In Memory of Angel Clare

by Christopher Bram

  He set one hand firmly on the bar and ordered a club soda. Even a beer seemed dangerous tonight. He stepped over to the wall roofed with a swatch of chain-link fence and stood between two knots of young men boasting about their jobs, one knot in publicity, the other in fashion retail, and solemnly opened the pack of cigarettes.

  A blue-eyed boy in publicity stole a look at Michael, sighed to himself, and looked away.

  Michael lit a cigarette, drew a mouthful of smoke—he never inhaled until the fourth or fifth puff—and loftily leaned against the wall to watch a busty woman do aerobics on the video monitor. There was something satisfying about being noticed when you had no interest in meeting anyone, when you were safely above all that. Michael rinsed his mouth with club soda and took another puff.

  A clip from a popular situation comedy appeared on the monitor, and everyone stopped talking to look up and watch. Between the deliberate bursts of laughter was a click of billiard balls from the back of the bar. Michael watched but never laughed. The door opened and more people entered, one of them talking very loudly.

  “So I told Terry it wasn’t love and he was just trying to blowjob his way into People—oh!” The talker stopped when he saw the silent crowd facing him; the monitor was just above the door. He quickly recovered with a mocking wave of his right hand. “My fans,” he told the two guys with him, coolly readjusted his black-rimmed glasses, then glanced up to see what everyone was watching. “These poor fags,” he wearily muttered. “Getting their wit from television.” James Teale had been weary and mocking even at Columbia, where he’d been in Michael’s class.

  Michael stood his ground and waited for James to see him.

  “As I was saying,” James went on and finished his story out of the side of his mouth while he checked out the room. When he saw Michael he drew his head back in mock surprise and lifted his eyebrows. He smoothly stepped over and stood squarely in front of him, smiling like a cat.

  “Mi-chael,” he purred, lightly mocking the name by breaking it in two. “Why what brings you here?”

  “Oh. Just needed some air.” But it was difficult to seem nonchalant when James’s whole manner made even honest expressions seem insincere.

  “I haven’t seen you here in ages. You been behaving yourself?”

  Michael had barely known James at Columbia, but he had run into him here a few times when he started visiting this bar four months ago. Beneath his constantly muted irony, James always seemed to think Michael was overjoyed to see him. “I was in Europe,” Michael told him as casually as possible.

  “How nice. But how did you manage with the dollar so puny this year? Oh yes, I forgot. You have that boyfriend to take care of you.”

  Michael had told James back in school he had a lover. Since they started running into each other here, he told him only that his lover had made a feature film, nothing else. He could not share something that important with someone like James. Nevertheless, it was odd finding Clarence still alive in James’s thoughts. “I did this on my own,” he told James.

  “Michael’s married,” James told his two friends, now standing behind him. “An older man. That was your boyfriend I met that night outside the Eighth Street?”

  “When?”

  “Back in the spring. A fat man with a beard.”

  Michael remembered and shook his head, relieved. “No. That was an acquaintance.” James had come up to him when he was in a movie queue with Jack, wearily mocked the movie they were seeing—“I’ve never heard of it so I’m sure it isn’t any good”—mocked the V-neck sweater Michael wore, ignored Jack completely, and sauntered off, fortunately without ever mentioning he knew Michael from this bar. Michael promptly told Jack they knew each other from school. “He’s your age and he’s like that?” Jack exclaimed. “Is your generation getting into pre-Stonewall retro?” But Jack knew almost nothing about gay men of any generation. James wasn’t an old-style queen; he was a minimalist. Even Michael knew that.

  “An acquaintance?” purred James, lifting his eyebrows into the pale wing of hair across his forehead. “Hmmm. Michael works so hard to be mysterious,” he told his friends. “He has to. He’s from New Jersey.”

  Michael had been worried James might mention Clarence’s movie, then remembered that wasn’t James’s style: it would have made Michael too interesting.

  One of James’s friends was looking around the room, already bored with Michael. He was a lean, moody runt with a short, casually spiked haircut and sleepy eyes. He wore a brown leather jacket over a tight white T-shirt pooched by a slight tummy. Michael found him attractive, in a blank, annoying way. The other boy had a dark, strong-jawed face and jet-black hair that receded over his temples, although he looked about Michael’s age. He stood there with his arms folded, looking at Michael and listening to James, his sealed, lipless smile breaking into a laugh every time James said anything that sounded like a joke. He found the “New Jersey” line especially funny; his laugh caught James’s attention.

  “I suppose I should introduce everyone,” James sighed. “Michael, this is Arnie.”

  The dark boy reached over James and shook Michael’s hand, then frowned as if afraid he’d done the wrong thing. His hand was moist and warm.

  “And this is Lloyd. Lloyd, Michael. Michael, Lloyd,” went James, making mock of the whole business.

  Lloyd nodded his haircut without turning to look at Michael. “What’re we doing here?” he grumbled. “I thought we were going to The World.”

  “We can’t go yet,” said James. “It doesn’t even open until ten.”

  “The World,” Michael said tonelessly, not letting on he didn’t know what it was.

  “Yeah,” James admitted with a pout. “It’s Rock and Roll Fag Bar tonight and they have good music. Sometimes.”

  “I wish they didn’t do it on a weeknight. I have to be at work tomorrow,” Arnie fretted.

  James shared a contemptuous look with Michael, although Michael wasn’t sure what they were sharing contempt over.

  “What’re we gonna do until then?” griped Lloyd.

  “We’re in a bar,” said James. “I suppose we could drink.”

  “You can. I didn’t bring enough money to stand around drinking.”

  James shared a contemptuous look with Arnie.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” said Michael. He immediately downplayed the offer with a shrug. I’ll buy us all drinks. I just got a big check from home.”

  The three immediately accepted, careful not to seem too eager.

  Michael wanted to buy them drinks, and not just for Lloyd’s sake; he didn’t find the guy that attractive. Michael just wanted some company and buying them drinks should guarantee him their company at least for another half hour. He didn’t really enjoy their company, but their impersonality and the challenge of playing their game of cool was the kind of distraction Michael needed right now.

  Michael took their requests and made two trips from the bar to bring everyone his drink: scotch on the rocks for Lloyd, sidecars for both James and Arnie—Michael thought they might be putting him on, but the bartender didn’t bat an eye—and a gin and tonic for himself. He had no fears about alcohol making him too emotional in this group.

  “What do you do, Michael?” Arnie asked, a subtle way of saying thank you.

  “Yabba, yabba, yabba,” went James. “We’re not talking about jobs or rent tonight. We’re here to have fun.”

  So nobody said anything. The four of them stood in a row against the wall and unemotionally drank their drinks.

  “Oh! I heard a wonderful piece of dirt today,” James announced. With gossip he could allow himself to sound sincere. “You’ll never guess who was listed as the correspondent in the divorce of______,” he said, naming a major movie star above suspicion. After a suitable pause, he named a less major movie star, also male, about whom there were already rumors. “Of course it’s being kept very, very secret.”

  “Wow. Really. Goodness,” said Arnie, without irony.r />
  “But how do you know?” Michael could at least assert himself against James with a little skepticism. “People can say that about anyone.”

  “Believe me. I know. This person I work with has a good friend who’s a law clerk and—” James described a complicated procedure involving divorce papers that were sealed in New York but unsealed in Los Angeles and an additional friend, this one the law clerk’s, who had a look inside. “They’re paying the wife two million dollars so she’ll keep her mouth shut.”

  It didn’t sound completely plausible, but it was too good a story for Michael to want to annoy everyone by pointing out the holes.

  “Wow. I believe it,” said Arnie. “Incredible.”

  “I’d love to see the look on Reagan’s face if he ever heard the star of his favorite movie was a fag,” said James. “Even if I did vote for him.”

  “You voted for Reagan,” Michael observed.

  “Naturally. He was the best man.” James proudly settled his glasses on his nose. “I’m not one of those fags who lets being a fag dominate his whole life, you know.”

  Lloyd snorted and derisively rattled his ice. “Who gives a shit about politics?” he muttered.

  Deciding that was the right attitude, Michael dismissed his surprise that a gay person would vote for Reagan. He had spent too much time among old homosexuals and even James’s use of the word “fag” sounded odd to him. He drank his drink and said nothing. The gin and tonic was already giving him a pleasant distance from everything.

  James told more stories about “fag” celebrities—the magazine where he worked provided him with a wealth of stories that never saw print. He luxuriated in being on the inside of the real world. Michael pretended to listen, Lloyd pretended not to, but Arnie gave James his complete, rapturous attention. Michael decided Arnie was in love with James, or at least enthralled with him. Nobody fell in love anymore. Arnie was even dressed like James, wearing a robelike cardigan sweater with the sleeves pushed up to show the unbuttoned shirtsleeves underneath. They wore different colors and patterns, however.

  Distanced by alcohol and his own silence, Michael found himself peering around the corners of each person’s cool, reading their thoughts and looking for a place for himself. Arnie had no room in his thoughts for anyone but James. James was high on holding Arnie in thrall, but he wanted Michael here as a witness to the capture. It was a role Lloyd refused to play. Lloyd’s silence and indifference to James endeared him to Michael, created a special bond between them even if it were only the mutual respect of silence. The alcohol was making Michael very quick and perceptive, he thought.

  “Want another drink?” he asked Lloyd.

  Lloyd shrugged and handed Michael his empty glass. James and Arnie had drunk only half of their sidecars, which were enormous, or Michael would’ve had to offer to buy them another round. This way he could be impersonally intimate with Lloyd.

  He returned from the bar with Lloyd’s drink and a new gin and tonic for himself. Lloyd thanked him with a brusque nod. He didn’t look at Michael, but made a friendly smile with the corner of his mouth as he took the first sip.

  That’s all you need, Michael told himself. There was no exchange of intimacy more honest and real than one guy buying another a drink. Everything beyond that was bullshit. People his age understood what was real, were smarter about that than the older generation, who needed to wade around in each other’s emotions to feel like they were friends. They only muddied things up with all their talk about feelings and guilt and concern. Michael felt very clear and solid with someone like Lloyd.

  “How do you know Teale?” Michael muttered, wanting to build on their shared indifference to James, who now filled Arnie’s ear with the rumors of a cat fight between two actresses over the love of a bisexual pop star.

  Lloyd rattled his ice again. “Through Arnie. He’s Arnie’s new boyfriend.”

  “Ah. And you know Arnie from…”

  Lloyd twisted his neck as if he had a crick in it. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

  Michael glanced over at Arnie, wondering what made him so popular. He glanced back at Lloyd and admired him for being so indifferent. It sounded terribly messy, but people Michael’s age, with their gift for keeping emotions simple and real, could handle situations that would reduce older people to nervous wrecks. “It’s great you can still be friends,” Michael told him.

  Lloyd shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I had anything else to do tonight. Hey, Arnie.” He leaned around Michael. “We gonna eat or something before we go dancing?”

  Arnie was too involved with James to hear.

  “You can see her black eye in the photo we used, if you look real hard at the makeup. What?” said James. “I thought you said you didn’t need food. That you were broke, remember?”

  “Yeah. Just asking,” said Lloyd, who shrugged again and settled against the wall.

  “I’ve got money,” said Michael. “You want to go eat somewhere?” The gin and tonics had numbed his stomach, but he remembered he hadn’t eaten since morning.

  “Nyaah. Just asking to see how long we’d hang out here. Unless you wanted to get something to eat,” Lloyd added.

  “Only if you wanted to get something.” Michael shrugged.

  “Nyaah. That’s okay. I only brought enough money to get into The World.”

  “I said I’d buy.” Michael noticed James, then Arnie listening to him. “Hey,” he told everyone, “I got a big check from home today. What if I take us all out to dinner?”

  Arnie frowned at Lloyd. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Sssssh,” went James. “Mi-chael,” he purred. “You serious?”

  “Sure. I got money to burn tonight.”

  “Well then,” James told the others. “Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s not every night one finds a sugar daddy in our midst.”

  “Yeah,” said Michael, liking the idea. “Let me be the sugar daddy.”

  “You coming with us to The World?” asked Arnie, sounding faintly guilty.

  “Of course he’s coming. He wouldn’t be a sugar daddy unless he had us all night long.” James broke into peals of giggles.

  It was perfect. He could stay out all night with these guys and never return to the apartment. “I’ll be the sugar daddy and the rest of you can be my tricks.” He hadn’t meant that to sound so nasty, but he was giddy now and could laugh at his accidental nastiness.

  James struck a pose and swung the ropy belt of his sweater as if he were a hooker. “That’s me, all right. Just a cheap trick. Oh Uncle Mikey. Can’t I have just one more drinky?” He really got into the role. “Or I know. Let’s go downtown, eat there, maybe drop into Boybar, and then go to The World.”

  “Sure. Why not?” said Michael. “That sound good to you, Lloyd?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever you people want to do,” he grumbled. “But if we’re going, let’s quit fagging around and catch a cab or something.”

  James quickly finished his drink and Arnie did like-wise. They all followed Lloyd out the door to the street, where he stood indifferently on the curb and let his friends signal for a cab, Arnie frantically waving one hand in the air like a student afraid the teacher wouldn’t call him, James holding his hand aloft with the weariness of a boy who always knew the answer. Their sweaters were lightly blown behind them by the breeze rattling through the trees. The cool air and new sounds around him made Michael more conscious of what was happening. He liked what he was doing; he liked the bit of power he gained in spending money on people he wanted nothing from in return. He tried to remember how much money he had on him. He couldn’t pull out his wallet and look, not in front of everyone.

  A cab pulled over and the four of them piled into the back. “Make room for Daddy,” cried James, pushing his boyfriend against his boyfriend’s ex so Michael could sit beside him.

  “Let’s stop at a Citibank on the way down,” said Michael. “So I can stock up and we can do anything we please.”

  “Any
thing?” James snapped directions to the driver, then went into a nasal Long Island accent to tell Michael, “We can do Boy Scouts for you. We can do swim-team-and-the-coach. Priest and choirboys will cost ya extra though.” James’s voice was nasal to begin with, so he only sounded like himself without the veneer of cool.

  The driver didn’t even glance at his rearview mirror.

  The cab stopped outside a bank on lower Fifth Avenue and Michael went in alone. The room with cash machines was empty and as bright and barren as a public restroom. Michael used his card and five-letter code and pressed buttons until the machine gave him thirty dollars, his usual withdrawal. He realized that wouldn’t be enough and started all over again, using the code to enter his savings account, where most of his money was. He seemed to be drunk, because he found himself imagining all the layers of information and memory that must be shifting around beneath the green fluorescent screen while he waited for his money. The machine tsk-tsked for an incredibly long time counting it out behind the shiny cylinder. Then the cylinder began to rotate: Michael saw a stack of bills an inch thick. He grabbed the money and tried counting the tens and twenties, which were so new they seemed coated with clay. He had to read the screen to find out how much he had in his hand: “I have just given you $500.00.”

  He hadn’t intended to take that much. Then he read what was left in his account: “$30,497.02.” Laurie was right; he’d been spending the interest and had barely touched the principal of what Clarence left him, even though it was just normal bank interest. Michael had deposited the check into his bank account and left it there, not wanting Laurie to invest it for him, not wanting to think about the money, never giving it much thought except when he withdrew the fat amount for his trip. Only when he was staring at the impossible figure on the screen and remembering where the money originated did he remember what his five-letter code meant: C-L-A-R-E. He had used the code so many times his fingers knew it as a sequence of positions on a keyboard, nothing more. How could he have forgotten?