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“So that’s the end of that,” Peter said, crumpling the letter and tossing it across the bedroom into the waste basket. Bull’s-eye. Another fling at heterosexuality ended, neatly and without malice. Susan had seemed better than the others; but weeks of familiarity, then intimacy, had exposed the quirks, the imperfections, the annoying habits. She was, after all (and he should have known better by now), like all the rest. “So that is definitely that.”
He pushed aside the ungraded tests on his desk, then put on his cap and ventured into the drizzly streets. Glancing at his passing image in a store window, he discovered the hunched and harried figure of a fugitive. He needed to lose weight, especially around the gut. Patting his stomach, he fancied that “Time waits for no man” should be amended to “Time weights every man.” He smiled — a bit ruefully — wishing the pun were wittier, or at least more grammatical.
He crossed the street to the Figaro, a bar where he knew the men and women drinking around him would be neither too strange nor too familiar, offering polite smiles of recognition but, mercifully, no intrusive chatter. Tonight he wanted to drink alone. Or rather, not alone, but in peace, without the subtle torture of sparkling conversation.
Wishing that one of the booths were empty, he ordered Scotch and water. He disliked sitting at the bar, especially when it was crowded like tonight. “There you go, Mr. Versani.” The bartender pushed the drink toward him. Peter took a sip, then a gulp; caught his breath, gulped again. Listening to Miles Davis on the jukebox and waiting for the Scotch to warm him, he ventured a glance left, right. Seeing no one he recognized, he breathed more easily and began to relax.
He finished his drink and ordered another. The alcohol was working. He could feel it warming his legs, his arms, his shoulders. The music on the jukebox suddenly sounded very loud. He let his head roll in a slow circle, massaged his neck, sighed. Catching the eyes of a young woman down the bar, Peter smiled. He wondered if he would have smiled five minutes earlier, before the Scotch had done its handiwork.
He felt a draft as the door behind him opened. “Want some candy, mister?” someone asked. The voice was young, husky, bold. Peter turned on his stool and saw a boy speaking to a man near the door. With a shrug, the boy turned away from the man, hoisted his cardboard box and walked to the bar. “Want some candy?” he asked again, showing the box to a young couple near Peter. The boy’s red stocking cap was pulled down over the ears, covering all but a few curly strands of his dark hair. Peter, catching himself with a grin in the opposite mirror as he watched the youngster, looked away quickly. Then the boy was beside him. “Want some candy, mister?”
Peter looked around. His heart beat rapidly; he felt a sudden, tight breathlessness; perhaps he had downed the first drink too quickly. The boy was watching him, scowling, holding the dirty cardboard box with even dirtier hands.
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