Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  Mark snorted. “You think you’re going to check out first? Excuse me—who’s got four hundred T-cells? Not this pig.”

  “Two eighty-nine,” said Steven automatically.

  “Two forty,” pounced Mark triumphantly. “So you’ll be scattering me. I was thinking the woods behind my high-school gym, since that’s where I first sucked dick, but the woods are probably gone by now. Your idea’s better. Big Sur maybe, or Puerto Vallarta. Where would you like to go?”

  “No fair. You have to pick. It’s supposed to be a surprise, because I’ll be prostrate.”

  Something about it cheered them both. Their shoulders grazed as they stood side by side, which managed to tip the scale from rue to irony. Casually Steven touched the back of Mark’s hand, right at the fork of the veins. “Why don’t we go there now,” he said, “before one of us has to go in a box?” He seemed to mean this very moment, as if they had no other obligations here.

  Mark nodded. “My place or your place?”

  “Well, November’s awfully windy on Crete. Puerto Vallarta might be terrific, and I can probably get us a shitload of discounts.”

  And then Margaret’s fiery orange Celica rounded the knoll and drew up to the curb at the foot of the stairs. She got out on the driver’s side looking drained and puffy, and no, she wasn’t exactly wearing overalls, but the gray sack dress wasn’t much of an improvement. She waved up at Steven and Mark as if she were surrendering, and Steven said, “We have to go help with the wheelchair.”

  Mark really didn’t know anything about the case at all. Steven had told him about the stroke when Ray Lee first went in, but by now it had blurred with a dozen other horror stories currently making the rounds. They headed down the stairs to Margaret’s car, the trip to Mexico dispersing into the chalk-white air. Mark and Margaret tossed off a cheery hello, as if they knew each other better than the one night back in September.

  Steven opened the passenger’s door and greeted Ray Lee, whose face was a skull with the skin stretched tight. “Well, I hope you’re hungry, pardner,” Steven said, “’cause we got enough food up there to feed an Olympic team.”

  Beaming with excitement, the Korean lifted a covered dish from his lap and offered it to his host. His thin arms wobbled. Quickly Steven relieved him of the dish. “What’s this?” he asked, lifting the lid a crack and sniffing. Then turned with a delirious grin to Mark. “The creamed onions!”

  “Pie—lookit pie,” retorted Ray impatiently, pointing over his shoulder. And there in the backseat, nested in a towel so it wouldn’t be flung around, was the mince pie with the lattice crust. Steven hooted with pleasure, and Ray Lee wagged a bony finger. “Margaret help. She did crust.”

  But he looked just awful, pasty white and perspiring, shrunken in his visored cap and jacket, frail as an old, old man. This to Steven, who’d seen him every day for weeks. Mark was speechless, saucer-eyed, even as he shook Ray’s wasted hand in greeting. Margaret had meanwhile flipped open the trunk and dragged the wheelchair out, expert as a stevedore. She wheeled it round to the passenger’s side, and Mark and Steven stood back as she coaxed and gently tugged the Korean from the car.

  He groaned once as he leaned against her, more in frustration than in pain, then collapsed in the chair, panting as if he’d just run up the mountain. Margaret stooped and placed his feet one by one in the footrests, grunting like an overworked nurse but every moment tender. She stood up, swiped a straggle of hair from her brow, and nodded at the two men. “Okay, guys, you take it from here.”

  She relieved Steven of the creamed onions and ducked in the back to retrieve her bag and the pie. Steven hadn’t exactly worked out the logistics here. Sputtering at Mark, not quite making a sentence, he gestured at the chair and then the flight of steps, indicating they would carry him up. On either side they hunkered down and grabbed the seat bar just in front of the wheel and then the handle behind Ray’s head.

  “Wait,” the Korean announced, and as they paused he reached in his jacket pocket and drew out the tortoise shades from L.A. Eyeworks. Carefully he put them on under the visored cap, then nodded for them to proceed.

  Steven counted to three, and they heaved. It was surprisingly light. The chair was aluminum alloy, and Ray Lee weighed barely a hundred. The tricky thing was the climb upstairs, the space too narrow between the railing and the house to accommodate both men and the chair on one step. So they had to sort of straddle sideways, Steven one step up and Mark one step down, lugging and heaving, while Ray Lee sat serene as an emperor in a sedan chair, Margaret following a few steps behind bearing offerings like a priestess.

  About halfway up Steven and Mark exchanged a red-faced look that was partly a goad, cheering each other on, and partly a ghastly SOS, as if the disease had fallen on them like a meteor. Every step got a little harder, and Steven could see the cords standing out taut on Mark’s neck. They grunted in unison, hunkered like Sumo wrestlers, and at last they reached the landing, Mark lifting his wheel over the last riser with a final burst of force that left him wheezing and panting worse than the patient himself.

  “Thank you, gentamen,” Ray Lee said, declining his head in a small imperial bow. Margaret handed him back his dish of onions and the pie, which he held proudly in his lap. Then she went around behind and made ready to push him in, waiting for Steven and Mark to catch their collective breath. They were both still reeling, but they pulled themselves together nicely, exchanging a nod of their own. Steven flung open the door and led the procession in.

  They all knew somebody sick was coming, more or less, but no one was ready for this. The moment was so frozen, five heads turning as they came in the room, that Steven swore he could see the split between the men and the women. Dell and Sonny and Andy, who all had the virus, stared at the enfeebled figure in the movable chair with a kind of disbelieving horror, to see as if in a dark mirror the place where they were bound. Yet there was something else as well, a weird fascination, as if every case was uniquely appalling, and thus another lesson in how to die. Heather and Linda winced in pain, and a terrible grief sharpened their features. Then they both looked up at Margaret, to see if they had the strength to be where she was.

  Steven started to introduce them all, but just then Heather sank to her knees beside the chair, laid her head against Ray’s arm, and began to sob. Gently he stroked her hair and made a hushing sound. The rest stood dumb while he soothed her, refusing to let her wail that she had abandoned him. But he let her cry for a while, as if he understood that she was crying for all of them there.

  Only when she was done, groping for a Kleenex in her bag, did Steven complete the rounds, so that each guest gravely shook Ray’s hand. He loved the formality and the attention, then asked for a glass of champagne. Steven looked askance at Margaret, who shrugged as if to say what the hell, and Steven dug out a pony of Mumm’s rusting in the back of the fridge.

  Margaret came into the kitchen and declared the turkey cooked to a T—for it was she who had instructed Victor in the sin of over-roasting. “Americans like their turkey dry as sawdust,” she announced to no one in particular, implying that those gathered here were devastatingly Continental. It was only three days ago she informed Steven that Richard would not be joining them for dinner. “He’s made other plans,” she said succinctly, indicating there would be no further discussion.

  Now she insisted, before they carved it, that Steven bear the bird into the living room to present it to the group in its pristine state. Which he did, eliciting a round of cheers and applause. The moment served to galvanize them all, time for the under-chefs and galley slaves to get the feast set out in the banquet hall. Steven felt a knife of pain between his shoulder blades as he tottered with the turkey to the sideboard.

  Mark was enlisted to carve, though he swore he hadn’t a clue. Heather and Linda donned their aprons and began a frenzy of potato-mashing and gravy-making. Dell and Sonny fetched chairs from all over the house, and Andy filled glasses with water and wine and rather a dro
opy countenance. Such that Margaret murmured to Steven, both in the midst of bearing tureens, “Why is the boy so melancholy? Did you break his heart already?”

  “Mm—cracked it a bit,” he replied, trying not to sound too cavalier.

  At last they had the myriad bounty lined up on the sideboard, brimming with delights. Ray Lee begged them to take a picture before it got spoiled, but Linda didn’t have a flash. They swore a group oath to memorize it in all its cornucopian glory, and then they attacked. Lining up and serving one another with relish, swords beaten to ploughshares, peaceful as pilgrims and Indians. Steven stood back with folded arms and watched them load their plates, then remembered in a flash of panic that he hadn’t put out the place cards.

  The doorbell rang as Heather was taking a great dollop of cranberry sauce, so Steven had to leave them to their own devices to seat themselves. He opened the front door, and Angela gripped his arm wide-eyed. “Tell me the truth, do I look like shit?”

  How could she even think so, drop-dead chic in the black silk dress with an alligator belt as wide as a cummerbund, a white angora cardigan around her shoulders. No, she looked fabulous, he told her three different ways, till the haunted look in her eyes began to soften. All right, she would stay. Steven was dispatched to run down to the curb to release the cab, in the process having to pay the fifteen-dollar fare.

  When he came back up, she needed coaxing again before she entered the house, a thumbnail refresher course on who was there. He sleeked her ruffled feathers and bore her in on his arm, astonished to find his guests all seated without any bloodshed. The first thing he noticed was Margaret with the embroidered shawl about her shoulders, which she’d snatched from her bag when the doorbell rang. She winked when Steven smiled at her. The gray sack was magically transformed.

  Steven had to admit, as he went round introducing Angela, that he couldn’t have seated them better himself. Ray Lee was at the foot of the table, Margaret and Heather on either side. Next to Margaret was Mark, then Linda, then Dell, then a space for Steven at the head and Angela to his left. Next to Angela’s place was Sonny, with Andy between him and Heather. No potential nuclear explosions.

  Steven commanded them to begin, then steered Angela to the sideboard. He had to coax her through every dish, for she had a terror of getting fat, despite being cocaine-thin. Steven made sure she took a spoonful of everything, taking twice as much himself. By the time they sat down, the table was abuzz with conversations one on one, punctuated by waves of praise for the food. Margaret was heavily tête-à-tête with Mark, while Heather was practically spoon-feeding Ray.

  Sonny turned from talking men with Andy to welcome Angela more warmly, his company manners as impeccable as his Ivy drag. Yet there was something else immediately, as if they caught in each other’s countenance the trace of an old memory. “I bet you’re a Gemini,” Angela said, all her shyness vanished now.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I am,” Sonny replied with a grin, clearly impressed by her perspicacity.

  She laid down the fork with which she had been pushing around her anorexic portions. She turned and looked deep in the Greek’s eyes. A passionate flush had come into her face, vivid as the expectant look he returned. “You don’t have very long, do you?” she asked in a dusky undertone. Slowly Sonny shook his head. Angela covered his hand with hers. “I knew it the minute I saw you …”

  Steven, who had been politely bobbing his head in their direction, waiting for an entrance, suddenly reached for an olive instead, avoiding by inches the New Age quicksand. Sucking out the pimento, he turned to his right, just in time to see Dell steal a glance at his watch. “Are we keeping you from something?” Steven asked in his crispest housemother tone.

  “She’s havin’ a cable telethon at seven.”

  “She who?”

  “Mother.”

  Steven swallowed his olive hard. He had been laboring under the assumption that Dell had put his obsession aside once he became a wanted man. The futility of it all was obvious to everyone. Mother Evangeline had gotten all the sympathetic press. The disks had been restored to their rightful place, and once again were spewing out weekly mailings to the faithful. Nobody ever even understood exactly what the terrorism was meant to protest. Linda smiled at Steven, thanking him effusively, as if she couldn’t quite believe that the nightmare of the last weeks had resolved itself so peaceably. For her sake Steven pretended he hadn’t heard the Mother Evangeline reference. Blocked it out, the way he blocked out Victor’s first demented phrases, locked in his mind without any door.

  He gazed around the table, satisfied that everyone was being taken care of. Ray Lee was nodding off in his chair but smiling beatifically. Then Steven looked to the right, where the dark was beginning to fall on the hillside. The sliding glass door was open about six inches. In the crack of the door lay the dog, head on his paws, nose in the room and the rest of him on the terrace. His eyes were open and staring cautiously at Steven, his nose still quivering moistly, raptured by the feast.

  Steven pointed a finger at him, ready to cry “Out!” There were limits, after all, even if everyone else had decided to befriend the beast. But Steven found he didn’t have the heart, not today. Deluding himself, of course, to think that any inch the dog had gained would ever be recaptured. Yet he had no choice. If he meant the house to be brimful of holiday cheer, everything perfect, an island in time, then he had to give a guinea to the chimneysweep.

  He stood up at his place and reached for the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. The laughter was like music to him as he drained the last of the wine into Dell’s glass and disappeared through the swing door into the kitchen. He stood for a moment dazed with satisfaction. Then he dropped the wine bottle into the wastebasket and looked around hopefully, as if it would come back to him in a second what he had come in here to get. He reached for the refrigerator door, but then pressed his head against it, between the two star magnets. “Oh Vic,” he whispered in a strangled voice, and a rush of hot tears stung his eyes.

  He was flooded for a moment by the pointlessness of it all. Stranger in his own house, wandering round the edges of this party like a ghost, no one to let him in. Even so, it wasn’t a full-fledged cry. More like losing his breath, and a sharp stab of pain in the chambers of the heart. Victor was almost palpable to him, as if that guttural infectious laugh were spilling in from the dining room, beckoning Steven back. The old life, the lost one, was all that made any sense. It tantalized him like a mirage, clinking its glasses and chattering happily just beyond the door.

  And then the door swung open behind him, and Steven turned from the fridge and quickly wiped his eyes, facing away from who ever’d walked in. If it was Andy Lakin whining with need, Steven swore he would stuff him down the disposal. But it was Mark: “Hey, pal, you need some help?”

  Steven stared at the butcher-block island, covered with pies and trifle and Linda’s pudding. In two hours they would all be out of there, and then he could go to bed for a week. “No, I was just … taking a break.”

  Mark laughed as if he understood completely, that after pulling off such a production Steven might need a breather. He clapped a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s going great. First Thanksgiving I ever had where I’m not the only fag. Except—is that guy gonna make it through dinner?”

  “You mean Ray? Jesus, I hope so. He deserves a piece of his fucking pie.”

  They both grunted in disbelief at the awfulness of the poor Korean’s situation. They couldn’t have said how close he was to the end, but closer than either of them ever wanted to be. Like the other three ticking men at the table, both had made a sort of contrary vow when Ray Lee entered the portals of the feast: not to last so long. It was the timebomb at the edge of all their plates, like some ghastly party favor, the question of checking out before it got that bad.

  “Margaret’s dead on her feet,” continued Mark, rubbing the spot between Steven’s shoulders where the muscle was tight. “She’s afraid to wish it was ov
er and even more scared it’ll just keep going.” Steven nodded, stretching his neck as the muscle unknotted, happy as a dog being scratched. “She said uh … apparently you and the kid broke up.”

  It wasn’t certain who pulled away first, maybe it was a draw, but Steven sidled out of the massage and turned to face him, brutally nonchalant. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. You have to have something to break up from. We were just—” But he couldn’t think of the word, and he stood there in a kind of half-shrug, half-flail, wishing they’d all go away.

  “I love you, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.” Steven nodded dumbly. Still his palms were open, the shrug not quite finished.

  “No, I’m serious, Steven. I really love you.”

  “Look, I don’t think this is the time,” Steven began miserably.

  “Sure it is. An hour ago you were taken, and now you’re not. I think my timing’s perfect.” Mark was somehow beckoning Steven out to play.

  “But I don’t want to be taken,” protested Steven, as petulant and stubborn as a child. “I hate my dick—ask Andy.”

  There was a bare three feet between them, yet Mark seemed to take a great stride forward as he moved to grasp Steven by the shoulders. Even as he tilted his head and planted his open mouth on Steven’s lips, Steven was thinking: he doesn’t kiss.

  For the moment Steven could scarcely process his own name. He stayed with it, tongue to tongue, as much as anything to give himself time to think. But he didn’t think, he just kissed. And when the kitchen door swung open and Margaret froze on the threshold, pulling them apart at last, Steven wanted to say it was all a mistake. “What do we need?” he demanded—slightly panting, having just come up for air, but determined to focus things back on the matter at hand.