Remembering Christmas Read Online Free PDF

Alex said, playfully mussing James’s still thick mane as James finished his drink. “Are you letting it grow longer?”
    â€œNo, I just need a haircut,” James admitted, more pleased by the compliment than he should have been.
    â€œDon’t. Keep it longer. Silver daddies are all the rage these days. I can’t believe you’re . . . what? Forty-one? Forty-two?”
    â€œI’m forty-six, and you know it. Which makes you . . .”
    â€œStop, stop! I can’t bear it!” Alex shouted in mock horror, covering his ears with the palms of his hands. “You look much better with gray hair than Leo. He looks like his grandfather with that disgusting hair growing out of his nose. I keep begging him to have it colored, but he refuses. He says an outspoken faggot at Lazard can’t afford to seem so trivial that he would care about the color of his hair.”
    Of course, a faggot at Lazard earning the GNP of a tiny thirdworld nation was perfectly free to indulge his narcissism in more acceptable, traditionally masculine ways, such as hiring a private trainer to arrive at his co-op at five in the morning, six days a week, to ensure that his waist size never exceeded thirty-two inches. Not that his weight or muscle tone mattered, since Leo’s donkey dong and income just below the threshold for the Forbes 400 assured him his choice of the most desirable sexual partners. But Leo still needed to believe his conquests wanted to sleep with him because he was hot and not because he was powerful and almost unimaginably wealthy.
    â€œWe need to get back in there before Leo starts to suspect I’m doing you on the kitchen table,” Alex laughed. “But I’m worried about you, James. I really am. What’s wrong with you? I don’t believe you’re this down in the dumps because that evil old man is finally dying.”
    â€œHe is NOT evil. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”
    Alex, so used to charming people that even the ones he’d royally fucked asked him to dinner to thank him for his efforts, could only attribute his being the object of Ernst’s undying scorn and derision to the old man’s vile and corrupt nature. Ernst Belcher, a hoarder, avaricious to his core, had never forgiven Alex for stealing James from him. Never mind that James had grown beyond the age of Ernst’s romantic interest and a younger, fairer, and more naïve understudy was already waiting in the wings: All that mattered was that a belonging of Ernst’s had been taken from him.
    â€œHave it your way,” Alex said, dismissing the subject. “Just don’t expect me to believe that the news that old bastard is dying is what put you in such a funk.”
    James refused to take the bait. Even Alex couldn’t pry from him his nagging fear he was going to spend the rest of his life alone. Adolescents and widows might get sympathy for such a heartfelt confession of vulnerability, but a successful New York editor would be exposing himself to a chorus of ridicule and mockery for admitting he desperately missed falling asleep next to someone at night.
    â€œOkay, be that way,” Alex said, affectionately, knowing from long experience it was best not to pressure James when he slipped into the occasional miasma of doom and gloom. “Come on! I’ve got a surprise. Archie Duncan is here, and I’ve told him all about you.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œDon’t go acting all snooty on me and pretending you don’t know who Archie Duncan is.”
    The only Archies James knew were Veronica’s boyfriend and Cary Grant.
    â€œHe was on that television series for years, the one about the basketball coach who has to take over the drama club. It was a really big hit. You know the one I mean. I loved that show!”
    James had never developed Alex’s appreciation for double takes and laugh tracks.
    â€œAnyway, he’s in New York now. He