to get him and quite prepared to kiss his ass.
'Are you coming to my picnic, Peter?' he asked in an appropriately humble voice.
'Who's going to be there, darling? I know it's rude, but-'
'Everyone, Peter.'
'
'Friends and enemies. That's the fun.'
'With Mustapha too, you mean?'
'Of course, Peter. Of course.'
'I'll think about it, dear, but forgive me if I don't turn up. I get headaches on the beach.'
Robin thought then that he'd hooked him, but just to make sure he threw him another bone. 'I really hope you bring Mustapha, Peter. It's so amusing the way Wax turns envious when he sees that boy with you.'
Peter muttered something and rang off. Robin felt he'd escaped with his dignity intact, and without the gouged scar that was Barclay's usual price.
He was thinking hard then about saving money on the food. He considered buying horsemeat for the kebabs, but he knew the Moroccan boys would recognize it no matter how much salt and cumin he packed on. He decided against it, since one of them would surely tell, and then his more fastidious guests would retch.
He only wished he could invite his real friends-Jean Tassigny, the Beaumont girls, the Hawkins', Vanessa Bolton, Martin Townes. But his picnic was strictly confined to queens. The Moroccan boys would be prancing around in their skimpy shorts, and he expected biting insults and nasty repartee from his European guests. A mean and nasty social life was indispensable to his profession-a flaw, he knew, in his hugely flawed character, part of the aura of corruption he was trying to cultivate about his name.
On the morning of the solstice Herve Beaumont came by to pick him up. They stopped at a cheap butcher shop, picked up wine and bottled water, then drove out to Robinson's beach. It was such a searing day that they immediately took a swim, then worked to set up the tent. Robin was clumsy with the pegs and stakes, and finally, after everything collapsed, Herve erected it himself. Robin lay in the sun for an hour in a pair of cutoff jeans. He knew his guests would be late, vying to make spectacular entrances, so he waited patiently and with a hopeful heart.
Percy Bainbridge was first. The Australian inventor brought an English boy, an ordinary tourist he'd picked up at a bar. This boy, he said, ran a poodle-clipping service in Liverpool, which fascinated Percy, who had the notion of turning dog's fleece into yarn. 'That way, you see,' he explained, 'a master could have a sweater knitted from the hair of his very own dog. Think of it-master and dog in matching coats. It's just the sort of thing that could catch on.'
Robin was irritated when Vincent Doyle arrived alone. The old exemplar, the literary lion, gaunt and bony, his hair shaved nearly to his skull, explained that his friend Achmed was indisposed. Doyle was excessively polite, but Robin sensed he was on edge. He settled on a rock and immediately lit up a pipe of kif.
Doyle always carried his manuscript with him, packed in a burlap sack. He was known for his paranoia, his fear of Moroccans, particularly servants and police, and his belief that a revolution might break out at any moment, making it necessary for him to leave the country without his work. Doyle was almost as well known as Ashton Codd, but he hadn't published anything in years. The manuscript he carried was to be his swan song, a huge novel into which he was pouring everything he knew and by which he hoped to remind the world that he was still alive.
Robin offered to store the sack in the tent, and actually had his hands on it when Doyle suddenly grabbed it back.
'Christ's sake, Vincent. What's the matter? This thing's as heavy as bricks.'
Doyle, upset, stashed the sack beneath his knees. 'I'm most particular about my manuscript,' he said. 'I'm a mother you see. I must keep my baby in my sight.'
'Yes, of course.' Robin nodded, though it saddened him that Doyle, once such a famous hipster, had become an old lady about his goods.
Sven Lundgren arrived next, with his Mohammed, thank God. Immediately they stripped to bikinis and ran hand in hand into the surf. Mohammed was delicate as a willow branch, his smooth, bronze flesh marred by adolescent pimples along his jaw. Robin was entranced, for he was truly a chicken, his innocence set off by contrast with the dentist, whose torso was covered with a pelt of thick blond hair.
Kranker arrived then with Nordeen, a sulky boy whom Robin knew from around the Socco. Kranker liked professional hustlers; he had no interest in finding and courting a lover, preferring to pay for sex and keep himself detached. This had its advantages, and dangers too, since most of the hustlers Robin had known were capable of exhibiting psychotic rage. Kranker, Robin thought, must be excited by the danger, the possibility of being suddenly turned upon with fists and knife. He lay down beside Doyle, leaving Nordeen to his own devices. The boy drifted down to the tidewater and began to build a castle in the sand.
So far the picnic was shaping up with a lot less style than Robin had hoped. Herve was literally sulking in his tent, Lundgren was in the ocean, Bainbridge and the poodle clipper were lying in the sun, and Doyle and Kranker were whispering together by the rocks. But then suddenly and simultaneously Inigo and Patrick Wax appeared, and at the sight of them Robin knew everything would be all right.
Inigo, wearing nothing but a white panama hat and green silk slacks, walked across the sand with the panache of a South American millionaire, stalked by Pumpkin Pie bearing a great plate of salad, with Inigo's sketching kit strapped across his back.
Wax arrived from the opposite direction in a flowing white djellaba and gold-trimmed Arabian headdress, his riding crop in his hand. His Kalem followed, bearing salad and a folding beach chair-a marvelous, tough-looking Arab boy, Robin thought, with bulging muscles and a cruel face. This Kalem was only the latest in a long line of chickens whom Wax had ferreted out, instructed in interior decoration, introduced into society, then dropped when the youths became twenty years old.
'Oh, Patrick,' Robin yelled. 'You look just like T. E. Lawrence.'
'Florence of Arabia, dear boy,' Wax replied. 'I see Mother Barclay hasn't arrived.'
'She will,' said Bainbridge.
'He'd better,' said Wax. 'I want to arrange a wrestling match between his Mustapha and my Kalem.' Then,
Robin was elated. This was just the sort of thing he'd hoped to see. He helped Wax arrange himself, then hurried to Inigo on the other side.
'My salad and my friend,' the artist said, snapping his fingers at Pumpkin Pie. 'You must come see his portrait before I ship it off to New York.'
Pumpkin Pie grinned.
'Oh, he's very pleased,' said Inigo. 'I've flattered him a lot. He's being good to me this week-I've promised to take him to Madrid. Well-first we're going to swim, and then we're going to draw.'
'Come say hello-'
'No thanks, Robin. I detest homosexuals. Wait-isn't that my dentist in the sea?'
'If you're such a snob, Inigo, you can swim farther down the beach.'
'Yes. That's what we'll do.' He snapped his fingers at the boy. 'Come!'
Pumpkin Pie handed Robin the salad and sketching pack and followed Inigo across the sand. A few minutes later, when Robin came out of the tent, Patrick Wax beckoned with his crop.
'Look,' he said. 'Do you see Doyle? Now why do you suppose he doesn't undress?'
'The sun's hot today-'
'Rubbish, Robin!' Wax switched him gently around the navel. 'There're black-and-blue marks all over him. That Achmed of his beats him up, and of course the man's ashamed.'
Now that was something Robin didn't know, and wasn't about to concede. Wax was a marvelous character but he lied all the time and was the most evil man in all Tangier. Though he lived in a palace on the Mountain, he kept a flat for assignations in town, a deteriorating place that Robin had once seen, filled with dusty, rusted mirrors and scores of crucifixes on the walls. The crucifixes, Wax claimed, were part of a valuable collection he'd inherited from his mentor, a Polish cardinal or a Bavarian bishop, depending on which version he was telling at the time. They had, he said, a twofold usage: as religious paraphernalia, and to ream boys in the ass.
