Nude Men

PENGUIN BOOKS
    Published by the Penguin Group
    Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
    Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
    Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
    Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
    Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
    Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
     
    First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
    a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993
     Published in Penguin Books 1994
     
    3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
     
    Copyright © Amanda Filipacchi, 1993
    All rights reserved
     
    PUBLISHER’S NOTE
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
     
    Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from “Tonight” and “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © 1957 (renewed) Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Jalni Publications, Inc., U.S. and Canada; G. Schirmer, Inc., worldwide print rights and publisher for the rest of the world. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
     
    THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:
    Filipacchi, Amanda.
    Nude men/Amanda Filipacchi.
    p. cm.
    ISBN 0-670-84785-2 (he)
    ISBN 014 01.7892 9 (pbk.)
    I. Title.
    PS3556.I428N83 1993
    813'.54—dc20 92-32338
     
    Printed in the United States of America
    Set in Bodoni
    Designed by Michael Ian Kaye
     
    Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    For my parents , Sondra and Daniel
     

O thou, that from eleven to ninety reign'st in mortol bosoms…
     
     
    —Palamon’s speech to Venus,
    Two Noble Kinsmen,
    attributed to William Shakespeare
     

acknowledgments
    F or their advice and enthusiasm, I am very grateful to Sondra Peterson, Nan Graham, Melanie Jackson, and Alice Quinn.
    I would also like to thank Courtney Hodell, Giancarlo Bonacina, Hal Fessenden, Edmond Levy, Frederic Tuten, Richard Locke, Robert Towers, Peter J. Smith, Michael Kaye, and all my other friends.
    Et surtout Minou.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    nude men
     

chapter one
     
    I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another reading while eating.
    I work at Screen, a magazine on movies and celebrities, here in Manhattan. For lunch I go to a little coffee shop that is farther away than the other standard lunch places. It is also more expensive, less good, and less exciting, but it has one tremendous advantage. No one I know goes there.
    Recently I discovered another coffee shop. It is even farther away, but the lighting is better for my reading. And no one I know goes there even less. Or more. Or whatever. You know what I mean.
    This morning was exhausting at work. I sense that I will get one of my headaches this afternoon. I am hungry for food and literature. As I leave the office building for lunch, I try to decide if I have the strength to walk the extra distance to my new, well-lit coffee shop or if I will settle for the closer one with inferior lighting. I opt for light. After such a morning, I deserve to have a perfect, intensely pleasurable meal. On top of it, I want to see very clearly what will happen to Lily Bart in The House of Mirth.
    The restaurant is called Grandma Julie’s, and it’s as cozy as its name. I’m sure everyone feels a little embarrassed walking into a place called Grandma anything, but once you’re inside... the warmth, the neatness, the sheer professionalism, make you forget your shame.
    Today the place is full. I ask the waitress how long it will take to get a table. She says two minutes. I wait, thinking my lunch might not be ruined if I truly get a table in two