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It's the morning after the boat trip, the one where Dickie ignored him again and Marge told him he was disinvited to Christmas in Cortina. The morning after that she pulls him aside and says, “You’re planning to leave us, aren’t you?” sounding genuinely disappointed which Tom supposes shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’s not hogging all the sunshine anymore, is he? They’re in the shadows together.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tom says, his tone implying, yes, tomorrow if I can find a train ticket, when really leaving seems quite drastic yet. Freddie won’t be here for long, and once he leaves Tom can get back on track with Dickie. His instincts have just been a little off lately. He’s been moving too fast, seeming too interested. The key with these people, and especially with Dickie, is to be wildly interesting yourself and expect the same from everyone else, only ever waiting to be disappointed.
Marge grabs his arm and squeezes. “Stay a little longer. I had a brilliant idea last night! I invited Peter Smith-Kingsley to stay for a while. The house is already so full. Peter can’t stand Freddie, naturally, but I told him you’d more than make up for him.”
“Me?”
“Of course! I think you’ll get on famously. You’ll stay?”
Tom sighs. “I’ll stay through the weekend. For you!”
“Good!” She claps. “You’ll be staying for Peter by Sunday—just you wait.”
Tom manages to get a look at Peter before they’re introduced.
The first thing he learns is that Peter’s very handsome. Not handsome like Dickie—or, really, handsome exactly like Dickie, but not so flawlessly. He’s water to Dickie’s ice. Peter has kind eyes and hair that falls in his face and a smile that seems to give you something, while Dickie’s smile seems to wrench something from in between your ribs. Peter’s whiter than Tom ever was, but he doubts Dickie would have ever commented on it, and if he did, Tom doubts even more that Peter would give half a thought to getting some more sun.
Marge welcomes him first and they adore each other, no undercurrents or qualifications. He keeps holding her hand as Freddie comes in and slaps him on the back to say hello. Peter makes no move to touch him in return. Peter greets Dickie more warmly, with a long hug and a kiss half on the mouth, but he still keeps ahold of Marge. Tom can’t tell if that’s his choice, or hers, or something that’s simply understood between them.
He’s in love with Dickie, but no more so than everyone else is. If anything, he’s more guarded than most, not that Dickie seems to notice. That must mean Peter loved him a great deal more in the past, but that only raises him in Tom’s estimation. Tom knows how that goes.
Peter would be behaving no differently if Marge wasn’t here, except perhaps not to be here at all.
“Oh, Tom!” Marge calls. Did she spot him watching them? After a quick assurance that she didn’t, Tom hurries away from the window. He smoothes his clothes and his hair, puts his book under his arm, as if he was just reading and doesn’t know why she’s calling for him, and goes.
He stops at the top of the stairs and feels Peter’s gaze snap to him, feels it rake over him from head to toe and back up again, his smile widening into something even warmer than what he was tossing around the room before, easy as rice at a wedding.
Oh. It’s a revelation. No one has ever looked at Tom like this in his life. Well—it’s not unlike how Meredith Logue looked at him when he first arrived in Italy, but the look is entirely different on Peter. And this is about Tom. It has to be—Peter must know Tom can’t sail, can’t ski, can’t mix a martini. During his fifteen minutes with Meredith, it was impossible to know how much was about Tom—Tom’s face, if anything—and how much was about the idea of Dickie Greenleaf.
Tom trots down the stairs. “Hello,” he says from a ways away and holds out his hand.
“Hello,” Peter says, coming forward to take his hand sooner. He’s not holding Marge’s anymore—Tom checks without breaking Peter’s gaze because Peter’s not looking away and Tom will be damned if he’ll be the first to do it.
“Isn’t this romantic?” Freddie says.
“Freddie,” Marge chastises, but Peter doesn’t seem to hear him at all.
“You’re Tom,” Peter says.
“And you’re Peter.”
No last names. They’re given, Tom supposes, but it seems more that Peter just doesn’t care.
Another revelation. Amazing.
Peter’s staying for two weeks. It’s clear by the third day that Marge didn’t expect Peter to like Tom quite so much.
Frankly, neither did Tom. Tom knows he’s attractive. He got plenty of dinners out of men in New York—rich men and normal pencil pushers in the city for the weekend and treating themselves to a steak and a pretty smile to take back to the hotel with them. They were all very happy to say goodbye after he gave them directions to the train.
Not Peter. Right away he starts talking about taking Tom to Venice. Again, that’s to be expected—Dickie’s promised to take Tom to the moon and back and he has no interest in Tom’s smile—but Peter’s already talking specifics and logistics, trying to convince Tom to leave with him in two weeks, assuring him that Peter would linger if Tom had business to finish up.
The others all laugh at that. “Tom doesn’t have any business.”
Peter doesn’t join in their laughter. “I suspect Tom has more going on than any of you know,” he says, not looking away from Tom.
Tom overhears Marge warning Peter away from him:
“You know he’s a piano player.”
“So?” Peter says. “I play the piano, too!”
Tom thought she was talking about his low class, but maybe it was a euphemism for homosexuality—that’s clearly how Peter took it, but he knows that Tom’s a poor Yankee, too, and couldn’t seem to care less.
“He has a fiancée, Peter.”
“Yes, well—most men do.”
That confuses Tom, as well, so he decides to bring it up again that night. Tom discovered a way to get up on the roof of the villa a while back and he was saving the discovery for something to interest Dickie, but he’d much rather interest Peter now.
Peter’s charmingly nervous, scrabbling to keep his balance as Tom has him basically scaling the wall above his bedroom window, and helping him is a good excuse to touch him. When he’s steady on his feet, Tom presses both hands against his chest and says, “Are you all right?”
Peter trails his fingers over Tom’s skin on his way to squeezing the back of Tom’s neck. “Fine. Thanks.”
“It’s a little filthy up here, but the view of the sunset is worth it, I promise.”
He lays out a blanket and they sit down facing west, leaning back on their forearms when he asks, “Are you married?”
“Ah—no. Never.”
“Seeing anyone?”
Peter looks at him for a long moment. “Yes, I have been.”
Tom feels himself blush. He doesn’t easily do that naturally, but he’s never met someone as open as Peter—not ever.
“You’re engaged,” Peter says, moving to lie flat on his back.
“Yes,” Tom says.
“Have you been with her a long time?”
“Since we were kids,” Tom says, because he did have a friend named Francis in the old neighborhood and he had been telling people they were dating since he was fifteen.
“Do you love her?”
He doesn’t sound resentful at all, just curious. That’s something else amazing about Peter—to have enough conviction about his sexuality not to normalize things with a woman, while not expecting the same from anyone else.
“No.” Tom covers his face with his hands. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I don’t think I ever have.”
“So. . . you don’t like both. Some men do.”
“Like Dickie?”
“No. Dickie. . . likes people to like him. He doesn’t consider how that ends up.”
Tom sits up and looks down at Peter. “This summer has been a dream for me, but I’ve been thinking about going home to Francis the whole time. But then you came and—”
“And?”
“I wrote her a letter ending things with her the night I met you. It just—never felt like such a lie before.” He puts his hand on Peter’s chest, letting his fingertips brush over Peter’s chest hair in the open V of his shirt. “I haven’t sent it yet.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t known you a week yet, Peter. I don’t even know—we haven’t even—it’s crazy.”
Peter covers Tom’s hand with both of his. “I don’t think so.”
Tom smiles. “I’ll send it tonight.”
Without warning, Peter flips them around so Tom’s on his back and Peter’s looking down at him. He nudges Tom’s legs apart and presses his thigh to Tom’s cock, which starts to harden immediately.
“Later,” Peter breathes against his mouth. “I’ll walk with you to the postbox.”
At the end of his two weeks in Mongibello, Peter takes Tom home with him. In Venice, Tom discovers being Peter’s young man—as several old ladies have called him—opens just as many doors as the Greenleaf name. Peter introduces him to so many people that Tom finds himself with the career he told everyone he had back in New York: playing piano at beautiful places a few times a week, making enough money that he could get by if he lived on his own—but he doesn’t, of course—he lives with Peter. When he first arrived it seemed important to keep up the charade that this was a vacation and Peter was his guide and he said, “This is so generous of you. I would have wasted a lot of money on a hotel.”
Peter just laughed. “Be a good guest and open some wine.”
Tom has his own bedroom that he never uses. Their housekeeper Giuseppina knows only to clean once a month. Peter puts Tom’s name on his bank accounts and Tom deposits all of his money there where it becomes indistinguishable from Peter’s. He wouldn’t even need Peter’s signature to con him. It would be so easy to take everything and run that Tom knows he’ll never have to.
They’re taking a stroll after lunch one afternoon when Tom hears, “Dickie!”
At first he thinks Dickie must be nearby, but quickly he recognizes the voice.
Oh no—no, no, no, no, not Meredith Logue. Anyone but Meredith Logue. It’s going to be destroyed. All of it—his future, his hopes—all gone.
She’s behind them, still, a few yards away, and through a crowd. Maybe they can get away—but Peter turns, probably to look for Dickie himself, and then calls out, “Meredith!”
Damn it, it’s worse. Peter knows Meredith. Of course he does. They’ve all known each other forever. Tom’s the intruder in this world. It was pure luck Meredith hadn’t met Dickie before when Tom lied to her at the docks. It wasn’t luck that Peter likes him so much—that was magic, a miracle—but that’s over now. Peter grabs Tom’s arm to stop him so they can wait for her.
“Peter!” she says. “I didn’t know you know Dickie.”
“Oh, well—yes, I do, but—is he here?”
Meredith laughs and smiles at Tom. “Hello, Dickie.”
Now Peter laughs. “What? Dickie Greenleaf? This isn’t Dickie, Meredith, this is Tom Ripley.”
Meredith pats her hair, uncomfortable. “Tom Ripley—are you Dickie’s cousin or something? You look—you look so much alike it’s uncanny.”
Oh, that would have been easy—except, of course, Peter knows that they don’t share much more than blonde hair and blue eyes. Tom searches his mind desperately for something plausible, anywhere he can, and finally he finds something.
“No, Meredith, I—Dickie and I went to Princeton together.” He turns to Peter. “You know we look a little alike.”
Peter smiles, completely trusting. “In the grand scheme of handsome men, yes.”
“Well, I’d get confused for him all the time and eventually, sometimes, I’d just run with it and say I was him. Then even after school, sometimes I’d pretend—it was like a little joke I’d play with the world. I know it’s strange.”
But from his smile, Peter doesn’t seem to think so. “Impersonations. Marge told me you had a talent.”
Tom looks at Meredith. “I’m sorry I played the joke on you. I was going to see him for the first time in years and—anyway, I’m not Dickie—I’m not anybody. My name’s Tom Ripley. I’m just—”
“—my good friend,” Peter finishes. “Have dinner with us tonight, Meredith. You’ll adore Tom. He’s better than the real Dickie, I promise.”
Meredith is upset, but she put on a good smile—actually, it’s a terribly false smile, but she seems all the more sweet and pretty for the effort.
“Sure!” she says. “I’m starved—and I think you owe me a drink, Tom.”
Late one night, not long after, he’s lying awake, wishing there weren’t any more secrets between them.
“What would you say if I told you I’m not a Princeton graduate?” he whispers. It’s easy to say, Peter as likely asleep as not.
Peter groans, and turns, reaching for him. “I’d tell you I didn’t finish Oxford, either. There was an opportunity with the Royal Opera and I jumped on it. Life doesn’t come with blueprints, you know?”
Tom could spill wine on the white rug and Peter would find a way to thank him for it. Simply amazing.
“What would you say if I told you that you probably saved my soul?”
“I’d say, ‘Ditto,’ and pull you into my arms.” Peter heaves Tom on top of him and crosses his arms over Tom’s back.