Object of Desire. William J. Mann

SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

      I headed up our walkway just as the sprinkler system kicked on, a small, insistent hiss under the bushes, a soft spray of mist across the dry purple night.

      We weren’t meant to be here. Humans weren’t designed to live in deserts. But we did, anyway. We pumped in water and planted bougainvillea. We built swimming pools and golf courses and laid out vast stretches of grass. We put up shopping malls. We did it because we could. But that didn’t change the fact that we were not meant to be here.

      In the air hung the fragrance of dry sage. I paused, looking up at the sky, a vast dome of indigo studded with thousands of stars. At night the desert’s stillness never lost its power to astonish me. A quarter of a million souls resided under that big sky, but at night I heard only the rustle of dried weeds. From somewhere far away came the crackly, impatient whine of a coyote.

      Against the sky, the mountains ringing the valley were a slightly darker shade of purple. I stood there, trying to make out the line that separated mountain from sky. From eighty-five hundred feet above, the bright white eye of the tram winked at me. I took a deep breath, pulling the dry, clean desert air into my lungs. Then I let myself into the house, uncertain of what I might find.

      “Frank?” I whispered.

      The living room was dark. I flicked on a lamp, sending light spilling throughout the room, illuminating the sleek black-and-white tiled floor and the low-slung midcentury-modern furniture. On the wall hung two of my prints: a giclée of the Chocolate Mountains and a close-up of a sunflower, which Frank called his green daisy. They were images that suited our house, a classic Alexander built in 1955, a butterfly-roofed exemplar of rational design and modernist style, with its exposed beams and gabled spun-glass walls. Back in the day, these houses were built on the cheap, snapped up by postwar California’s tail-finned, consumer-happy middle class, eager to snare their own piece of a desert playground popularized by the Rat Pack and other Hollywood elite. Now original Alexander homes fetched millions. From every oblong window, the house offered stunning views of the mountains, and fifty years of stringent municipal policy had ensured that nothing was ever built too high to obscure that scenery. Very few moments in my life were more treasured than my early mornings out by the pool, sitting with my coffee and watching the reflection of a very pink dawn against the blue gray of the mountains.

      I set my keys down on the table and stepped through the living room into the dining area. The hallway was dark. No light emanated from the doorway of the bedroom. Might they both have fallen asleep?

      I turned and headed through the kitchen. Only then did I notice the light coming from the second bedroom, which we used as an office. I peered around the door.

      “Frank?”

      He was sitting at the desk, a pile of papers in front of him, his brow creased, his glasses at the end of his nose. He looked up at me.

      “Danny. I didn’t hear you come in. How was happy hour?”

      “The usual.” I gave him a confused look. “What are you doing in here?”

      “Polishing up my syllabi for the start of classes.” He sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I’ll stop if Randall wants to pull out the bed….”

      “Randall isn’t here. I assume he’s tricking.”

      Frank looked up at me and smiled. “Well, good for him.”

      “Yeah. If it gets his mind off Ike.”

      Frank nodded.

      “But where’s Ollie?” I still couldn’t fathom why Frank was in here, poring over papers, when I’d expected to find him engaged in a very different sort of activity.

      “He’s in the casita.” Frank had replaced his glasses and was once more looking down at his desk.

      “The casita? What’s he doing out there? And why are you in here?”

      He didn’t look up at me. “I really needed to get these syllabi done. I don’t want them hanging over me all weekend. And rather than having Ollie in the living room, watching television, where he’d distract me, I suggested he go out and watch whatever he wanted to in the casita and get comfortable there, and then, when you got home…”

      I nodded, following his line of thought. “So you want me to go bring him in, then?”

      Frank hesitated. He took his glasses off again and looked up at me.

      “Danny, why don’t you just go out to him? I’m exhausted. I’m going to finish this one syllabus and then head in to bed.”

      I made a face and folded my arms across my chest. “You don’t want to…do anything with him, like we planned?”

      Frank smiled. “He came down for your birthday, Danny. And look, I’m so beat, I’d just end up sitting at the foot of the bed, watching the two of you.”

      “That’s all you’ve done the last few times, anyway.”

      That came out harsher than I wanted. Frank ignored it and looked back down at his papers. “Really, Danny, it’s fine. I’m exhausted. You go have fun. I’m honestly looking forward to sleeping a good solid nine hours.”

      I just stood there in the doorway. There was silence.

      “Frank,” I said finally. “It’s my birthday. I don’t want to spend the night with Ollie if it means I spend it without you.”

      “That’s very sweet of you to say, baby.” He looked up and gave me a genuine smile. “But, of course, you want to spend the night with him. He has an ass you can bounce quarters off, remember?”

      “I’m serious, Frank.”

      “Oh, baby.”

      He stood, placing his hands on my shoulders. We were nose to nose. Once, Frank had been a few inches taller than I, but no longer. Somewhere over the last two decades, he had settled, like the frame of a house. His joints had retracted; his bones had curled inward ever so slightly. I studied him now at close range, observing the dark circles under his eyes, the mosaic of brown spots etched across his high, shiny forehead.

      “Are you really too tired?” I asked him.

      He nodded. “You can’t disappoint him, baby. He drove all the way in from Sherman Oaks.”

      I leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips.

      Frank smiled. “We’ll take a drive up to Joshua Tree tomorrow, go for a hike.” He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Just the two of us. Maybe we’ll even finally spot a bighorn sheep after all these years.”

      “Frank—”

      “Let me finish this syllabus, Danny. And leave a note in the kitchen for Randall, if he comes back at all, that all he has to do is pull out the bed here in the office. I’ve already put sheets on for him.”

      He sat down at his desk again. I remained unmoving in the door frame, watching him.

      “Go,” he said, not looking up at me. “Skedaddle. Have fun.”

      I stood there for a moment longer, then turned away.

      One of the wonderful things about properties in Palm Springs was the casita—the “little house” on the grounds, which could be used for guests. Ours had a Spanish tile roof and beige stucco walls, accessed by a zigzagging stone path through a garden of cacti and creeping rosemary. Passing the kidney bean–shaped swimming pool, I could see the blue glow of the television from the casita’s windows reflected on the water. I looked closely and caught a glimpse of Ollie through the sheer curtains, lying on the bed, shirtless and barefoot and in jeans, the remote in his hands. I think he was watching America’s Next Top Model. I wasn’t sure, because he snapped off the TV as soon as I walked in.

      “Hey,” he said.

      “Hey,” I replied.

      The