Free What Binds Us by Larry Benjamin

ride to the village. I’ll buy you an ice cream.”
    “But I haven’t had my tea yet.”
    “That’s okay. Wouldn’t you rather have ice cream than old stale tea, anyway?”
    “Can Thomas-Edward come too?”
    “Sure. If he wants.”
    “I don’t want Marquis to go though,” he whispered.
    “Okay. We’ll sneak out.”
    The three of us climbed into Matthew’s Jeep and drove too fast into the village, where we had ice cream cones and fed the gulls along the wharf. When we got back, a maid informed us that Dondi had left for Fire Island, would be back in a few days.
    Matthew looked at me. I shrugged.
    ***
    The next morning, when I knocked on his door, he told me to come in. “I’m in here,” he called.
    I followed his voice to his bathroom. His bathroom was a blizzard of white marble and clouds of steam. Balls of black soap lay in cobalt dishes. His scent was on the perfumed air. He stood under the shower. I could see his naked silhouette behind the etched glass screen by Rene Lalique. My erection was almost instantaneous. I was only wearing swimming trunks and didn’t know what to do.
    “I overslept,” he offered. “I’ll be out in a minute. Hand me that towel.”
    Idly I wondered what would happen if I dropped my trunks and stepped in the shower with him. I reached for a large white towel that hung on a heated brass rack.
    ***
    Matthew and I had just stepped inside from the beach when we heard it: a shrill cry that ripped the fabric of silence, a fissure running under the construct of our conversation, causing it to collapse. The noise was pure, unadulterated terror. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
    It was Matthew, more familiar with the house, who identified the source. Jumping to his feet, he careened across the room and skidded to a halt at a pair of doors. Twisting their serpentine handles, he slid them apart.
    I ran up behind him, looking over his shoulder into a high ceilinged room. Pale sunlight filtered in through half-open shutters. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets holding leather bound books; the gilt lettering on their spines gleamed dully. The room smelled of paper and tobacco and leather.
    Mr. Whyte sat, knees drawn up to his chin in a high-backed leather chair behind a leather-topped partner’s desk. Tears ran down his face, his lips quivered with a murmured prayer.
    “Dad?” Matthew called. “Dad, what’s wrong?”
    I stood rooted at the threshold, afraid to enter, afraid to leave.
    “Dad,” Matthew repeated. “What is it?”
    He turned fear-glazed, wet eyes on his son. “He’s here,” he said in a dead voice.
    “Who? Who’s here?”
    “Reggie! And he’s still mad at me. He still hasn’t forgiven me.”
    “Where?”
    “Will you talk to him? Tell him how very sorry I am? How much I miss him?”
    “Yes, Dad,” Matthew answered. “Just, tell me where he is.”
    “He’s over there, by the window. Can’t you see him?”
    Matthew looked around the opulent room. Beneath the veneer of calm, his eyes were desperate. His eyes locked on the corner of the room by the window. “Reggie,” Matthew began firmly, loud enough for Geo to hear. “Now listen to me,” he barked. “Geo is sorry. He is. Say you forgive him.”
    Marquis touched my waist as he edged past me, making me jump. “Is everything all right?”
    I noticed for the first time that he was good-looking. He had soft hair with slightly too much kink in it to be curly and was just beginning to recede. Despite his obvious youth, he appeared spent; there were bags beneath his eyes and he moved with the slow deliberation of the exhausted or inebriated. His narrow hips swayed languorously as if he were a chanteuse or a cocktail waitress.
    “No, everything is not fucking all right,” Matthew said. “Dad had another episode. Where were you? Aren’t you supposed to be watching him?”
    “I—I—”
    Dondi appeared behind Marquis like a shadow. “What’s going on?” he asked, both shadow and