Here's another part of the same novel - some time later but still discussing Tunisia; this time Alfredo has gone missing and the narrator talks to a gay actor who also shares the house.
I'll put one more excerpt up maybe around Sunday. These are not necessarily the best or my favourite parts - they just spring to mind.
By the way the usual trouble with copy and pasting with the margins - I think!!!! But you should be able to follow it if you keep your eyes on the inverted commas,
Till Sunday.
47
I didn’t plan to tell Betty about Alfredo’s disappearance so when I got back to the house I went into his room and put the little light on next to his bed so that she would think he was in when she got back from her weekend with Harold.
Gene was in the kitchen and I asked him for a lift up to Griffith Park; that was the only other place I could think of to look for Alfredo. I don’t even know what I was expecting to find and just felt a bit guilty, I suppose.
He had a convertible and we drove with the top down to Griffith Park which wasn’t very far. The car had been left to him by a friend who had died of AIDS. I didn’t pursue the subject; I figured if he wanted to talk about it he wouldn’t need my prompting.
“What happened to Alfredo” he said.
I didn’t know if he was referring to him being missing so I just said “In what way?”
“He started to tell us stories in the kitchen in the evenings and then one night he just stopped. When we saw him again he wouldn’t even say hello.”
“Didn’t one of you complain?”
"Complain?”
“Yes” I said “Betty said he was frightening you.”
He laughed at this.
“Frighten us? We were enjoying his stories. He’s quite a story teller - why would she say a thing like that?” he said.
“Beats me.”
And it did beat me.
The car park at Griffith Park was full. Gene looked around for a place to park.
“You don’t need to hang around” I said.
“It’s okay, man” he said “this place looks cool. Hey! Look at James Dean. He was bi-sexual
too.”
“Are you bi-sexual?”
“No” he said “I’m full blown gay – I was referring to Alfredo.”
“Wow! You think so?”
“Yes. We got the impression he was. He mentioned a rich Arab that pursued him in Tunisia.”
“The guy with the metal toe caps?”
“Yes” he said “it was the way he described him. A nice little ass, is how he put it.”
“He didn’t describe him like that to me.” I laughed.
“Well he wouldn’t to you, would he, you’re too straight!”
Round by the main observatory building we could see the sculpture of James Dean.
“Over there, man, look!”
He pointed to the wall by the observatory steps and it was where they had filmed the knife fight scene for the movie ‘Rebel without a Cause.’
A family car pulled out from a line of cars and Gene made for the space.
Most of the people there were Latinos; they were making their way back to their cars after family picnics carrying ice boxes and portable furniture; some of the smaller children were being carried by their daddies with their mothers following behind pushing push chairs full of picnic and barbeque equipment.
“Maybe you see bi-sexuality where I don’t?”
“Maybe’ he said “– takes one to know one you mean?”
“No” I said “Alfredo’s a writer. He assumes certain opinions and attitudes to see what the other fella thinks.”
“He spent the night with the rich Arab.”
“He what?”
“He spent the night with him.”
‘Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. He didn’t say they slept together - Let’s go and look at James Dean.”
“You go” I said “I have something to do.”
I walked to the cars and he followed.
“What are you looking for?”
I told him about Alfredo.
“That’s okay” he said “I’ll help you. But let’s look at James Dean first.”
We looked. It was useless. Alfredo’s car was nowhere to be found and the park itself was many many acres and far too many acres for us to cover in a month let alone a Sunday evening; it was beginning to get dark and it would be Alfredo’s second night out and missing.
Gene knew he was missing and I did and no one else on earth either knew nor cared. Just as I had suspected earlier: any of us could go missing and not be missed.
We drove back to the house and he told me more about Alfredo’s Tunisian adventures.
“I heard him telling you about the motor scooters showing up at the chip shop.”
“That’s it” he said “that was the night.
He was alone in Tunisia and got involved with a Scotsman called Archie. This was a big Glaswegian boy in his thirties. He wasn’t a skin head he was more thinning on top, which was how he put it.
Archie was on the run. He had been arrested for drunken driving in Glasgow and on the day before his court case he took a flight to Tunisia on a package trip - you know for the one price you get your hotel and fare in one for a fixed time.”
“I’m familiar with that.” I said.
“Archie’s time had run out in his hotel so he was looking for somewhere to sleep and as
Alfredo had two spare beds in his room he let Archie have one for a couple of nights. He said
he didn’t get a wink of sleep as Archie snored the night through.
On the night of the motor scooters coming to the coffee shop he had gone up the road a piece because the bathroom was out of order; when he got back Archie was standing outside saying he’d got no money and didn’t want to get involved in buying food and said he wanted to go back to the hotel. Alfredo was after an adventure and gave Archie the key to the room. He said it wasn’t far to the hotel and knew the way back so Alfredo let him go and joined the younger crowd in the coffee shop.
There he met the guy with the Gucci watch; he spoke English having been to school in
England and Alfredo found him charming.
They were all Muslims so there was no chance of a drink and that was the real reason Archie had gone back to the hotel as he had left a bottle of whiskey in Alfredo’s room. In fact he had a few bottles in there as he sold them for forty pounds each the following day as whiskey was hard to get.
So they all had a good time and at the end of the evening – which in fact was early morning - Alfredo ended up on the pillion of Mister Gucci’s Vespa.
He took him back to a very large house a few miles away which was Gucci’s parents’ house and he was very well looked after; they ended up having breakfast together in Hammamett.
He didn’t say he had slept with him – on the other hand he didn’t say he hadn’t.”
Alfredo hadn’t told me about that bit – he told me about admiring the Arab horsemen on the beach and the Gucci guy following him around Hammamet but he told me he knew where his sexual preferences were when the pen swapper’s sister had cornered him in the shop.
It was none of my business – I had taken on the responsibility of looking for Alfredo as I thought he was in trouble but I couldn’t help thinking of one thing he had said to me: ‘it would have been ironic if I was gay and let an Arab arse bandit fuck me.’
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from The Storyteller by Chris Sullivan - all rights reserved (c) Chris Sullivan 2008
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