Clouds over Antibes

After I had given my commiserations on what had happened in the years immediately following my leaving for Morocco, Tristian said, "You were trying to get back to the States during the war. You didn't make it, though, did you?"

"No, I didn't," I said. "I pretty much went with the flow, and I'm well situated in Morocco now."

He then asked me about Mark, the Englishman I'd left with.

"I don't know," I said. "I doubt his name was really Mark Standish. He changed it as soon as we reached Morocco, and after a time, he left for Gibraltar--still working for the English cause, I'm sure. Someday perhaps he will return to Tangier, and we can be less secretive than before."

I wasn't being completely honest about Mark. I did know who he was and what had become of him. I had been working so intimately with his novel that when it came out, in 1948, under the name Miles Simpson, I knew it instantly as his even though the title had been changed from the working title. Checking into the author's biography on the novel jacket flap, I was able to surmise that this was, in fact, the same man I had known in Antibes and Tangier. Further checking had found him in a sanatorium outside Paris, where he was being maintained after suffering torture at the hands of the Germans in Paris that made him a virtual vegetable. That had come in the waning days of the German occupation of Paris and therefore was all that more tragic and unnecessary. He would not be returning to either Antibes or Tangier, but I didn't think that either Tristian or Louis would be happier knowing that. The war had certainly taken its toll on all of us.

"But what about you, Louis?" I asked. "I thought you had escaped to Switzerland with the German actor, Gunter Achten."

"We tried, and Gunter made it. He's Swiss now and quite famous as a movie actor and director. He goes by the name Gerhard Heinz now. Before we reached the border, I was detained. Gunter slipped away and made it across. I escaped too, but came back here. After the war, Gunter and I reconnected and we've visited back and forth a couple of times. Which is rather coincidental, because--"

That's when I got another surprise. "Coincidental?" I asked.

"Yes, because he's here, in Antibes, now, having been at the Cannes film festival. And he should be showing up... yes, I hear him on the stairs now."

"Brent!" I heard a voice shout out.

I turned. "Gunter!"

The years had melted away. It was as if the intervening, difficult ten years had never been.

* * * *

I lay there, chest and cheek to bed surface, arms flung out, gripping the sides of the bed on either side, panting hard, rocking my pelvis against his hand, as Gunter's body covered mine, his face buried in the hollow of my throat, kissing and biting me there, his left hand gripping the left wrist of my outflung arms, his right hand working my channel open, his fingers working me deep as I rhythmically moved against his buried fingers. They had just moved from my cock and balls, where he had stroked me off and rolled my balls, relentlessly working me until I had come for him.

This was the Gunter I had remembered from ten years earlier.

Having taken care of me, it now was Gunter's turn. He raised his chest off my back, put his cock head in position, grasped my waist between his hands, and, thrusting up inside me as I writhed, panted, and groaned under him, fucked me hard to his ejaculation. He was strong, thick, long inside me, stretching me, working me deep.

Later, as we lay stretched out beside each other in one of the rooms above Tristian's tavern, he whispered, "You don't know how often I'd dreamed of being able to do that with you again."

"I worried about what had become of you," I answered. "I've heard of Gerhard Heinz and your movie work, of course. I just never figured that that was you. Heinz is identified as Swiss. I never took a closer look. You acquired a beard."

"The beard comes and goes according to whether I want to be identified or not. And I am Swiss. I was already half Swiss. They took me in and supported me during the war. So, I became fully Swiss. I've known what you were doing all this time, though. I've read your novels."

"Have you?"

"Despite Everything has a familiar ring to it," he said, punctuating that with a low laugh. "You treated me well in that book."

"You treated me well in Antibes in that period," I answered.

"And did I treat you well just now?"

"Yes."

"I've been looking for you. I'm glad I've found you here."

"I'm glad you did too. You haven't lost your sexual power."

"I wanted to find you more than for sex," he said. "Have you written any screen plays?"

"A few, yes," I answered. "None that have been optioned."

"I want you to write a screen play for Despite Everything. I want to do a movie of it. I don't want that period to be forgotten--and I don't want to lose you entirely. Nothing permanent, of course, but we must meet here in Antibes every year."

"That suits me," I said. And we left it at that. The only thing I had learned in all these years was to go with the flow, to not lose my way, despite anything--to not count on anything as permanent.

Thus, when we returned to the group at Oscar's, I let Gunter drift off to renew friendships and memories with Tristian and Louis and I tracked down Jacques.

"I thought you had forgotten me," he said. "You became absorbed with old friends here and went off with that German."

"He's Swiss," I said. "And we have history. I don't forget anything or anyone, though. Despite everything--everything that has happened, I remember and savor. Now, I would like to be with you."

"You've just been with the German, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Should I be afraid that I can't measure up to him?"

I reached down and gave him a good feel. "No, I don't think so. I think you'll do very nicely."

"They do have several rooms upstairs," Jacques said. "I don't want to fuck you in the same room where the German had you."

"Then I don't think we'll go upstairs at all," I responded. "I think I'd like us to go to sea for a while." We went out on my cabin cruiser, dropping anchor off the night lights of Antibes, and there Jacques covered me and fucked the hell out of me, creating new memories.