Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden Page B

. yes, my old Scott Hellman. Scott will get what he wants.”
    Dennis Savage took away Bert’s empty plate.
    “Great dinner,” Bert said, surveying us. “God, you guys are still the same. Still holed up in this enclave, huh?”
    “Huh,” I said.
    “Those kids are really right little numbers. Jesus, I’d love to tie their hands at the wrist and cane them. First one, then the . . . What’s that noise?”
    “The kotos are messing up on their Gay,” I said. “Noel Gay,” clarifying.
“Me and My Girl?”
    “That’s some theatre show?”
    “Right,” I said, trying to remember what musicals he and I had seen together.
Ballroom? King of Hearts? One Night Stand?
    “So, Rip,” Bert very heartily continued, turning to Carlo. “You’re as titanic as ever. So fucking
buff
! They remember you back in San.”
    “There were some good times then,” said Carlo quietly.
    “Good times?” Bert echoed. “It’s Cum City.”
    Dennis Savage beckoned me into the kitchen. “What on
earth
does that think it’s doing?” he said.
    “Talk about the San Francisco Earthquake.”
    “He doesn’t deserve my stew.”
    “I can see why he wanted to redecorate his outside, but why is he playing this role? He was nice before, and now he’s—”
    “Shit freaks and killers, did you hear that?”
    I was thinking about it, and took too long to respond, so he said, “What are you getting so
inner
about?”
    “Well . . . that was the feeling of the seventies, wasn’t it? That the best men were the ones who had the most sex? Hot was the first virtue. Is there any stew in the pot for me to take home?”
    “I’m bringing it to school for lunch tomorrow.”
    I struck a pathetic pose and begged shamelessly.
“Please.”
    “You chiseler,” he muttered, shoveling leftover stew into a plastic container for me.
    “Thanks awfully. Do we have to go into the living room again?”
    “Foolish man,” he said. “We haven’t asked the fifty-dollar question yet.”
    So back we went. Bert was exhorting Carlo about some frantically devious sex practice and Carlo was shrugging; in the bedroom, the koto group was exercising “Once You Lose Your Heart.”
    “Cock,” Bert is going. “Fuck,” he insists. “The allness of it,” he invokes. “Come on, Rip.”
    “Where did it get me?” Carlo laughed.
    “Man, you are a legend. Guys are dreaming about you, wondering what you could be like. And
where did it get you?
What does that mean, coming from you?”
    “Who could believe what something
means?”
Carlo replied.
    “Like that’s such heavy trim.”
    “I just don’t—”
    “Morbid stuff, you know?”
    “I’m asking—”
    “I know a guy, pro wrestler, just this side of three hundred pounds, big crusher kind of man, and when he stretches you out on his—”
    “Why did you come back to New York, Bert?” Dennis Savage asked.
    Bert paused, smiled—real slow and certain—and then he said, with an air of Surely You Knew This All Along, “Revenge.”
    Bert looked up his old pal Scott Hellman in due course, and they started in right where they had left off. Except now Bert was the cynosure who got everything God can give, and Scott was the guy who gets stood up. Oddly, seeing his former boy friend walking around like Mr. New York energized Scott, recalled him to his days of note. He began, almost, to compete. He reinstated himself in the weight room and retrieved his sense of style, dressing down with the abandon of a disco teen. He was calling up old friends, running with a crowd, bumping into you on the street clearly on his way to where.
    Actually, he wasn’t bumping into
us
because we didn’t seem to get out on the Circuit anymore. Dennis Savage and Virgil had their day jobs, I had my daily walk or bike ride, Cosgrove had two households’ worth of chores to do, and who knows what Carlo’s up to when he’s out and about? But by the evening, barring the odd dinner date or theatre trip, we were all in either of these two