I shrugged. “A grape grower?”
“A grape picker,” he said. “A local yokel who picks grapes. She is besotted with him!”
His shouting woke up Plato. The chow raised his head and peered up at me with worried eyes.
Nevada raved on. “Obsessed, besotted, head-over-heels in love! Surprise, surprise. What did they expect?” He didn’t want an answer. “So what this child needs now is some exposure to the real world, to peers! They want to get her out of there, away from him! They’re sending her here for the summer. She arrives tomorrow.”
He looked into my eyes once again and said, “That’s where you come in.”
I sat there waiting for the other shoe to drop, while Toni Braxton sang, and Nevada interjected, “This singer is very much like Roberta Flack.”
“I never heard of Roberta Flack,” I told him.
“You two would probably get along,” he said.
I knew he didn’t mean Roberta Flack and me.
“Now, here’s what I have in mind,” he said, finally getting to the point. “I’d like you to help me out. Take her to a movie now and then. Play some tennis with her. Show her around the Hamptons. Give her a taste of real life. Introduce her to some intelligent young people! Of course, I’ll reimburse you for any amount you spend.”
He looked at me and I looked at him.
“Well?” he said.
“It’s not a very good idea,” I said. “I don’t know anyone out here.”
“You were with a group the other day. I saw you.”
“They’re from New York, Mr. Nevada.”
“Then you and Huguette would be good company for each other. You’d like a tennis partner, wouldn’t you? Someone to spend time with? And it’s easier to meet people when you’re with someone.”
I could see myself getting into another situation where I’d have to lie and pretend I was someone I wasn’t, so I just sat there shaking my head.
“She wouldn’t be interested in you,” he said, “if that’s what’s bothering you, Lane.”
“Lang,” I said.
“She’s in love with this French field boy!”
“I have other commitments.”
“You mean your work at Sob Story?”
“Things I do on weekends.”
“Do them. You don’t have to give up your weekends.”
For a moment neither of us said anything. Then he rubbed his forehead with his hand and sighed. “I don’t know how to say this,” he said.
I had the idea he was going to tell me that I worked for him, and that this would be part of my job.
“Just say it,” I told him.
“All right. I think I know why you’re reluctant to do this, Lang.”
Plato was on his feet, rubbing his nose against Nevada’s pant leg.
I said, “Why?”
“I saw you with your friend down on the beach that day.”
I thought Alex was the blusher, but I felt my own face get red.
Nevada said, “It looked to me like more than a friendship. And those books you had with you—Truman Capote—he was homosexual.” He held his hand up before I could say anything. “I don’t give a damn about that sort of thing! That’s your business…. In fact, Lang, I think in this situation it’s all to the good! I don’t want some young kid getting ideas about Huguette. She’s got enough baggage without that! All I want is for you to show her a good time. I’ll pay for it!”
I kept shaking my head.
“Remember our first meeting, when you described yourself as ‘torn’?”
“I’m not, though.”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
“What I meant was I get tired of the masquerade.”
“It’s all right to have ambivalence.”
“I don’t have ambivalence about that. I have ambivalence about keeping it to myself.”
“Oh, I know at your age you know everything there is to know about yourself. It’s only when you’re my age that you look back and see a stranger, and it was you! …I look back and see a stranger who was a fool! Always trying to impress a man who hated him!”
“Your father?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
We sat there in silence.
Then he said, “He was an accompanist. Beware of understudies, accompanists, and ghostwriters! Their own dreams are put aside while someone else is featured!”
More silence as he sucked on his cigarette.
“In my case,” he said, “those dreams were foisted off on me! I had to be the star he never would be. And I was never good enough, because he was never good enough!”
“I guess I was lucky,” I said. “I don’t know my father. I don’t even know where he is.”
But Nevada was not interested in my story.
He said, “I think you’re lucky that I just made you this offer. Why not agree to it? Can’t you enjoy yourself with a girl?”
“It isn’t that.”
“Drive her around—”
I cut him off. “I don’t have a car!” I said.
“I have six!”
That spring I’d taken driver ed and gotten my license, but I hadn’t had much practice driving.
“I’d like to help you out, sir,” I said, “but I can’t spend my summer in another masquerade.”
“What do you mean another one?”
“That’s all I’ve been doing all my life!”
He looked annoyed. My life wasn’t the point. His was.
So I said, “If someone asked you to take out a gay man and show him a good time, how eager would you be to do it?”
“That’s different!” he barked.
“Why is it?”
“It just is, Lang…. No one would ask someone to do that. What I’m asking you to do is put yourself in a perfectly normal situation.”
“It wouldn’t be a normal situation for me.”
“It wouldn’t be something you haven’t done before, though.”
“I’ve done it too many times.”
“Once more won’t kill you.”
I said, “Thanks for lunch,” and stood up.
Plato got up and ran over to jump against my legs.
“Down, Plato!” he shouted.
But he was right about Plato; Plato didn’t follow orders.
“Think it over, Lang!” he called after me.
Plato trotted along with me until
