Page 17 of Rhymes with Metaphor

T he next day, while Reg made coffee after a long lie-in, Joel entered the kitchen in his rumpled scrubs and tousled hair.

“Morning,” said Joel.

“Do you want some coffee?” said Reg.

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Why not?”

“I tried it once. I didn’t like it.”

“This isn’t your sister’s instant coffee. This is proper coffee. If you don’t like this, you have no soul.”

He poured some for Joel. As Reg passed him the cup, their hands touched briefly. Joel had such beautiful hands, graceful and still.

“There’s cream and sugar if you like,” said Reg. “But I take mine straight.”

Joel took a sip, then stared into the cup.

“Well?” said Reg. “Do you have a soul?”

Joel took another sip. He was perched on the wooden bench seat of the kitchen table, knees slightly apart, elbows balanced on the table, and the slice of sunlight shining through the window blinds laid a path along his side and his thigh, and he looked so magical and ethereal, Reg almost expected him to sprout wings.

“I thought we could go out today,” said Reg.

“Where?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“All right,” said Joel.

“Finish your coffee, then go and get dressed,” said Reg.

While he was gone, Reg’s phone rang.

“Yes?”

“How’s New Bug?” said Martin.

“Fine,” said Reg.

“Sick of him yet?” When Reg said nothing, Martin said, “What? What have you done? If you’ve done something to Juliet’s little brother, I’ll—”

“Don’t send out the troops. We’re going punting.”

“Thank god. I thought you might have drowned him in the bathtub by now,” said Martin.

“I take it Juliet’s not with you?”

“No, but I’m taking her out later today.”

“Have fun.”

“You too, if that’s possible with New Bug.”

It was quite possible. Very, very quite possible.

Joel came down twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and wearing the raspberry red silk shirt Reg had bought him, still buttoned up to his throat, but a new light shone in his eyes. He looked more awake and alive, and his body language had changed.

“Am I appropriately dressed for the surprise?” said Joel.

Reg smiled. “Yes.”

He took Joel out in his father’s car.

“Where are we going?” said Joel.

“Yours is not to ask. Your only task is to relax and enjoy yourself.”

Reg didn’t feel relaxed, trapped as he was in this steel and glass enclosure of heat and temptation. His gaze kept sliding to Joel in the passenger seat.

They stopped at a nice pub and had a lunch of rich cheeses and velvety meats and fresh, crusty bread slathered with Irish butter, chased with ginger beer.

Reg was pleased to see Joel clean his plate.

Afterwards, Reg took him for a punt on the river.

Joel lay along the bottom of the punt digesting his meal, with Reg’s striped blazer rolled into a bundle for a pillow, while Reg poled them along, water coating the pole like melted butter.

Sunlight and shadow dappled Joel’s body.

He looked so vulnerable and precious that Reg took extra care to move the punt smoothly through the water so as not to disturb him.

As Joel smiled and stretched, arching his back, the bottom edge of his silk shirt came untucked from his trousers and rode up, revealing his left hip and a pale, concave belly with a trace of dark hair.

Reg wondered if the gesture was calculated or purely accidental.

Joel was a closed book, and Reg wanted to open his covers and read him beginning to end.

By the time Reg returned the punt to the dock, Joel had fallen asleep, and Reg had to wake him.

As they drove back to the house, Joel said, “I feel like I should be working. I haven’t had a summer off since I was a kid.”

“What if you modelled for me?”

“What?” said Joel.

“I’d like to make sketches of you. I’ll pay you.”

“I’m not a professional model,” said Joel.

“You would be if I paid you.”

“But I’m not...,” said Joel, looking at himself.

“...not?”

“I don’t look like a model.”

“You will when I’ve finished with you,” said Reg.

When they got back to the house, Reg went to the attic and hunted up an Edwardian gentleman’s costume, complete with waistcoat, blazer, and boater.

He’d worn them for a costume party when he was thirteen, before his growth spurt.

He brought them downstairs and gave them to Joel.

“Go to your room and put those on. And take off that bitch of a watch.”

“It was my dad’s,” said Joel.

“I want you to look timeless. And literate, so choose a book to read from the bookcase in your room.”

Reg got his sketchbook and art box from his room and set up the chaise longue on the terrace, angled so that neither he nor Joel would be looking into the sun.

Joel emerged from the house dressed in the clothes Reg had given him. They fit perfectly, and he looked heartbreakingly fetching in them. In the sunlight and in those clothes, he was strikingly charismatic, and the art was to capture that charisma on paper.

“Lie down and make yourself comfortable,” said Reg.

Joel arranged himself on the chaise longue so he was lying on his side, one leg outstretched, one leg bent, Collette’s Chéri splayed open on his palm.

“It’s not period,” said Reg, inspecting it, “but I’ll allow it.”

“Now what do I do?”

“Read your book, and pretend I’m not here,” said Reg.

Reg tuned the wireless to Radio 3, then he opened his sketchbook to a blank page and began tracing an outline of Joel’s body in pencil.

The sun grew hot, and Reg removed his jacket. “Take off your blazer and waistcoat, would you, Joel?”

Joel, roused from his trance, removed the jacket and waistcoat, folded them, and draped them over a nearby chair.

Reg put the sketchbook down, and he carefully rolled back Joel’s sleeves, revealing the fine, soft hair covering his forearms, apart from a round patch of smooth, shiny skin worn bare by Joel’s watch.

Reg took Joel’s boater off, touched his face, ran his hand through Joel’s hair, arranging his bangs to sit lightly on his forehead.

Joel watched him do this with a hint of uncertainty.

Joel glanced at his wrist. “I feel naked without my watch.”

If he were actually naked, Reg wouldn’t have to picture it, but Reg didn’t say so.

He flipped the page of his sketchbook and started anew with this stripped-down version of his model.

Reg felt jittery. Joel, by contrast, held preternaturally still.

He only moved to blink or turn a page with the perfect self-possession that had gotten under Reg’s skin when they’d first met.

What had gotten under Reg’s skin was on full display now.

It beckoned to him like a still pool to a round stone, inviting it to break its calm surface.

Reg approached again and loosened Joel’s tie, pulling it off slowly. Then he unbuttoned the top button of Joel’s shirt. This ruffled Joel’s composure slightly, then he went back to reading his book.

Reg flipped the pages of his sketchbook to one of the black pages in the back. He fished a stick of orange chalk out of his art box.

Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” played on the wireless.

With the stub of orange chalk, Reg traced the outline of Joel’s body, the rise and swell of bone and sinew, the chalk pulsing between his fingers and thumb like notes blown through a flute in his trembling hand.

Finding an angle he didn’t like, he went to Joel and gently repositioned him on the chair, opening his shoulders and hips, kneading his thigh to loosen the muscle and then bending the knee of his outstretched leg, while Joel compliantly allowed himself to be moved, watching him without blinking or saying a word.

His body was warm and succulent under Reg’s hands, his scent, a sweet alchemy of sun and skin.

Reg retreated to a safe distance, knelt on the grass and continued sketching, the stub of the orange chalk riding over Joel’s hip, moving down into his lap and exploring the folds and creases of his trousers.

Reg brushed the paper gently, smudging it with the ball of his thumb.

And in the brief moment between doing this and looking up, in his model’s lap he saw a new fold in the material.

He pressed his thumb into the paper over it, feeling his pulse.

Then he tucked the chalk up into his palm.

He got up and knelt by the chair, brought his hand slowly down Joel’s body, which quivered in quick, spasmodic breaths, accompanied by little hiccups of sounds like quietly plucked harp strings.

Reg placed his palm flat on Joel’s stomach.

Joel watched him. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

His face gave nothing away. But elsewhere, his body did.

Reg tugged the material of his trousers, the texture soft as velvet and cool, pulling it taut against Joel’s body so there could be no doubt.

His hand brushed lightly over Joel’s lap, flicking off invisible dust. The fold had now become more apparent, marked with orange dust from the chalk in his hand, reminding him of Flip’s shirt after falling on the clay court at Roland Garros diving for a ball.

In a deliberate motion, Reg placed his palm over the open country of Joel’s inner thigh. Joel’s eyes drifted slowly closed. His lips parted slightly, and Reg left his hand where it was, as the muscle slackened beneath, then tensed as Joel made a brief, ever so slight movement of his hips.

“All right?” said Reg softly.

Joel nodded, the barest movement of his head.

Reg slowly and subtly moved his hand up Joel’s thigh.

Joel dropped the book. It landed with a clatter on the terrace, and Joel braced his elbows on the chair.

Reg slowly brought his hand across Joel’s lap to that long fold and felt Joel hardening, filling Reg’s palm.

A shiver passed through Joel’s body, as a soft exhalation left it.

Reg looked into Joel’s eyes, and he moved his hand again, purposefully this time, up and down, coaxing him, goading him, felt Joel become fully erect.

Joel strained against his hand, porpoising off the chair.

A sudden tender gasp broke from Joel, and a surprised, pained expression disturbed his face, still water, rippling.

“It’s all right, Joel,” Reg whispered. His other hand clasped Joel’s shoulder, which was shuddering, “It’s all right.”

Was it?

Joel exhaled in a rush, collapsing into the chaise longue.

Then he was breathing hard like he’d done a sprint, and Reg was brushing the hair back from his damp forehead.

He almost came just from looking at Joel then.

He didn’t, but it was a near thing. He kept his other hand where it was, resting on Joel’s lap.

Then Joel sat bolt upright, and he scrambled off the chair and ran into the house, slamming the back door.

Reg turned off the wireless, picked up the book that was spreadeagled on the grass, smoothed its pages, and carefully closed it.

He folded the chaise longue and set it against the side of the house, retrieved his sketchbook and shut it.

Then he went back to his chair, pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one.

He looked at the house, at the window in the upstairs bathroom.

That window was open, and he could hear the shower running.

All the evidence of what had happened had been cleared away. It looked like nothing had changed. But everything had.