Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  Add to that the uncountable times in less than an hour when the cast went up on their lines, missed their cues, forgot their stage spots, mis-crossed stage lines, and knocked over the scenery, which thumped loudly in protest. The middling, mostly middle-aged guys, mostly sitting alone, that constituted the audience had applauded at the curtain.

  But since they'd reacted to nothing but the wrong things, they'd doubtless return after intermission expecting Act II to be more knock-down-the-scenery-and-show-dick farce—which, Lord help me, it probably would end up being.

  Alistair called over to the bar one of the less prepossessing back room waiters, Chip—earlier he'd patiently explained that he was a "professional food services person," which was to say not a model, not an actor, not a roman-fleuve novelist, not even a slumming tepid-fusion physicist—and Alistair was now grilling Chip in detail about the foursome he'd just seated. I finished my margarita and, with foam still on my lips, asked, "Why not invite Dillon and his friends to the play?"

  "Tonight?" Alistair asked.

  "It probably won't run after tonight," I reasoned.

  "It would be an excuse...." Alistair mused. "C'mere, Chip"—who listened to what was whispered in his ear and vanished.

  I began to order another margarita. "I'm not paying," Alistair said succinctly. I replied, "I'm tanked enough. How about we get back?"

  "Momentino! You were right! It is Matt Dillon."

  "Course, I was right."

  "And he's coming... Stand up straight!"

  Dillon came right at us, his large extended hand suddenly coming at my midsection. I fumbled for it, let it pump my hand.

  "You'll never believe it, but I write plays too!"

  Nice, deep, manly voice. Close up, he looked like a tall version of some kid I had played softball with—what was the kid's name?—except, of course, for the million-dollar silk jacket and eleven-thousand-dollar lizard-eyelid shirt. Lots of eyelashes. And the complexion.

  "So, congratulations! Thanks." He took a flyer from Alistair. "I'll try to make it while I'm in Manhattan."

  I felt compelled to ask Dillon, "Is it true? The worse the dress rehearsal, the better opening night is?"

  His serious brown eyes were half-amused, half-sorry for me. "That's the tradition."

  "I'm the producer, Alistair Dodge. My phone number is on the flyer. Call me for comps." A second later, Alistair said, "Did you smell him? Cuz? Pure pheromones. Come on, let's get out of here. And did you check out that peaches-and-cream skin? I know women who'd give away their firstborn for that skin."

  The second act had already begun when we got back into the theater. Our entry came during a sort of hush. The by now three-quarters full (where did they come from?) audience seemed not to be laughing. And in fact, onstage, everything seemed to be going pretty well. Across the aisle in the opposite row, Blaise Bergenfeld wasn't sitting with his hands half covering his eyes, but leaning over to the seat in front, gazing, making little hand gestures at the actors, who couldn't possibly see them.

  The extra direction wasn't needed; the scene went off without a hitch. As did the following one, the relatively complicated Harry Hay scene in which Sal Torelli suddenly revealed depths of languor and feyness until this moment unsuspected. Revealed them not with a nod and wink as though to say, "See, guys, I'm straight but I'm playing this fag," but by finding his character and adding depth to the role, not to mention emotion to the scene, in which the police move in to bust up the picketing. Sal was so effective, the audience began to verbally murmur discontent at the cops.

  I caught Blaise's eye. The director mouthed, "I don't get it."

  "What does it mean, Alistair, when the dress rehearsal is half-bad and half-good?" I asked.

  "Shhhh!" Someone turned around.

  Alistair too remained rapt. Especially when Sal Torelli emerged in the final scene dressed as Miss Matches, a fictional drag denizen of the famous bar on the famous night, and revealed yet another level of female impersonation: flirting, teasing, fixing her nylons, checking her purse like a lady before transforming herself into the outraged spitfire who turned the fighting words "I've had just about enough of this shit! We've all had enough of this shit!" into something out of Victor Hugo, out of Thomas Paine, out of the Declaration of Independence.

  Everyone froze, then the other three drag queens—Bernard Dixon among them, done up to the eyeballs—clicked their heels together, turned, and began to attack Andy and Big Janet. Like the recently felled Sherman, they too fell to the ground.

  "What have we done?" Eric cried out as one drag, imitating the hoarseness of Bambi's voice.

  "What we're doing," Sal shouted in triumph, beating at the now stumbling Sherman again and again with his purse, "is getting ours back finally!"

  His words were greeted by whistles from the audience, calls of "You bet!" and "Yea, Sister!" and applause. The melee continued onstage.

  I couldn't believe it. For a minute it looked as if the audience were going to leap onstage and assist the actors in drag beating up the actors in uniform. The scene played on, now accompanied by continued shouts and calls for further action from various rows in the theater, until at last Carolyn, in fifties male drag as a reporter, came onstage, stepped in front of the action, freezing the scene into a tableau vivant, and uttered the historical commentary ending the play. The audience erupted into applause, gave the cast—especially Sal, and a beaming Bernard—an ovation, and left the theater buzzing.

  Alistair and Blaise went out with them, but the director returned a few minutes later, with his mouth pursed, rubbing his hands. "We still have opening night, but I think it's going to be a—" He slapped his hand over his mouth.

  Alistair arrived arm and arm with Cynthia.

  "What say we give Sydelle the acting chance she's been begging for?" Cynthia suggested slyly, revealing a sense of humor too. "Onstage tomorrow night as one of the cops. And we let the audience at her," she added.

  "Did you believe them?" I asked.

  "I did! I saw and heard them."

  "Who knew we'd end up being so politically correct?" Blaise asked. "Well, I mean a show that gives a gay audience a chance to relive Stonewall close up every night is a..." He didn't finish his sentence.

  "Well, there goes my capital investment loss!" Alistair moaned, with a television-dumb look on his face. "Don't just sit there, Cuz! We're a hit!"

  Phone ringing. I sat up in bed. Five thirty-nine. Phone ringing in the middle of the night and wouldn't stop. Why me? I was so tired. Tired when I got to bed at three tonight. Dead tired now.

  It wouldn't stop ringing. I got up, still sleeping, barely able even with the night-light to locate and—Ring, ring, ring!—slide on my moose-hide slippers, find and pull on—Ring, ring, ring!—a robe, step into the other room—why hadn't the machine gone on?—Ring, ring, ring!—and pick up the receiver, still sleeping.

  A woman's voice. "Roger Sansarc?"

  "Hmmmmnnn."

  "We have you listed as next of kin."

  What?

  "Hmmmmn. Next of...?"

  "To Mr. Log-u-deechee. It says here..."

  What?...? Could she mean Matt?

  "Load-your-dice. It's Matthew Load-your-dice. What's wrong?"

  "Mr. Load-your-dice," she pronounced it correctly, "expired at four thirty A.M. Since you are listed as next of kin... you'll have to come identify at the Medical Examiner's Office. Do you know where that is? I'll give you the address. Do you have a pen? It's..."

  I hunted around for one and copied the address.

  "What's this about?"

  "I just told you. Mr. Load-your-dice expired an hour ago."

  "Expired?" Like a credit card?

  "Died," she explained. "Your name is down as next of kin for his family. You have to come identify his body."

  "Not my Matt Loguidice? He was okay today! I was there at, I don't know, eleven at night? He was better than he'd been all week."

  "I'm sorry. I don't know anything about it. I'm just a
n administrator here. I've been told to contact next of kin."

  "There's a mistake. Has to be."

  "You have been asked to go to the Coroner's Office."

  It made no sense. "Only a few hours ago..."

  "I'm sure they'll tell you there, sir. You have the address?"

  "Yes. I still don't unders—" The receiver buzzed.

  I looked around at the apartment. It seemed strange at this unfamiliar hour, in this light. And I was so tired! The last few days...! I had to get some sleep. I'd call and straighten it out in the morning.

  Lights out. Back to bed. Slippers off, robe off, sheets still warm. I slid in. Ahhh!

  I was just there a few hours ago, I thought. He was eating, smiling. He kissed me...

  It had to be a clerical error. I'd call and clear it up later.

  "This is it!" the cabby said.

  The building he'd pulled up to was the smallest, whitest, squarest edifice of the ten-block series along Second Avenue in the East Twenties, in what over the past few years I and my acquaintances had come to call—familiarly if without pleasure—Hospital Row. There, right on the outside wall, was a sigh that read "Medical Examiner's Office." Plain to see. Why hadn't I ever put it together before? Probably because I hadn't had to.

  "I'd say, Have a good day..." The cabby turned, taking the fare.

  When he pulled away from the curb, I saw what he meant. It was a flawless late spring day: not a cloud in the postcard sky, and that particular quality of light that redefined and beautified every tree, every bird, every blade of grass, even automobile fenders, even the huge white bricks of the building I now entered.

  Deep within the overhang, a large glass-enclosed lobby. Inside, a Latino couple sat in the plush rec-room sofa arrangement, each sipping coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, each reading a section of the Post. A receptionist sat before an S-curved white brick wall. A young woman, barely out of her teens, her pretty face hidden behind too much eyeshadow and lipstick. She too was sipping coffee, reading what looked from upside down like Seventeen.

  I gave my name. She checked a list.

  "Relation to the deceased?" Her accent was Bridge and Tunnel.

  "Friend. Lovers. We were lovers."

  Unfazed, she said, "Because you have a different last name, I'll need two pieces of ID."

  I handed them over. She copied down some numbers, then slid them back and asked me to have a seat. She lifted the peach-colored phone and called someone, speaking softly into the receiver.

  "I still..." I remained at the desk. "I still don't understand why I'm here. Why I have to do this."

  "Whenever the cause of death is unclear, the city requires that a coroner determine actual cause of death and that someone identify the body."

  "When I called the hospital an hour ago, they told me the cause of death was 'cardiopulmonary.'"

  She was leafing through the file. "That's pretty much always the cause of death.... Ah, here!" She looked up. "It seems there were discrepancies. Extraordinary traces of...," she had difficulty pronouncing the medical terms, "in his bloodstream. That's why they sent the body here." She looked kindly at me with her overcosmetized eyes.

  "Could that have been something he was taking? He had AIDS. He'd been running high fevers. He was on heart machines a few nights before. At first, when I heard he'd died, I didn't believe it, but then..."

  She shrugged, increasing the mystery.

  I sat at the huge square coffee table opposite the young couple, opened the Times, and began to look through the third section. Someone in the cast had told me a reviewer had come to the show last night. Neither Henry, at the box office, nor Cynthia—who knew most of the second-string reviewers—could verify the rumor. If it was true, the review hadn't run yet. The News had sent a reviewer and the Voice. The reviews had been great. The second and third nights were sold out.

  "Betancourt!" the receptionist called. The young couple put down their newspaper, looked at each other, and got up. I couldn't help but think they were there because of a violent incident, a knifing, a shooting. Was I being prejudiced?

  When they'd gone through the double glass door built into the curved wall, the receptionist picked up the phone and motioned me over.

  "My friend." She nodded back, evidently into the building. "He says this 'iolate' stuff I mentioned in the report is from sleeping pills."

  No surprise. Matt had taken sleeping pills to get through the long nights. Was this showing up because so little else in the way of an actual determining factor was showing up? Because they had no other cause? With Calvin, the listed cause had been herpes! That was like saying he died of hangnails.

  After another endless period of time—really only ten minutes—the receptionist said, "Loguidice."

  Through the double glass door, the corridor rose and curved. A small

  Asian woman in a green medical smock appeared and guided me into a square room. Three chairs fronted what looked like a huge, partly curved shop window, blanked out by curtains. I sat and waited, thinking this was like a private show of Saint Laurent's fall line.

  The woman left the room, and a minute later the curtains opened. She was standing next to a body on a sort of cloth-rippled plinth. She made a single, delicate motion, arranging the sheet on the torso.

  They'd left Matt's eyes open.

  Unable to do otherwise, I stood and went right up to the window. Matt's eyes were open, and as though imprinted on them forever were emotions I couldn't help but recognize: surprise mostly, relief, curiosity. At what? Death, as it arrived?

  The body was so wasted, the flesh so burnt away from within, Matt looked like art: a sort of Roman funerary piece.

  "It's him. It's Matthew Loguidice." I was surprised at how steady and strong my voice was. Could she hear me?

  Evidently she could. She stepped forward to close the curtains.

  "Wait!"

  She looked up.

  "His eyes? Why are his eyes open? Can't you close his eyes?"

  She closed the curtain and a minute later joined me.

  "The eyes," she spoke precisely, "had to remain open until identification."

  She led me out of the room, into an office, where she made me sign three copies of the death certificate and checked with me that Matt's body was to go to the funeral home in Mamaroneck the Loguidices had already approved.

  "Can't you shut his eyes?" I asked.

  "Will there be an open coffin?" she asked.

  "I hope not. Is it too late to close his eyes?"

  "I will see," she said. "Sometimes a little snipping of the muscle..." She illustrated with a gesture. "I'll make sure of it. You now go to the hospital administration office to pick up his things? Items left in the room?"

  I'd forgotten all about that. "Yes. Of course." I was checking over the certificate for cause of death. "They said... sleeping pills."

  She shrugged. "Contributory. He was very sick."

  Her soft, sane words partly managed to efface the startling vision of Matt laid out on that slab, sheets draped about him as if he were some poet of ancient Rome about to be covered in treasure and set afire, eyes open.

  I got lost returning to the lobby. At the receptionist's desk, wearing a light-colored checked jacket, was Alistair. He turned, saw me, and quickly joined me.

  "Do you want to sit down? You look... Well, I don't know exactly how you look.... Did you see him?"

  "Don't go in there, Alistair. They didn't close his eyes. They said they had to keep them open for identification. Don't go."

  "I won't! I won't! Are you done here?"

  "Have to go get his stuff. Hospital administration office. They said they brought him here because of discrepancies. They found, I don't know, contributory factors... sleeping pills."

  The unsurprised response from my cousin made me grab Alistair's arm. "Did he say he was going to... ? You knew he was going to take sleeping pills, didn't you?"

  "I guessed as much when I saw him collecting them."

&n
bsp; "Collecting them?" Now I remembered going out past the nurses' station every night and asking them to bring a sleeping pill to Matt. He'd not taken them. He'd collected them. "Stupid me," I moaned. "I helped him collect them."

  "We all helped him collect them, Cuz! What else did he have to look forward to? More of what he went through these few past days? Come on, let's get out of here." Alistair guided me out of the building and into the astonishing glare of daylight. "Seeing him... was it horrible?"

  "Oh, Alistair, it was as though I could actually see what he was thinking when it happened—the moment he died, I mean. God, I'll never forget it if I live forever."

  "You poor, brave thing! Are you sure you want to do this business with Matt's stuff now?"

  "Yeah, might as well. We'll do it fast."

  The administrator's office was on the first floor of the hospital, and what there was of Matt's clothing had been packed in a big cardboard box.

  "Send it to his folks?" Alistair suggested.

  "They said to give it to charity. Could you do that?" I asked the assistant, who said she could. That had been another remarkable thing about that day, that train ride with the Loguidices into the city: how calmly and how thoroughly we three had discussed what was to be done once Matt was no more.

  The assistant handed me a large Jiffy envelope. "This was his."

  Matt's Sports Walkman. A handful of cassettes. When I put on the headset and turned it on, Mozart emerged: Sarastro singing "In diesen heil'gen Hallen." I would never listen to Magic Flute again without thinking of Matt.

  Also in the envelope was the oversized postcard Matt had kept within sight, upon his bed table: the very medievally designed Expulsion from Paradise, with its depiction of the Earth as a rocky, mountainous, inhospitable, lava-threaded desert, deep within rings of multicolored hoops. I turned it over and read, "Giovanni di Paolo (1403-1483), The Robert Lehmann Collection."