Free Our Young Man by Edmund White

the meditating Buddha at the entrance, low black-lacquered tables with pagoda trim, blood-red silk couches with heavy tassel pulls, a spotlit abstraction that some decorator had obviously chosen for the color, a terrazzo floor with glitter buried into it delineating—oh, a dragon lounging on the Great Wall of China. “I’m a sort of Buddhist myself,” Guy said, to be agreeable in case the décor was an expression of Fred’s beliefs rather then his tastes.
    “This is something Ceil concocted with that pansy decorator of hers—I’m going to clear it all out and put in something simple and modern and classic, maybe with a Pompeian motif or a Moorish.”
    “Don’t be too hasty,” Guy advised.
    “Maybe I’ll go all antique. Édouard has that handsome young antique dealer he’s so crazy about. What a body that kid has! Gr-r-r …” and he made the sound of an angry dog, which reminded Guy uncomfortably of Édouard’s excesses.
    “I haven’t met him,” Guy said coolly.
    “Really? Édouard’s besotted with him. He’s clearing out all that boring-ass white furniture of his and going all Chippendale or something, but I’ll bet you it’s just so he can be with young Will, who’s going to supply him with lots of priceless lumber with a fifty percent markup, you can bet.”
    That was quick , Guy thought, panicking to think he’d been replaced.
    Fred turned a dial and lowered the lights. “It’s nice to see the city from here, if you can glimpse it between all those goddamn Buddhas. Sorry,” he said.
    “I’m just the chanting kind of Buddhist,” Guy hastened to say, “not the begging-bowl kind.” Fred had refreshed their drinks and now was sitting next to Guy. He said, “Isn’t that the kind where you chant all day for things you want? I had a friend who chanted who was bi and kept by rich men and women one at a time. He chanted for a Rolls and got it. He said the only disadvantage of being a live-in gigolo is that you have to be willing to play canasta at three A.M. with some ancient insomniac lady.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Guy was quick to say.
    “But what are you chanting for?”
    “A beach house in Fire Island Pines.”
    Fred, who’d been leaning forward, now sat back. “Whoa! I’m not that rich. I’m a millionaire, but a very minor millionaire,” and he held his finger and thumb apart to indicate two inches.
    Guy laughed. “But I wasn’t asking you for anything. That’s what I chant for. I pray to Amida, not to you.” But after Guy went to the toilet he said he was tired, he had an early call, and he thanked Fred, who looked devastated.
    “You can’t just walk out of my life like that.”
    They exchanged phone numbers, but when Fred tried to line him up for lunch or dinner or a movie, Guy said, “I don’t have my schedule yet for this week. It would be unfair to you to make a date and then have to break it.”
    “Don’t French people kiss each other goodbye on two cheeks?”
    “Fathers and sons. When you get the Légion d’honneur. Silly Parisian queens and society people.”
    While Fred was pondering this, Guy shook hands, thanked him, and left.
    Guy needed some time alone to absorb how the baron had turned on him. All that talk about how they were soul mates, about how Guy had a rare gift for transcending nationality, class, age. Had he said class? Did that mean he thought Guy was beneath him, low-class? Pierre-Georges had insinuated he, Guy, was a bore, with just his looks to offer. Was he a bore?
    On his way home he cruised a hot kid who turned out to be a nineteen-year-old dancer named Vladimir. Guy took him home, gave him a drink, and fucked him. Enough old men! Guy told himself. But after the adoring, rapturous Vladimir had left (“Sorry, I can’t sleep with another person in bed,” Guy had said drily), he still felt bruised and insulted.
    He wondered the next morning if Édouard would phone him, but Vlad and Fred did. He agreed to have a quick lunch with Fred, who