Free I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore by Ethan Mordden Page A

his teeth. I grabbed the man by the collar and was about to swing him toward the door when our host restrained me. “Not him!” he cried. “The kid! ”
    “Come, Little Kiwi, we’ll view the ocean.”
    “He has boils on his nose,” Little Kiwi screamed as we left, Bauhaus staggering after us. “He has liver lips!”
    “Hush.”
    “Meet us at tea,” Dennis Savage called out at the door. “And do me a favor—lose the puppet.”
    That part was a cinch: Wacko fell in the water and drowned, and, Bauhaus barking at every wave, Little Kiwi and I walked west along the water’s edge. I never know what to say to him, so we moved in silence all the way to the Grove, which Little Kiwi wanted to explore. “This one looks different,” he noted—from the Pines, and indeed it is; cramped, campy, and heedless of fashion where the Pines is expansively tense with it. The Grove is like a stomach that has sagged atrociously for twenty years; the Pines is abdominals perfectly turned.
    “Why are we here?” Little Kiwi suddenly asked.
    “We walked here.”
    “On Fire Island, I mean. Us three.”
    “For fun.”
    “No.”
    “For adventure.”
    He shook his head.
    “Okay, you tell me.”
    “No, it was your idea to come out here. What are you two planning?”
    I said nothing. We were walking back along the beach, admiring the sunset. The sand was nearly deserted, though here and there solos and small groups were playing out the day’s concerto of desire and regret. Ahead of us we saw a tall, dark-haired, very well-built, and extremely handsome man of about thirty-five stalk down the beach toward a young, fair man in the surf up to his thighs. As the older man neared him he turned and they stared at each other for a long moment. Everything else around us seemed to stop, too. The older man very gently stroked the youth’s chest. The youth returned the gesture, but not willingly—uneasily, maybe, in a beautiful alarm, never taking his eyes from the man’s own. They went on trading these compliments in a kind of reverie, hypnotized by the setting, by their utter disregard for the received inhibitions of Western civilization, and perhaps by their own grandeur as archetypes, like unto like. It was awesome: turbulent and still. So open, so secret. It was the magic of the Island. Oblivious of the rest of us, the two finally stopped touching and just looked. Then the man put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and together they walked out of the water and across the sand to the boardwalk.
    Little Kiwi looked at me. “Do they know each other?”
    “I don’t believe so.”
    “They just … met? Like that?”
    “It happens.”
    “Is it going to happen to me?”
    “Do you want it to?”
    He was silent. Then: “What is it for? ”
    “What’s an orange for? Or shoes?”
    “I ate an orange,” he replied. “I wore a shoe.”
    We reflected, looking out upon the sea. Bauhaus, whose existence is an endless chain of wrong choices, rushed sneezing out of the surf, wrestled frantically in the sand, gobbled seaweed, and threw up.
    “That dog of yours,” I said, “is going to make a big hit at tea.”
    We arrived late and put in the worst sort of entrance: moodily pensive. Dennis Savage’s eyes narrowed as we joined him. Our host was high, however, and forgave me five or six times for our faux pas with the Influential Man. “Well, he really is a troll,” our host admitted. “He has everything but the bridge. Dear me, that little boy has a nice frown. Where did Dennis Savage find him, do you suppose?”
    We gazed dotingly upon Little Kiwi. A huge weightlifter in silk pajama bottoms also took note of him, moved near, and smiled down like a rainbow as Little Kiwi slowly looked up at him.
    “You’re the sweetest little thing on the Island,” said the weightlifter, “and that’s a fact.” He ran a finger down the front of Little Kiwi’s shirt and hooked it on his belt, pulling him closer. “Think we could arrange something,