I’m not a trick, he’d corrected Eden.
“Oh, right, I’m sorry,” Eden had said. “You’re his boyfriend.” And she had pursed her lips and fluttered her eyelashes—she didn’t approve of monogamy, and neither did she approve of men: “Except for you, David,” she’d say. “And you barely count.”
Gee, thanks, he’d say, and she’d laugh.
But he knew it wasn’t true that Adams disapproved of all of Charles’s boyfriends, because he’d once overheard a conversation that Adams and Charles had had about Charles’s former boyfriend Olivier, whom Charles had dated before he met David. “And Mister Olivier called,” Adams had said, giving Charles his messages, and David, standing just outside the doorway to the study, could hear something different in Adams’s voice.
“How did he sound?” Charles asked. He and Olivier were still friendly but only saw each other once or twice a year at most.
“Very well,” said Adams. “Please give him my regards.”
“I absolutely will,” Charles said.
Anyway, trying to complain about Adams was useless, because Charles would never abandon him: He had been Charles’s parents’ butler when he was a teenager, and when they both died, Charles, who was their only child, inherited not only their house but Adams as well. He could never tell his friends that; they would see Charles’s employment of a seventy-five-year-old man in a physically demanding position as a form of geriatric exploitation, despite the fact that David knew that Adams enjoyed having his job as much as Charles enjoyed providing it to him. His friends never understood that—how, for some people, work was the only thing that made them feel real to the world.
“I know it seems anachronistic to have a butler,” Charles had said—few of his own friends did, even the ones who were richer or from older money than he was—“but when you’re raised with one, it’s a hard habit to give up.” He sighed. “I don’t expect you, or anyone, to understand.” David said nothing. “This is as much Adams’s house as it is mine,” Charles often said, and David knew he meant it in a way, even if it wasn’t true. Habitation is not equivalent to ownership, he’d reminded Charles, quoting his first-year law-school professor, and Charles had grabbed him （they’d been in bed then, too）。 “Are you actually explaining legal principles to me?” he’d asked, teasing. “To me? You really are adorable.” You wouldn’t understand, Charles said to him, about this and so many other matters, and when he did, David’s grandmother’s face would suddenly flash through his mind. Would his grandmother have ever said that their house was as much Matthew’s and Jane’s as it was theirs? He didn’t think so. Their house belonged only to the Binghams, and the only way to become a Bingham was to be born one or to marry one.
It certainly would never have occurred to Matthew or Jane to consider the Bingham house theirs either, and David suspected that Adams felt the same way: This was Charles’s house, and always would be, and although he might be a part of it, it was only as a chair or a sidewall cabinet was part of it—a fixture, but nothing with its own desires or motivations or sense of autonomy. Adams could behave as if it were his—look at him now, ignoring the presence of the party planner to order the caterers into the kitchen and the furniture movers into the dining room—but though his authority was in part innate, much of it was due to his association with Charles, whose name he invoked only when necessary, though still not infrequently. “You know Mr. Griffith doesn’t like them,” he was now chiding the florist, who stood before him, protesting, trying to persuade, clutching a green plastic bucket of partially opened Easter lilies against her chest. “We discussed this. He thinks their scent is funereal.”
“But I ordered all of these!” （The florist, in a near-wail.）
“Then I suggest you contact Mr. Griffith and try to convince him,” Adams said, knowing she never would, and, indeed, the florist turned and walked away, calling to her crew as she did, “We have to eighty-six the lilies!” and, lower, “Asshole.”
David watched her go, feeling triumphant as she did. He was to have coordinated the flowers. After the last big party—this was shortly after David had moved in—he had suggested to Charles that the flowers were a little listless, and far too fragrant: overly perfumed flowers distracted from the food. “You’re right,” Charles had said. “Next time, you’ll be in charge of them.”
Will I really?
“Of course. What do I know about flowers? You’re the expert,” Charles had said, and had kissed him.
At the time, this had felt like a privilege, a gift, but since then he had come to learn that when Charles declared his ignorance it was only because he thought the subject inconsequential. He could make his lack of knowledge—about flowers, baseball, football, modernist architecture, contemporary literature and art, South American food—sound like a boast; he didn’t know because there was no reason to know. You might know, but then you had wasted your time—he had other, more important things to learn about and remember. And anyway, it hadn’t happened: Charles had remembered to tell the party planner not to hire the same florist, but had forgotten to tell her that David would be in charge. David had spent the past month planning his arrangements, calling different shops in the Flower District to ask if they could special-order stephanotis and protea, and it had only been two weeks ago, when he and Charles were having a drink in the living room and Charles had asked Adams for an update about the party planner—“Yes, she’s hired a different florist”—that David had realized that he wasn’t to be responsible for the flowers after all.
He had waited until Adams left to ask Charles about it, both because they tried not to argue in front of Adams and because he wanted to rehearse the words to himself, to make sure he didn’t sound like he was whining. But he had anyway. I thought I was overseeing the flowers, he’d said, once Adams exited the room.
“What?”
Remember? You said I could?
“Oh, god. Did I?”
Yes.
“I don’t remember. But if you say I did, then I did. Oh, David, I’m sorry.” And then, when he didn’t answer, “You’re not mad, are you? It’s just a bunch of silly flowers. David. Are you upset?”
No, he lied.
“But you are. I’m sorry, David. You can do the next one, I promise.”
He had nodded, and then Adams had reappeared to announce that dinner was served, and the two of them had gone to the dining room. As they ate, he tried to be cheerful, because that was what Charles liked, but later, in bed, Charles had turned to him in the dark and asked, “You’re still annoyed, aren’t you?”
It was difficult to explain why he was—he knew he would sound petty. I just want to help you, he’d begun. I just want to feel like I’m doing something here.
“But you are helping me,” Charles had said. “Every night you’re here with me, you’re helping me.”
Well—thank you. But—I want to feel like we’re doing something together, like I’m contributing something to your life. I feel like—like I’m just taking up room in this house, but I’m not actually doing anything, do you know what I mean?