“Relax,” Carla sleepily whispered when Laurie’s body tensed beside her.
When Laurie met Clarence in college, he was a sweet, innocent goof. Always excited over some painter, composer, or film director he had just discovered, he laughed at his own joy and expected you to laugh with him. His joy in discovering things was infectious, even if it was something you already knew. It was wonderful running into him outside the library or coming up the hill to the dorms, a stack of art books usually under one arm, shuffling along in a sweet, private dream, a newborn aesthete from Danville, Virginia, rawboned and ponytailed—the red-neck crewcut had grown out as quickly as his mind, and the big-jawed face was always framed by shaggy sideburns and an unraveling kerchief of tied-back hair. He broke into a grin the instant he saw you, popped out of his dream and shared the dream with you, like a piece of good news: Vermeer, Cocteau, Vivaldi, Midnight Cowboy, his first hit of acid, his first taste of hollandaise. He told Laurie everything, even how as a child he drew plans for elaborate mansions and palaces and then, because he didn’t know anything else, mentally furnished them from a Sears catalog. With her other friends so intellectually insecure and serious those years, it was a relief knowing someone like “Angel Clare.” Laurie had still assumed she was supposed to be attracted to men, but she never mistook her appreciation of Clarence for anything like attraction. She was much too serious a person for him.
She saw him only now and then in the years after college, when she tried political work in Boston and teaching fifth-graders in Cleveland, and trusted he was still the same lovable anomaly. Then she moved to New York with Carla ten years ago, saw more of Clarence, and realized he had changed. They had all come out to each other on visits or in letters, and her disappointment that Clarence’s uniqueness might be explained by his repressed sexuality was balanced out by the pleasure of learning they had something in common. But it felt different in person. Clarence now looked at women, even Laurie, with polite bewilderment. He smiled down at Laurie with a blank gaze of “Why’re we even talking since we can’t go to bed together?” It was puzzling at first, then infuriating.
Sometimes Laurie thought she was the one who’d changed, that knowing Carla had raised her expectations of what people can be to each other. Sometimes she thought his friendship in college had been just another case of “A friend is only someone who got there first,” as Livy liked to say. Whatever the reason, she stopped trying with Clarence, and he made no effort at all. She saw him only in the company of the friends they had in common, never alone, never had a long, confessional, one-on-one chat with Clarence like the ones she had with Jack, Livy, and even Danny. She grew accustomed to his benign indifference and forgot their past, expected no more of him than she did of the pesky calico cat Jack fussed over.
Nevertheless, here she was, in Clarence Laird’s apartment, lying awake and listening for the return of his widow.
“I wonder how he would be now if it’d been Michael?” she asked Carla.
But Carla was sound asleep, her moist breath warming Laurie’s side, her arm responding to the sound of words in Laurie’s chest with a minuscule shift of elbow.
Laurie shifted down to join her. This was her real life, she reminded herself. All her questions about her past and others were only idle thoughts, luxuries she could speculate on because she knew she had this life and this woman breathing beside her.
They enjoyed waking up early. It was Wednesday, and Laurie worked at home and Carla didn’t have to be at the Center until ten. They liked the routine of starting the day together, eating a real breakfast, watching the morning news, exchanging their hopes and dreads for the day ahead. Also, because Michael slept late, mornings were one time when they could be assured of no interruptions.
Not until Carla was ready to leave for work and Laurie walked her to the door did they see that Michael’s room was empty. His door was wide open and the bloated leather bag still sat packed on his bed.
“So he did go home with someone!” said Carla.
“I hope nothing’s happened to him.”
“What could’ve happened to him? He met another twink and they went off somewhere to not exchange bodily fluids.” Carla could get rather blunt at times. “He’ll come moping in later this morning.”
Laurie decided Carla was right and her concern was only guilt left over from last night. She kissed Carla good-bye, closed the door, and went back to her alcove to see what could be done to save a ditsy, neo-punk illustrator from having to sell her mink jackets to pay her back taxes.
It was good, clean, heartless work, going through a Fiorucci bag full of sales receipts, then arranging the figures on a sheet of graph paper. Laurie completely lost herself in it and was almost done when the telephone rang.
“Me again.” It was Jack. “I happen to be in your neighborhood and was wondering if you’d like to break for lunch.”
“It’s too early for lunch.”
“It’s almost one. Meet me out front and we can go eat lunch and talk about Topic A in peace.”
She had forgotten all about Michael. “Yes, well—Could you hold on a sec?” She put down the phone and hurried down the hall. His room was still empty. She would have heard him come in, but she had to be sure. Knowing Jack’s love of worry and how it brought out the worst in her, she became concerned again. “Jack? Topic A’s still out, so we can talk here. There’s stuff for lunch here.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Who knows? Well, he went out for a walk last night and never came home.”
“Really? Hmmm.” He said nothing, then very calmly said, “I’m just around the corner. I’ll be right there.”
She knew Jack didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood; he had come here expressly to talk about Michael. Jack could be oblivious, or he could be overly concerned. If it were the latter today, she would not let herself be panicked into unnecessary worry. Michael was fine.
Laurie opened the door to Jack a minute later. His posture was slumped and casual, but his mournful eyes looked more alert than usual. He bent down and kissed her hello. “Delivered my stupid review this morning. Was going to treat myself to that secondhand bookshop next to where the Thalia used to be.” He stepped past her and looked into Michael’s room, glancing around with mild curiosity. “He never came back last night?” he said nonchalantly.
“We figure he met someone and went home with him.”
“That’s probably it.” Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled toward the kitchen, doing his baby elephant walk.
Laurie knew both of them were pretending not to be worried, even as they went through the kitchen cupboards together and assembled things for lunch.
“Has he ever gone home with anyone before?” Jack suddenly asked. “Or been out all night?”
“No. Not that I can remember. But there’s always a first time. Maybe he fell in love last night.”
Still straining to sound nonchalant, Jack said, “How did he look to you when he went out last night?”
“Just fine. He was a little abrupt when he left, but that’s Michael’s rhythm. He didn’t look depressed or suicidal if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Jack looked at her with his mouth open, his tongue pushing at the back of his lower lip inside his beard.
“What, Jack? You think we should start calling around to the hospitals?” she said with a lightly scornful laugh.
“Nothing. I just—” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. “I told Michael yesterday, when I lost my temper with him, that if he really felt as bad as he said he did, then he would kill himself. Or should kill himself, I can’t remember.”
“You really said that?”
“Yes. I hated myself as soon as I said it but, yes, I said it.”
Laurie considered it, weighed it in her mind and tried to imagine how it would have sounded to Michael. Jack took words much too seriously—his own especially—and he had a bizarre need to blame himself for things. What annoyed her mos
t, though, was that she found the idea of Michael committing suicide much too plausible. “Has anybody ever done what you told them to do?” she scoffed.
“I know,” he admitted. “It’s stupid for me to worry about, but I can’t help feeling…” He stood up slowly. “Where’s your telephone book?”
“Why? Who’re you calling?” She was getting angry with Jack.
“A few hospitals and the police. Just to put my mind at ease,” he grumbled. “What else did Carla say to Michael yesterday?”
“Nothing! What else did you say that makes you so damn sure Michael’s gone off and blown his brains out!”
“Nothing at all! It’s just a feeling I have, dammit!”
They looked sheepishly at each other, bewildered over losing their tempers.
Laurie made sandwiches and tea in the kitchen while Jack used the telephone at the other end of the apartment. There was nothing like the spectacle of somebody else carrying your own fears to their logical, ludicrous end to make you understand how ludicrous those fears were in the first place. It was ridiculous, she thought. It was comical: poor old Jack fumbling out a description of the pompous little twinkie who had probably gone straight from a one-night stand to his first round of visits to real estate brokers. Jack used the strong, masculine voice he used on the phone with editors and publicists, and Laurie was able to hear him from around the corner.
“White Caucasian male, twenty-three, brown eyes, curly brown hair in an expensive haircut, last seen wearing gray slacks and a white dress shirt, white socks, and black tie shoes. That’s what he usually wears anyway. And a navy suit jacket. No, no distinguishing marks.”
All that was needed to complete the comedy, Laurie told herself, was for Michael to mope into the apartment while Jack was reducing his corpse to a current gay stereotype.
7
MICHAEL HAD SLAMMED THE door hard when he left the apartment, letting slip out the anger he had hidden from the women.
Lying assholes. Greedy bitches. Dykes. The anger filled his head as soon as he was out the door. They thought he was too stupid to see around their clockwork smiles and sagely folded hands. They thought he wouldn’t see they only wanted Clarence’s place all to themselves. Selfish cunts. This was what Jack had been warning him about. Michael knew it the moment the little businesswoman tossed away the flowers he bought her. Why had he bought the pigs flowers?
He was too angry to wait for the elevator, too tempted to rush back inside and tell them what he really thought of their phony concern, like warm spit—he rushed through the door marked Exit. He had carefully hoarded his anger, smiling into their smiles, as cunning as they were, refusing to let them think for a second they could hurt him. They didn’t hurt him; they disgusted him. The bleak stairwell banged with his angry hard-soled shoes. If he had shared his anger with them, they would have lied more concern, crawled into his head and tried to argue him out of what he was feeling. They only wanted him out of Clarence’s apartment. They only wanted him out of the picture.
It was early evening outside. Above the tattered trees of Riverside Park, the river and sky were still light. Up the hill toward Broadway, streetlamps sputtered on and slowly glowed brighter, washing out the remaining daylight, prematurely turning the evening into night. The air was still mild, but the mixed light suggested winter. Michael stood before the building he had thought was his home and tried to decide which way to go. He walked up the hill into the gloomier light.
Liars, bitches, dykes.
But it was difficult to keep his anger pure. His use of words Clarence had hated no longer stung with the same righteousness. When his anger with the women began to falter, even a little, Michael could sense another emotion beneath it, a feeling or fear he didn’t want to feel, something like what he had touched last night in Connecticut.
He had to be angry, he told himself. They wanted to get rid of him; he reminded them of Clarence. They wanted to forget Clarence. Only Michael remembered. And maybe Jack. But he remembered Jack crawling over his feelings that afternoon and how he had thought, “At least the women understand and respect my grief.” He had been fooling himself when he thought that. He must have known he was fooling himself, because he realized the women wanted him out even before they started. Jack looked good now only in comparison to the women.
Michael was surprised to hear that Jack had said he could live with him, if necessary. But even that made sense the more Michael thought about it, remembering Jack’s claim he missed Clarence as much as Michael did, that he had even gone to bed with Clarence. The fat, horny old critic. He was faking this great grief they had in common as a ploy to get Michael into bed. That was why he sat on the bed and crawled all over Michael’s grief. It would be repulsive, like fucking a beached whale. Michael had been too trusting of Jack to even suspect such a thing, until now. He had trusted all of them, thought they were his friends, thought they still loved Clarence. But here they were, the women seizing Clarence’s apartment, Jack making a play for Clarence’s lover. They were vultures. Michael could be righteously angry and safely above any fears about himself.
With the buildings blocking out the sky and the street lit by shop windows and a river of headlights, Broadway looked sunk into night. Mindless office workers poured out of a subway entrance. Grim mothers rammed strollers full of babies and fancy lettuces through the crowd. Derelicts still stood on the corners and sat on the benches out on the median, annoying Michael with their greasy looks and the idea of their smell and pleas for sympathy. Winter would soon clear them off the streets.
The cool-edged air reminded Michael of school, and he missed the way life had been organized into classes and assignments. The furious neighborhood reminded him of Clarence. Here was the video store where he and Clarence rented movies. Here was the newsstand where they bought their Sunday paper. Here was a young woman walking one of those big baggy dogs Clarence said looked like children dressed up in dog costumes—Akitas. This was their neighborhood, Michael’s home. How could the women so coldly ask him to move out? Michael’s anger with the women changed into sorrow for himself.
He was standing alone at a corner, waiting for the light to change, when the shape of a derelict asked him something, then asked him again and Michael finally looked at the man. It was a blue-faced black in a soiled trenchcoat. He didn’t look much older than Michael, until he smiled and showed a mouthful of splayed teeth.
“Sir, sir, ’scuse me, sir?” He spoke very rapidly. “I’m one of the homeless, sir, and I won’t lie to you, I do need money, but I don’t want you to think I’m asking for a handout or charity, I have too much pride for that.”
The media gave these people so much attention they now had an identity and rubbed your face in it. Michael doubted they read the newspapers; seeing the headlines would have been enough.
“I want to give you something of value in exchange for your money, sir, because I have too much pride to pan-handle. Now you give me a quarter, fifty cents, a dollar, whatever amount you choose, and in exchange I guess your age and weight.”
Michael had never heard this approach. “And if you guess wrong, you’ll give me back my money?”
The man smirked as if Michael were crazy. “Of course not.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point is I keep my pride and still get myself some bread.”
Michael looked away as he reached into his pocket and found a couple of quarters. He had to get away from the man, and only money would break the creepy bond the man had forced on him. “Here. I don’t want to know my age and weight.” He dropped the money into the man’s hand and stepped off the curb, but not before feeling his fingers brush a cold, rubbery palm.
He reached the other curb, trying to shake the feeling from his hand. He had no business feeling distressed by the encounter. The junkie had suckered a little pity from Michael, that was all. But something lingered in Michael’s hand, like a queasiness in the joints. He had to get off Broadway and away from these
people.
He crossed Broadway and walked east, down a street that felt treeless and deserted despite a handful of wiry trees and a couple walking their dogs. Accordions of brownstones were squeezed between granite-faced apartment buildings. Here and there in the dead stone peeked windows full of yellow light and comfortable furniture or shifting blue light and television sets: people’s homes. They were oblivious of how cruel life could be for those who had no home, like Michael. He paced, listening to the angry click of his shoes. He touched his anger with the women again and drew back from it, as if from a broken tooth. It no longer seemed as solid, no longer promised to protect him.
He saw that he was approaching Columbus and realized where he was headed. He shouldn’t want to go there tonight, but he felt too vulnerable to return to the apartment. He did not want to stay alone either, not with the emotions creeping up on him. He stepped into an Asian market on the corner and bought a pack of Winstons. Outside, he adjusted the hair on his forehead and flattened the collar of his jacket in a darkened window full of knives, then went a few doors down and entered the bar.
Immediately there was a numbing roar of conversation and music. A rock video played on the monitor overhead, and people talked loud to make themselves heard. There were oxford cloth shirts, a scatter of important neckties fresh from offices, and several faces still glowing from the swimming pool or gym. It was early yet, and people had stopped here on their way home. The place had the atmosphere of a college reunion for a class that had graduated only a few years ago. Even the men in their thirties radiated college, confidence, health, and promise. Michael saw a pack of narcissistic guppies who didn’t know life as deeply as he did.
In Memory of Angel Clare Page 11
