Outro: The Serial Novel

Twenty-Eight, Part Two

Surprising Alex

For once, my instincts are absolutely correct. The Alex who knows the buttons on my palms also knows the buttons everywhere else. I am spring-loaded with anxiety, and by the time Alex is finished with mouth, fingers and penis, I’m a five-time lottery winner, pleasurably destroyed, lying on his bed as the moon paints a skunk-stripe over the Sound. As it turns out, Alex lives in one of those pricey homes on Soundview, the ones I was passing this morning along my weather buffet. You could put a miniature golf course on his front lawn. I’m lying on my stomach, flagrantly naked; Alex runs a hand over my buttocks, as if they belong to a priceless Greek statue. I have decided that I merit just such treatment.

“I feel like I’ve discovered your secret, Alex. All those women, like a goddamn doctoral program.”

“I wouldn’t go too far with that,” he says. “It’s mostly about the dancing. But the dancing sometimes sets off triggers. Maybe a fifth of the time. What I like most is how surprised they are. It’s easy to overlook a guy like me.”

“Not when you dance.”

It’s odd when a man you’ve just had animal sex with gives you a shy look.

“Thanks. You know, the words to ‘Danny Boy’ were written in iambic pentameter. The song’s in four, but the contrast gives it this lovely meandering quality. You can’t just go hopping and skipping to it.”

I can hear the song as he speaks, and recall its meaning.

“I’m still in love with him.”

“I almost hate to ask,” says Alex, “but… who?”

“Kai.”

“Oh. That I knew. And, believe it or not, when you said ‘one-time offer,’ I took you at your word.”

My gaze drifts to a charcoal sketch on the wall, Fred Astaire in coat and tails.

“So it’s… okay?”

He runs a finger along the valley of my spine – a gesture that almost answers my question.

“It’s not just okay, Channy. It’s marvelous. For years – decades, actually – I waited for that life-long love affair, denying anything that didn’t have the potential to meet that lofty standard. What foolishness. Some time or other, it finally happened, I finally figured out where I fit into the equation. I am Mr. In-Between, the guy who dresses the wounds and sends the women on their way. But meanwhile, I get to enjoy them, and feast on their lovely bodies, and the very brevity of these affairs affords a variety matched by few men that I know. I am one hell of a lucky guy.”

I smile. “Nothing but A-pluses here, fella.”

He slaps me affectionately on a butt-cheek. “That’s what a man likes to hear. Another satisfied customer.”

We laugh the laughter of the sexually spent. A minute later, I put on my clothes, give Alex a big smooch on the mouth, and show myself to the door.

True to the day, the weather has changed. I cross the lawn in an envelope of mist, leaving dewy footprints on the grass. As I near the streetlight next to my car, I discover a thousand tiny splinters of light. It’s freezing fog, just the kind that one might find in a signpost forest.

I believe it now: Harvey’s dead.

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