The Married Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

fascinating?”
    “Well. They’re
friends
. I don’t stop to wonder whether a friend is ‘fascinating’ or not.”
    “No. Of course not. Childhood friends are exempt from all criticism.”
    “They’re not exactly
childhood
friends—I came to France only eight years ago. Do you have lots of old friends?”
    “Yes, but I never see them.”
    “Why not?”
    “I prefer to think about them. My friends mean so much to me, but only in my thoughts, in my memory.”
    “What a poetic idea,” Austin murmured dreamily with a soft smile, because he thought Julien might kiss him. At a less romantic moment Austin might have objected strenuously to such a chilly notion. He wondered if it wasn’t just an affectation Julien had invented on the spot so that he himself could sound “fascinating,” a quality he apparently rated highly.
    But Julien didn’t kiss him and a moment later he was gone, but not before Austin had lined him up for dinner two nights later. At the door Julien gave him a big, helpless smile and let his hand sketch out something indecisive, between a hug and a handshake, which ended up as a sort of clumsy pat on the arm—the only awkward gesture Austin had seen this terribly conscious man make.

Chapter Four
    T he next morning at ten Pierre-Yves, dressed in new jogging shoes and a blue nylon track suit and crisp white T-shirt, was at the door, playfully exasperated because Austin was barely awake and not yet in his gym clothes. Pierre-Yves beat his hands together rhythmically and called out,
“Vite, vite, vite.”
He’d been an Olympic ice-skating coach and retained a vigorous manner, though with Austin he was obviously working with hopeless material. Their whole “routine” (vaudeville, not workout) consisted of Austin’s irrepressible desire to gossip in mid-exercise, whereas Pierre-Yves, at least in his official capacity, demanded that his student finish all twenty repetitions before jabbering anymore. When Austin said, “So I see you’re not bruised today,” or “What on earth were you and my guest Julien fighting about last night?” Pierre-Yves raised a warning finger and pronounced the next number louder
(“Dix
, onze,
douze
…”). He’d assumed the role of outwardly stern, secretly amiable taskmaster. Austin spent so much of his workout on his pale blue rubber mat on the floor, looking up at Pierre-Yves, that he constantly had a perverse, child’s-eye view of this man with the lean, muscled legs, the compact torso, the smooth, hairless arms, the powerful jaw and small, neat features. When he was younger, in the pre-AIDS days, he’d seldom hesitatedto touch another man seductively, a big grin on his face, but now he’d trained himself to recognize that he was positive, that other men were more reticent sexually than he, and that even if they weren’t it was hardly likely that he would be their first choice.
    “Did you like my friend Julien?”
    “… Dix-neuf,
vingt
. He has very strong opinions,
non?”
    “He said the same thing about you.” They both laughed.
    After Austin’s next series of push-ups, Pierre-Yves started nodding about something as though he’d reflected further. “He’s certainly a nice-looking man. He’s married?”
    “Did he tell you that? He is married, but why did he mention it, I wonder. Perhaps he was trying to keep himself from being too attractive to you.”
    Pierre-Yves shook his head twice, as though he was baffled. “No. Not at all. In any event, he’s not homosexual, is he?”
    “I should
hope
so. Why else—”
    “Un,
deux, trois …”
    At the next interval Pierre-Yves was talking about his plans to accompany three drag queens to a ball.
    “Will
you
be in drag?” Austin asked. The whole subject bored him stupid.
    “Me?”
Pierre-Yves asked, shocked. “I’ll be their escort. The man.” He added in English, “It will be a funny evening,” making the usual French mistake of imagining
funny
was the adjectival form of
fun
.
    Pierre-Yves