Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  At Farmers’ Market the bus began to fill—Samoans, Filipinos, old Jews from Fairfax—and it headed down Third to downtown like a melting pot on wheels. Riders sat on all sides of Dell and the gaunt woman. No one dared to interrupt the reverie of her prayer to push aside her bags and sit by the window. As they came toward Korea-town, Dell began rubbing his hands on the thighs of his pants, to make the sweat go away. A man in the aisle beside him jostled his shoulder, but Dell smiled and didn’t lose his temper. Anger wasn’t part of it at all anymore. Anger might have veered him from the path. This was passionless, indifferent, not quite real.

  He reached to yank the cord, but somebody got there first, buzzing the driver to stop at the corner of Third and Emery Place. Dell Espinoza stood up with care, huddling his left shoulder like a slightly broken wing. He wouldn’t have bothered the woman across the aisle, but she looked up abruptly from her rosary and said, “Nice boy.”

  He fixed her with a helpless look, a hair-trigger second of doubt. “Pray for me, madre,” he said. Then the crowd in the aisle stood back for him to pass, and his face was composed again, a mask of inertia as he hurried down the steps and out of the bus. It roared away, enveloping him in a brown cloud of exhaust.

  He could see the parking lot was practically full. As he strolled along the sidewalk toward the church, he noticed that the neon sign across the portico was still lit, even in the morning sun. At the foot of the wide stone steps was a signboard, felt behind glass with tack-on letters. The text of the day was I AM THE ROCK AND THE REDEEMER. Below Mother Evangeline’s name were listed the Sunday services. Below that, in block yellow letters set off with borders, like a special on a menu, it read: “1st of the Month. Family Prayer and Breakfast. 7:30 A.M.” Nobody lingered on the steps outside, the way the young men in Morelia did, halfway in and halfway out of Mass.

  Dell opened the tall oak door, expecting a cool dank breeze, startled instead by the bright lights and stifling heat thrown off by the cable equipment. He stood in the back to get his bearings. The crowd was standing-room-only, as polyglot a mix as on Halloween. The flood of the TV lights streamed over their heads, bathing the altar and pulpit. An Asian man in a suit stood at the pulpit, wrapping his tentative English around a passage from St. Paul. Mother Evangeline, in proper white vestments, sat on a sort of Tudor throne, downstage right of the altar. Even now she was on—rapt with attention, willing the reader to stumble through and break the language barrier, turning her honey-blond head to gaze directly into the light.

  Dell was standing in a group of men who’d given their seats to the women and children. There was no way he could advance down the center aisle and get closer. Any move he made out of the shadows at the back would fix him in the light, his every gesture naked. Restlessly he scanned the baseboards, hoping the cable fed to an outlet he could disarm. And he suddenly locked eyes with the pale young man in the glasses.

  Mother Evangeline’s aide was standing slightly apart from the overflow crowd, directly beneath the control booth. As before, he had a fan of memos in his hand. Instantly he looked away from Dell, then two seconds later looked again. Kenneth, Dell remembered now, letting his own eyes drift to the front, but always homing back to the man in the shadows.

  Clearly Kenneth didn’t recognize him—dressed as a ghoul last time, disconnected from his manhood—and just as clearly the aide was cruising him this morning. There weren’t a lot of single men in the Church of Family Love, and no one dressed so raw and sexy. Kenneth looked as if he could taste the bandanna. Dell smiled lazily.

  The reader finished. Mother Evangeline rose from her throne and approached the pulpit, buoyed by the waves of applause that erupted to greet her. The cheering and clapping didn’t seem out of place in the church, perhaps because of the game-show lights. Dell reached a hand to his crotch and lightly cupped his balls, casting a sidelong look at Kenneth. The aide was beside himself, memos fluttering, a thin mustache of sweat beading on his upper lip.

  “Children of joy,” said Mother Evangeline, “let us sing the morning. The armies of righteousness grow. Today we are welcoming viewers from Durham, North Carolina, and Lawrence, Kansas. Let’s open our hearts and greet them.”

  Again the roaring swelled in the old Congregational church, like a halftime cheer, the children especially shouting with pleasure. Dell stroked the length of his dick where it lolled down the leg of his pants, pressing the fabric against it so it stood out in lurid outline. Kenneth was riveted. Meanwhile, Mother was telling the flock about her latest crusade, just completed, culminating in back-to-back appearances on Sally Jesse Raphael and Geraldo. Once more Kenneth caught Dell’s eye and nodded toward the side aisle. At first the gardener didn’t understand, not having started teasing with any goal in mind except to make Kenneth crazy. But the aide was making motions, indicating Dell should follow him.

  “Losing one election makes no difference,” Mother declared. “It only means we have to give more. Decent family people like us have had enough. Next time we’ll win—because who’s on our side?”

  “God!” they shouted like a battle cry.

  Kenneth nodded again up the side aisle, more impatient now. About halfway down were the heavy velvet drapes that separated the church proper from the offices and storerooms. The idea seemed to be that Kenneth would suck him off back there, perhaps in among the choir robes. Dell hesitated a moment more, but he had no other plans. He moved toward Kenneth, and the aide turned and strolled purposefully down the aisle.

  “I want every one of you here to choose a sinner—a blasphemer, a Communist, a sodomite. And then I want you to bombard that sinner with prayers!”

  Dell followed Kenneth a few paces behind, and no one in the congregation gave the two of them a second look, because they were all accustomed to Kenneth darting about. He reached the velvet curtains and waited for Dell Espinoza. The expression on the aide’s face was completely self-possessed. He was as casual as if he were showing Dell the way to the water cooler. When the gardener reached him, he gestured for Dell to precede him through the drapes. Dell, more courtly still, nodded humbly and drew one of the drapes aside, indicating he would follow. Kenneth swept through to the vestibule, his heart bursting with the promise of a little joy. Then Dell let the curtain fall back into place.

  And here he was at last, twenty feet from the pulpit. None of it was planned. He’d never once walked through it in his head. But he had no hesitation, walking quickly past the front pews and directly into the glare of light below the pulpit.

  “Come, all you sinners, and win with us!” exulted Mother Evangeline. Again there were cheers. She saw the man in the bandanna moving toward her, but her view was hazy because of the lights. She was used to people seized with God, stumbling forward to be reborn. The congregation was still applauding as Dell Espinoza pulled the gun from his jacket.

  The ones who saw it first, in the front pews, froze in horror, but none of them was ready to step out into television. Dell pointed the gun at Mother, who threw out her hands to stop it, praying for once in her life. He shot directly into her face, no hate anymore, no reason. The force of it flung her backward, falling against the altar. Dell could hear the voice of the crowd change from cheering to wailing in pain.

  Mother’s white robe was ghastly now, and she had no face at all, though her arms still flailed to protect it. Dell turned as the crowd surged forward, blinking into the holy light. Kenneth was lurching toward him from the left, and a hundred more from the congregation. Dell seemed perplexed, not having figured the next part out. It was really almost an afterthought that he put the gun in his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, but patients aren’t allowed to take incoming calls.”

  “Well, could I leave her a message then?” asked Sonny plaintively as he pulled on his lizard cowboy boots, the gift of a two-week trick last spring. Not everything had to be thrown away.

  “We can’t reveal the name of any patient,” replied the switchboard primly.

  “Please—just te
ll her that Sonny called, will you?”

  “I can’t confirm that the lady is here,” declared the resolute woman at Betty Ford.

  But there was something in her voice that left the door ajar, an appreciation perhaps of his burning sincerity. Sonny rushed in to fill the gap. “Say that I’m leaving on a long journey,” he declared with breathless fervor. “And when I’m finished I’ll be back. But if I’m not—if I don’t—” He couldn’t even say the words, for fear he would jinx his voyage. “Then tell her I’ll meet her the next time around.”

  “All right,” acknowledged the receptionist, gravely accepting the commission.

  Sonny rang off, convinced the message would get to Angela. He went in the tiny bathroom and grabbed up his razor and toothbrush, but as much to check himself in the mirror a final time, the last sight he would ever have of the incarnation he was leaving. He stared with cold dispassion at the end of his youth, Narcissus cured. Nothing so decadent as beauty looked back at him. For once he didn’t touch his hair or arch his brows, but turned on his heel and left cold turkey. His pair of nylon duffel bags were by the door, and he tucked his odds and ends in a side pocket and zipped it. One look around, as little sentiment as if he were exiting a Motel 6, and he stepped from the room beyond the garage into the morning of a new life.

  The dog was waiting sentry in the driveway just outside. He’d made no move to return to his old haunt under the lantana. Since Sonny let him out an hour before, he’d pissed in the bushes and come right back. One night indoors and he was hooked. It had taken him months to domesticate to the point where he’d wheedle for shelter, but he had reached that shameless place. He looked up at Sonny with beseeching eyes.

  “You don’t want me to go, huh?” Sonny asked playfully, touched when the dog trotted after him down the driveway. He went around behind the Mercedes, propped one of the bags on the bumper, and opened the trunk. It was empty except for one thing—his black canvas gym bag, which sagged open, a jumble of bicycle shorts and tank tops, sweat socks, Speedos, workout gloves, a pair of Reeboks tied to the handle. The full raw uniform of his sunlit days as Apollo.

  He reached and lifted it out, then walked over to the trash barrels at the foot of the drive. He lifted the lid and stuffed the bag in, not even bothering to root out the shampoo and moisturizer, both still perfectly good. Did it mean he planned never to exercise again, that his hero’s journey would unfold without aerobic conditioning? He didn’t really think that far. He only knew he had to dispose of the weight of that persona, so charged with being gay, like a soldier burning his combat fatigues.

  The dog sat patient beside the car as Sonny went back and hefted the duffel bags, stowing them into the carpeted trunk. He slammed the lid and grinned at the animal. “Next time we meet, you probably won’t even be a dog.”

  Steven’s eyes fluttered open when he heard the sound of the slamming trunk. He glanced over to the bedside table—8:37. Mark was deep underwater, arms across his face. Gently Steven slipped out from under the sheet and comforter. He padded naked around the bed, grabbing up the boxer shorts Mark had shed the night before. He closed the bedroom door behind him going out, then rushed across to the front door, dancing into the shorts, fearful Sonny would peel away without a wave good-bye.

  But he was putting down the convertible top, folding it like an accordion into the hollow behind the seat. “Are you trimming your sails, boy?” called Steven from the top of the steps. “Should we crack a bottle of Dom across your bows?”

  Sonny looked up startled, flushing with unexpected pleasure. He didn’t want to leave unheralded after all. “Beautiful day for it,” he declared, hearty and butch as either of his straight brothers. “You take care of yourself now, Stevie. I’m not gonna be around to watch you.”

  He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. When he flipped the ignition, filling the morning air with power, it seemed no further words would pass between them. None were needed. Sonny was already waving over his head and pulling away from the curb when Steven suddenly bolted down the stairs in his shorts.

  “Wait!” he shouted, and Sonny braked, eyeing Steven guardedly, leery of too much good-bye. Steven pointed to the dog, who sat in the driveway still, idly licking his balls. “Please—take him off my hands. I don’t need one more thing to take care of.”

  “I can’t,” protested the Greek, wishing now he had slipped away unnoticed. “He’s got his own destiny.”

  “Excuse me, but that’s a crock. He’s totally in love with you, and it’s all your fault.” Nobody else could have gotten away with it. The dog blinked stupidly, but was clearly aware he was the subject under discussion. Sonny hesitated, engine roaring to go like a stallion. “Besides,” said Steven, “I can’t stand him. Especially now that he’s so doggy.”

  The last thing Sonny had ever permitted, the very last thing—except for Ellsworth—was someone in love with him, but that of course was the old life when he was still gay. What the hell, he thought, and reached over and flung open the passenger’s door. The dog stood up, loped over and jumped in, casual as could be, as if he’d never doubted the outcome at all.

  Steven slammed the door behind him, and the Prince of Thebes was ready. This time they parted with truly minimal ceremony, nodding a bare half-inch, so as not to call attention to the boy-and-his-dog maneuver. As Steven watched the 380 disappear round the turn, he thought how he didn’t have a clue what went on in Sonny’s head, and he supposed the feeling was mutual. Had he been good for Sonny? The question had no meaning. He’d simply been a sanctuary for a while, because life had happened to deal them exactly the same card, like a pair of Jews at the opposite ends of Europe, a Dutch banker and a Polish tailor.

  When he came back in the house, all he wanted to do was go back to bed, but the housemother instinct made him turn and glance into the living room, to see if Dell was up. The pristine tidiness of the place, as if no one had stayed there at all, didn’t especially surprise him, for he was used to Dell rolling and stowing the bedclothes. Yet it was something about Dell’s insistent unobtrusiveness that drew Steven into the room, even though he ached to sleep. Sonny, by contrast, had taken over the house, and the beast he carted away was only the most extreme proof of the claim he’d laid. Dell had barely left a dent in the sofa cushions. Hardly ate, even on Thanksgiving. The only evidence of his presence was the green of the hillside where he’d watered, the rosebushes clipped to the bone for the winter.

  Steven stood in the middle of the room and looked around. He saw the cupboard door slightly ajar in the wall beside the hearth, and the crumpled brown paper in the fireplace too, but none of that meant anything. A sort of vacuum gripped the place. He couldn’t have said why he leaned over the sofa and pulled the button on the Sony, since he wasn’t a fan of morning TV, except that the room suddenly felt colder and more silent than even Ray Lee’s apartment.

  A street reporter was shouting over the noise of a crowd. Right at that moment—“LIVE” flashed on and off in the upper left corner of the screen—a team of paramedics was barreling through with a body on a gurney, all zipped up in a bag and very dead. Steven wondered idly why they bothered to hurry so if it was all over. There was always a murder on the morning news. “Two dead,” Steven was able to make out, a man and a woman, murder/suicide. A lover’s quarrel, probably, or a marriage on the rocks.

  Except for the size of the crowd, a mix of races that seemed to be beating their breasts with grief. Then, as the camera swung wildly to show the chaos, Steven could see the stone facade of a church in the background. His stomach seized with a slight clench of dread. “The second body is just coming out,” declared the reporter, and another team of useless paramedics emerged with a gurney, three on each side like pallbearers. Only here there were several police officials as well, hovering close as if the killer might at any moment leap out of the body bag.

  Steven knew it all now. He didn’t require any further information. Nevertheless, the station broke away momentarily from
the live report, and a still of Mother Evangeline flashed on-screen, her in the meadow surrounded by children, the Sermon on the Mount. The coverage was already starting to accrue the nimbus of martyrdom, and the body was barely cold. Back to the studio: a bimbo anchorlady with a honey-blond do just like Mother’s.

  “Police have not yet identified the killer,” she intoned, “but it’s believed he may be a member of the radical gay underground. Mother Evangeline has long been known for her vocal attacks on the gay lifestyle.”

  Steven could see just where it was going. Within hours the telegenic priests and rabbis would be coming out of the walls to denounce and decry. Mainstream guys, not just the Jesus fringe and the Aryan nuts. With one fell stroke, it seemed, Dell Espinoza had set things back a generation, all the making nice and the coalition-building.

  And Steven could feel himself keeping his distance, here even more than with Sonny, as if it were some kind of test to see how shockable he was. You wouldn’t have known to look at him that he was at all acquainted with the parties to the crime. The blood didn’t drain from his face. He didn’t cry or wince in pain. And the screen before him was full of examples of how to do it—an entire congregation keening and moaning, stunned to the soul.

  All he wanted to do was go back to bed.

  The telephone rang in the study. As Steven leaned over to turn off the tube, a psychologist joined the bimbo, to try to probe the mind of the killer. Steven recognized the man as an expert on California murder, who had proven indispensable after the McDonald’s massacre. No thanks, thought Steven, tuning out. He shuffled into the study and picked it up on the third ring. It was Linda.

  “What’s he done?” she cried in anguish. “How could he do this?”

  “Honey, I’m sorry,” Steven said brokenly, feeling the rush of protectiveness. “There was no way to know. He had a pain we couldn’t touch.” This sounded, even as he said it, as mindless as the TV expert.