his heart rate up and help keep his cholesterol down. He dressed younger, too-casual, mostly turtlenecks and corduroys. And he dyed his white hair black, his one concession to vanity. If he squinted, he could still find and sometimes talk to the twenty-year-old who always wanted to be where he ended up.
That sense of accomplishment was the real reward, though sometimes there was unexpected blowback.
Tony had once told him the story of Beth Middleton, and how he was attracted to her the instant he saw her. The woman’s smile hooked him and her tight jeans held him. Her quick wit did its job, too. In that sense he was not unlike most men: it was lust at first sight.
Beth was thirty years younger than him but something about her was much older. When they finally got around to talking about something other than medicine, he learned that she had grown up in a military family, moving from base to base, though she had managed to stick around the Florida panhandle, near Panama City, long enough to go to high school. Maturity is something he found in a lot of army brats. Because they never really got to put down roots, because they rarely got to make friends for very long, their lives were spent on the outside, reading when they were alone, watching when they were with people.
Beth’s father had been a lieutenant colonel in the air force. He flew a hundred combat missions in Nam, in the F-4-a classy, long-range Mach-buster that was still being used in the Gulf War. The sky jocks always said that if you had to be away from home and honey, this was the baby you wanted to be with. Lieutenant Colonel Middleton apparently felt the same. He later became a flight instructor, keeping close to the Phantoms, married late, and had Beth even later.
She worshipped her father and craved his attention-which he obviously didn’t bestow as readily or happily as he did lectures on the range of his big silver bird. Beth didn’t have to say it for Tony to figure out that he was the reason she was attracted to older men. He didn’t imagine he was the first.
After college she earned her master’s in Arabic language studies from Texas A amp; M and, after hours, snagged a Ph. D. in MdS-Marquis de Sade. She liked to be dominated and humiliated, something Tony didn’t know till later.
Although it was against military rules and regs they fraternized in the most intimate way. At first in his car and later in motels near the base in Sacramento. As they came to know each other better, she became more open about her desires.
At first Tony went along with the “game,” as he called it, by tying her up and telling her she was a “dirty girl.” But he-and his anatomy-quickly tired of the sport because he wasn’t wired for it. He decided to self-prescribe Levitra. He took it with a Coke from the vending machine outside their favorite cheap motel. When they got back to the room, Tony slipped into the bathroom. As he undressed he looked at his old friend in the mirror and was shocked to see it standing at the same angle as his seventeen-year-old self. And he didn’t even have to squint.
In the months to come he would jokingly tell his friends about his experience, noting that, “I took that little orange tablet, looked at myself, and fell in love.” It never failed to get a laugh.
The Levitra worked all right, except where it counted most: inside his head. This wasn’t lovemaking, it was psychodrama. After a couple of months he found the sight and feel of the clothesline she carried in her bag to be a turnoff. It had the smell of the recent past but the less tangible odor of the distant past, a lack of attention from daddy. That was something he didn’t want to be a part of.
The night he told her wasn’t fun for either of them. Beth dropped her bag on the bed, crawled toward the pillows, and when he sat beside her she curled into a tight, fetuslike ball, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob, “Tell me I’m a bad girl… tell me I’m a whore!”
He gently lifted her hands and held them between his.
The light shone on her tears. The edge of the rope poked from the top of her bag like a fuse.
“Tie me up,” she demanded. “Make me feel like the dirty slut I am.”
“Not tonight, Beth,” he said softly, cradling her to him.
She seemed to recoil slightly before yielding. “You’ll be back?”
“Not tonight or ever again.”
Tony missed what she made him feel, but not how she made him feel. On the other hand, after nearly seven decades, it was good to feel challenged. More than anything, that was what life had to be about.
As soon as he got back to the city that night, he immediately went to Peter and Paul Church in North Beach and begged Jesus to forgive his sin. Like millions of lapsed Catholics, Tony loved Jesus, admired the Church less, and was no longer constrained by the sexual edicts of a corrupt priesthood.
When Jack finished editing the footage of Drabinsky, Tony was the first person he showed it to.
“Damn if I don’t have tears in my eyes,” Tony Antiniori said.
“Thanks,” Jack said.
“I mean it, that’s a helluva tribute,” Tony said. “You think you’ll run into any resistance from the networks?”
Jack shrugged. “My name isn’t exactly welcome, but considering what I’ve got here and the price I’m asking, how can they refuse?”
“Because they’re kind of like reverse terrorists,” Tony said.
“I don’t follow.”
“They will blow up an entire network news division just to keep one guy from the spotlight.”
Jack smiled. That was as good an assessment of the network mind-set as he’d ever heard.
“They’re putzes,” Tony added for good measure.
“That’s what my grandfather used to call my old man.”
“Your mother’s father?”
Jack nodded.
“Because your dad wasn’t Jewish?”
Jack shook his head. “No, because he was hoping his daughter would marry up. In Granddad’s mind, watch repair didn’t quite cut it. Even though my dad loved it.”
They were sitting in the aft salon of Jack’s Aleutian 59 he’d dubbed the Sea Wrighter. He and Rachel had bought it during the real estate boom, with money she made from flipping houses. Jack had been a live-aboard for two years, since moving out of the house in Tiburon he’d shared with his ex-wife. He often marveled that his boat was almost double the size of Hemingway’s famous thirty-eight-foot Pilar. Named for his second wife, Pauline, whose nickname was Pilar, it was also the name of a pivotal character in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 by the Wheeler Shipyard, it cost $7,455. Jack chuckled thinking about the 70-hp Chrysler Crown gasoline engine, which drove her at 8 knots with a top speed of 16 knots. Jack’s Aleutian had two 1000-hp Caterpillar diesels, which could drive his forty-ton beauty upwards of 22 knots. Jack also had a small apartment in town but he rarely spent time there, preferring life on the marina instead. There was a sense of community here, of shared purpose, that you didn’t get in the city.
Tony lived aboard the Tarangi, a thirty-two-foot Chey Lee clipper just three slips down-a slot he’d managed to score despite size restrictions when one of the larger boats pulled anchor. So a day wouldn’t be complete without Tony at least popping his head in, and more often than not he brought along a bottle of wine. Tony considered himself something of a budget connoisseur and liked to share.
Jack preferred beer or a single malt himself. His favorite combo was a few ’85 Glenrothes followed by a couple of cold Becks, but he indulged his friend’s passion and usually gave in when offered a glass. Tony’s selection tonight was an ’04 Gaja Sori San Lorenzo, which he’d received in exchange for his mechanical skills on an Atomic-4 engine. They toasted Officer Thomas Drabinsky at the top; it was the first time since the blast that Jack had choked up. Something about the finality of the gesture, the acknowledgment that a life was over, his story had been told, The End.
Tony picked up on it and gave him a tight-lipped smile.
The wine was damn good and it lifted his spirits from the first sip. It tasted unlike any other heavy red. He savored the understated layers of currant and black cherry, with a tinge of coffee. But even his relaxed mind wasn’t able to stray far from the events of the last twenty-four hours.
“Y’know, something’s bothering me about this whole thing,” Jack said.
“Talk to me.”
