Comfort and Joy

by Jim Grimsley

  "I think I'll do that." He headed for the bench press.

  My lover made Christmas dinner. He remembered what Dorothy had said while he showered in the on-call suite one floor below, stashing his gym bag in the locker and dressing in scrubs. Taking a deep breath, running a hand through his hair to get the look of it just right, he spoke to the face in the mirror. "Whatever happens, I'm fine," he said. "Whatever happens."

  The wait for the elevator seemed endless, but when he entered the car a wave of dread engulfed him. At the outer door to the office suite in which he would either find or not find Dan, he took a deep breath. Let him be here, he thought, let this be over. The other voice attempted to intercede as well, to say, no, not yet, you haven't planned what you're going to say, wait a while, but Ford placed his hand flat on the door and pushed.

  The secretarial office lay empty, desk clean of paper, and one of the inner offices, darkened, bore witness to the quiet of the day. But the second of the inner doors opened onto a well-lit room, and Ford could see window blinds and the fragments of a light court beyond. On a table, at right angles to a desk, sat a personal computer, screen facing the desk's occupant. Ford watched the doorway, the corner of the desk, his fear rising. He should announce himself, but he could find no voice.

  Dan called from the office, "Hello, I'm in here."

  The fullness of sound touched Ford from many angles at once. He found he had been holding the door open all this time and released it to close behind him. He cleared his throat and said, "It's Ford McKinney. I'm here to see you, if you have a minute."

  Silence.Followed by the sound of a chair releasing weight.

  Dan's shadow crossed the doorway, paused there. Dan himself emerged a moment later.

  He stood in the doorway. Taller than Ford remembered, though not as tall as Ford. Watching Ford with an expression neither cold nor warm, a simple blank. "This is a surprise. I didn't expect to hear from you, after your note."

  Ford fought off breathlessness and leveled his gaze to meet Dan's. "I'm sure you didn't. Can I talk to you for a minute? Are you busy?"

  A telephone buzzed. Dan turned to face it, then turned to Ford and watched him as the buzzing continued. "Yes, I can talk to you." He turned again into his office. "Please come in."

  The phone continued to ring, then stopped. Dan folded his hands and looked at Ford. "I got your note. Is there something you need to add to it?"

  Ford flushed, feeling his heart beat harder. "I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to write."

  Dan shrugged. "I don't know about that. If you were going to cancel, a letter was as good a way as any. A lot better than doing it in person."

  The blunt, unforgiving words collided with the image of innocence, leaving Ford speechless. The rising of steam through convector pipes covered the silence. Finally Ford said, softly, "No, that's not what I meant," drawing a long breath, forcing himself to look Dan in the eye, to show some of what he felt. "What I mean is, I got scared. I wanted to take you to dinner, but I got scared. I was sorry later. But it was too late to do anything about it."

  "You could have called me. I would have been glad to let you change your mind."

  "I did. But your secretary said you had already gone home for Christmas. I called you the Friday we were supposed to go to dinner." A flush still heated his face, and he was beginning to feel like a fool. "I called you at home, too. The phone rang for a long time. I guess you don't have an answering machine."

  "No," Dan said, "I don't," and for the first time his expression softened. He studied the desktop. With sudden understanding, Ford said, "You were there, weren't you."

  Dan's face shimmered from its cool control to another expression, and Ford saw in that other face the man whom he wanted to reach.

  "I wish you had answered."

  Dan shrugged. "I wish you hadn't written the letter."

  Beneath the cool voice lurked another, and Ford answered. "I'm sorry I did. I already said that."

  "Well, you might have to say it again."

  Outside, in the light court, dying breezes tossed potato chip bags idly on the roof below. Ford said, "I'll say it as often as I have to."

  "Why? What do you want?"

  He would never have guessed from the brittleness of Dan's tone that this same voice could soothe. Ford concentrated on the face he had glimpsed, the softness he had reached for a moment. "I want to convince you I'm not a jerk so maybe you'll agree to go to dinner with me tomorrow."

  Dan absorbed this. "What will that prove? That you're really okay, that you're not a jerk, like you said? And that's it?"

  "What do you mean, that's it?"

  "We go out to dinner, and that proves you're an okay guy. But what about me? Am I okay?" His voice had begun to tremble, but he quickly brought it under control. "I already know you're not a jerk, I don't care about that. One stupid note doesn't make you a jerk. But I don't want to go out with you because you feel sorry for me, or because you feel sorry for something you've done."

  Ford stepped closer, sat on the desktop, nearer than before, and when Dan turned each could feel the heat of the other. They watched each other for a while. Ford wet his lips. "So you'll let me take you to dinner," he said quietly. "Tomorrow."

  When Ford went on duty in the Pediatric Emergency Clinic, he focused his concentration. The work absorbed him completely through the day. Near evening, realizing the time, he hurried upstairs for a shower and change of clothes. Dorothy Ballard joined his downward elevator ride, entering on the thirteenth floor and greeted Ford with the carefully casual tone used by medical students when addressing their hierarchical elders.

  "You don't look like you're just getting off thirty hours," she said, "you must have plans for tonight."

  "I do," Ford said. "I'm going to dinner with a friend. I've been looking forward to it all day. You headed home?"

  "Yes," Dorothy flexed her shoulders, "I'm going to spend the evening with my lover for a change."

  The elevator stopped, bounced a little, and the doors opened. The two looked around the cab as if it had suddenly become precarious, then laughed.

  He found Mr. Franken still in his office, the partly open door revealing several other men in dark suits as well. Dan looked up from a large, bound report and set down his yellow highlighter after carefully capping it. He tried to move casually and to mask his delight, but Ford could see the changes in his face. Ford asked, as a greeting, "Did your secretary tell you I stopped by this morning?"

  "She spelled your name McKenzie but I figured out who you were. She said you just came to say hello, but I was a little afraid something had come up."

  "McKenzie," Ford said, laughing softly. "That's pretty good."

  "Ms. Vaughn's eyes aren't that good," Dan said.

  "She sure scared me to death this morning." Gesturing toward Franken's office, Ford asked, "Can you go?"

  In the dim, quiet parking garage, Ford felt Dan's physical presence acutely. Dan seemed calmly aware of this, but his face betrayed little. "Nice car. I like the smell."

  "The smell?"

  "Leather seats."

  "It's a good car. My dad drives one."

  "Is your dad in Atlanta?"

  "No. My folks are from Savannah. So am I, I guess. Though after this Christmas I don't know. You?"

  "North Carolina. From the backwater, way down east, where they grow tobacco."

  "You must have lived in Atlanta for a while. You've been around Grady since I've been there."

  "Sometimes it feels like I've been at Grady forever," Dan said, with a slight scowl. "But it's just five years. That's about how long I've lived in Atlanta. I like it here, I guess."

  Ford had maneuvered to the down ramp and drove through the open gate. "So do I. Better than Savannah, I think. But that's not supposed to happen."

  "Savannah boys grow up to be Savannah men, don't they? Something to do with evolution of a higher order of being."

  "Do you know much about Savannah?" Ford asked.

&nbs
p; "I was there for a while, once. A couple of months. I was in New Orleans longer. It's the same way there."

  "I was in New Orleans once, when I was a kid. Before I was old enough to remember much about it. We went on a steamboat ride. And we ate seafood I didn't like. And I didn't like the French Quarter because there weren't any rides. That should give you some idea how old I was."

  He navigated toward the expressway. Dan nested in his winter coat, surrounded by the dim of winter evening, by Ford's low-slung coupe and by the highway monuments of downtown Atlanta. Enormous bridges, loops and rivers of prestressed concrete, dressed steel beams, and arcs and torrents of masonry dropped shadows across the windshield. Dan's awareness moved from shadow to shadow; he leaned forward to look up at the sky, his face catching the low light. Ford found himself watching, at odd moments.

  "You drive well. Do you like this car a lot?"

  "What do you mean, a lot?"

  "Do you drive it a lot, do you take it out in the country? Does it mean as much to you as a horse to a cowboy?"

  "No," Ford chuckled. "I like to drive it but I hardly ever get to. Why are you making fun of my car? Do you think it's ostentatious?"

  "It's certainly conspicuously consumptive." Dan crossed his arms and inspected the interior once again. "But I don't think it's offensive. Maybe it's just the smell of the leather, maybe that's what reminds me of cowboys."

  "I don't think I ever reminded anybody of cowboys before," Ford said.

  "I bet you have, it's just that nobody ever told you about it."

  Ford steered through traffic, and Dan smiled faintly. Ford said, "It's a flattering image, anyway. Are you at all curious as to where we're going?"

  Easy silence followed as the automobile cruised past buildings too new to have either name or reputation. Into a side street the car turned, and Ford parked.

  The restaurant, a converted bungalow, nested behind twin cedars, each tall and full based. A brick path led them to the dwarfed house. In summer the patio in front, shaded by an old pecan tree, housed outdoor tables, but these were cleared since the winter cold rendered them useless. Leaves beat across the red tile, tumbled by sharp wind. Ford found himself remembering his last date here with Haviland Barrows, which had taken place at a table in a bay window in what had once served as the parlor of the bungalow. His restlessness that night had been evident to Haviland, and when she asked him about it, the whole long conversation leading to their breakup began. Tonight, standing in the small foyer waiting for the owner, a polite Frenchman, to seat them, Ford wondered if this gesture, this dinner, were truly the end of that cycle.

  As they were about to be seated, Ford stood, blankly eyeing the neat arrangement of china and silver, then turned to the owner. "Could we have the window table in the parlor? I'd prefer that one, now that I think about it."

  The owner assured him the table was available and led them through low-ceilinged rooms to the front of the house. Dan walked ahead of Ford to the table, Ford watching him. The man moved with a precision that approached grace; but also with undeniable softness, a trace of effeminacy.

  Ford savored newness. He sipped a drink and studied the menu while Dan cradled a tall wine glass in one hand. They ordered from a small, neat, mustachioed man. Dan accepted Ford's recommendations on most items, folding the menu. He considered the wine. "I can't drink more than this. Unfortunately. If I'm going to rehearse tonight. I'm having trouble remembering the words to my songs. I do three songs in this show."

  "You sing other places too? Other theaters?"

  "Sometimes. I also act sometimes, but I'm not very good at it. It's something to do besides push paper at Grady.

  I grew up singing in the choir. At least I joined the choir once my family started going to church. One of the times when my parents were trying to save themselves."

  The tinge of sarcasm in the tone and the sudden hardness of Dan's expression surprised Ford. He asked what Dan meant by saving themselves, and Dan answered, coolly and with that same distance, that his mother and father had spent eighteen years fighting, with time out to regroup every couple of years. During time-out they attended church passionately, prayed on their knees in their bedroom every night before going to bed, taught Sunday school classes and Baptist Training Union sections, and generally pursued a path toward whatever salvation they could thus earn. Dan told the story easily, not as information that was difficult to give, but articulated quickly, in an offhand way. As if he had been merely an observer all those years.

  Throughout, Ford was struck by the ease with which Dan spoke, no matter what the subject, and by the liveliness of his mind. Surrounded by the flux of Dan's charm, Ford found himself free to talk as well, and he told, without any forethought, the story of Christmas and the coming Atlanta summit during which he and his parents would hash out the subject of his marriage. He talked about his mother's coolness at the altar of family photographs and the sudden return of her kinder self at the moment of his departure. "The whole visit was like an essay on why I should marry well," Ford said, "and there I was, very quietly trying to tell them that I'm not the marrying kind."

  The words dropped into space before he heard them in his head. But he knew as soon as he spoke that he must have had a plan. He watched Dan carefully for response.

  Dan met his eye and said, "My mother and I got through that stage. I finally told her I was gay a few years back, and she stopped asking about my girlfriends."

  "I hate that word," Ford said.

  Dan shrugged. "There isn't another one."

  Ford conceded the point, though with an inner resistance that puzzled him. "How did your mother react?"

  Dan's face filled with gentleness. "She had been worried about me, because she knew I was keeping a secret from her. So I finally got up the guts to tell her I was gay, and she shrugged. She still doesn't like to talk about it. She hates the word 'gay' too, but I make her say it every now and then, to get her used to the idea."

  "What about your father?"

  "He's dead," Dan said.

  Something in Dan's tone warned Ford to ask no questions. Ford waited till the chill passed from Dan's features, a visible change. "I don't think my parents will react very well," Ford said. "My sister was fine. But Courtenay's just like that. We've always had to take care of each other."

  "My sister was fine about it too, when I told her," Dan said, "but she always hates it when I have a boyfriend."

  Ford laughed. Framing his next question with careful casualness. "Even the current ones?"

  Dan met his eye again. "There aren't any right now."

  Silence. After which Ford asked, "Are you sure about that?"

  Dan flushed slightly, abandoning the dinner, turning to the window. Deep emotion stirred in his face, and he spoke as if to the cedars beyond the glass. "I hope you mean that. Because I really like you. And I don't want this to be the last time I see you."

  "I feel the same way," Ford said, suddenly breathless.

  Having accomplished this much, they sat in silence, each flushed. They were jointly aware of the need to shelter this intimacy from the other couples in the restaurant. With his composure once again secure, Dan turned from the window to sip wine. "I'm going to be a wreck at rehearsal, I can tell."

  "You've only had one glass."

  Dan looked at him evenly. But the face had changed again, illuminated from within by what must be joy. All hardness had fled from him, and the mask was no longer a mask. Ford said, "I could pick you up after rehearsal."

  "You'll be asleep."

  "I could wake up. For that." Swallowing.

  The moment receded, Dan touching his fork again, and Ford realized clearly that Dan controlled the distance between them, that he had closed a gate which had stood open a moment before. "Not yet." Dan seemed momentarily afraid. "I'd be a fool to say yes. Until we've had more chance to talk."

  "I can wait," Ford said, heart sinking at little. "I don't mind. But I promise I won't hurt you."

  "It isn
't you." The mask returned, secure and implacable. "It's me."

  "What about you?"

  "Let's leave it at that for right, now." Voice uncertain. Brows knit together.

  "I don't want to leave it at that. I want you to tell me what's wrong."

  Dan froze with the fork nearly to his lips. A slight shudder passed through him, and he set the fork at rest at the side of his plate.

  As suddenly as the space of that small gesture the gentle man vanished and a mocker inhabited his face. "All right. I may as well say it. This has probably gone on long enough, anyway." Dan was no longer able to look Ford in the eye, and trembled. "I have hemophilia. You know what that is."

  "Of course I do." Ford was numbed. "I've treated hemophiliacs before. Type A?" Trying to keep his voice even and calm, trying to betray none of the fear that gripped him in the pit of the stomach.

  Dan's smile was heartless. "Yes. Less than one percent activity." Taking a long breath. "You know why I'm telling you that, don't you? You know what that means?"

  "No," Ford said, looking out the window, hardly able to see the cedars in the dark. "No, I don't."

  "All right. I'll spell it out for you. I'm HIV positive. I have been for years." Voice trembling. "It's really funny. I guess 'funny' is the right word. I've had two lovers in my life. Two. But I've had blood from thousands of men. In my veins."Silence. Senseless noise from wherever they were, whatever place this was. Dan's voice, softer. "I'm sorry, Ford."

  The next moments passed in a jumble, and Ford was never sure exactly how they got out of the restaurant and into his car. He drove through the clean, well-kept Buckhead neighborhoods with Dan rigid beside him. Ford had never seen anyone under such terrible self-control, as if at the least move Dan would shatter into shards. Hardly a word passed between them.

  Ford parked near the theater and turned, but Dan had already swung open the door. "I'll call you," Ford said, and Dan paused to let him know he had been heard. Dan faced him for an instant. Something desolate in his expression. He started to speak and then shook his head. In a moment he had vanished altogether.