Hugh comes to himself again ringing the bell at Newell’s big glass door. But the squat shadow strutting across to answer is not Newell. Of course not. Burton’s glass-blurred hand fumbles with the lock. His bruise reminds you to be kind—yellow now, a jaundiced eye.
“Hey, Burton!” Hugh says, fake cheer/light beer. “I’m looking for Newell.”
Of course. “Of course,” Burton says, drawing back to let Hugh in. His sourness may not be personal. The huge Paris clock on the kitchen wall says it’s nine, early for Burton. His robe is just the right rich purple to pop that yellow eye. (Wouldn’t it be nice to pop that eye again. Sick feeling of fist again on bruise.) To atone for internal loathing, Hugh attempts a smile.
Burton waits. He is a cat. Hugh: mouse or dog?
“I brought Mimi’s lease for him to pass along to Hendy,” Hugh says. Trying, he is trying, honestly. Head aches, pulses. “Is he out for a run? I could wait.”
“I am not quite sure …” Burton is careful with the words, “exactly where he is.”
“Oh.” Now what? “Mind if I—?” Hugh gestures toward the washroom.
“Be my guest,” Burton says. And then, “An espresso? I was just about to grind.”
Surprise. “Sure, thanks. Be right back.”
Huge apartment. High ceilings, all the surfaces hard. Shoes sound down the hall. Past the many pieces Hugh has sold Newell. There’s Mighton’s portrait, him as Hamlet—not as old as the entwined Newell/Della/Ann thing that Hugh remembers. Wherever that now is.
In the powder room pale glass reaches the zenith. Glass sink, glass tiles on floor and ceiling; like being inside an aquamarine. An aquamarine submarine. He’s tired, elation deflated by Mimi’s sad condition. Yet she carries on. So you will have to too. Hugh will.
The flush is loud. He shuts the door to contain it; stands for a while in the hallway. The bookcase built into the end of the hall is full now. Burton’s books. Hugh looks along the shelf. Pulls out a—oh. Another. Yes. Well. Jason might find these interesting. Hugh is not disturbed by porn, whatever turns the crank. He doesn’t (does he?) despise Newell? No, he never could. But he shudders still, however blinkered, bigoted, wrong he is, imagining Burton’s crank. Trying to imagine what bond it is that he and Newell— Stop. You can’t.
Not your business. How often you’ll have to say that. As, presumably, long years go by. In fact, Newell is lost to you. Lost to Hugh. Friendship will be impossible with Burton always here.
Burton is watching from the end of the hall. “Espresso, Americano?” Archness: “Or would you rather browse?”
Hugh puts down the last book. Stupidly quickly. “Coffee, yes. I’ve been visiting Mimi.” Playing the death card, to get out of feeling smutty. He follows Burton to the vast kitchen.
“Bali taught me the art of coffee,” Burton says, attending the copper-swathed machine. “That is the place to repair the soul. A tarot reader I consult in Ubud—and I very much subscribe to that sort of thing—warned me that the soil in Canada is too new. I need to root myself in ancient soil.”
Hugh takes the tiny, perfect espresso from Burton’s outstretched hand. He sips. Delicious. Anything he can like about Burton he’d better practise liking.
A wave of Burton’s plump palm at the papers and books lying on the black slate counter: “Remounting my one-man Swinburne show for the Edinburgh Fringe—refining my verses.”
“Much of a market for Swinburne?”
“Well, it wouldn’t play the Edmonton Fringe, no!” Burton laughs loudly, Newell not being there to keep him reined in. Vile teeth peep between flexible purplish lips; you don’t often see those teeth in the first world. He has an unsavoury habit of allowing his tongue to lie forward on the bottom teeth, his mouth slightly open. “But I have to make my own way in the world, unlike you, dear Hugh. No longer really employable, you know—the school only wants me because Newell is part of my package.”
Everything Burton says has a taint. Hugh takes a second sip of espresso.
“We have the privilege of perfect understanding,” Burton says.
(We, Burton and Hugh? Or Burton and Newell?)
“We have, we’ve always had, an open, mutually supportive relationship.”
(Ah. Burton and Newell.)
“And we’ve had our vicissitudes!” A modest moue of the mouth: “We won’t get married, in case you were worrying. That was a gesture, an emotional exchange. We have no need of marriage. You hate me, Hugh, and that’s all right because I mostly hate you too, but here’s the thing you don’t take into account: I really do love Boy. I always have. I always have. He and I are all in all to each other. Whoever may, from time to time, come between us.”
Hugh drains the cup, welcoming bitter distraction. He can’t answer this.
Burton stares at him, waiting. Then gives a bitter chuckle.
“You know, Hugh know, there’s really something very beautiful in the relationship of an older to a young man—stretching back into ancient history. A rootedness—a way of bringing the young forward into the world and introducing them—not only to the physical, don’t think I mean only that—to the whole life of the mind, of the soul and heart. A friendship more than ordinary, one that elevates the junior into the society to which he aspires. It is the basis for so much in art, so much in philosophy. Well, the Greeks!”
Hugh looks down into his cup. The dregs. He wants Newell to come home. Burton doesn’t spout this kind of shit with Newell in earshot.
“That boy—Orion—he is a very talented young man.”
Oh, that’s it. Burton is justifying himself, posturing against the long window that looks out over the river.
“A mentor. You know—better than I! Every young artist needs a mentor who recognizes talent, who sees the possibility in a young mind and heart and body, whose experience and vision grant the generosity to sponsor—”
Hugh can’t listen to any more. He pretends to drink from his empty cup, so he does not have to nod or disagree, or look at the purple dressing gown flapping over Burton’s grey old chest, satin clinging to each roll of pompous pitiable belly and butt. Don’t hit him again, some small voice sings, back behind Hugh’s ears. Which are ringing, slightly.
Burton giggles. “I know, some say polyamory is poly-agony! But I refuse pigeonholes. We are what we are, the world can go fuck itself.” His yellow-ringed eye wanders, squints. Then zooms in, intense, on Hugh. “I lay no blame. I will permit none to be laid by you.”
Hugh puts the cup down on the black countertop, where a playscript lies open. Words leap to his eye: I will kiss thy mouth.…
Burton sees him reading. “Orion is extraordinary, after all. That skin—”
“Don’t,” Hugh says. It comes out quite softly.
“Ah, you don’t like to think of it. Even when he is our dearest friend, we can never think of the older man kindly, objectively, in this day and age.”
How can Burton justify himself with this shameless self-serving bullshit?
“But I tell you, Hugh, no one comes into their full glory without a teacher, without being initiated into the mysteries. This whole dirty business—well, nobody pretends that it’s a nice way to live.”
He’s gone mad, Hugh thinks. Tears well up—hold on. You can’t cry here!
“Show business!” An Ethel Merman explosion. Then Burton sweetens, sentimentalizes. “I do understand, I do. Orion needs the guidance only an older man can give a younger. I think the good example of Newell’s and my continuing—what would you say?—partnership—attests to the value of that.”
Where’s the lease? Jacket pocket. “I’ll leave this,” Hugh says. “I can’t. Wait.”
Burton’s puckered neck purples. His age, his sheer old age! He cries after Hugh, “A most intricate, most important relationship—I am his rock, his centre.”
But Hugh is out the door.
The light is blinding again. It’s rained so long, Hugh can’t take in this much light.
Refracted by tears, the world is cellular, universe-huge, distorted. At the brink of the stone stairs he stalls, dizzy, trying to find the van. There, in the shade of the hedge. Okay, railing. Don’t fall, don’t fall, hold on.
He gets the van door open, and himself inside. Afraid of being sick, of dying of grief—honestly, honestly, stop. You are overreacting. Are you so bound by convention?
Oh no, no matter what the benefit, or whether Orion is old enough to make his own choices, no matter what—this is—this has to be— What is Burton, fifty years older?
The dizziness eases. The sickness. Newell’s whole life—no—it’s none of your business. Newell, Burton—it’s not up to you to dictate or judge other people’s lives. Orion, even.
Here comes Newell, up the long incline from the river. Loping the last leg of his long-reaching miles. Hugh sits motionless in shadow until Newell has passed, has leapt up the flight of stairs and moved behind the glossy hedgerow.
Then he starts the van.