A Man of Principle

I don’t usually pick men up in bars. I’m of an age where it is unlikely to promote romance, and while I have no philosophical objection to hustling, I take no particular pleasure in pleasure that I must buy.

Nor was it my intention to pick up Neal MacIntyre the night I met him. I had been to the opera, Faust, as it happens, and I was on my way home, but the performance had been a good one and I was feeling somewhat euphoric, and disinclined to rush back to my apartment. Mostly I don’t mind that there is no one there, but this evening that prospect seemed to me rather dreary, and I decided to stop at Julio’s for a nightcap. I wasn’t looking for anyone, but sitting alone in a bar sipping a good single malt and listening to the music—there’s a rather good jazz trio on Friday nights—is sometimes preferable to the alternative, listening to the stereo alone in one’s apartment.

At first I hardly noticed him. He was sitting two stools away from me and nursing what, at a glance, looked to be a nearly empty glass. I wouldn’t have thought he had noticed me, either, but I had been there maybe ten minutes when the musicians took a break and a kind of silence descended, or rather a muted din of bar sounds masquerading as silence—the clink of glasses, murmured voices, the whirr of a blender.

So I was surprised when this stranger said to me, “How was the opera?”

I blinked and turned to look in his direction. He wasn’t looking at me, however, but staring straight ahead, at the backlit rows of bottles behind the bar, a neon of chartreuse and crimson and amber.

“How did you know I’d been to the opera?” I asked, intrigued.

He did look at me then, a quick glance. “For starters, you’re the only one here wearing a suit and tie, and you came in late, about the time someone would if they were stopping off after the opera.”

“You’re rather observant,” I said.

“Of course, the program was an important clue,” he said, and pointed at it. I had forgotten that I had laid it atop the bar when I sat down.

I laughed and he replied with a broad smile. A very nice smile, really. It was an ordinary kind of face, but it lighted up splendidly when he smiled.

“Faust?” he asked.

I glanced down at the program. “Can you really read that from where you are?”

“No. I happened to pass by the opera house earlier, and I saw on the posters that it was playing tonight. How was it?”

“Very nice. Do you know the opera?”

He shrugged. “I know the main tunes.” He hummed a snippet of “Salut, Demeure.”

I found myself rather warming to him. By now I could see that the glass he’d been pretending to nurse really was empty. I emptied mine as well. “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

He hesitated for only a second or two. “If you like,” he said, somewhat offhandedly. He looked a bit embarrassed and I had the impression he usually bought his own. You sometimes met the sort in these bars who did not, and I was oddly pleased to discover he was not one of them.

“Scotch?” I asked.

He lifted his glass and looked into it as if to make sure. “Yes, thanks.”

I signaled the bartender and impressed him greatly by ordering two of the Macallan, twelve year. We waited in silence until they came. My neighbor saluted me with his and took a sip. “Much nicer than what I was drinking before,” he said. “Thanks a million.”

The silence descended again, a little awkward this time. A part of me thought it would be best to let things as they were, finish my drink, say good night, and go home. But, I admit, I was somewhat fascinated by him now. He was a good-looking man, not spectacularly so, but pleasant enough to look at, and totally masculine. If he was gay, I thought he was pretty deep in the closet. He didn’t look quite comfortable here, although Julio’s is a mixed kind of place. He was wearing denim pants and a suede jacket, both of them expensive looking, and I got the impression that he had a good body, not the gym bunny type, but someone who kept himself in shape.

“What do you do?” I asked.

He turned to look at me again. “Work? I was an accountant.” He named one of the tonier firms in the city.

“Was?”

“I lost my job.”

“Oh.” Which maybe explained why he had been nursing that earlier drink past all expectations. “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not a good time to be looking for employment, so I hear.”

“Oh, I’ve got another job. My sister has a small business in San Diego, and as it happens, she needs someone. She even sent me the airplane ticket.” He patted his jacket and took the ticket from the inside pocket, looking at it as if to confirm that it was real. “Seven o’clock, tomorrow morning,” he said.

“Ah,” I said. “That’s fortunate, then.”

“Yes. Only…” He hesitated.

It sounded suspiciously like my cue. It might have been wiser to have ignored it, but I was curious to see where things were going. It was evident to me that he wasn’t a hustler, and his appearance and his manner suggested someone used to living well. I admit, he rather puzzled me. “Only…?” I prompted him.

He sounded and looked genuinely embarrassed now. “Nothing,” he said shortly. “There’s no reason why it should interest you.”

“Maybe not, but I confess, it does. Is there some problem about going to San Diego?”

“No, not at all. And I’ve got enough to get to the airport in the morning—if only just.”

He left that last part dangling. It came to me then. “It’s tonight that’s the problem,” I said.

He shrugged. “I gave up my apartment. Well, I had to, since I couldn’t pay the rent.”

“What are you going to do until tomorrow morning?”

“If you really want to know, I was going to sit here as long as I could, until the bartender threw me out. Then, I figured I’d just walk around till morning, or maybe find a bench to nap on.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s only another seven hours or so.”

My usually cautious nature was screaming at me to drop it, to let it alone, finish my drink and go home. As if it were someone else speaking, however, I heard myself say, “I’ve got a sofa at my place. You could crash there, if you want.”

He looked at me long and steadily. Weighing me, it seemed. “I should tell you, I’m not gay,” he said.

It was my turn to be embarrassed. “I honestly didn’t think you were,” I stammered. “But I wasn’t propositioning you. I really did mean, you can sleep on the sofa, if you’d like. No one will molest you, I assure you. I’m not the molesting type.”

He actually grinned at that. He took a long time to consider the offer. Finally, he lifted his glass and drained it. “If you’re sure it’s okay,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.” I emptied my glass, and we went out together.

My apartment is only a couple of blocks away. I introduced myself as we walked and he said, “I’m Neal MacIntyre.”

“Scotch,” I said and shook the hand he offered me, and he said, “Somewhere way back.” After that, we went in silence. I had an impression maybe he was regretting accepting my invitation, for whatever reason, but I couldn’t think of any sensible way now to retract it.

When we got there, I made a point first thing of going to the closet and bringing a blanket and a pillow back, and putting them on the couch, just in case he didn’t believe the part about sleeping on the sofa. “It’s not a fold out, but it’s not too uncomfortable,” I said. “I sometimes take a nap on it.”

“It’ll do me fine.”

He looked around the room and I saw that his glance hesitated slightly at the liquor cabinet. “Would you like a nightcap?” I asked him.

“If you’ll have one too.”

I poured us each a glass and brought one to him, and we clinked glasses. We were standing. I hadn’t realized in the bar how tall he was. I stand about five foot ten, and he was a good five or six inches taller than me. He smelled faintly of Old Spice. I had always been partial to the scent.

He had shed his jacket when we came in, and now he started to unbutton his shirt, and paused to look a question at me. “Is this all right? I can sleep in my clothes if you’d rather.”

“I’m afraid you’d look awfully rumpled for your flight,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to put on a robe.” I went into the bedroom and when I came back, he was sitting bare-chested on the sofa, with the blanket discreetly covering his lap. He appeared to be deep in thought.

“You look like a man with something on his mind,” I said.

He glanced up at me, once again in that weighing manner. “I haven’t talked to anyone in a long time. Really talked, I mean.”

“I’m a good listener.”

He thought about that. I thought he’d decided against telling me anything, and then quite unexpectedly, he began to speak.

“I hope you didn’t think I was rude, back at the bar,” he said, “spelling out that I’m not gay.”

“It’s usually just as well to get those things settled. I didn’t mind.”

“I’m not homophobic, really. My best friend, Jack, was gay. We were kids together, spent our whole lives as buddies. Some people thought we fooled around, but the funny thing is, it never came up. He lived his way and I lived mine.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead,” was the abrupt answer. He went silent again, briefly, and then he added, “In a plane crash, a couple of weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“When it happened, I blamed myself. I stayed drunk for three days.”

“I don’t see how you could be to blame for a plane crashing.”

“It was my fault he was on it.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and I didn’t try. He sat for a long while staring off into space. I thought he might even have forgotten I was there. Then he gave a great sigh, and shoved the blanket aside. He was wearing boxers. I don’t think he meant the gesture to be provocative. I doubted he was even conscious of it. He seemed to have far more serious things on his mind.

“I’ve really wanted to tell someone…” he began, and stopped.

The urge to confess is a strong one, and it affects people in different ways. The Catholics have it easy that way, I think, but I have a notion that even the hardest of criminals feels the need to unburden himself to someone. Ideally, someone nonjudgmental.

“Look, we’re perfect strangers,” I said. “You’ll be gone tomorrow and we almost certainly will never see one another again. I can’t see what harm it could do, if you wanted to talk about whatever is bothering you. And nothing you say will go beyond this room, if that’s any assurance.”

“It is.” He looked frankly at me then. “I killed someone,” he said.

“Your friend, Jack? But as I said…”

“No, not him. Someone else. Jack’s boyfriend, I guess you’d call him.”

I must admit, it gave me a queasy feeling. “Are you…?” But I didn’t know the expression to use. “On the lam,” sounded too much like an old gangster movie. “Are the police looking for you?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing like that. They did question me, they had their suspicions, but in the end they let me go.”

That was a relief, then. I took his statement to be a bit of an exaggeration.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

I got the bottle and refilled our glasses. “Well, your plane isn’t until tomorrow morning.” I said. I sat in the chair opposite him, making a point of not staring at his nearly nude body. I had been right, though, he was in excellent shape. He seemed to have forgotten that he was nearly naked, and I thought it best not to remind him of the fact.

“Jack and I, as I say, we were the best of friends. All our lives. We grew up together, lived next door when we were kids, went off to college together—the whole thing. To tell you the truth, I’m something of a loner. Jack was the only really close friend I had. He was different, though, he was gregarious. Even, I think, a little promiscuous. We talked about his antics sometimes, and laughed at them together. He was an easy come, easy go kind of guy, and since he never seemed to take any of his little adventures seriously, neither did I.

“Then he met Lonnie. It was rare for Jack to have a second date with anyone, but it soon became apparent that Lonnie was different. It was once, and then twice, and then it seemed as if he’d left everyone else behind and it was an exclusive thing between them. I don’t know what the gay term is—boyfriends, or lovers or…?” He lifted an eyebrow at me.

“It’s been so long for me, I don’t think I know the current terminology either,” I said.

He shrugged that off, and went on. “I wanted to be happy for Jack. I mean, I loved him like a brother, and if he’d found that special someone to share his life with, I was prepared to be happy about it.

“But, I can’t pretend that I was. The moment I met Lonnie, it seemed to me that he was—I hope this doesn’t offend you—the stereotypical queen. Pure faggot. I couldn’t believe Jack was in love with him, and I told him so. It was the first time we’d ever quarreled. After that, I kept my thoughts of Lonnie to myself and we rarely discussed him. But the truth is, it had changed our friendship, and not for the better. Almost the only time Jack mentioned him was when he told me that they were looking for an apartment and meant to live together. I was sorry to hear it, but I kept that opinion to myself.

“Then, Jack lost his job. We had both set out to be accountants, but Jack wasn’t quite up to it, and while I became a full-fledged accountant, he had to settle for bookkeeper.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oh…” He had to think. “It’s like a chef as opposed to a short order cook. Which isn’t to say a short order cook can’t be damned good. Jack was a damned good bookkeeper. It’s just a little less demanding, is all. And pays less, of course. I don’t think he minded particularly, to be honest, since he wasn’t all that ambitious.

“But, it’s like you said, it’s a bad time to be out of a job. He looked and looked, and nothing came up. Weeks went by, and then months. Things were looking grim for him. He’d used up all his savings, and even had to ask me for a small loan, which I was happy to give him.

“Finally, he got an offer from some international firm. They needed someone bilingual for a job in Paraguay—Jack was fluent in Spanish, and he got the job with no difficulty. But he wasn’t all that keen on going, either. He suspected that the work was not going to be entirely aboveboard, plus it was in some out of the way place in the middle of the jungle. It sounded like a very rough sort of proposition.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jack could look after himself well enough. He wasn’t the kind of man that most people would recognize as gay. Still, it was kind of a last resort thing. And I think one of the reasons he was reluctant to go was that it meant parting from Lonnie. The pay wasn’t great, either, not enough that he could afford to take Lonnie with him, and Lonnie spoke not a word of Spanish, so the likelihood of his getting a job there was slim.

“They talked it over and they agreed that Jack would go, he’d work for a year, maybe two, and put away all the money he could, and when he had enough, he’d send for Lonnie and Lonnie would join him there. Or, if it turned out the other way, then Jack would return home, and hopefully by then he’d have other prospects.

“Of course, I would miss Jack if he went, but I was secretly delighted too. I thought in a year apart, maybe longer, Jack would have gotten over his infatuation—that’s all I really thought it was—and anyway, my opinion of Lonnie wasn’t too great. I doubted he’d remain faithful for more than a week or two before he found someone else. I guess I sound cynical, don’t I?”

I gave a shrug. “Never having met Lonnie, I can hardly say. But it’s been my observation that distance is to love what a wind is to a fire, it can fan a great flame or snuff a candle.”

He nodded. “I like that,” he said approvingly. “So, yes, in this case, I didn’t think the candle would burn for long. I felt sure the distance, the separation, would snuff it in no time.

“Then, something totally unexpected happened. The manager of my firm, a Mr. Aldrich, called me into his office one day.”

He stared hard at me across the room. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else,” he said. “I always thought of myself as an honest man. I would have said a man of principle. I’ve always tried to do what seemed the right thing. In all my life, this is the first thing I did that I felt ashamed of afterward.”

“If you don’t want to tell me,” I started to say, but he brushed away my objections. I think at this point he had quite made up his mind to unburden himself of whatever this guilty secret was. I don’t think he even heard what I’d said.

“It seemed an opening had come up unexpectedly in our firm, and Jack had applied for it. Jack had given me as a reference, and Mr. Aldrich wanted to ask me about him.

“‘This is of great importance,’ he stressed. ‘The person who fills this position will be handling a great deal of money, much of it in cash. It is essential that we know we can fully trust whoever we hire.’

“I saw at once where this was leading. If I told the truth, Jack would certainly get the job. He would stay here, and he and Lonnie would get their apartment together as they had planned. But if he didn’t get the job, then it was off to South America, and I wouldn’t have bet two dollars on the relationship lasting.

“I want you to know, I thought that I was doing the right thing, I was doing it for Jack’s sake. I swear it, I honestly meant well. My every thought was of Jack’s well-being.

“I said, ‘Mr. Aldrich, sir, this isn’t fair. You’re asking me to betray my best friend. I can’t do that. I won’t answer your questions.’

“He gave me a shrewd smile. ‘I admire your loyalty to your friend,’ he said. ‘It does you credit. Thank you for coming in. I think I know everything I need to know now.’

“Of course Jack did not get the job, and two weeks later he boarded a plane for Paraguay.”

He went silent after that, looking morosely down at his hands. After a time, I said, gently, “And the plane crashed?”

“Yes. Everyone aboard died. You can see why I blamed myself.”

I didn’t want to reply to that. “And his friend, Lonnie?” I asked instead.

He lifted his eyes again to look at me. “That’s the funny thing,” he said. “I told you, I stayed drunk for three days. I called in sick, and I had plenty of leave coming. I hadn’t taken a day off since I had joined the firm, so nobody questioned my story.

“Well, of course, you can’t wallow in self-pity forever, and eventually I sobered up, and made plans to go back to the office. And…” He hesitated. “And then, the oddest thing, Lonnie came to see me. He just showed up at my door one evening. He was the last person I should have expected to see.

“I guess under other circumstances, I’d have given him the brush. I didn’t like him in the least. But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. I mean, he had lost someone he loved, the same as I had. And I think my guilt was eating at me too.

“Anyway, to make a long story short, I invited him in for a drink. The truth is, we got rip-roaring drunk together. It was stupid, but there we were, the two of us, belting the drinks down and emptying our hearts, sharing our grief. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

“I don’t know how we ended up in bed together. I tell you honestly, I swear, the thought hadn’t even entered my mind, but we did. Of course, I was consumed with guilt, not just for what had happened to Jack, but I thought I was to blame for whatever grief Lonnie was suffering. And when he came on to me, my first impulse was to push him away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that, to be so cruel to him. You’ve got to remember, whatever I thought of Lonnie, Jack had loved him, and I thought their love was mutual. I almost felt as if I owed it to Jack, to let Lonnie do what he wanted.

“So, it happened. Sort of, anyway, if you know what I mean. Of course it was entirely one-sided, but I’m not going to lie either and pretend that it was a horrible experience. It wasn’t. He knew what he was doing, and all I had to do was lie there in the dark and let him do it. I’d like to say I wasn’t able to come, but it wouldn’t be true. I did, even drunk as I was.

“Afterward, though, he was all clingy, he wanted to snuggle up, but that was more than I could bear. Now that it was over, I wanted nothing so much as to be rid of him, but I’m not a complete ass. I knew it was unfair to blame him altogether. I turned my back on him, and went right to sleep.

“I woke up during the night, and he wasn’t in the bed. I almost went back to sleep, and then I started wondering where he was. I didn’t know him all that well, and I had this picture of him, well, snooping around the apartment, looking for money, you know, or something like that. I had to check on him.

“When I came out of the bedroom, the apartment was dark but there was plenty of light from outside, and I could see him standing on the balcony. He was wearing a robe of mine, which for some reason rubbed me the wrong way, and smoking a cigarette. I never smoked, and neither did Jack. I don’t know why, but that aggravated me too.

“He heard me. ‘Hello,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

“‘No.’ I hesitated, but I thought I’d better make things clear before he got any more ideas, so I said, ‘Look, about what happened earlier—uh, I want to say, that was a one-time thing. I wish it hadn’t happened, but well…I just don’t want you to have the wrong impression.’

“He gave me a surprised look. ‘You didn’t like it? Most men seem to. I thought you did.’

“I was embarrassed by his bluntness. I hadn’t wanted it to happen, and I sure didn’t want to talk about it. ‘It was okay,’ I told him, ‘It’s just…you know, I’m not gay.’

“‘You didn’t exactly fight me off, either,’ he said, with a kind of smug little smile.

“‘No, I should have, I guess, but I didn’t. I let you because, well, I felt bad, about your grief…’

“To my utter astonishment, he laughed at that. ‘My grief? That’s a good one. Is that why you think I’m here? Did you think I was mourning Jack?’

“I was completely baffled by his remarks. ‘Aren’t you?’ I asked him.

“He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry he died. He was a nice guy. But I wasn’t in love with him, you know. And as far as my going to South America—Lordy, why would I want to do that? I hate spics, if you want to know the truth.’

“‘But, he thought you were going to be coming there to join him. Eventually.’

“‘Oh, I let him think that. He wanted to, and I knew he’d never go if I didn’t tell him I would. I figured after a year he’d have gotten over it. Or, if I had to, it would be easier then to tell him I wasn’t coming.’

“‘But why on earth did you want him to go? He’d never have gone if you hadn’t encouraged him.’

“‘Do you really want to know?’ His smile was sly. ‘I figured if he was out of town I’d have a better chance with you. And I was right, wasn’t I?’

“He laughed again and turned his back on me, leaning against the balcony railing. ‘I never did believe you were as straight as you pretended to be,’ he said, ‘but I knew with Jack around, I’d never get a chance at you. Even if you wanted to, and I was pretty sure you did, you were too much of a stick in the mud. You’d think it wasn’t fair to Jack. If you really want to know, it was you I wanted all along. I knew once he was gone I’d get what I wanted from you.’

“I’ve heard people say they saw red when they got angry, and I’d always just thought it was a figure of speech, but it’s true, it was like a great mist descended between us and I saw him through this crimson veil.

“I was so enraged I couldn’t speak. All I could think of was, if only he hadn’t deceived Jack, I wouldn’t have had to say what I did to my employer. Jack would have gotten the job here, and he wouldn’t have died in that damned plane crash. I’d been blaming myself, when all along it was Lonnie’s fault, not mine.

“The tip of his cigarette flared as he puffed on it. Then he flung it away, over the railing. In my mind’s eye, I seemed to see that filthy weed spinning end over end down to the street below. I can’t say why, but that was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

“I don’t know if I told you, my apartment was on the fourteenth floor. I didn’t even think what I was going to do, I went right at him. He was a little thing, and I lifted him as easily as lifting a feather, and threw him over the balcony. He screamed, it seemed to go on forever, and then just like that it stopped. I stood by the railing, breathing heavily.

“I told the police when they came that he must have jumped, that he was grief stricken over Jack’s death, that he’d come by crying and I had let him sleep on the couch, and it was his scream when he went over the railing that woke me up.

“They didn’t believe me. They took me into the station and they questioned me over and over. But they couldn’t come up with any reasonable motive. They hinted at a homosexual connection between him and me, but everybody they talked to told them I was dead straight, there had never been a hint of anything like that in my life, apart from my friendship with Jack, and everybody who knew us knew there wasn’t any sexual element to that. No one gave any credence to the suggestion that he and I had been homosexually involved. And without that, there was simply no plausible reason for me to kill Lonnie, and not a whiff of evidence that I had. Eventually, they had no choice but to drop the charges. But my employers didn’t like the scandal that came with my being arrested. They let me go. You know the rest.”

I hardly knew what to say. “Don’t you think you could look upon it as a kind of accident?” I suggested timorously. “You must have been temporarily out of your mind.”

“Not so much that I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said with a note of finality. The smile he gave me then was a bit weary. “I hope you don’t think too badly of me, having heard all that.”

“Aren’t you afraid I might tell someone?”

“Not in the least. You gave your word.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, you’re awfully trusting.”

“Not really. I knew, back there in the bar, that you and I were two of a kind.”

“In what way?” I asked. I found that comment rather appalling.

“You’re a man of principle,” he said. “Same as me.”

He lay back on the couch, and gave his crotch a not-quite-absent-minded scratch and turned his head in my direction. “Look, I really appreciate your letting me spend the night. Like I told you, I’m not gay, but I guess I kind of owe you. It’s okay if you wanted to…well, you know…as long as you understand, it’ll just be one-sided.”

“No, that isn’t necessary,” I told him.

He nodded his head. “Well, I’m glad, to be honest,” he said, “but I thought I ought to offer, at least.” He wrapped the blanket around himself and turned on his side, his back to me. “Good night, then,” he said. “I’ll be gone first thing in the morning.”

I don’t mind saying, I didn’t sleep much that night.