He was at the screen door almost immediately, shorter but tougher looking than Tim. A Budweiser in his hand like it could be a weapon. He had a mop of thick, curly dark hair, with just a little salt in it. He had grease on his shirt.
“Jimmy, this is the lady,” Tim said.
He softened, only a little. “You wanna come in?”
“That would be nice,” I said, moving to shake his hand. “I’m Ruth Coker Burks.”
“Jim Kelly,” he said, still formal, like I was from the government.
They were living with Tim’s parents, who were watching a game show in the living room. Tim’s dad was almost in his eighties, and he made no effort to hide that he was staring a hole through my dress, and it didn’t matter much, because his wife was sitting on the couch suddenly trying hard to not look drunk. I shook their hands, Princess Ruth greeting everyone. When you went into somebody else’s world, you had to enjoy how their life was, not bring your world into theirs.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” I said. “I know you’re working on the truck.”
“Right,” said Jim. He gestured to Tim, cocking his head, meaning we should follow him outside. I wasn’t sure if that was the end of the visit, but Tim grabbed a plaid vinyl lawn chair and brought it over to face the hood. He opened the door of the truck and sat in the driver’s seat, leaning back like he was in a lounge chair.
“Do they know?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” Tim said.
“I’m glad you could tell them,” I said. I went into intake mode, getting all the vitals. Tim and Jim were doing odd jobs to get by, fixing cars for people who couldn’t afford a real mechanic, working at convenience stores. The kind of jobs you could come and go through.
They’d been together a few years, meeting in Gainesville and then moving up here to live with Tim’s parents. Tim had started a heavy-duty love affair with heroin down in Florida, but had quit when he moved back home. Tim told me he got a real bad flu, which I assumed was pneumonia, but I let him talk. He went to AMI for it and tested positive. Then Jim tested positive too.
“Timmy said you help people,” Jim said, starting to relax as he tipped back his beer and then went to work on the truck.
“I do.”
“What can you do?”
“Well, for one, I can get you social security,” I said. “Get you some income.” They nodded, so I got out my little planner to get their information. “I am also trying to figure out why some people get this,” I said. “How, I mean.”
“You know, I don’t know how I got it,” Tim said, seeming genuinely mystified. “Because I always slept with nice-looking men who wore suits.”
“A suit will do it, right?” I said.
“Always,” Jim agreed. There was a sudden drawl to his voice.
“The South just jumped out in your voice,” I said. “Where are you from, Jim?”
“Perryville,” he said, like he hated to admit it. Perryville was about fifty miles north of Hot Springs in the middle of nowhere. It’s five square miles of not many people living as far from each other as possible.
“How’d you get to Florida?” I asked. It’s hard enough to get to Perryville, and it’s even harder to get out.
“Navy.”
“That’ll do it.”
“Babe,” Jim said, then threw Tim the keys. By now I was invested. The truck hummed, not great, but not bad either.
“No more squeak,” Jim said. He closed the hood and did a slight bow as I clapped. Tim moved to sit on the hood, crossing his long legs. We stayed out talking until the sun set purple and pink across the sky. These were like the good old bad boys I grew up with, not hurting anybody but always up to something. When I left, I promised to be back with forms to get them services.
I drove over to the Arlington Hotel feeling like I’d made new friends and excited to see my old friend Sandy. I never got over how grand the Arlington was; everything about it was big. The lobby was more like a palace court, and it looked the same as when it opened, on New Year’s Eve in 1924. Sure, it was haunted, but so was a lot of Hot Springs.
I found Sandy at the lobby bar and stood back a minute to watch her in the wild. She sat with her back arched in an impossibly unnatural pose, scanning the bar. Sandy’s floral dress blended with the huge mural of flowers over the bar. It was like a nature documentary with the female of the species being the aggressor.
“Is this seat taken?” I said in a low voice, sidling up to her.
“I’m waiting on somebody,” Sandy said. “He’s taller than you and very rich.” She laughed. “Wait, I forgot you’re buying. You’ll do.” She turned to find the bartender, who was already waiting. She feigned surprise at her luck. “Oh! We’re all here, how perfect. She’s buying me a vodka soda.”
“And a club soda with lime.”
“What time do you have to be back at the convent?”
“I’m easing into the night,” I said.
“Well, Sister, maybe we can find you someone to sneak in.”
Our bartender brought us our drinks and asked if I wanted to open a tab.
“Yes, she does,” said Sandy. “And don’t be a stranger.”
We clinked glasses. “To friendship,” I said. “Thank you for putting Roxanne in her place for me today.”
“Oh, I’d do that even if I didn’t love you, Ruthie. She’s a bitch.”
We caught up on office gossip. Sandy wasn’t selling enough, but now I felt like it wasn’t her fault for not putting more effort in. There were just fewer people buying. “There’s no chickens left on the side of the road,” I said.
“What are you talking about chickens?”
“You can tell how good or bad the economy is by how many dead chickens you see on the side of the road. They jump off the trucks, and you see ’em if things are good. If it’s bad, there aren’t any because people have stopped to take ’em home and eat ’em.”
“I haven’t been seeing chickens,” she said.
“See?”
“Well, when I die, that’s when the credit card will be paid off,” Sandy said. She took a long draw on her drink and scanned the room. “I’m going to need someone to drive me home.”
“I can.”
“Um, no.”
The next round, I ordered a vodka soda too. “I can’t let you drink alone,” I said. We clinked glasses, and as we drank, I loosened up a little. I thought how much I wanted to tell her about the work I was doing. I still felt I couldn’t. So, when Sandy started in again on me needing to find a man, I felt the need to at least say that truth.
“You think I don’t want someone? Not just for Allison but for me? All I want sometimes is to be a wife and be in the Junior League.”
“You’ve got the haircut for it.”
“Doesn’t work, though.”
We sighed. I still had hope.
When I finished my drink, Sandy knew I was heading out. She didn’t try to stop me, because I think she was ready to focus on finding Mr. Tonight. We went to the ladies’ room, and since it was empty but for us, I took my chance.
“Sandy, I want you to start protecting yourself,” I said as she primped in the mirror, reapplying lipstick. “I am not going to harp on this, but AIDS is real, and you need to be careful because you could get this disease.”
Sandy rolled her eyes, but I continued. “You need to use a condom every time. It’s not just gay men, no matter what they’re saying.” She looked mortified.
“Shush,” she said. “Dear Buzzkill Magazine, have I got a story for you—”
“I’m serious,” I said, opening my purse. “I am giving you these.” I had a stash of condoms I’d bought for my guys to have.
“Oh Lord.”
I wasn’t going to harp on it, because nobody wants a friend to do that. But I had to.
“Why do you h
ave condoms?” she asked.
“Let’s say hope,” I said, with a laugh. “You never know what’s gonna happen.”
We walked out, and she pretended not to notice a table of men looking at her, not realizing they were the prey.
Chapter Seven
When Marc had called two days before, he kept saying that he’d be wearing a Yankees hat, intent that I not miss him at the bus station. He told me three different times that he was getting in at 7:40 a.m. I think he was afraid of being marooned back in Arkansas. “I’ll see you,” I said.
Of course I would spot him. Though they were strangers, I could always pick out the guys who came for me. Even Allison could. They were always surprised to see her waiting with me, but she went wherever I went, especially in summer.
Marc came off the bus nearly last, circular glasses on top of a sharp nose and a chin that was just as angular. He was tall, bundled up in a sweatshirt and brown leather jacket. So many layers for August.
I waved, and he came over. These moments could be awkward, because you had to read if they were nervous talkers or if they just wanted some silence. And I also had to look them over real quick and quiet to see if the next stop had to be the hospital.
But before I could figure him out, Marc said he needed the bathroom badly. I pointed quick; it was clearly an emergency. He fumbled with his duffel bag, so I took it. He came back and apologized.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” I said. We started the drive to one of the tourist courts. He was hoping that his family would take him in, but not naive. They were Pentecostals down in Arkadelphia, so he wasn’t going to go straight there.
He waited until he closed the car door to talk. “The pills are a nightmare on my stomach,” he said.
“Really,” I said, more as a comment than a question. He had told me he was on AZT, and I had so many questions for him but was afraid to overwhelm him. Marc was the first person I met on AZT. The FDA had rushed it to approval in March, after a study showed at least fewer people died while on it. But supplies were small, and doctors had to go through a lot of hoops just to get it prescribed. They would have to call the pharmaceutical company, Burroughs Wellcome, and make a case for why their patient needed it. Deserved it. I could barely get a doctor to go in a room. You had to have a real Boy Scout of a patient, because the dosage was every four hours, night and day, to the minute. The article I read about it said it was ten thousand dollars a year. It seemed doubly cruel to tease people with the idea of having a year and to make it the most expensive drug ever made at the time. Here I had my guys on Medicaid, sometimes relying on the fountains in Hot Springs for water. Not a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of, yet they were supposed to have a beeper to remind them when to take a pill. But I wanted the medicine for them.
The irony was that Marc told me he had gone through all his savings just to qualify for Medicaid. Now he was stuck. I’d warned him on the phone weeks ago when he first called with his plan to come down. “You can’t get AZT here,” I told him. “Tell your doctor there and see how much he’ll let you stockpile. Try to get three months of prescriptions and then come home.”
When we got to his room in the tourist court, he seemed relieved that it was really there. I mean, I guess when you leave your whole life behind, you don’t really know where you’re going to land. I would get him housing assistance, I assured him again.
“Can I see them?” I asked.
He knew exactly what I was talking about. He had a black nylon fanny pack, which he kept up front under his sweatshirt, and when he unzipped it to reach in I saw what cash he had. And a wide bottle.
He handed it to me. I let out such a sigh, and the weight of the moment made me sit down so fast that Allison came over to see what this precious thing was. I showed her, turning it in the light like some magic elixir that could save the village.
“Here she is,” I said aloud. I read every word on the bottle. Azidothymidine, and the name of a pharmacy on Bleecker Street in New York City, Village Apothecary.
“May I?”
He nodded. I opened the bottle and looked at these tiny white capsules with blue bands.
“I love them and I hate them,” he said.
“You feel they’re working for you?”
“I can’t tell what’s me and what’s them. It feels good to do something. I get headaches, brain fog. I’m sick all the time with diarrhea. God knows what it’s doing to me.”
“But you’re doing something,” I said. My guys needed that, but it seemed impossible.
“Yeah.” Marc took off his glasses, wiped them on his sweatshirt, and grimaced. “It doesn’t save everyone, I know that,” he said. “I have friends on it that I know I’ll never see again, even if I’m just down here a few months.”
He thought he would go back. I’d had a lot of guys who told themselves that a cure was on the way. That we’d all line up for a vaccine, with the sick people pushed to the front. But there was a little more to this hope. He thought he could go back to his old life.
“I’m sorry they’re so far gone,” I said carefully, trying to keep that hope fully intact. “Uh, when they die, does the doctor or someone come and take the medicine back?”
He laughed. “No,” he said. “Oh, you’re serious.”
“It just seems like it would be . . . valuable.”
“Nothing’s valuable when someone dies of AIDS,” he said. “Walk around SoHo and the Village, you’re gonna see incredible art left by trash cans. Families or just landlords show up and throw everything out that doesn’t look valuable. So, pills? For AIDS? No.”
It took the wind out of me. Even if these pills were just hope, it was hope.
“Well, I have to get going,” I said. I’d promised Tim and Jim that I would take them to Wal-Mart that morning. “We’ll let you settle in.” I gave him the drill again, repeating that I would help him get in the system here and bring meals by when I could to supplement what he could get with food stamps. I hugged him goodbye, and Allison did too, quickly squeezing his legs.
We drove over to Tim and Jim, and I found myself feeling that we were stopping in on friends, not patients. I would take them up to Collier Springs or Mount Ida with me to hunt watercress for the meals I made my guys. These country boys made it fun, squealing when we found a Cottonmouth hiding in the stream. Jim would act like he wasn’t scared, but you never saw someone jump so fast in your life. There was so much laughter when they were around, and they asked Allison questions, truly interested in a five-year-old’s take on which one of them was right about something. There was always something to discuss, because they would make a drama of everything. “Jimmy says he hates cream cheese, Allison,” Tim might say. “Now, you tell me, where do you stand on cream cheese?” She would laugh, then laugh harder when one pretended to be devastated to hear her verdict.
They were waiting for us. I didn’t even have to get out and ring the bell. Jim was out first, and then Tim. Oh dear, I thought. The Daisy Dukes.
“Tim, honey, we’re going out in public, and I know we’re just going to Wal-Mart, but you cannot wear those shorts.”
He smiled, posing quick. “You don’t like?”
“Yes, I love them, and yes, I love you, and yes, you look fabulous, but I can’t take this at Wal-Mart.”
He laughed and went inside, coming back in sweat shorts that at least left something to the imagination. “I’m sorry,” I said, as he joined Jim in the back seat. “They’re gonna run me out of town if I’m not careful.”
“Pitchforks!” said Tim. “Get her.”
“You laugh, but if people knew what I was doing—” I stopped myself and made it a joke, eyeing them in the rearview mirror. “Hanging out with degenerates who don’t know what fork to use. Allison cover your ears a sec.”
She did. “You know why Junior Leaguers hate orgies?”
“Why?” they bo
th said, playing along.
“Too many thank-you notes,” I said. “And they never know where to put their elbows.”
They laughed, and Allison said, “I heard you.”
“We’re just talking about oranges,” I said. “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
We laughed, but we knew we were right, that people would disapprove. Even walking with them through Wal-Mart, I was conscious that people were staring at us. The people I recognized smiled wanly and kept going, and the people I didn’t looked at us like we were a puzzle they couldn’t figure out.
Tim and Jim mostly got groceries covered by their food stamps—ready-made stuff like Chef Boyardee. I couldn’t imagine anyone in that house cooking. I needed to get Allison a backpack, so the guys humored us by going to the back-to-school section with me. She was starting kindergarten at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in a few weeks. It was the best education around, and I didn’t mind that she’d go to Mass every morning.
Jim and Allison pretended to chase each other, scurrying between the circular racks while I tried to find things that wouldn’t break the bank but still looked like we had money. Tim was acting funny, a little impatient.
“If you want to go smoke,” I said, “you can just meet us at the registers.”
He was watching Allison and Jim. “I have a daughter,” he said. I nodded to let him keep going. “I was married in Florida. She’s six.”
“Is she as pretty as her daddy?”
“Prettier,” he said. “Long blond hair.”
I pictured his sandy blond hair falling long on the sharp shoulders of a girl. “Do you get to see her?”
“Uh, not really,” he said. He swallowed, then reached for the Marlboros in his pocket. “I’m just gonna . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. He turned to head out the front.
When he was back, he was his usual fluffed-up self. I decided I wouldn’t bring it up if he didn’t. And he didn’t.
I lined Marc up with a doctor in Little Rock, and when I drove him to his first visit, I had Marc go in with the pills and explain how he took them. I think the doctor cared more about being shamed that a New York City doctor had access to a drug than that it would actually help people. But whatever the reason, I was able to get him to prescribe AZT to another one of my patients, Owen, a mild-mannered guy in his twenties who was almost homebound. He was sick enough to deserve it but not so sick he would be considered a lost cause.
All the Young Men Page 8
