That Look

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Since most of you haven't seen my fiction before or know much about me, I feel a little bit constrained to mention that certain attitudes expressed by the narrator of the following story are not personal beliefs of this author. I do hope you enjoy!



The Yank is at it again – looking at Benton, damn his eyes.

Most of the time he’s a square fellow – could stand some more pounds on his frame, but wiry and bursting full of energy, I’ll give him that. Oh, and he could use a good haircut. But it isn’t his appearance I’m criticizing tonight. It’s when he goes silent during dinner with my son, or driving him around, or sitting together in the bullpen, and looks.

It’s never when Benton is looking back, never. The Yank has some subtlety, I’ll give him that, and an iron-clad sense of what is appropriate behavior to display to one’s partner. My son never sees that longing look, the way the Yank’s eyes get soft and his mouth curves. If he laughs behind Benton’s back at a kafuffle between my son and his wolf, it’s discreet. Keep your own counsel, but be supportive always – the man understands partnership. I can’t fault him there.

But from the looks, it’s clear to me that a professional partnership isn’t all that the Yank desires. I’ve tried to hint to Benton about it, put a bug into his ear, so to speak, but my son refuses to hear anything against his partner… which I suppose is loyal and a good quality, but for once I could wish Benton wasn’t quite so dutiful.

And as has happened before – on a night when there’s been several looks, the Yank makes sure that my son gets returned safely to the Consulate, fussing about the locks on the door and the security of the building, and then drives off in his “muscle car” (whatever that means – it looks more like a black beetle than a muscle, you ask me). I follow him tonight, suspecting that what has happened before will happen again.

First, the Yank drives by his ex-wife’s apartment building, and sits looking from his car. Sometimes he gets out and circles the block, checking the alleys for lurkers, testing the locks on the doors – whether he’s trying to get in, or making sure that nobody can, I don’t know. He’ll stand in the park opposite one side, looking up at a lighted window that I think must be the ex-wife’s, but I’ve yet to see so much as a silhouette there, for all his waiting.

Finally, he’s satisfied, and then as on the other nights he drives downtown, to a certain district – most big cities have them, I’m told – where if a man walks alone in a certain way, he’ll get looks from other men who are alone.

The Yank’s not easy. I suspect he could have his pick, there’s something about his sure walk that could get any man to go off with him. Some nights like this, he doesn’t choose anybody, just takes the measure of the place and goes home, but tonight he locks eyes with a handsome man – clean-cut, dark-haired, blue-eyed, reminiscent of my son – and goes off with him for what we used to call an assignation.

Sometimes the Yank’ll use his car, but usually they get a room in one of the nearby hotels. There’s little chatter, for all the Yank makes his professional business the art of deception, he doesn’t burden his temporary lover with empty promises or the illusion that they are bosom friends… they just get to it, and I must say, with no little amount of gusto.

The thing about being a ghost is that I’ve become more detached about certain… details, sights that would have shocked me terribly in life. I can see as much dignity in the act of love between men as between heterosexual lovers, which is to say little enough, but of a similar nature, bringing two souls together for a little while.

But technically, I don’t exactly look on, just stand by lest one of these Yank’s assignations turn out to be a doubtful fellow. Benton’s not here to back up his partner, so I’ll have to do it for him. I suppose I could startle someone if I put my mind to it, enough that the Yank could gain the advantage. Good man in a fight, he is.

I do wish I could talk to the Yank on these nights. He’s a good fellow at heart and needs to be set right. He needs to be told to stop fooling with this Peter Pan nonsense, chasing these Lost Boys around. It’s clear he misses his wife; that he knows a man’s life is centered around his marriage and his family. That even though I know he’s a good and loyal partner to my son, he should move on, find some real happiness while he’s still young.

Lord knows I should have taken similar advice when Caroline was alive, all that time I could have spent with her and Benton; or later when she’d died and I left my boy to be raised by his grandparents. Learn from my example, I’d say to the Yank, don’t waste your love on these strangers, and don’t waste your love on my son, honorable though that love may be.

The Yank never stays the night – says a surprisingly courteous goodbye, heads out to the muscle car and takes the long way home – I’ve seen him pause at the wife’s apartment building again, sometimes. The next day at work he’ll be calmer, laughing at Benton’s jokes and smiling back without that haunted look in his eyes. Maybe he’ll flirt with the attractive women who cross his path; he’s less picky on these days.

But then… after a few days, the Yank starts looking again at Benton, shadowing my son’s walk with his own, standing closer, using the quick touch of his hands to make points, and the cycle starts over. And then my heart, my dead heart, aches for him and all the opportunities I lost myself.