The dogs and I arrived upstate first, in a rental car crammed with food and flowers, Alice and Lola in the passenger seat either nuzzling my shoulder or pawing the dashboard. I was so busy managing them and worrying I’d forget the house alarm’s code that I didn’t take the place in until we were safely inside.
The house was modern, ringed in floor-to-ceiling windows, with a living room that could have housed my apartment three times over. Everything, from the floors to the countertops, looked polished, and the river shimmered through the windows. Upstairs were four bedrooms with large beds and light pouring in and, of course, art. Abstract paintings filled one room, line drawings of flowers and men hung in another. I wanted to lie on each bed, leave indents on duvets as pristine and white as new paper. Instead I went into a closet, found a striped T-shirt, and put it on along with a pair of shorts Nicola wouldn’t have fit into again with even the most draconian fitness regimen. I found the first-floor room where I’d stay. As I looked at its bed jammed into a corner, its only window darkened by shrubs, Nicola and Philip’s generosity turned piddling. Still, I thawed beef stock and washed lettuces. And just before they were scheduled to arrive, I put the T-shirt and shorts in my room, telling myself they’d never miss them, though I wonder if I saw what I was doing then as stealing or as a perk of my employment. Or if—like Nicola and his aspirational clothes—I knew what was true, but preferred the nonsense I’d invented.
The annual costume party—Philip called it his “silly indulgence”—always took place on the weekend closest to his birthday. That year, eight people were staying over, other guests in nearby houses and hotels.
Philip and Nicola were driven up by Adam, a man who took them on any trips longer than a cab ride but shorter than a flight. Philip walked into the kitchen right away to marinate the pork roasts. I chopped what I was asked to chop. Nicola disappeared into their basement gym. For his Plato costume, he’d wear a toga that would show off much of his chest and back. I turned to Philip and said, “The unexamined abs are not worth having.” Any laughter I’d heard from him before paled in comparison. As I washed parsley, I chided myself for how much his laughter lifted me. But there was a pull Philip had, a sense he deserved all that was his, that he could change his mind and suddenly deserve other things.
“What’s your costume, young man?” Philip asked.
“I didn’t realize I needed one,” I said.
Philip winced, rinsed his hands, and told me to follow him.
A guest room’s walk-in closet housed racks of costumes. Hangers whispered as he moved them.
“I grew up in a family of serious people,” Philip said. “My father was in banking. My mother had been a debutante and a great beauty, also quite stern. She had relatives in Jamestown, if that gives you a picture.”
“With the Kool-Aid?” I asked.
“That was Jonestown,” he answered. “I’m talking about Virginia.”
I made a comment about John Smith, and he said, “Exactly.”
Philip went on about his mother who rarely drank or smiled, who he didn’t realize until his adulthood had been depressed. A yearly costume party for her birthday had been her one joyful indulgence. She’d transform their house in Beacon Hill, hiring actors to dress up as royalty or monsters.
“There was one year, I was maybe fifteen, and I’d had it,” Philip said. “I didn’t want to play dress up with my mother. Teenagers, I find, have an unparalleled capacity for a self-involved sort of cruelty. I told her I wanted to spend that weekend with friends, maybe go to the movies.”
“And it broke her heart,” I posited.
Philip moved through a series of costumes that may have been Egyptian.
“She canceled the whole thing. She’d invited fifty people. Told them not to bother. ‘Look what you did,’ she said, on the morning of her birthday. She was smoking at breakfast, something she never did—she had all sorts of opinions about smoking and laughing and music at the table. Then she returned to bed.”
I thought to put a hand on Philip’s back, but doubt squelched that impulse.
Philip handed me a white suit and vest, a pair of black boots. “The shirt Nicola wore with it seems to be missing, but if you button up the vest, it’ll almost be the same.”
“It’ll show off my cleavage,” I replied.
“You are a funny one,” he said. “Try it on.”
Not wanting to seem prudish, I took off my shorts and T-shirt. I slid on the pants; the vest and jacket. After I stepped into the boots, Philip walked me over to a mirror.
“You know what movie you’re in?” he asked, and I nodded.
I wished I’d known Philip as a younger man, when he might have worn revealing costumes himself, his parties frenetic and raunchy, him the hub around which things spun.
The dogs found us in the guest room and dropped onto its rug. Philip kept looking at me. Though I had no interest in sleeping with him, I didn’t want him to stop looking either.
“It’s amazing,” he said.
“Me forgetting a costume?” I asked.
“How you and Nicola’s former self are the exact same size.”
Philip went downstairs. I stayed in front of the mirror, lifting my arms, shifting my hips to see how others might see this costume on me when I danced or cooked or walked into a room.
A few hours later, guests arrived. Some wore elaborate costumes, including a queen who came as a queen I’d never heard of. His wig was a spire of curls, fake birds woven into it. The few men closer to my age had on costumes that showed off their bodies—a sexy Viking, a sexy sailor. The sailor, Andrew, worked at the gallery. In my few interactions with him, he’d toggled between annoyed and indifferent. But when I opened the door, he said, “Oh, you!” kissed my cheek, then asked where to put the wine he’d brought. Most of the guests, though, lived in that nebulous haze of elite middle age. A few of them had on sexy costumes, too, including a woman named Helen who showed up as Aphrodite. She was bone thin, with narrow, muscled arms, and I wondered at the deprivation required to sustain such an austere version of herself. As I brought more ice to the poolside bar, Andrew and the Viking came over for vodka.
“Did you see Helen?” Andrew asked.
“Isn’t Aphrodite the goddess of fertility?” the Viking asked back.
“Well, that ship has sailed.”
Their faces pinched with callous amusement. I wanted to defend Helen, though she didn’t strike me as a particularly pleasant person. But saying nothing was a complicity I’d be buried under, so I told them, “Unlike us, Helen was fertile once.”
Mistaking this for another barb, the Viking said, “I bet her insides have been shriveled up since the day she was born,” and slipped an olive into his mouth.
“There’s a better party we’re going to soon,” he added.
“Better how?” I asked.
“Greg has to stay, I think,” Andrew said.
“Who’s Greg?” I asked.
“Your name?”
“Gordon,” I answered.
“I knew it was something with a G,” Andrew said, his tone implying that he’d tried, his trying enough. I poured myself a drink.
“Greg does have to stay,” I said. “This is his form of employment.”
Shortly after the food was served, the younger guests left for the better party. Those who stayed danced on the poolside patio. The sun’s last embers dimmed behind the Catskills, and a string of lights was flipped on. A few people clapped at their arrival, then laughed at themselves for clapping, the crowd looser now that the younger guests, apart from me, had gone. A gregarious, gray-haired photographer named James took on the role of DJ. The dozen dancers shouted in approval at each new track he played. I was dancing with a woman named Rebecca when a car pulled up in front of the house.
“I wonder if that’s the police,” I said to her.
“Wouldn’t that be something,” she answered, holding space between each word in hopes of passing for sober.
I went inside, opened the door, and found Pavel. Part of me had hoped he’d appear; a louder voice had tried to warn me against adolescent pipe dreams.
“I heard they’d poached you,” he said, and kissed my cheek. A scratch from shaving interrupted his smooth neck, his hair damp from a shower or swim.
“The other young ones have gone already,” I said.
“What other young ones?”
I said the Viking and sailor’s names. Pavel shrugged.
“Where’s your costume?” I asked.
He lifted a mask to his eyes. It was a delicate red, adorned in hand-painted feathers.
“You have a place in these parts?” I asked. “A country house?”
“A friend lets me use their house from time to time,” he answered.
Nicola, toga slipping from his shoulder, embraced Pavel. Helen and a rail-thin man sat at the edge of the pool, kicking up arcs of water.
“Pavel, meet Plato,” I said.
Pavel allowed Nicola to pull him onto the makeshift dance floor. He was, to my surprise, an exuberant dancer. His hips caught the song’s rhythm. His shoulders and hands found quieter percussive waves to ride. One song ended. Another began. Philip raised his hands in the air, danced over to James the DJ, and kissed him on the mouth. He could dance, too, but his movements stayed careful, Philip both enjoying himself and watching each time his feet touched the ground.
Rebecca waved me over.
“Was it the police?” she asked. I nodded.
“But you charmed them,” she said, insisting I dance with her again.
A minute later, as I spun Rebecca around, I saw Pavel walk back to his car. I caught his eye. He waved and left.
Rebecca called the next song “the best one ever,” though seconds later she went from dancing to swaying. We stayed that way, slow dancing to a fast song, and I wondered about the friend whose place Pavel borrowed, if friend was the right word to use.
A man jumped into the pool. Nicola splashed in next. Soon, most of the guests were in the water. One woman, stripped to her underwear, stood at the pool’s far edge and performed a perfect flip. People clapped as she surfaced. She gave them a small, sheepish bow. I was moved by their clapping, by people my parents’ ages and beyond jumping and diving and half naked, discarded costumes drifting across the pool’s surface with the elegant indifference of jellyfish.
“Come in,” Rebecca called from the water. Her dress was still on—she’d come as some ancient painter—and ballooned around her.
“I think this is polyester,” I said, but she shook her head.
Nicola floated in his underwear next to a woman named Veronica, who I found out later was good friends with Hillary Clinton. I stripped to my briefs and moved to the edge of the pool. James, the DJ, whistled. Nicola called out, “There he is!” Philip sat in a lounge chair (he was dressed as an explorer, in a helmet and velvet pantaloons), his face dark so I couldn’t tell if he was watching.
I dove in. The water was perfect. I wished Janice was there with me so she could understand why I’d had to go, for her to float close, a relenting grin spreading across her face as she whispered, “Yes, this makes sense to me now.”
After a few more hours of dancing, then beignets the guests ate as if they’d been without food for days, followed by James inviting me into the pantry to do coke, grabbing my ass as I leaned down to sniff, but in a way I understood was playful rather than sexual, the guests left. The town’s one available cab picked people up, dropped them off, then came back for more. At three in the morning, there was finally quiet.
Philip and the overnight guests went to bed. Nicola and I cleaned. A small army of glasses crowded the counter.
“You’re a good farmer,” Nicola said. Then he kissed me. I hadn’t been interested in him, but with the enthusiasm of his kiss, my interest materialized.
“Let me show you the barn,” he said.
It sat behind the house, empty apart from some tools and crates of spare dishes. Toward the back, extra lawn furniture sat in a neat row. Nicola brought me to a chaise longue.
“I worry this is stupid,” I said.
“Listen, Gordon,” Nicola said.
“You usually call me farmer.”
“A nickname, yes. But listen.”
Our knees touched. Booze leaked from his mouth and pores.
“I’m with a lot of people,” he said. “Philip, too. Or he used to be.”
“He’s lost interest?” I asked.
“He’s still very interested. But finding other interested parties…”
Nicola tried to pass this off as humor, though I sensed he saw Philip as both a crystal ball and cautionary tale.
“But I work for you,” I said, even as Nicola kissed me and I kissed him back.
I knew this was a mistake, one I’d enjoy, his single-minded attention a web I was unlikely to outwit. Nicola kissed my throat. His fingers slid under the vest he’d worn a decade before. I let out a noise, and he looked pleased at the effect he had.
“I’m not the jealous or vengeful type,” he whispered. “I don’t see you as that either.”
“I don’t think I am,” I said.
“So this can be as big or small as we want it to be. Something or nothing or every once in a while.”
Nicola was a great salesman. Perhaps that made him such an asset at the gallery.
“Let’s keep it small for now,” I said.
We made out and jerked each other off. Of course Nicola had a lovely dick. Big but not wildly so. Well groomed, perfectly straight, a delicate foreskin.
After we were done, we lay on the chaise. Its frame dug into my shoulders.
“Will you tell Philip?” I asked.
“Will I tell Philip,” Nicola said, patted my thigh, and headed inside.
Walking back to the house after giving him a head start, I tried to calculate how stupid I’d just been.
I was drifting in and out of sleep, the sky shifting to the dull gray of soon-to-be morning, when I heard a noise. In the bathroom next to my room came retching, then sickness’s wet rush. I left my room for the kitchen, thinking the person might need something. Even more, I was curious. The toilet flushed, water ran. I put dishes away.
The door opened and Philip stepped into the kitchen. A few hours before he’d been drunk. A boa had appeared that he’d worn, twirled. His startled expression now turned my curiosity to voyeurism.
“I didn’t wake you, I hope,” he said.
I shook my head, told him thoughts of cleaning had woken me. He seemed to see through my excuse, but was polite enough to pretend, and said, “To be young again,” then returned to his room.
An hour later, Rebecca appeared.
“Did you even sleep, Gordon?” she asked.
“A few hours, I think.”
As we drank coffee, she told me stories of the gallery’s early years. She’d worked for Philip until she’d decided she needed to break up with New York and moved to Vermont, where she taught art at a hippie boarding school.
“Philip is loyal,” she said. “Even though I imagine he seems distant and strange to you.”
When my bosses came downstairs, I was making the guests eggs. Nicola appeared first. He kissed everyone good morning, gave me an easy smile, and went out for a swim. Perhaps what we’d done was, as he’d insisted, inconsequential. Philip showed up next. He made requisite jokes about all they’d drunk, what James had forced people into. When I told him his eggs were almost ready, he rested a hand on my shoulder and called me “the best young man.”
The only hint that he was rattled came later in the day. I was packing the rental car I technically wasn’t old enough to drive when he said, “Gordon, could you take the dogs back with you? I need a few days off from their demands.”
He and Nicola weren’t coming home until Tuesday morning, back for just a few hours before flying to an art fair that wasn’t the name of an herb after all. Competing feelings swooped in: the annoyance that they thought nothing of my availability, the thrill at the additional pay. But I was becoming essential to them, being needed a drug I couldn’t turn down.
Rebecca and I left at the same time. In the driveway, she turned to me and said, “You’re good for them, for Philip especially.”
It was a perfect early summer day, the sky a blazing blue, grass in a neighboring meadow bobbing in unison. Rebecca stood between the rental car and me.
“I don’t mean to overstep,” she said.
“You’re not,” I answered, dumb to what she was talking about.
“It’s just that Nicola,” she said, “can be slippery. Always finds a way to get what he wants.”
“Makes him a good salesman.”
I thought of the walk to the barn, the house behind us with some windows still lit.
“But you understand,” she said. “I’m not mad, you know. And don’t like to share people’s secrets.”
I tried to think of a way to make it clear that Nicola and I weren’t anything, that a small thing had transpired that wouldn’t happen again. But all I could come up with was the word, “Noted,” then, “No worries.”
Rebecca wished me a safe ride back. The dogs stared at me through the car’s windows.
On the ride home, I thought of what Rebecca had seen, what Philip knew, what that meant for me. Though part of me worried about Philip’s feelings, my larger concern then was self-preservation. When I talk to Janice about it now, she says that I wasn’t being selfish but taking care, and I answer that both can be true, that both were true for me.
Back at Philip and Nicola’s, the dogs hopped onto the sofas they weren’t meant to be on. I put food away and checked the machine for messages. There was a reminder about a dentist appointment for Nicola I’d have to reschedule, a message from a woman in smoky French. The next was for me. “Since you aren’t getting my messages at the other number, I thought I’d try here again,” my father began. “I’m wondering if this is where you live now. Just tell me when you call back.”
He called as if we talked all the time, insisting he had important things to say, when by important he meant disapproving.
I erased his message.
The next day, I waited until I thought he’d be at work to return his call. I began my message by telling him that he needed to stop contacting me at my job. As I talked, I grew livid at not being listened to, and thought of a play I’d once seen where a character lamented about the attention that had to be paid. I wrote attention on a scrap of paper and ended my message with this: “I don’t leave random messages where you work.” This was petty, also true, though I didn’t know where Dad was working then, or if he even had a job.