Glacier Gold Read online

  Okay, no point in regretting the past. He’s still here. He isn’t looking at me, but instead of walking away, he’s hovering in front of the fireplace as if he were waiting for the fire to start itself. Giving me another chance to say something.

  “I’m sorry if I made a mistake there,” I venture. “I didn’t mean to annoy you when I invited you for a drink.”

  “You didn’t annoy me.”

  “But you ran away!”

  He shifts uncomfortably. I try again.

  “Listen, all I wanted was talk—”

  “Did you?” he says in a low voice.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have said no to some après-ski action, obviously.”

  He quickly looks to the door as if he expects someone to walk through, then pushes his hair back, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, sorry, that won’t happen,” he says curtly.

  “But—”

  “I can’t have people watching us… do shit, okay?” he says roughly.

  “But everybody was doing it! Making out, I mean! Except for Carl, maybe.”

  He gives a wary scoff. “It’s what the guests do. That’s après-ski.”

  “Your brother was pretty busy last night too. And he didn’t seem to mind an audience either.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  Okay. I’m starting to get what this is about.

  “Is it because you aren’t out?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just gives a small shrug that says it all.

  Right. If he isn’t out, then the last thing he wants is to be seen fooling around with a male guest. Or even just flirting. Right. Wow.

  I guess I should have seen this sooner. This is why he’s constantly scanning the surroundings when we talk. This is why he didn’t want to talk to me in front of his friends down in the club. He doesn’t want anyone to pick up on what’s going on between us. And he’s clearly suffering from the strain of having to hide like this.

  He might even be a virgin.

  What if he’s a virgin?

  I wish I had more experience with closeted folks. Oh man, I wish I were somehow equipped for this.

  “Maybe, if you stop hiding, it won’t even be such a big deal? Maybe people will be cooler about it than you think?” I offer. “Maybe, if you just—”

  “Listen, Bennet,” he interrupts. “I know I started this, down in the vapor bath. I should have stepped back out the door the moment I saw you weren’t hurt. I didn’t, and it was wrong.”

  “It wasn’t! It was fantastic, and—”

  “You don’t understand.”

  Voices drift over from the reception area. Someone calls his name.

  This conversation clearly needs to be shifted to neutral territory. To somewhere that’s not his workplace and where he isn’t on everybody’s radar.

  He’s already moving toward the door.

  With a neat jump across the couch, I block his way.

  “You know this bar down the street, the Snowball?” I quickly say. “It looks quite nice, and… how about we meet up there tonight, just you and I?”

  He has stopped in his tracks, apparently fazed by my cat-style move. His gaze travels to my middle. And gets stuck there.

  Sure, my leopard jeggings weren’t designed to hide stuff. But you don’t look at a guy’s junk like that. Unless you do. Guys have looked at me like this in clubs often enough. I can read that burning glitter. I know what it means when a guy is devouring you with his eyes.

  And Andi knows he’s doing it, even though he’s trying his hardest to stop.

  “Come on, man,” I whisper. “Tell me I’m wrong, but I’m getting the impression you like my leopard jeggings just as much as I like your lederhosen!”

  His jaw works, and he has turned away again. Hell, picking up a guy is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world! This is like a high-wire act.

  His gaze is glued to the dead fireplace now as if he were trying to hold on to it. Bright red spots have appeared on his neck and cheeks.

  “Andi?” I say, floundering, needing him to tell me to fuck off or else what to do next.

  Again, someone calls out for him from beyond the open doors.

  He marches past me. He’s already by the door when he tosses me a curt “see you.”

  Then he walks on.

  From behind he looks like an android. An especially attractive and well-made android, but still a machine, unfeeling and unreachable.

  Well, I know for a fact he is neither.

  Fuck, he wants this as much as I do!

  Only what am I going to do about it?

  Fuck, I want him, I want to see him with his hair ruffled up as I kiss him senseless, I want to see him come apart as I jerk him off. I want to fuck him into a mattress while he’s begging me to fill his ass with my come.

  God, I want to make him see stars.

  At least this time he said goodbye before leaving.

  Not the kind of progress we might need with just three more days to go, but I guess it’s something.

  JAY AND Carl refuse to share in my newfound optimism.

  Jay especially seems to feel I need some reining in. He acts as if I were an out-of-control fifteen-year-old and he my dad.

  When we get ready for dinner, he looks at me askance as I take a turn in front of the mirror.

  “Why don’t you choose something more appropriate for a country hotel restaurant for a change? Do you want to burn his eyes out with that shirt?”

  It’s a perfectly regular semitransparent satin shirt in magenta. If people tend to look at stuff that’s magenta, that’s hardly my fault.

  Jay struggles to make the ends of the belt of his dress pants meet over his stomach.

  When Antje moved on, it didn’t take him long to redirect his amorous efforts toward an Italian girl who sits at the table next to ours at dinner every night. She’s with her parents. It’s him who should stop being inappropriate, chatting up people while their parents are watching and while wearing blue dress pants with cowboy boots. And this man has the nerve to comment on my outfit.

  Ignoring him, I sit down on my bed and put in my heart-shaped pink rhinestone earrings. I got them at Innsbruck airport, so what could be a more appropriate choice of jewelry for a Tyrolean hotel?

  In the mirror I can see Jay give Carl a pointed look, as usual when he feels he needs support. Carl, who’s lounging on his bed with a selection of snacks, gives a tiny nod in response and noisily swallows a chunk of Sachertorte. They’ve been talking about me, the bastards.

  “We don’t mean to rain on your parade, dude,” Carl begins, confirming my suspicions, “but what about your studying? Did you get stuff done today?”

  Fuck. He knows full well that, no, I didn’t.

  “Not to spoil your evening,” he goes on. “But we think that you should get started. Like tonight. You won’t be happy if you fail that test again.”

  “So not happy!” Jay affirms.

  “I won’t fail! I have time enough for studying on the flight home!”

  They exchange a glance that is nothing short of infuriating. Fuck, this is like being on vacation with two fucking parents! I could just as well be that poor Italian chick!

  “Okay, dudes, here’s the thing. I have more important stuff to do at the moment than focus on my future. Stuff that can only be done while I’m still here. And you know what I’m talking about.”

  “He doesn’t want you!” Jay exclaims, sounding almost hysterical. “Forget it, Justin!”

  “What’s so special about him anyway?” Carl mutters, shaking his head and opening a bag of chips.

  I lean back against my bed’s headboard, interlacing my fingers behind my head.

  Jay moans.

  “Why did you have to ask him that, Carl!”

  “It’s his looks, obviously, but that’s only part of it,” I say to Carl, turning my back on Jay. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think it’s th
is mix of grounded and aloof. You know? He’s got this kind of cool superiority, but underneath I can sense something else, a warmth, like a hearth fire, or—”

  “Carl, stop him!” Jay cries.

  “Let’s go to dinner,” Carl says. He puts the bag of chips back into his drawer with the special tender care he reserves for his provisions and gets up from his bed. “I’m starved.”

  ANDI HASN’T been on the service team at dinner. When I step into the lobby afterward, just to have a look around, I discover why.

  The Fankhauser family has congregated for a party in the lounge. There’s a sign saying Privat, but the doors are open so the waiters can go in and out, and it’s easily possible to take a peek into the room from the lobby.

  I sit down in one of the extrabroad, extracomfy armchairs, behind a man-sized vase full of pussy willow branches. Jay and Carl are already back upstairs. I’ve told them my mom is expecting me to give her a call and that the signal is best in the lobby. All of which is true.

  Only I’ve got no plans to actually phone her, of course. She’d ask after my progress with Statistics for Business, and it’s impossible for me to lie to my mom. Not for moral reasons, but because she sees through people, and because I’m useless at hiding shit. And what good could possibly come of it if she learned that I’m busy stalking someone instead of studying?

  I only wish I’d listened to Jay and put on something less flashy than my magenta shirt. I crane my neck to get a better view of what’s going on in the lounge, taking care to keep hidden behind the vase.

  Some matriarch of the family has turned seventy-five, judging from the pink-and-silver number on the giant cake on the table.

  There are about fifty people of all ages gathered in the lounge, many of them in dirndls or lederhosen and pink-checkered blouses or shirts. This must be the traditional costume of the Fitschtal, the Tracht.

  Andi is wearing it too. He’s hugging an old lady, probably the birthday girl, right in my line of sight.

  Man, I love him in his Tracht. The look suits him just so well. I definitely have a lederhosen kink. And I love the pink-checkered shirt on him too. The color contrasts so nicely with his black hair, and the rolled-up sleeves reveal his toned forearms in the best of ways.

  He doesn’t look like a mannequin at all. The fact is he looks way more dressed up in his black waiter’s uniform than in this fancy, colorful outfit that was quite obviously tailor-made to perfectly fit his fine physique.

  Sadly, now my vision is being blocked by other Fankhausers crowding the old lady.

  I spot Fankhauser Senior and Andi’s brother Max from the sports store. He isn’t Andi, but I have to admit he’s quite a looker in his lederhosen too. He’s a real bear, with a frame like a weight lifter and wiry black chest hair curling from his open collar.

  I recognize the lady who runs the Snowball too. The woman must be a relative as well; probably an aunt or something. So much for neutral territory.

  Neutral territory doesn’t seem to exist in this valley as far as the Fankhauser clan is concerned. Andi Fankhauser is surrounded by family 24-7. For better or for worse.

  Yes, he’s under surveillance around the clock. And I can just feel how everyone is expecting Andi, their nephew or brother or son or grandson, to present a girlfriend one day and eventually marry and enlarge the family. Whether they mean to do it or not, they effectively keep him from coming out.

  I might have my mom to deal with, but he has got a whole tribe that’s laying a claim to him.

  But I can also see how happy he is to be part of this vibrant, oversized clan. He looks completely relaxed as he moves about the room talking to his folks, his face lit up by an easy, radiant smile.

  It’s only now that I realize I haven’t seen him smile before, not like this. As I observe him fooling around with a bunch of kids who must be his cousins or nieces and nephews and who quite obviously adore him, I understand what his problem is.

  I understand what Carl meant the other night when he gave a monologue about the sociological implications of being born and raised in rural Austria.

  The locals here are descendants of farmers who settled in this harsh world centuries ago, when only the fittest survived, Carl said. Today they deal with customers from around the globe; they pocket their money, then move on to make the next bold investment, build the next funicular up a glacier or five-star hotel in a glass cube on a mountaintop. They aren’t peasants anymore, they are businesspeople.

  But at the same time, they’re still deeply rooted in the rocky soil of their secluded valleys, determined to hold on to their traditions and their folks. It’s a question of survival for them to preserve their identity in the fast-paced industry that is Tyrolean tourism, Carl said. He called it the challenge of social development, and a permanent act of balance.

  I guess it is. And I guess that same as with most things, it’s just a little bit harder when you’re gay.

  Naturally Andi is afraid of losing his foothold in his family when he feels it’s what keeps him sane. Naturally he feels it’s safest for him to pretend he’s the same as everyone else.

  If his family drops him, there will be no rainbow community nearby waiting to welcome him home. He’d have nothing.

  For a moment I feel I should leave him alone.

  But no.

  No, that can’t be the answer.

  He definitely can’t go on like this. At some point in their lives, people need to start to be all of themselves, including their orientation. That’s what I’ve heard said, and it sure rings true.

  And one thing is clear. If I leave him be, he’s going to download some app one day, go to a big city for the weekend, and lose his virginity to some asshole who isn’t me.

  He’s talking to a little girl. She seems to be telling him jokes. The full, happy sound of his laughter travels over to where I’m sitting behind the willow branches.

  Instead of going straight to my groin, as would be normal, it hits me in the chest, then kind of lingers there.

  It’s scary. Just a little bit, but scary nonetheless.

  I need to cut out the sentimentality, and all the thinking too. Now.

  I’ll encourage him to take a walk on the wild side for a night or two, I’ll ask him to take a chance on me. And if he does, I’ll take him to bed, and make him see stars, and then I’ll be done with whatever this is and fly home.

  “HEY.”

  Someone is tugging at my sleeve. With a start, I sit up straight.

  I’m in the lobby; I’ve fallen asleep in my chair.

  And the man stepping back from me is none other than Andi. Looking all crisp in his Tracht, like he just popped out of a catalog for traditional Tyrolean party wear.

  There are voices from the lounge. Apparently the festivities are still going.

  I look up at him standing there framed by the willow branches, because it’s just too hard not to. I don’t say anything. If I’ve learned one thing in the past days it’s that he doesn’t want to talk to me with people around. And there’s a whole roomful of Fankhausers just a few yards behind this flowerpot.

  And he just woke me, so he probably came to tell me something. Like, “Stop watching my grandma’s birthday party, Bennet, it’s not a show for the guests.”

  But he only looks down at me with a weird expression on his face.

  I blink to get rid of the lingering sleepiness, my pulse quickening. He looks so…. Yeah, like maybe he’s about to say something entirely different.

  Someone is calling from the lounge.

  “Andi?”

  Man, why does he have to be in constant demand like this? Why is it that he’s never granted a minute of peace and quiet to talk to me?

  “Come meet me in the ski room around midnight,” he says in a low voice. “Just to talk.”

  I nod, feeling a little dazed by this unexpected suggestion, or order. A surge of elation wells up inside me.

  He made a date with me. As good as.

  Oh my God,
I can’t believe it. My heart is pounding, and its happy beat feels as if it were trying to get me to jump out of my seat and break into dance steps.

  This must be what it feels like to receive an offer of marriage.

  I’M WAITING in the ski room. It’s windowless and very stark; all gray concrete lit up by strip lights. Definitely not the place you’d choose if you intended to meet someone for making out. He must have meant it when he said “just talking.”

  At least the room is comfortably warm from floor heating and the long rows of heated boot holders that line the walls. The circular bench in the middle of the room I’m lounging on is just plain wood, and I’ve started to think of my soft bed and red-checkered comforter up in our suite with a quiet, fond yearning.

  I’ve been back to the suite to change out of my magenta shirt before I came here. It would hardly have been the right choice for a secret nighttime rendezvous. I’ve put on a black T-shirt and an open-front cardigan instead and complemented the look with my camo trousers. My camos are super baggy. I wanted something that’s a statement, yet as far away as possible from my leopard jeggings. The jeggings were too much for him earlier. It’s obvious that it doesn’t make sense to flash him with my equipment at this point.

  I also refreshed my eyeliner and did my hair. I decided on a bun. It’s a cool, classy style, and luckily I’m a guy who can pull it off. I told Jay and Carl I needed the bathroom for waxing to be sure they’d leave me alone and not start asking questions or give me some more of their endless, unnerving advice.

  I stayed on in the bathroom after I was done with my preparations for the same reason, gaming for a bit on my phone. I created two more accounts on Jay’s gaming site too, to surprise him with some new followers in the morning. Carl had checked out Jaymer’s channel over dinner, and I just couldn’t take Jay’s expression when Carl pointed out there wasn’t much growth in terms of an audience, was there. Jay even nodded along to that, the way he does, saying no, there wasn’t. His gaming channel is his dream, and it’s really the worst to see him like that, all defeated. Yeah, about half of Jaymer’s followership is me.