore to himself he would stick to a job once he got it. Patience and perseverance! Upward and onward!
He had run away at seventeen and had been brought back, and he had done it again at twenty and succeeded.
faute de mieux
How much better it would have been if he had just sat down in one of the cafés down at the beach and struck up an acquaintance with Dickie out of the blue!
“Yes.” It was his one last chance to amuse Dickie or to repel him, to make Dickie burst out laughing or go out and slam the door in disgust.
Tom has something funny to tell you,” he said. “Tell her, Tom.”
“Fine,” Tom said, though he still wasn’t sure that Marge wouldn’t be asked along. “Marge is a Catholic?” he asked as they went down the stairs. “With a vengeance! She was converted about six months ago by an Italian she had a mad crush on. Could that man talk! He was here for a few months, resting up after a ski accident. Marge consoles herself for the loss of Eduardo by embracing his religion.” “I had the idea she was in love with you.” “With me? Don’t be silly!”
young man with red hair and a loud sports shirt, an American. “Dickie!” “Freddie!” Dickie yelled. “What’re you doing here?”
The American’s name was Freddie Miles. Tom thought he was hideous. Tom hated red hair, especially this kind of carrot-red hair with white skin and freckles.
“I know a good place for lunch,” Dickie said. “A real Neapolitan pizzeria. Do you like pizza?”
possible way around Greece, cattleboats, sleeping with peasants on the decks and all that, no way for a girl to travel. But Marge still looked dejected,
the time his money ran out, Tom thought, Dickie would probably be so fond of him and so used to him that he would take it for granted they would go on living together. He and Dickie could easily live on Dickie’s five hundred a month income.
Tom stopped as Marge’s window came into view: Dickie’s arm was around her waist. Dickie was kissing her, little pecks on her cheek, smiling at her.
Tom was that he knew Dickie didn’t mean it, that Dickie was only using this cheap obvious, easy way to hold on to her friendship.
the big bulge of her behind in the peasant skirt below Dickie’s arm that circled her waist. And Dickie—! Tom really wouldn’t have believed it possible of Dickie!
He took off his knee-length shorts and put on the gray flannel trousers. He put on a pair of Dickie’s shoes. Then he opened the bottom drawer of the chest and took out a clean blue-and-white striped shirt.
“You were interfering between Tom and me— No, not that! But there is a bond between us!”
“Another thing I want to say, but clearly,” he said, looking at Tom, “I’m not queer. I don’t know if you have the idea that I am or not.” “Queer?” Tom smiled faintly. “I never thought you were queer.”
“Well, Marge thinks you are.”
Nobody had ever said it outright to him,
“It’s just the way you act,” Dickie said in a growling tone, and went out of the door.
”Dickie, I want to get this straight,” Tom began. “I’m not queer either, and I don’t want anybody thinking I am.”
Dickie if he knew this person and that in New York. Some of the people he had asked Dickie about were queer,
a pass at him, he had rejected them—though he remembered how he had tried to make it up to them later by getting ice for their drinks, dropping them off in taxis when it was out of his way,
Tommie, shut up! when he had said to a group of people, for perhaps the third or fourth time in Vic’s presence, “I can’t make up my mind whether I like men or women, so I’m thinking of giving them both up.”
As a matter of fact, there was a lot of truth in it, Tom thought. As people went, he was one of the most innocent and clean-minded he had ever known. That was the irony of this situation with Dickie.
I haven’t been to bed with her and I don’t intend to, but I do intend to keep her friendship.”
Now Tom saw that the group of men were doing acrobatics. “They must be professionals,” Tom said. “They’re all in the same yellow G-strings.” Tom watched with interest as a human pyramid began building, feet braced on bulging thighs, hands gripping forearms. He could hear their “Allez!” and their “Un—deux!”
“Ten thousand saw I at a glance, nodding their heads in sprightly dance,” Dickie said sourly to Tom.
All right, Tom thought, the acrobats were fairies.
You’d think he’d never seen a pansy!
He wanted to kill Dickie. It was not the first time he had thought of it. Before, once or twice or three times, it had been an impulse caused by anger or disappointment, an impulse that vanished immediately and left him with a feeling of shame. Now he thought about it for an entire minute, two minutes, because he was leaving Dickie anyway, and what was there to be ashamed of anymore?
he could become Dickie Greenleaf himself.
when Dickie was shoving his trousers down, Tom lifted the oar and came down with it on the top of Dickie’s head. “Hey!” Dickie yelled, scowling, sliding half off the wooden seat. His pale brows lifted in groggy surprise.
Tom took a deep breath and heaved. Dickie went over, but Tom lost his balance and fell against the tiller. The idling motor roared suddenly. Tom
He was in the water.
All right, he may not be queer. He’s just a nothing, which is worse. He isn’t normal enough to have any kind of sex life,
Tom studiously kept himself from learning the proper uses of subjunctive.
never asked anyone up—with the exception of one attractive but not very bright young man, an American, whom he had met in the Café Greco when the young man had asked him how to get to the Hotel Excelsior from there.
“Hello!” the American voice said out of the semidarkness of the hall. “Dickie? It’s Freddie!” Tom took a step back, holding the door open. “He’s— Won’t you come in? He’s not here right now. He should be back in a little later.”
The curved edge of the ashtray hit the middle of his forehead. Freddie looked dazed.
A selfish, stupid bastard who had sneered at one of his best friends—Dickie certainly was one of his best friends—just because he suspected him of sexual deviation.
