The Married Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

know I never give you advice, but that new Julien is
husband-material.”
He said it with a powerful stress on the
hus
and the
ter
, just as though he were going to zorro the air with a finger-snapping
Z
. “Seriously, doll,” and now he was no longer a black drag but the cozy waitress again, whispering a Kool-scented confidence as the toast in the toaster behind her started to burn, “if I were you, hon, I’d
grab
that one. Or else your daughter
will.”
    Despite the weather-vane changes of voice and role, Gregg was serious.
    “What should I do?” Austin asked.
    “Invite him away for a weekend to some luxurious hotel.”
    “I don’t have a car.”
    “Take the train to a nice little town.”
    But it was too soon to invite Julien anywhere except to dinner. He convinced Henry McVay, his rich friend, to have both of them over with Lauren Bacall, who was in town.
    “God,” Henry said, “can’t it be just us
boys
, Sweetie?”
    “No, Henry. Julien’s a married man. And besides, she’s a famous woman.”
    “Quelle barbe,”
Henry grumbled, using the French idiom for what he was always saying in English, “What a bore.” “Not that I dislike Betty Bacall for an instant. She’s pure heaven. And
very
amusing.” Hepaused, having exhausted his store of Parisian adjectives. “It’s just that at my age I really don’t like formal evenings much anymore.” By “formal” he meant “heterosexual.”
    And yet when Austin had met him six years earlier, it had been at a big cocktail party at which only half the men had been gay and there’d been as many women as men.
    Austin had met half the people there before. The handsome, seventy-year-old McVay, a few sheets (even a mainsail) to the wind, had said in his penetrating voice, “This is outrageous! I’ve been here for forty-five years and you already know most of my friends. It’s a scandal!” He rolled his eyes dramatically to heaven.
    Austin laughed, knowing he’d just been complimented. McVay, who seldom liked new people unless they were very young and decorative, preferably preppie blonds, nevertheless took to Austin instantly and started inviting him out all the time. They had known many of the same people over the years; even though Austin was twenty years younger, Henry was convinced they belonged to the same milieu. After all, they’d both often visited Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and they’d both been mentioned, if in different volumes, in Ned Rorem’s memoirs. Most important, they were both connoisseurs, even if Henry
owned
the paintings and chairs he admired and Austin merely wrote about them. But Henry would forget that Austin was poor, or if not poor then someone who lived virtually hand to mouth, and would lapse into complaints about his servant problems, something he was far too much a gentleman to do with someone he’d fully registered was less fortunate than he.
    Soon they were best of friends. When Austin’s book on eighteenth-century French ceramics was published in New York and London, Henry had written him a glowing letter. It was the only letter from a friend he’d received, though a few specialists had sent him notes pointing out questionable attributions.
    Austin would never have risked offending McVay by saying so, but he thought of him as a father. Austin’s own father had been a heavy-drinking Southerner, a man so reclusive that he’d go days without talking but who, when necessary for currying favor to earn his living, could put in an impeccable social performance. This old guy who farted loudly, gabbled like a chicken farmer and wandered aroundhis big eighteenth-century Virginia house unshaved, drunk and belligerent, had had the knack of dressing up like a duke on a yachting excursion when he had to. He’d treated his clients to a dinner of salty ham and sweet potatoes with pecans, cooked in Bourbon, kept his own drinking in check and kissed the hands of the wives on parting. He’d even made his dilapidated house gleam so