Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "I don't know, Blasé! It's so lame!"

  "That's exactly how many protesters were photographed!" Blaise defended. "Cynthia! Do you have those shots of Mattachine at the Postal Service?"

  Anthony and David J. entered stage left, David a cop, Anthony (anachronistically—it was the fifties) a black newspaper photographer. They said their lines. The picketers marched their oval.

  "I hate this play!" I groaned. "Hate. Hate. Hate."

  "Cyn-thee... Ah! Look, Rog. Six people in these photos. Five in this one."

  "I knew you were right. Anyway we have no more cast."

  "There's always Henry," Cynthia half joked.

  Henry was her assistant, who when the play opened would already be onstage a good deal of the time, moving around those objects that constituted what little set they possessed.

  "Hen-ry!" Cynthia and Blaise called.

  The compact lad was pushed onstage as an "onlooker."

  "Maybe he should carry an anti-gay sign?" Cynthia suggested.

  "This was the first ever protest by a gay group! An onlooker would be more astonished than anything," I said.

  "Look astonished, Henry!" Blaise directed. "Move closer to Anthony and David J. Frightened Hets snuggling together."

  "I still think it's too scrawny!" I said.

  "If you'd seen the original Battle of Bunker Hill, you would have thought that was too scrawny."

  "Let me try something with the lights," Cynthia suggested. Back at her booth, she dimmed the stage and lighted an inner oval so that the demonstrators had no shadow, while the few others had towering shadows: more menacing.

  "Fab-u-lous! I have an idea. Take five!" Blaise instructed the actors, who gratefully fell out. He ran up the aisle to confab with Cynthia. The actors shook themselves limber, lighted cigarettes, sat in front-row seats chatting, ate yogurt, went to take a leak. David B. and Eric faced off, pushed each other, kissed: love in bloom.

  I couldn't staaaaaand another minute of it.

  The problem wasn't the scene, which sucked. It wasn't even the play, which completely sucked. I'd realized that already. It would be a complete fiasco, and there was nothing but to see it through to the end. No matter that the producer, Ivan "Bob" Jeffries, was an alcoholic sleazebag and could care less about the production, despite having declared that the play must succeed or it was curtains for the entire company. No, I would see it through for Blaise and Cynthia, bless them, who still had creative ideas; or Sal, who thought his portrayals of Harry Hay and Roger Casement were worth an Obie; or for Big Janet and Henry and the three Davids.

  A day-and-a-half had passed since Barstow's news about Matt, and in that day-and-a-half I'd been virtually paralyzed. Morally paralyzed, for sure. Once I was in the taxi fleeing Alistair, I'd broken down, wept, thought, I'd better get tested again! I realized with some internal Delphic certainty that I wasn't infected: it had swept like a raging fire over the plain, had taken light everywhere around me, on every branch and every twig and blade of grass, and for some unknown reason, not on me: I would never sicken like the others, never die of this. My doom was of another kind. Perhaps survival was to be my doom. With the knowledge that the dying alone seem to comprehend, of how things truly were, Calvin had all but said it. With his intuition, Matt would also know. Maybe that was why, after I saw the taxi shoot past K-Y Plaza into the hospital's neighborhood, I'd shouted for the driver to change destinations. Yet once the cab arrived at the hospital, I'd changed again and had the cabby drive me home, to Chelsea. Perhaps that was why, although I'd spent the better part of two nights awake thinking of nothing but Matt sick and hospitalized, I'd done nothing about it. Not one single thing.

  "That your Post?" David J. stood in the aisle.

  "It's Blaisé's. Go ahead, read it!"

  "Just want to see my horoscope," the young actor riffled to page six to check gossip, then farther inside the paper. "Mnnmm... Umnh!... Ah!"

  Was he flirting? Who could tell anymore? All the actors were respectful around me. Too respectful, really, for my taste.

  "She seems on today!" David commented. "What's yours?"

  I pointed to the appropriate sign.

  David read: "'Constant improvement in beautifying...'"

  "Too late for that!"

  "'...important projects'!" David continued. "That sounds right. And... 'Someone from your past is more wonderful than you thought possible.'"

  "You're kidding?"

  David offered the paper. "I told you she was on today!"

  Matt. This meant Matt. I couldn't put off visiting Matt any longer. Matt couldn't be as bad as I feared. He couldn't.

  "Phone call for you, Mr. Sansarc," Sherman shouted from behind a panel that led backstage. He left the pay phone receiver hanging.

  "Doesn't anyone answer the phone there? I've been ringing all morning," Alistair all but chirruped from the other end.

  "We shut off the bell during rehearsal."

  "I assumed that whatever it was that sent you fleeing from me the other night is not contagious and has quite passed?"

  "How did you find me?" was all I could think to ask.

  "I called an old pal at Variety. They know everything about every show in rehearsal. And lucky for the two of us, your little theater is only footsteps away from my favorite Chelsea restaurant. So mark in your penis-length Day at a Glance 'Lunch. Tomorrow. Noon.'"

  "I can't."

  "Then tomorrow at one! Don't say no. You're not escaping, Cuz. I've found you and I'll haunt you until you buy lunch at Claire and let me sit in on a rehearsal."

  "I don't think that's such a good idea, Alistair."

  "Of course it's a good idea! If I know your young actors—and I must say I have known my share of young actors—they'll simply gloat on having an audience, no matter how small, if they think it's someone important. And you'll tell them I am. Well, you needn't even do that. They'll see I am. And don't tell me the show isn't ready to be seen. How can you expect me to go around trumpeting your play if I've not seen one rehearsal? Tomorrow. One."

  "You done?" Big Janet pointed to the receiver dangling from my hand. "'Cause if you are, I need to use it."

  "Check this!" Blaise enthused when I returned. "On your marks, kids! Lights!"

  It was unclear at first what Cynthia and Blaise had concocted: the scene looked the same. But it did feel more alive. The protesters seemed more highlighted, more isolated; the three in the back seemed even more a crowd, even more menacing. Why?

  "It's audiotape. A crowd scene. Car traffic? Is it subliminal?"

  "Audible but low," Blaise confirmed. "Cynthia! From the top."

  The scene seemed a smidgen less awful. The others seemed pleased. Blaise repeated it, then called a longer break.

  The small theater emptied as actors rushed out to local delis and take-out stands to replenish their strength. Blaise hit the backstage phone to continue the ongoing argument with his boyfriend that was about all they still had left of a relationship. In back, Cynthia and a woman in the control booth had their arms wrapped around each other.

  A silence developed.

  "It's moments like these... that... I'd prefer... a Pall Mall!" I heard myself dopily utter the fifties commercial to no one.

  I jumped out of the seat, up the aisle, and into the little lobby. I knew. I'd phone Matt! Phone and get an idea of how Matt sounded about whether I was welcome or not. What was the room number I'd gotten yesterday from Patient Information?

  In the theater lobby, I waited as Matt's phone went unanswered.

  "He may be out of the room," the hospital operator suggested.

  I made her try once more. Cynthia was emerging from the control booth and with her the more spiffily dressed other woman. They turned in profile to me. I almost dropped the phone. Wasn't that...?

  "Rog, meet Second Why," Cynthia said, proud as the young Liz Taylor with Pie in National Velvet.

  "Second Why?" But the silly nickname made instant, horrible sense. For the sportily dressed woma
n, lightly but securely gripping Cynthia

  by her jumper strap, was none other than Sydelle Auslander. And she was beautiful. Well, as beautiful as Sydelle would ever be. Full, sleek, voluptuous. Not thin and haggard. But somehow the Emily Dickinson word "ample" came to mind. Her skin clear and creamy, her eyes dark and lazy, her posture regal, calm.

  "We...," I stuttered.

  "Roger and I worked together," Sydelle said smoothly, without a hint that she'd once spoken only with nail-biting anxiety. "Briefly."

  "You look great!" I managed to get out without choking. "Being with Cyn seems to agree with you."

  "Second Why is the Wonder Lesbian!" Sydelle gazed fondly at her. Without a hint of irony, she added, "Super Dyke."

  It crossed my mind that Sydelle was from my past, and while not precisely "wonderful," then at least part of something miraculous. But then, so was Alistair. Why bother? When had a newspaper horoscope ever been right?

  We kept talking, and Sydelle seemed so relaxed, so off the hook-and-ladder, so altered really, that I found myself not trusting her, not trusting any of it. It was a fabrication, yes, a veneer, and beneath it was the same creature, broken-clawed, hungrier than ever.

  Wait! There was no reason to believe that. I was being paranoid. I'd been paranoid with Alistair, paranoid just now, distrusting the hospital phone operator, thinking she was ringing someone else's room. Why? I was losing my mind, that's why. It had finally happened. I'd snapped. I smiled and chatted and thought, What's next? Do I start hearing voices? I had to get out of here or they'd begin to notice, so I made a not too awkward parting, said the expected things to pass on to Blaise, and managed actually to get out of the theater and onto the street with only a bit of cold sweat. Then, although walking fast and not sure where I was headed, I knew at least I'd escaped before they'd seen what everyone coming at me must for certain notice. Thank goodness they were all strangers. Or were they?

  By the time I reached Fifth Avenue, I realized that no one was bothering to notice me. Meaning, I wasn't acting loony, no matter how I'd felt for a moment there. I'd try another block, walk along Broadway. I did, and again no one especially stared. So I walked on, occasionally checking faces for odd looks. Gramercy Park was visible down one avenue, and then I was there, at the hospital's front door, so I might as well go in, no?

  Three people were at the desk. I gave the room number and was given a large red plastic visitor's pass you'd lose only if you were legally blind, and I waited with other visitors at the elevators. They all seemed to be carrying flowers and shopping bags filled with cards and gifts and fruit baskets. I carried nothing. I couldn't believe I was here.

  The walls on Matt's floor were covered with children's drawings and pleasant reproductions, everything modern and cheery, although as I passed the open doorways, the patients inside looked pretty bad. Anything in the least out of the way or resistant would stop me, I suspected— anything at all. But nothing did. I continued to follow the numbers past the nurses' station. No one there more than half glanced my way.

  As I neared the corner of the floor where I supposed I was headed, I heard music: The Magic Flute, the middle of Act 1. I knew this part. Papageno and Tamino and the Three Ladies. The Queen of the Night had just sung the first of her two big numbers. The three women now introduced a new theme, telling the men, "Drei Knaben jung, schoen, hold und weise umschweben euch auf euer Reise: sie werden euer Fuehren sein, Folgt ihrem Rate ganz allein."

  The tenor and baritone (Wunderlich surely, and wasn't that Walter Berry?) repeated the first two lines, then all five moved apart to sing the separate lines leading into a glorious little fughetta on auf Wiedersehen. Who but Mozart was so prodigal with melodies? Who else would have bothered to turn a mere "Goodbye" into such a delicious moment?

  I wished I could hear it again, but the orchestra had moved on... No! Wait! The music stopped. Was the tape being rewound. Yes. As I located the doorway of the double room I was looking for, the little quintet started up over again. I stepped in: the bed nearest the door was empty. Just past an undrawn internal curtain, the room's walls were tinted red by a luscious sunset filling the entire sky over New Jersey and pinkly staining the leaves of a small forest of plants and flowers set upon the double windowsill. Stacks of books and magazines tottered against one wall. A few gifts recently opened lay en déshabillé. Two chairs, a mobile bed table on which the cassette player was hidden by tissues, water pitcher and glass, vials of unguents, all dominated by an oversized postcard depicting someone's quattrocento Expulsion from Paradise, featuring a spherical Earth rolled like a hoop by a cherub-lofted deity, while an archangel poked two slender youths of unclear gender past what looked like a stand of fully fruited peach trees. Headphones stretching behind the postcard connected to the cassette player: the quintet was once more singing the beautiful good-bye.

  Upon the bed, as though just resting a second on a chaise longue, listening, his eyes closed, clad in almost diaphanous pale-green hospital pajamas, slightly frowning in concentration on the music coming through the earphones, was Matt Loguidice—beautiful as ever. No, more beautiful—his face not much thinner, not drawn and Auschwitz-skeletal as Calvin's and so many others' had been, but clarified, ennobled. Matt's hair was still rich and thick, not chemo-dry and dying, but full and curly, spattered with diamonds of gray, and one striking four-inch lock over his left brow had gone completely white. The large, easily grasped, muscular flesh of Matt's body as I had known it was gone, of course, replaced by a new spareness, but it looked taut, with very little looseness of skin visible through the open vees of his pajama neck and the unbuttoned top at his waist. Matt's legs were visible through a tangle of sheets, the false one made of expensive "fleshlike" plastic, covered with a skin-colored net fabric, so it bent and even wrinkled a little like skin. Doubtless from the VA.

  My relief was so extreme, my pleasure at seeing Matt not ghastly and dying, as I'd feared, was so heartfelt, so complete, that when the pale gray eyes finally did open a second later, Matt's own surprise was genuine.

  "Mr. Myxtplqztrx!" He smiled as he greeted me as of old. He removed the headphones and adjusted the bed to lift his torso.

  For a second I was afraid I wouldn't be able to speak.

  "My hero!" I responded, aiming toward the night table to shut off the cassette player.

  Matt misinterpreted that movement as a kiss, so I shut off the machine and let myself be pulled down to buss Matt's cool dry forehead. Those eyes I'd known so well looked up, curious, expectant, slightly unclear.

  When I pulled back, I said, "I'm obviously the last to visit."

  "People have been great!" Was Matt's voice a little hoarse? "Some came from out of town."

  "I thought I'd have to wait in line."

  "Most come after work. A few at lunch time. This is in-between."

  "I'm not tiring you? If I am, I'll go."

  "I've just been lying here listening to music. Take a seat, Mr. Myxtplqztrx! See that wooden thing? The chess set? Would you set it up here?" Matt pulled the bed table over in front of himself. "That's fine," he said and began setting up first the black then the white chessmen.

  "Planning to be a grand master?" I faced the board and Matt. As ever, I couldn't get over how beautiful Matt was.

  "My way to check for dementia. You're white. You go first."

  "It's been years. I don't remember any but the most basic Capablanca convention." Even so, I made an opening move.

  Matt moved a pawn. The sun streaked the wall behind him orange-red, edged with hot green. It reflected on one side of Matt's face. It must be pretty colorless to have done that.

  "It's like swimming or driving a car," Matt was saying. "You have to think a bit, but you never forget the basic moves."

  As we played chess, we talked slowly, and I found myself thinking that too was like playing the game, still knowing the basic moves but just a bit rusty on procedure. Matt was more serene than I had ever known him to be. In the past, there'd always been an ed
ge—at times imperceptible, then later on all too evident. Now it wasn't there. Something else was changed: in the past, Matt always favored the bad leg and foot; sometimes touching it too much, at other times leaning toward it. That was gone. He had a new leg: fake or not, it served, it filled the need.

  "Can I do that?" I asked once, uncertain about a ploy.

  "Sure. Bernard was here," Matt reported. "Said he saw you."

  "Bernard?!" For the first time since I'd arrived inside the room, I almost panicked. Bernard the Grunt was dead. Died last year. Set aflame by the same enormous brushfire that swiped Calvin and so many others. Ironic to think the Grunt had developed even the tiny sex life needed to get caught.

  "Bernard Dixon," Matt explained. "He said you have a play opening."

  Meanwhile, Matt had been using his queen, one bishop, and a knight to mercilessly raid my pawns. In turn, I put up a defense, used my queen, a rook, and two knights to set up my own aggression against Matt's side of the board. In the past and despite Matt's experience— he'd learned the game as a child and for years had played against his grandfather—we'd always been pretty evenly matched.

  "Speaking of Bernard and people from the past," I said, "you'll never guess who showed up today. Acting like she's been on a vacation at the Betty Ford Clinic. Sydelle Auslander."

  I wanted to tell Matt how unsure I was of her, but Matt merely commented, "I've seen and heard many people from the past since I'm here."

  Stung a little, I said, "Like me."

  "You?" Matt touched my arm. "You're different. I knew you'd come. You belong here. I don't have to pretend or watch myself with you. Stay as long as you want."

  It was the closest thing to a declaration of love Matt had ever made. Touched, I asked, "Is it okay if I come at this time, after rehearsal? Five or so? I'll call and check first."

  "You don't have to call. Five's fine. Others don't arrive for another hour. This way I'm occupied yet rested. You don't have to come every day. Whenever you want."

  "We'll play chess. And what else? I'll bring you stuff."

  "Maybe you'll read to me. My eyes aren't..."