Read Online Far-Flung by Peter Cameron - Free Book Online Page A

I’ll take the ring for David’s sake. If he wants to give it to me so badly, O.K. But I won’t ever wear it and I won’t ever let it mean anything to me. It will just be this ring.
    “O.K.,” I say. “Thanks.”
    “Put it on,” David says. “Try it on.”
    I take the ring out of the box and put it on my right-hand ring finger. “See,” I say, laying my hand flat on the table.
    David touches my hand. “It’s beautiful,” he says.
    “I’ll be right back,” I say. I go into the bathroom. I wash my face, and rinse it with cold water. When I come out David is standing in the living room eating the Pop-Tart.
    “I’m starving,” he says. “Do you want to go out to dinner? Or are you doing something?”
    “Where do you want to go?”
    “Well, actually, I was thinking about going downtown. To the place where Heath works.” Heath is David’s lover. He was David’s temporary secretary last summer when his real secretary went on vacation.
    “He’s not at the bank anymore?”
    “He hasn’t been for a while. He’s a waiter, at this place called Café Wisteria. Do you want to go? It’s supposed to be good. Come. It will be fun.”
    Café Wisteria is a large, noisy restaurant. There are several dozen decorated Christmas trees hanging upside down from the ceiling. David confers with the hostess, a black woman in a green leotard.
    “See,” David says, as we sit down. “I told you this would be fun.”
    I try to locate Heath in the whirling mass of waiters, busboys, and diners, but it’s hard because all the waiters look alike in that gay-New York waiter way. They’re all tall and handsome. They all look like they just got their hair cut: The backs of their heads are as smooth and tended as their faces.
    “Which one is Heath?” I ask. I have to yell over the music.
    “I don’t see him,” David shouts back. A waiter who looks very much like Heath but who isn’t Heath comes to take our drink order. Moments later they arrive, along with a plate of crudites shaped like a wreath.
    David and I don’t talk much; we eat broccoli and watch the crowd. Now Ella Fitzgerald is singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and as I sip my cold amber drink I think she’s wrong, he’s already come, he’s here. I feel like we’re sitting on the ceiling, or we’re falling, or the trees are falling. Something’s falling.
    “What are you doing for Christmas?” David asks.
    “Going to my parents’,” I say. “It will be deadly. Julian’s in South America and Adrian is going on this lesbian cruise to the Greek Islands. So it will be just me and Harriet and Winston.”
    “Christmas is the worst,” David says. “It’s designed to make people like us feel bad.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Actually, it might work out O.K. for me this year. I have Kate Christmas Eve and Loren has her Christmas day. Gregory is going to be in L.A., so instead of shuffling her back and forth, Loren and I will take her up to my mother’s. We’ll pretend we’re still married for a few days.”
    “Does Gregory know?”
    “I don’t know,” David says. “I take it things are kind of rocky with them.”
    “What about Heath?”
    “I can’t very well take Heath to my mother’s,” David says. “Not that he’d come. Not that I’d ask him.”
    “Does your mother know about Heath?”
    “God, no. My mother is still waiting for me to get back together with Loren. She wants a grandson.”
    “My mother has given up on us producing natural grandchildren,” I say. “She’s joined this program called ‘Guardian Grandparents.’ She’s adopted about eight million black children. She’s always showing me pictures. It’s cruel.”
    David isn’t listening. And then I see why: He’s watching Heath approach through the crowd of tables, turning sideways to let people pass.
    I love eating out. It makes me feel sexy and wanted. I know that everyone in this restaurant—except Heath—assumes David and I are lovers. It’s