The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White Read Free Book Online

at Morris. I couldn’t see any trace of makeup. Why would he wear it? I wondered. Do queers like that? Is that how they can tell who’s who?
    The joy of reading The Outsider had turned ugly. Snow whirled in a sudden updraft, then fell through the streetlights.
    Day after day the snow fell and the streets rang with the sound of shovels. People in fur hats and many layers of clothing tiptoed awkwardly over gutters piled high with the snow that street plows had turned back.
    At home I felt a constant tingling excitement just knowing that yesterday afternoon I’d seen Tex and again today I would snatch a few minutes with him. In Evanston, I stood in the bay window and looked out at Lake Michigan beating itself up. Ticking steadily inside me was the thought, half-thrill half-fear, that within my grasp, or almost, lay this other world. This “gay world,” you might say, with its mood swings turning slowly, then slamming you to one side like a roller coaster on a sharp turn. This world with its childlike enthusiasms and vicious attacks. I associated it with Morris’s silent pouting and the way he’d stroked his leg, licked his lips, and said, “I’m feeling so gay tonight.” Although I knew something would have to come out of my visits if I continued paying them, I feared what I hoped, and what I hoped I didn’t want to know.
    Tick, tick, tick. The excitement was in my pulse. I couldn’t think of anything else nor did I want to. I’d look at the mashed potatoes exhaling steam and I’d hear the ticking in my ears. In my bed at night as I peeked through the curtains at the old man across the way reading his paperand luxuriantly picking his nose, I’d hear the tick taking me nearer to my next encounter with Tex.
    The next afternoon Tex and I were alone in the shop. Morris was home with what Tex sourly referred to as a “sick headache” and Tex kept complaining about Morris’s inept bookkeeping. He was looking through the accounts and a long gray silence installed itself in the room. For once the radio wasn’t on and no well-bred announcer was reading to us from Pound’s Cantos or playing us alternative interpretations of “Nessun dorma.” People stopped and looked at the books in the window but hurried on.
    Tex slammed the glass counter and moaned, “Honey-chile, your mother’s in a bad way.” For an instant I imagined my real mother had phoned in an emergency, but then I understood he meant himself. I was flattered that he was about to confide in me. My mother often told me her secrets, and I was an experienced listener. I could look sympathetic and I gave only welcome advice.
    “Your momma’s done hocked her jewels for her man and now I’s too hard up to buy needles and thread for my notions shop. Oh sweetheart, tell me, who will feed Baby?”
    Instantly I grasped that this funny, imaginative way of talking was a form of politeness, a way of conveying his distress in general terms without treating me to the unpleasant details. “Are you completely broke?” I asked, though I wanted to ask, “Who is this man?”
    “All my money is here,” he said, pointing to his glossy books and records. “If she can’t sling this hash, Mom will have to close the diner.” Every time Morris had started to substitute female for male pronouns, Tex had shut him up out of deference to my supposed innocence. Now Tex himself was inverting genders—was it a sign of embarrassment?
    “Who’s your man?” I asked.
    He slid off the stool behind the cash register and cameover to me on the pink loveseat. His shoulders dropped. He was really very homely, with clammy skin, small boneless hands, a meager sparrow’s torso. When he took off his glasses, his eyes looked huge and wet.
    “You see, my lovers always turn out to be straight.” I must have looked confused, despite my efforts to appear all-comprehending, for he added, “Heterosexual, normal. My current beau is a cop, Bob, and I just paid three hundred bucks for his