Free The Gold Diggers by Paul Monette

chaps and a rhinestone shirt?”
    Hands behind his head, Nick watched Peter go into a pose, one hip thrown out and his hands in his hair. Then he arched way back and let out an easy laugh. Where Sam was a runner, Nick thought, Peter was a dancer. Both so lean that the flesh on their stomach muscles stretched like a drum skin.
    â€œAnd a Stetson and a dusty kerchief? No,” Nick said, aroused in spite of himself, and only three hours gone since Sam. “Pretend you’re getting dressed to get picked up in a bar.”
    â€œWell, I’ll wear my silk jersey number, then,” Peter said. He fell down on his side next to Nick and pulled Nick over on top of him as easily as if he had been pulling up a blanket. “Net stockings. Patent leather pumps.”
    â€œNo, you won’t. T-shirt and Levi’s. I’ll get you some boots.”
    â€œI have boots.”
    â€œI’ll get you some new ones.”
    â€œYou want to fuck?” Peter said. It felt like they had just unpacked a trunk in a ship’s cabin, and clothes were everywhere about the room.
    â€œI guess so,” Nick said, wrapping Peter in his arms and thinking he was just about to touch down again on earth. “I didn’t think I wanted to.”
    â€œWell, your problem is you think too much,” Peter said, willing to be unoriginal himself. “You forget what you already know.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Nick asked. He needed just a hint, and now, because in a moment he was going to be somewhere else, just he and Peter together, and he wanted a thread of reason to bring him out the other side. He’d spent the whole afternoon in a story, and he couldn’t close the book as carelessly as he thought.
    â€œJust stop thinking,” Peter said sweetly, as if he would love him no matter what, “and it’ll come back to you.”
    Rita, she said to herself long-windedly, if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to figure out why it is some people can’t leave you alone and the rest look through you as if you weren’t there. It had been happening forever. She thought it was about time to start using it. Here was a good example: In Rusty Varda’s house, she was thrice blessed because all of them—Nick, Peter, and Hey—delighted in her and sought out chances to feed her and drive her and do her errands. But it could have gone the other way, she knew, and then where would she be? Besides, Hey was the type who made it a mixed blessing, coming on so strong he seemed about to faint whenever they met. She inspired reactions that were too extreme; and, consequently, daily life, the merest ordinary commerce, wore her out. And she never knew from one hour to the next whether it would be sticks and stones or a ring of kisses waiting around the corner. People tore up her magazines in subways. They passed her joints in airplanes. She made a blip in difficult people’s radar, and they did their most difficult thing as they thundered by.
    It crossed her mind again late Friday afternoon because Hey came in and fired a few rounds just as she was pulling herself together. She’d spent the day in the showrooms getting fabric samples for a list of upholstered pieces Peter had jotted down. She was fussy, and everything was ugly. Finally, she’d curled up in the back seat of Peter’s Jaguar and doodled out a crewel design that really looked like a Rhode Island wing chair. She knew she couldn’t spend her afternoons in parking lots. She had to make do with what was on the market. But she couldn’t get out of her mind how everything ought to look, and four days of decorating let her know she wasn’t going to be famous for sprightly solutions like red checked tablecloths done up as draperies. What kept her going was that, among Peter’s clients, money was no object. So if the marketplace was barren, they could always farm it out with their own design to a custom-maker and