The Gazebo: A Novel Read Free Page B

public school. He lived at the top of a hill in a neighborhood of enormous, ostentatious houses known as the Crest, and went to a formal boys’ day school twenty miles away. Like these houses, Martin was constantly at a remove, suspended slightly above everything. But unlike the other people who lived in the Crest, Martin refused to isolate himself, and so he often ventured downtown, even though his wealth and his gray military–style school uniform made him an obvious target. On this particular occasion, Martin was buying himself a fountain Coke after school at Beckerman’s, a local soda shop with gleaming taps, swivel stools, and an impressively varied jukebox, when he heard the first familiar comments: he was a queer. He should go back to the Crest. He should get on his throne and stay there.
    They were local high school boys, and he had seen and fought them before, and soon he was fighting them again, throwing and receiving wild punches. Martin swung at one of them, his fist landing on a jaw with a terrible soft crunch, like biting into an apple. But the boy hauled back and punched Martin in theeye, and as the punch connected he felt a thud, a deep pain circulating inside his head, and then he was down on the white tiled floor, looking at the silver roots of swivel stools. Distantly, he heard the door stuttering shut, and the boys were gone. Beckerman himself, a worried middle–aged man who was always nervously wiping his hands on his white apron, helped Martin up and chiseled off a chunk of ice for him. Gratefully Martin took it and placed it over his eye, which had already retreated deeply into the flesh of his face, and then he wandered out into the day.
    His family’s driver, Henry, was waiting around the corner with the Bentley, most likely leaning against it and smoking, but Martin couldn’t tolerate the idea of being ferried home, where his mother would make a foolish, woozy fuss over him, and his father would berate him for “engaging in violence with locals.”
    Instead, Martin Rayfiel walked into the town square, the grass giving slightly underfoot. Because it had rained the night before, the mineral smell of earth was now slightly stronger than usual. His eye was poundingwith its own pulse and heat, and he somehow made his way to the gazebo. Martin had always liked the looks of the gazebo, the way it was poised in the center of the square, as if in the middle of nowhere. Now he climbed the white steps and lay down on the bench under the roof, his knees bent, his head resting on the smooth, varnished slats. Alone finally, he repositioned the piece of ice over his eye, and then he let out a groan. “Christ oh Christ,” he said to himself. “Isn’t this great?”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” said a voice.
    Martin sat up quickly. A girl was facing him, about his age, and her arms were crossed. She was smiling at him. No, she was smirking, and Martin braced for an insult, some sarcastic comment about his family, his money. But none came. Through his one open eye, he noticed the book on her lap,
Treasures of European Sculpture
. She was a good–looking girl in a peach–colored summer dress, her arms and legs long, her hair fair and straight, and Martin was embarrassed as only a seventeen–year–old boy with a swollen eye who has been talking to himself in front of a girl can be.
    “You know,” she went on, “I heard that meat works better than ice.”
    “Is that right?” he answered. She nodded. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, and he stood carefully, trying to give himself some dignity, pretending that he was not in pain and that he could simply saunter out of the gazebo and back across the green.
    “Would you like to try it?” she asked. “I live around the corner; I could get you a piece of steak.”
    He looked at her. “You don’t even know me,” he said.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “And you’re inviting me to your house?”
    She nodded to him.
    “Why?”
    “Because you’re hurt,”