Less(39)

Less laughs and says surely they didn’t say that.

“No, but. Look at their bodies. Their arms are touching. And he leans in to talk to her. It is not loud here. He is leaning in just to be close to her. They did not want me there.” At that moment, Humphrey Bogart puts his hand on the woman’s shoulder and points to the drawing, talking. His lips are so close to her ear that his breath blows her loose wisps of hair. Now it is obvious; they are going to sleep together.

He turns back to Javier, who shrugs: What can you do? Less asks, “And that is why you came over here.”

Javier’s eyes remain on Less. “It is part of why I came over here.”

Less allows the warmth of this flattery to wash over him. Javier’s expression does not change. For a moment, they are silent; time expands slightly, taking its deep breath. Less understands it is up to him to make a move. He recalls when, as a boy, a friend would dare him to touch something hot. The silence is broken only by the sound of a glass, also broken, dropped by Finley Dwyer onto the slate floor.

“And so you are flying back to America?” Javier asks.

“No. To Morocco.”

“Ah! My mother was Moroccan. You are going to Marrakech, to the Sahara, then to Fez, no? It is the normal visit.” Did Javier just wink?

“I guess I’m the normal visitor. Yes. It seems unfair you have me pegged, while you’re a mystery.”

Another wink. “I’m not. I’m not.”

“I only know your mother was Moroccan.”

Sexy continuous winking. “I am sorry,” Javier says, frowning.

“It’s good to be a mystery.” Less tries to say this as sensually as possible.

“I am sorry, I have something in my eye.” Javier’s right eye is now blinking rapidly: a panicked bird. From its outer edge, a rivulet of tears begins to flow.

“Are you okay?”

Javier clenches his teeth and blinks and rubs. “This is so embarrassing. The lenses are new for me, and irritating. They are French.”

Less does not fill in the punch line. He watches Javier and worries. He once read in a novel about a technique for removing a speck from another’s eye: you use the tip of your tongue. But it seems so intimate, more intimate than a kiss, that he cannot even bear to mention it. And, being from a novel, it is possibly an invention.

“It is out!” Javier exclaims after a final flurry of lashes. “I am free.”

“Or you’ve gotten used to the French.”

Javier’s face is blotched with red, tears shine on his right cheek, and his lashes are matted and thick. He smiles bravely. He is a little breathless. He looks, to Less, like someone who has run a long distance to be here.

“And there vanishes the mystery!” Javier says, resting his hand on a table and faking a laugh.

Less wants to kiss him; he wants to hold him and protect him. Instead, without thinking at all, he rests his hand on Javier’s. It is still wet with tears.

Javier looks up at him with those green-golden eyes. He is so close that Less can smell the orange scent of his pomade. They stand there for a moment perfectly still, a groupe en biscuit. His hand on Javier’s, his eyes on his. It feels possible that memory will never be finished with this moment. Then they step apart. Arthur Less has flushed as pink as a prom carnation. Javier takes a deep breath, then breaks their gaze.

“I wonder,” Less begins, in a struggle to say almost anything at all, “if you have any tips about the VAT…”

The room, which they are blind to, is papered in green-striped fabric and hung with preliminary drawings, or “cartoons,” for a greater work of art: here a hand, here a hand with a pen, here a woman’s upturned face. Above the fireplace mantel, the painting itself: a woman paused in thought while writing a letter. Bookshelves go to the ceiling, and if he looked, Less would find, besides one of H. H. H. Mandern’s Peabody novels, a collection of American stories in which—surprise of surprises!—one of his is featured. The hostess has not read it; she kept it because of an affair she had long ago, with another featured writer. She has read the two books of poetry two shelves above, by Robert, but she does not know that there is any connection to one of her guests. Yet here, again, the lovers meet. By now, the sun has set, and Less has found a way past the European tax system.

Less’s endearing backward laugh: AH ah ah ah!

“Before I came here,” Less is now saying, feeling the champagne taking possession of his tongue, “I went to the Musée d’Orsay.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“I was very moved by the Gauguin carvings. But then out of nowhere there was Van Gogh. Three self-portraits. I walked up to one; it was protected with glass. I could see my reflection. And I thought: Oh my God.” Less shakes his head, and his eyes widen as he relives the moment. “I look just like Van Gogh.”

Javier laughs, his hand to his smile. “Before the ear, I think.”

“I thought, I’ve gone crazy,” Less goes on. “But…I’ve already outlived him by over a decade!”

Javier tilts his head, a cocker Spaniard. “Arthur, how old are you?”

Deep breath. “I’m forty-nine.”

Javier moves closer to peer at him; he smells of cigarettes and vanilla, like Less’s grandmother. “How funny. I am also forty-nine.”