How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden Page B

J., stalking the ever more enchanted Vince Choclo.
    “Now he took Polaroids of me,” J. told us one Thursday night. “And he got down my measurements, with his fingers playing along my skin, taking a little extra for himself. He even measured my mouth, and when he said, ‘You got the lips of a pretty chick,’ I knew I had him. He’s so helplessly in need of someone who likes him, he don’t care who.”
    “He ‘don’t’?” Cosgrove echoed, with consternation.
    J. shrugged. “He talks funny and it’s catching.”
    The dinner was spinach-and-potato soup, scallops over wild rice, salad, and tiramisù.
    “Here are the pictures,” said J., spreading them upon the table as Cosgrove and I leaned over to see. “Those are my mesh sexpants. I told you about them. Vince likes to see how he looks in them.”
    “Sexpants?” said Cosgrove.
    “Here’s a few of the babes Vince dates,” said J. “I snuck them out of Vince’s box because he lets me get away with anything. That’s the secret of how to love me, you know.”
    “‘Serena,’” I read off the back of one snapshot. “‘Jonquil,’” said another. Hot tamales, looking merrily wanton for Vince’s memory box.
    “And here’s Red Backhaus,” J. went on, pushing some more Polaroids at us.
    “Gosh” was Cosgrove’s report.
    Unlike the amiably natural Vince, Red was Built for Contest. He had one of those uncanny physiques that is at once pumped and pulled tight. It was not a modest shot: the pants were open to the knees to display Red’s manly pride. Yet the hero took no joy of it; his empty face seemed about to blush. One feature in particular set him apart—a close haircut of brown, blond, and red, the kind of visual that aroused commentary in a medieval village.
    “I want Red in my porn stories,” said Cosgrove. “I see him as a pie man going to the fair.”
    “He’s more like Simple Simon,” said J. as he gathered up his photographs. “Vince is pretty clueless, but Red is so dumb that people laugh at what he says. Then he cries right in front of you. He’s short, too, and he’s always saying what a problem that is with the chicks. He’s the night manager of a gym near Prospect Park, so he can talk to the chicks in his job capacity. But when they put him down, he stays on alone after closing and uses up all the machines to work off his frustrations.”
    “How does he treat you?”
    “I just ignore him.”
    “J., you should be nice to him,” said Cosgrove, who only now gave up Red’s photo. “When a guy feels unliked and someone is kind—”
    “No, because I finally had zero hour with Vince, which I entirely came to talk about tonight. Is there more salad?”
    Cosgrove took J.’s plate to the kitchen.
    “How come the food here is so good?” J. asked.
    “Cosgrove and Dennis Savage have decided to share an interest in cooking. Dennis Savage has been taking Cosgrove stage by stage through some of his dishes, and Cosgrove has been picking up secrets of the trade. Unexploited spices. The temperature of sauces. The application of sweetmeats.”
    “How come they suddenly like each other?” J. asked, a bit suspiciously.
    “Beats me.”
    Six seconds, then: “How is he?”
    “He’s fine.”
    J. nodded. “It won’t be as interesting to know Vince, because he doesn’t have these amazing friends or go to A Chorus Line or a snazzy Oscar party where you vote for who will win and someone gets a prize. But it will be good for me not to have to be Little Boy Blue doing a party turn. This time I’ll be more in charge. And it has its exciting side, to live with someone you hardly know and see their strange secrets come out all the time.”
    Cosgrove brought in J.’s salad refill and a pepper mill. Standing at J.’s left, Cosgrove asked, “Pepper, sir?,” and J. nodded. Looking down at his plate after Cosgrove finished, J. went on, “I know I’ll miss out on all the lively doings here,” as Cosgrove went back to the kitchen. “I’m