Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  “London. Just for four days.” He grimaced, as if to reassure Steven he wouldn’t be having any fun. Then Margaret put an arm around his shoulder and led the two new arrivals into the fray. As Steven lumbered back to the kitchen, he saw the laser look in Sonny’s eyes, picking up on the unavailability of Ted. Steven let the swing door shut behind him and leaned his forehead against the refrigerator. He didn’t want to hear about anyone going anywhere, which was why he stayed out of the office. Shaw Travel mocked him now with all its promise of freedom, the paradise beaches and Gold Card souvenirs. For Steven travel was over. He’d become a walking bad advertisement, like a misspelled sandwich board.

  He was lousy at getting surprised too. Ted Kneeland had been a friend of Victor from the prehistoric time before Steven. Victor’s furious loyalty had always kept a place for Ted, long after they hadn’t a thing in common, save having been twenty-two. Ted cried the loudest at the funeral, practically writhing on the floor, offending Steven mightily. He’d been invited tonight only because Steven needed a man as ripe and simple as Sonny. Mark Inman was something else entirely—Steven’s polar opposite, tough, superior, predatory. From the very first meeting years ago, the two of them had bristled and backed off for good.

  The door swung open, and Dell slipped into the kitchen, vacant-eyed with boredom. Steven opened the fridge and tried to look focused on dinner. Dell laid a mild hand on his host’s arm. “So who’s the beauty?” he asked, squeezing Steven’s biceps. Dell was the resident masseur, patting his friends like Labradors.

  “Friend of Vic’s. Used to be a model.”

  Dell nodded. “Creep. And the big shot?”

  “Mark’s in television. Major heartthrob. Eats gorgeous men for breakfast.”

  “Another creep. How come he’s still alive?”

  “Dell, don’t wish it on people.”

  The other man shrugged in his mottled shirt, a smile playing in his hawk’s eyes. He ran a hand through the stiff brush of his black hair and sauntered across to the sink. He didn’t seem bored at all anymore. As he reached for the phone, he said, “Gee, Steven, you’ll have to give me this recipe.” Steven turned to see him staring at the mess of raw vegetables in the sink, blotched here and there with the crimson of Steven’s blood. “HIV salad. Looks scrumptious.”

  Dell punched in a number. Steven had a sudden vision of the women walking in, all their hard-won reasonableness collapsing in the face of a viral bloodbath. He walked over and turned on the tap, using the spray attachment to rinse the blood from the greens. Beside him Dell spoke into the phone in a surly voice: “Yeah, is Mother Evangeline there? Well, tell her there’s a bomb in her church.” Steven stared at Dell. “It’s set to go off in the morning. During the sermon.”

  Steven reached over and slammed the cradle. “What the fuck are you doing?” he growled.

  “I can’t help it, I’m a phone addict. When do we eat?”

  “It’s not funny. Go be a sociopath in your own house. I’m not going down the drain with you.”

  Dell was bored again. He bent to the oven and pulled open the door, peering into the raft of lasagna. Steven shoved the flat of his hand against Dell’s shoulder, not even managing to rock him off-balance. Then he cuffed the younger man on the side of the head, so that Dell turned with a grin and hunkered into a crouch. They faced each other like stupid warriors, Steven having the weight advantage by thirty pounds. The oven was still open, pouring waves of Italian heat into the room.

  “That’s it, Steven,” taunted Dell. “Let’s have a little rage.”

  He started to bob in place, darting a hand for a quick slap to Steven’s cheek. Then ducked and landed a soft punch to his belly, which set Steven to roaring like a grizzly. He caught Dell’s head under his arm and wheeled them both in a circle, crashing against the counter. A crock of wooden spoons spilled over onto the floor. Dell yelped playfully, goading Steven on. They swung like a single beast, Dell grappling to yank Steven’s hair. When Margaret glided in, Steven was trying to butt Dell’s head against the refrigerator. Steven blinked at Margaret, panting now with exhaustion, and Dell slipped out of the armlock and stood up. He kissed Steven on the cheek and grinned at Margaret: “This is what we call safe sex.”

  “I guess Victor did all the cooking,” she observed distractedly, pushing up her harlequin sleeves and making for the stove to rescue her casserole. “Why don’t you both go out and … beat someone else up. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Steven says I should be nice to you,” declared Dell cheerfully. “Everyone’s not the enemy, right?”

  “Oh, so you’ve decided to woo me now.” She laughed with wonderful carelessness. “Really, it’s not necessary. I actually sort of like you the other way. Now go play.”

  She made a shooing gesture with one hand as she reached for a pot holder with the other. Dell beamed at her, blew another kiss at Steven, and headed back into the living room. The swing door swung like a saloon’s, but Steven didn’t follow. He stared at Margaret’s back as she lifted the lasagna to the counter. He tried to block the thought of Victor, easy as a gymnast, charging around the kitchen cooking three things at once for a Monday-night supper, and tried not to hate Margaret for bringing it up.

  He looked down at the floor and saw drops of red splashing like a bad Catholic joke. He held up the bleeding thumb and choked Margaret’s name. She turned with a frown between her eyes to see her boss cocking his thumb in the air, forlorn as a hitchhiker. “Help,” gasped Steven, for the thousandth time. And she moved swiftly to cradle him in her arms, he who was so lost and far from home, unanchored and alone, who would never again want a ticket anywhere.

  Mark Inman, former boy and TV star, thought they were all assholes, but he wasn’t proud of the thought. Though he had enough perks to choke a horse—car phone, half-acre granite desk, personal trainer—he’d just had a whole day of being abandoned and unloved. This despite two dozen calls from people who fawned and kissed the hem of his garment, even despite the fact that the glittering Ted Kneeland was crazy in love with him.

  Mark himself was good-looking in an offbeat way, with nothing studied about him unless that was the studied part. Ted Kneeland called him a Jewish jock by way of body type, but at thirty-eight Mark had lost a certain edge, so you couldn’t tell anymore what sport it was he’d played. Not out-of-shape exactly, he had a sort of arrogant indifference to the Renaissance bronze his body used to be. He had been a boy so long—decades—that when he grew up at last it was with a vengeance. In any case Mark did not require himself to be beautiful at all, as long as he got his share from men like Ted.

  Mark didn’t simply work in television. He was much higher up than that: chief executive officer of a company whose sole product and brand name was one Lou Ciotta. Lou was the crown jewel of the NBC Wednesday lineup—34 share—and no magazine went to bed without an update on him. He couldn’t even divide his coke into lines without the input of manager, lawyer, publicist, but all of these were so many phone calls stacked in the airspace over Bungalow 19 on the Burbank lot. The bungalow was Mark Inman’s starship. Input was one thing; the decisions were Mark’s.

  On Saturday the ninth of September, Mark was invited to a screening at the Academy, two black-tie affairs in Beverly Hills, and a power dinner at the crenelated house of a great white shark. He had canceled all of them at four o’clock, so he was batting 0 for 20 on the week’s invitations. Ted, of course, had not expected to attend a single one, since Mark was not permitted to be so openly gay. No couples in double tuxes. Ted was accustomed to seeing Mark only late at night, when love was all the business left to attend to. Yet Mark had canceled none of it tonight to be with Ted. On the contrary, Ted would have been on his way out even if this awful week had never happened. Regrettably Ted didn’t understand the finer points: he still thought they were made for each other.

  Over a beer Mark listened sullenly to the china doll swathed in Armani. “The mall people have discovered Rodeo Drive,” observed Ray Lee omino
usly, bravely filling the gap with Margaret and Steven away in the kitchen. Understandably Ray overcompensated, since the four other men in the room stuck to monosyllables, stalking one another with their eyes, and somebody had to talk to poor Lynn Heller. On opposite sides of the fireplace, Ted Kneeland and Sonny jostled like thoroughbreds pawing their stalls. Dell Espinoza, sunk in an easy chair, continued to look as if his pockets were full of explosives. The social fabric was stretched very thin by the time they got the call to come to dinner.

  They all moved intently toward the dining room, breaking off conversation. Margaret had whipped together a bloodless salad and garlic bread in minutes, so the questionable lasagna was buffered on all sides. Everyone laughed when Steven swore he would never entertain again, even Margaret who believed him. They grazed around the table, a shred of manners surfacing at last as they helped one another to bread and olives. With their plates for ballast they moved outside to the brick terrace, which floated along the brow of the hill above the white-flecked tide of the city.

  Somehow they fell into little groups that worked. Dell and Lynn straddled the chaise longues under the sycamore, its dry leaves rattling softly. Nearby Sonny sat cross-legged on the bricks beside a wooden bench on which Ray Lee perched primly, plate between his knees. Sonny rambled animatedly about his splintered youth, the nuclear exchange with his father that put him on the road at seventeen. Charmed though Ray was by the story, it was told for Ted Kneeland’s sake, who slouched against one arm of the bench and talked to Margaret about poor Steven and how he was getting on. Margaret lied and swore there had been a noticeable turnaround.

  Which left Mark Inman standing half in, half out of the dining room, poised on the brink with his pasta rapidly cooling. He seemed to survey the others, making sure they were all engaged but not committing himself. As if he were trying to choose the “A” conversation, or as if he had one ear cocked for a phone call that would draw him away from the place entirely.

  Steven hardly noticed that Mark was waiting, as he put together a mechanical plate of food he didn’t want. He was actually thinking about the two remaining Mud Pies in the freezer, but that would have to wait till later. He poured himself a glass of Finnish seltzer and turned toward the terrace doors, only to have Mark pivot neatly and smile at him. “Why don’t we eat in here?” he asked conspiratorially. “I like to see what I’m putting in my mouth.”

  “Oh, sure.” Steven gestured vaguely for Mark to take a chair, but instinctively he looked outside, as if longing for reinforcements. Steven sat down lightly on a chair opposite Mark. He poked at his pasta and took a guarded bite. For a moment he thought they were going to be lucky and not have to speak at all. Steven relied on other people’s bouts of uncomfortable shyness in his presence.

  But then Mark rolled his shoulders and stared at Steven’s thumb. “I’m sorry I never wrote you about Victor.”

  “Mm,” replied Steven mildly, on automatic pilot. “After all, it’s not like we were friends.”

  “No, it was chickenshit of me. He was a really sweet man. I should’ve—” Mark stopped mid-sentence, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t bear his own inadequacy.

  Suddenly Steven felt weary and annoyed. “Don’t worry about it, Mark. We had all kinds of people around. Besides, you hardly even knew him.”

  Mark glanced up bewildered. “But we—” And he stopped again, but this time Steven got it. He stared blankly in Mark’s gray eyes till Mark looked away, visibly squirming. “It was ten years ago. I thought you knew.”

  Before Steven. As if Ted Kneeland weren’t bad enough, his deeply tanned presence teasing Steven with all the summers of Victor’s twenties. Why was it he’d never been jealous of Victor’s past during all their eight years together, and now he was? He couldn’t even remember asking Victor anybody’s name from the deep past. Ten years ago Steven still lived in Boston, being tormented by a man who was half Portuguese and half crazed. Nino: faceless now, a character in a book Steven never quite finished. Who cared about ten years ago?

  But Mark was clearly mortified. There was something almost endearing about the deep flush that washed across his face. He was not someone who ever had to back down in a business deal, and his temper was legion in the close quarters of Bungalow 19. It was other people who did the wincing and the flinching. Yet even as Mark struggled to frame an apology, Steven stood up, set his plate down, and walked away through the front hall.

  Mark blinked after him, feeling stunned and ridiculous. He glanced outside to the group on the terrace, to see if anyone had noticed his appalling gaffe. But everyone was happily engaged in dinner chitchat, and Mark’s gaze focused instead on Ted Kneeland, who happened to be laughing, his head thrown back, the sculpted swell of his chest taut against his shirt. A queer chill of contempt went through him. Ted wasn’t just not beautiful to him anymore; there was something almost repellent about the Perry Ellis perfection. How long had they known each other? They’d slept together for five weeks, having circled each other for some months prior. They didn’t know each other at all.

  Sonny stood up and moved toward the house to get more food, and Mark hastily bolted from the room. Once in the vestibule he decided impulsively to leave. There was no way to apologize to Steven without making more of a fool of himself. Let Ted hitch a ride with the Greek kid. Mark’s hand was on the doorknob when he heard Steven beckon from the room beyond: “Here, look at this.”

  Startled at the conspiratorial echo in Steven’s voice, Mark walked into the study. Steven was standing at the desk with a big book open in front of him. Behind his head was a poster of an Italian hill town, a blue-streaked painted cart in a meadow beside a crumbling wall. Steven smiled as if there had been no awkwardness whatever. He pointed to a picture in the album, and Mark approached and dutifully bent to look. It was a Polaroid of Victor and another man, both shirtless, leaning shoulder to shoulder and laughing.

  “Summer of ’seventy-seven, right?” asked Steven, precise as a scholar.

  Mark’s gaze widened to take in the pictures on both pages. Victor Diamond in his mid-twenties, scrappy and muscular and in constant motion, racing in and out of the camera’s frame, as if he could be caught only by accident. Mark sighed. “He looks about eighteen.”

  “Vic always looked eighteen. I mean not at the end …”

  Mark could feel the sudden shiver of tension in the man beside him, like one who had looked too long from a high place. Scrambling for something to say, Mark touched a finger to the print of the two laughing boys. “Who’s this?”

  “Why, Ted of course,” retorted Steven, recovering his balance.

  “Oh, right.” Mark recognized now the tilt of the chin, cocky and self-satisfied. More than ever he felt as if he’d never met this man. It was a case of mistaken identity, five weeks at the wrong address, like everyone else Mark ended up with. Abruptly he said, “Guy I knew just died.”

  Steven felt the empathy like a hot rush. They were standing side by side, and he reached out and touched the back of Mark’s hand where it rested on the desk. Steven retracted all his censorious thoughts, now that the pain in the hunted eyes was real. Neither man spoke for a moment, Steven’s fingertips resting on the vein that coursed from the wrist to the knuckles. He might have been taking Mark’s pulse. Finally Mark, whom no one touched except in bed, began to talk in a cautious voice.

  “Thursday night, out in Riverside. Nobody else was there but me, but it didn’t matter. He was in a coma.”

  Still Steven waited, staring down at the pictures of Victor a decade ago. He only had a fear that one of the others would walk in before the story was done.

  “I went out with him last winter,” continued Mark, then hastened to qualify that. “Couple of months, no big deal. Then I had to go away on location, and when I got back he’d split. I just thought he was gone.” The last word came out with a certain torque of bitter irony, as if “gone” were a whole other story. “Then last week his father called, because Brad left me a note. I don’t
think I was supposed to get it till after he died.”

  Silence again, and this time Mark’s hand stirred under Steven’s fingers, restless and unsure. Steven recalled the lame and useless remarks he’d heard by the thousand in the last year, how angry every attempt at comfort made him. All except Margaret, who never even tried but only asked the plainest questions, solid and dull as her lasagna. Steven said, “How old was he?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  Eight years less than Victor, five less than Marcus, three less than Ellsworth. Steven always asked how old. He read the obituaries only of men under fifty. He tried not to feel a spurt of triumph that Vic had lived longer than Mark’s friend. But then, Steven spent so much time trying not to feel that he sometimes couldn’t recall what was still allowable.

  “I’m sorry, Steve, I wasn’t even going to tell you that. You’ve had enough.”

  “I don’t mind,” Steven replied mildly. Since the night he last walked out of Victor’s hospital room, nothing surprised him anymore. Nothing was too horrible or too much a reminder. He knew they were lying in comas all over the city.

  “Nobody knows I even knew him. ‘Mark,’ he wrote, ‘thanks for a wonderful time. At least I got a taste.’”

  In one dispassionate room of his mind Steven waited for Mark to cry. It amazed him how much of the story Mark had managed without a break, and wondered now if he’d heard him right that it happened just two days ago.

  “I can’t cry,” Mark announced with a certain psychic precision, as if they were playing chess by mail. At that he withdrew his hand from Steven’s touch, restoring the equal distance, man to man. Nobody seemed to have anything safe or comfortable to say. Steven closed the album and turned to slip it back on a shelf, where Mark could see half a dozen more, leatherbound in a row. These, he supposed, were the sum of Victor’s life, organized year by year, all of it compact enough to fit in a baby’s coffin.

  Steven turned back and shrugged at Mark. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said, “but nobody calls me Steve.”