Dream Girl(35)

Luke’s schtick about being attracted to Gerry was a running gag, which made him uncomfortable. The fact that it made him uncomfortable made him even more uncomfortable. And then Luke would go for a while without making the joke and Gerry would wonder why he stopped.

“Based on what happened with Tara—no. It was a stupid thing to do and it loused up our friendship.”

“Women can’t do just-sex.”

“I can’t do just-sex. That’s why I screwed up the friendship. We have so much in common; we make each other laugh. I just had to know what the sex would be like.”

“And?”

“Not that great. For either of us.” Gerry was still puzzling over that fact. He was even more puzzled by Tara’s assessment: “Our damage doesn’t mesh.” What damage? He didn’t consider himself damaged and, frankly, Tara’s alcoholic father seemed small potatoes to him.

“Maybe your luck will change in Atlantic City.”

Luke managed to get Tara’s car without Tara attached and they headed to the beach. It was amazing to Gerry that one state could contain both Princeton and Atlantic City. It was delightful, at first, to smell the ocean air and see the street names he remembered from his Monopoly set. He called out the names and Luke responded with the colors, then the costs and even the rents.

“Kentucky Avenue. Three houses, seven hundred dollars. Four houses, eight-seventy-five.”

Gerry wanted to play blackjack, because it was the closest thing to a game of skill, but he was not prepared for the speed at which it was played and he quickly lost the forty dollars he had staked himself. Luke left the table up fifty dollars. He wanted to shoot craps, a game Gerry could not follow at all. Luke started a run and people gathered, enjoying the vicarious thrill, or perhaps rooting for his lucky streak to end. A woman in a bareback leotard and filmy skirt tried to flirt with him, but Luke ignored her, ignored the drinks that started coming his way. Gerry realized that Luke was in his own private world, just him and the dice and the chips. He won another hundred dollars, tipped the croupier, and moved on to roulette. Gerry decided to go in search of a beer. When he left the roulette table, Luke was up two hundred dollars.

By the time he got back, it was all gone.

“I bet on the black,” Luke said. “Fifty-fifty shot and I lost. Do you have any cash?”

“No.”

“I wonder if I could get a line of credit—”

“Luke, don’t be crazy.”

“But that was the point of coming here, to be crazy. Do you know the single best moment in gambling, Gerry?”

“Winning, of course.”

“No, it’s the moment before. Before the ball lands, before the card is shown, before the dice settle, one of those rare moments when you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Think about all the books we read, the movies we love—how often are you truly surprised by a story? Or your life? We always sort of know where we’re going, what’s going to happen. But not in a casino.”

Gerry opened his mouth to object, but he could not think of a story that truly contradicted Luke’s point. Only last week, they had gone to see this new movie, Halloween, which was full of surprises, but—was it? It was clear which girl would live, that the children would not be harmed.

“Sounds unsettling to me,” he said. “Like staring into the abyss.”

“Oh, no, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. I would live in that moment every waking second if I could. It’s like Rocky Horror Picture Show. ‘I see you quiver with antici—’” He held the pause even longer than Tim Curry. “‘—pation.’”

“Okay, do you know what I’m going to say next?”

“Something sensible, no doubt.”

Somehow, Gerry got Luke to take a walk on the boardwalk, where the fresh air was a shock to their lungs after the casino. Despite the autumnal chill, they took off their shoes and walked on the beach.

“If I can’t gamble, I need to find someone to fuck,” Luke said. “Don’t worry, it won’t be you. Not tonight, at least.”

“Let’s just drive back, Luke.”

“I’ll meet you at the car in an hour.”

“Luke, that’s crazy—”

“What?” Mock outrage. “You don’t think I can get laid in an hour? Gerry, I could probably be done in fifteen minutes.”

In the end, it took him ninety. He showed up at the car, brandishing a twenty. “He thought I was trade and who am I to disabuse someone of that notion? I would have paid him, not that I had any money. I like older men. They’re experienced.”

Gerry drove, although Luke had promised Tara that no one else would touch the wheel of her precious Tercel. It was evening now, but still not late. They would be back on campus before midnight. They could order pizza, drink beer.

Gerry had no words, no context for his friend’s behavior. Luke, exhausted by whatever he had been doing, fell asleep in the car and Gerry kept stealing glances at his profile, so smooth and perfect and pretty. What was it like to be that pretty? What was it like to be a homosexual? Would anyone choose to be one? Gerry had been with only three women, but the first time he entered one, he couldn’t believe how amazing it was, how literature, which he held in such high esteem, had failed to inform him fully of the wonders of sex. According to Luke, it was the moment before winning—so therefore the moment before ejaculation, or maybe contact—that thrilled him. That made no sense to Gerry. When he came inside a woman, it was about as happy as he had ever been. And he knew, because of his father, that he had to guard himself against becoming obsessive about this particular joy, that he must never hurt another person in his pursuit of that pleasure.