10

Power over willing victims. I had winced at his words, which continued to echo, unwelcome. But why? They were his words, not mine; his deduction, not mine. Not mine? Had I trafficked on that dark street? Paul’s words—uttered in admiration—kept resonating in judgement.

“—the blue hour.”

“What?” I was startled by Sonya’s words. She had walked onto the sundeck when Paul and I had been ready to leave—the heat had become unrelenting. I had been so immersed in the reverberations Paul’s remark had set off in my mind that I had heard only a few words of her announcement. Standing before us waiting for us to respond, she looked like an apparition, rivulets of water like sequins on her darkened flesh.

“You said—didn’t you, beauty?—that Stanty has a surprise he wants to reveal during the blue hour.”

“Yes, after dinner,” Sonya said.

Paul laughed, surely at Stanty’s dramatic presentation of his supposed surprise.

I was sure the “surprise” would be another exaggeration of his ventures into the neighboring island, graver intimations of looming dangers.

At the announced time, as we sat on the deck trying to ward off the sullen heat with chilled wine, we learned Stanty’s surprise as the bluish cast of evening brought down the night.

“If the blue hour is when everything is the way it really is”—standing assertively before us—“then we should take advantage of it, shouldn’t we?”

“How do you suggest?” Paul indulged him.

“By telling secrets.”

“How do you play that?” Sonya said.

“Very simple.” Stanty remained facing us, taking command.

I resented his demand that we attend to what would surely be a disappointing revelation. I resented Paul’s—and Sonya’s—permision of his brazen charade; and yet, annoyed, I was curious to hear what he would say.

“Everyone has to tell a secret,” Stanty instructed.

“Oh, Stanty—” Sonya dismissed, but in a kind tone.

“Please!” he said. “Father?”

I hoped Paul would reject the suggestion. He didn’t, watching his son intently as I now expected he would when Stanty “performed,” studying him.

“First you’ll have to tell us why you chose that game,” Paul said.

I needed to ambush their alliance before this proceeded. “I think Stanty is eager to reveal his own surprise and so he’s made this game up. Why not get to that first?”

He answered Paul: “Because it’s getting to be the blue hour, and that’s the time when everything is revealed.” He turned to me: “Isn’t that so, John Rechy? Remember what you said?” He was adjusting his game. “You first, Father. Please, Father, please.”

“This is my secret,” Paul said, “I love—”

The word jarred me, so incongruous for him not only now but at all. When he had spoken those words, he had fixed his stare on Sonya, a locked stare, with a smile.

She answered back, an unwincing stare, a challenge—I sensed it—between them.

“I love … Stanty, very much,” Paul finished, and broke the stare. “And—”

“That’s no secret, that you love me, you’re my father, you have to love me, and I love you, so much, Father. You have to go again.”

Paul said, “You can’t change rules in the middle of the game.”

“And—?” Sonya goaded Paul to finish his declaration.

He shrugged, silent.

She had risked Paul’s dismissal, prodding him to add her name to his declaration.

“You have to go again, Father,” Stanty insisted. “You have to reveal a real secret.” He assumed a rigid pose, adding to his insistence: “Father!” The pose broke. “Father?” he pleaded, staring at Paul, Paul looking back at him, silent; and silent intense moments passed.

There was a clear purpose in Stanty’s game, I was sure. There was something specific he was calling for from Paul while disguising it by bringing the others into his game. Sitting next to me, Sonya sensed that; her hand on mine was tense.

“Father!” Stanty demanded. “Who is—?”

“It’s John Rechy’s turn,” Paul interrupted sharply.

The first time he had used that tone with Stanty. Whatever had occurred between them remained like an echo without discernible origin.

Stanty regained control. “Okay, then. John Rechy, you’re next,” he proceeded.

Did he want to prod me into the embarrassing announcement that I had withheld, that I didn’t know how to swim? He had implied asking that before. Fuck the little bastard. I would make this my opportunity to assuage Sonya, get back at Paul for his rejection of her.

I said. “This is my secret: I love Sonya.”

“Your magic powers reign, beauty,” Paul dismissed my comment.

“Love? Or in love?” Stanty pushed on.

“I meant love,” I said. I should have said “in love.” That’s what Sonya would have preferred, to counter Paul’s omission of her.

“Sonya,” Stanty called on her.

“My secret? My secret is that I have no secrets.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Stanty said softly.

“It does,” I said, to ward him off. Her hand on mine was gentle.

She said: “Now you, Stanty, what’s your secret?”

“He has so many he won’t remember just one,” I said.

Whatever “secret” he had, he didn’t seem ready. The game had run away from his intentions.

“Game’s over!” he announced, and he jumped upon the wooden border that enclosed the deck; and, with his arms up, hands pointing in the stance of a champion swimmer, he lunged into the dark water.

“Stanty!” Paul shouted.

“Stanty!” Sonya echoed.

Both jumped up to look over the railing, aware of the boats bound beneath us, the possibility that he would fall on one of them, hard.

We heard a splash, the gurgle of water, and then words over the splattering as he swam outward:

“Island! Island!”