by Tom Larsen
Stevie blanches. “The seedy side does nothing for me.”
“Drive three hundred miles inland and its all underbelly. East to mid-west will break your heart. Past the Rockies it’s even worse. Out there it’s another planet.”
“Okay, I’m sold. When do we leave?”
Their food arrives and they hop through topics, mostly Stevie’s life in the closet and his coming out travails in Phoenix. Funny stuff really, and Harry laughs out loud. Other patrons are drawn to their banter and good cheer spills over the room. By dessert Harry’s picked around enough to piece it together, big heart and a quick wit, playing out a shitty hand. The guy already misses himself.
“This treatment you mentioned. What about it, Stevie?”
“Oh let’s not talk about that. I made a promise to myself not to dwell on the bad things.”
“I’m interested. Humor me.”
Stevie makes a face. “The procedure is strictly last ditch. The thing you do before they throw in the towel. Like sandbagging. One day you’re manning the barricades, the next day you’re living on the roof.”
“I might be out of line here, but that sounds like the wrong way to approach it.”
Stevie reaches for the champagne. “I reserve the right to my melodrama.”
“When will you be leaving here?”
“I have to fly to LA next week. That’s where she lives.”
“Who?”
“My daughter, of course.”
“Must be tough on her.”
“Please,” Stevie holds a hand up. “Happier subject.”
“Sorry.”
“Now then,” Stevie fills both glasses. “Where are you staying, Gerry?”
“I’ve got a little place in town.”
“How nice. The hotels are a nightmare, you know. Bussing us in like cattle, wandering the streets like Sebastian in Suddenly Last Summer. I keep waiting for the children to pounce,” Stevie forces a laugh. “So, are you with anyone?”
“I’m a firm believer in separate vacations.”
“Ah, a kindred spirit.”
“The thing is, when you travel with someone you feel compelled to fill the time. I like to sit back and do nothing.”
“Now see? I have to get out and see the sights. So much work! This morning I wanted to lay there and watch television, but I couldn’t let myself.”
“Try some of the local reefer,” Harry jokes. “Two hits and you won’t leave the room, I promise you.”
“I’m afraid my psyche is too fragile for that. I’m the sort who has bad Tylenol trips.”
“Too bad. Under the proper influence Mexican television can be mesmerizing.”
“I’m curious, Gerry. Do you think we share a certain resemblance?”
Harry doesn’t flinch. “I suppose, now that you mention it.”
“Yes, we’re a definite type,” Stevie wiggles with delight. “Same build, same jawline. I bet these people think we’re brothers!”
“You think?”
“The irony is my real brothers look like Dan Blocker.”
“You’ve held up well, Stevie, for a forty-eight year old punching bag.”
“Thank you,” his eyes shine over the rim of his glass. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Harry tosses his napkin on the table. “Come back to my place with me.”
“Hmmm.”
“For a nightcap. I’ve got something you might like.”
“How can I be sure your intentions are honorable?”
Harry grins. “We can walk. It isn’t far.”
“I warn you. Any funny business and I call the federales.”
***
Lena watches the Gila monster locked in a square of moonlight.
“Go away.”
The lizard retreats into the shadows. She sets the ashtray on the table, fingers an ice cube from her glass and bounces it across the floor. The damn thing doesn’t budge. Lena turns to the mirror and searches her reflection.
“You will not go through with this.”
***
“My mother’s bras made her tits look pointy. The Jayne Mansfield effect, real defiant.” Stevie stumbles on a cobblestone, knows he’s rambling but can’t help himself. “When she hugged me, which was rare enough, I could feel the underpinnings.”
“Hold up, Stevie. This clown has a headlight out.”
“A fortification. That’s what it felt like. Naturally I thought the female breast was hard and solid, like a muscle.”
“Okay. We can cross here.”
“The first time I was intimate with a girl? Why I was dumbstruck! These soft things, almost gooey, I thought there was something wrong with her. I tell you Gerry, I couldn’t stand to touch them.”
“You’d like the new ones. Tough as shoe leather.”
“But what really killed it for me?” Stevie clutches Harry’s sleeve. “Menstruation! Every month an open wound! Explain to me how you process this?”
“That’s easy. I’m Catholic.”
“I was grossly unprepared. Oh, I’d seen Playboy, but there was no porn in Bozeman. I’d never seen it before. And when I finally did it scared me half to death!”
“A nasty business, this sex.”
“I had male crushes, but they weren’t physical. I wanted a Spin and Marty thing, but even they were too, I don’t know, furtive. I was sexually ambivalent. I loved my wife and I loved my lovers. What about your wife, Ger?”
“I worried she would kill me in my sleep.”
Stevie glances up the road. “You didn’t tell me you lived on a mountain top.”
“We’re almost there. Another block.”
***
Lena moves like a shadow through the dim rooms. Harry should have been back long ago, dinner and drinks, four hours now. She wonders what this means, but it could mean anything. It’s a good sign, she decides. They’ve hit it off and now Harry sees the whole thing for what it is. A bad idea run amuck, a fatal mistake they won’t have to make.
She passes into the kitchen, freshens her drink, picks an orange from the bowl on the counter. The room rings in silence, the house so still she can hear breakers in the distance. It was a mistake to let Harry go off on his own. Something bad always happens when she’s not there to watch him. This man, Stevie, what do they know about him? Who does he know here? Where the hell are they?
“Come on Harry,” she whispers at the window. Cool air filters in from the terrace and her arms pebble in goose bumps. Then she’s back in the bathroom, looking at herself, looking at the death drugs. She breaks the seal on the syringe, and touches it to the orange skin. As the tip pierces the surface she hears voices down the hill.
***
Harry enters bearing drinks. The Gila monster flicks his tongue.
“A platonic nightcap, could there really be such a thing?” Stevie takes the dosed one and settles back on the sofa. “Here’s to you, Mr. Lizard.”
“I’ve grown quite attached to him, actually,” Harry returns to the kitchen. “Like sharing your house with the distant past.”
“My brother had a tarantula when we were kids. He got it to terrorize me, but my mother’s shaky grasp made that dicey so he soon lost interest. For months it just lay there pining for the desert. Then one day I came home and found the terrarium on the floor in a million pieces. The cat must have knocked it off the shelf. My heart stopped when I saw it. Of course, the tarantula was nowhere to be seen. Where are you going, Gerry?”
“Go on,” Harry calls from the hallway. “I can hear you.”
“It’s the classic nightmare, when you think about it. You know it’s somewhere, but where?”
Harry goes into the bedroom. Lena looks up from the bed, arms folded, needle pointed out.
“Oh man, we’ve got a live one,” Harry whispers. “Get that thing ready.”
“Who is he, Harry?”
“He’s nobody. He’s our ticket out.”
“I used your measure of Seconal. That should do it, right?”
“I’m shaking, Harry.”
“That’s enough, right?” he goes to her. “Lena help me out here!”
Harry ducks out and hollers down. “So what did you do? About the spider.”
Stevie laughs to think. “Mother and I spent the summer in a tent in the living room.”
Harry rejoins him. “That’s pretty resourceful.”
“It was a living hell! Every time I picked up a towel or opened a drawer I’d expect the damn thing to leap on me.”
“What, no plunger?”
“Plus the close quarters, my mother’s gastrit–” he breaks off in a yawn. “Coldest winter on record.”
“Killed it?”
Stevie’s eyes glaze over. “Must have, killed everything else. Ooh, that chocolate mousse is killing me, Gerry!”
A dog barks deep in the night.
“How was San Francisco anyway?” Harry pushes on.
“Elitist, self-imp– . . . a shnotty little town.”
“You forgot cynical.”
“. . . hmmm?”
“Cynical? San Francisco?”
“Bah,” he waves a hand. “Rank amateurs. San Frisco still wants to be loved. For true cynicism you must go to Paris.”
“France?”
“Ab–so–lute . . .” Stevie rubs a hand over his face.
“Paris, France, Stevie?”
“Paris, yes,” he curls into a ball. “All the European pretensions. Plus . . . it’s in Europe. I got mugged near Clingan– . . . the flea market.”
“How exotic.”
“The man spoke perfect French!” Stevie hiccups once and fades out.
Harry leans forward. “This condition of yours. Tell me about it.”
“Lilly, oh God please help.”
Lilly? Or was it liver? Something about his liver?
“Stevie?”
“Just a few days, then . . . then they can . . .”
“Stevie?”
“. . . no cure . . . Hopelesh.”
“Can you hear me, Stevie?”
***
Lena hasn’t moved a muscle. Harry blows in then out, then in again.
“He’s out cold,” he pries the syringe from her hand. “We can’t pass this up, Lena!”
Her name sounds somehow different.
“Wait!” she whimpers.
“Listen to me,” Harry takes her by the shoulders. “He’s dying, Lena. The man came here to kill himself.”
“What?”
“We’ll be doing him a favor. Don’t you see?”
“Dying? Of what?”
“Something, I don’t know, AIDS? He said the prognosis is hopeless.”
“He told you he has AIDS?”
“Yes!” he gives her a shake. “The man is suicidal. I know it’s sudden, but we’ll never get a chance like this again! It’s fate, Lena!”
“Oh Harry.”
“Look, we said we’d see how it goes. Well now it’s going and look what we’ve got. It’s over for this guy. He’s already a statistic. And he’s suffering, Lena. You saw Gerry! You know what happens in the end, the wasting.”
Lena buries her face in her hands.
“I know it’s a nightmare. Until he told me there was no way I could go through with it. What you said before, I do like the guy. But he’s a dead man looking for a way out. We’d be sparing him the worst.”
“You can talk yourself into anything.”
“What do you mean? Instead of dying piece by piece, he’ll go a little earlier, before the bad stuff. We can live with that, Lena. I know we can.”
“How?”
Harry pulls her hands away. “If we don’t he’ll soon be just as dead and we’ll get nothing.”
“What about the autopsy?” she grabs at anything.
“What about it?”
“Whatever’s wrong with him, they’ll find it. How do I explain my husband having AIDS?”
“You don’t have to explain. First of all they may miss it. If not, you say you didn’t know, or you suspected he was gay or on the needle, or anything.”
“Anything? Hey Harry, when you’re getting away with murder you want to have your story straight.”
“See, now you’re making problems for yourself. If you don’t know anything you don’t need a story.”
Lena moves away. “It’s madness, Harry.”
“Madness? What’s left for this guy? If he were a dog they’d put him under. If I offered, he’d probably insist!” Harry turns away. “You don’t have to do anything, Lena. I’ll take care of it, just like you showed me.”
He walks away and she sees him clearly, head down, shoulders hunched, syringe in hand. Something comes over her, warm and visceral, the drag of time running down. She hears the clink of a belt buckle and shoes hitting the floor. Harry’s gone a long time and she grips the mattress to keep from going to him. Then he’s there in the silence, a shape in the doorway.
“Lena?”
***
She wraps herself up to hold it together, chews the edge of the blanket to keep from shivering. Harry rushes from room to room, switching on lights then switching them off again. Then he’s gone for a while and she hears him in the bathroom, feels the dead presence in the other room.
“Wallet, wallet,” Harry mutters. Lena moves to the doorway, sees Stevie naked and spread-eagled, Harry going through his pants, piling things on the table. Finds the wallet and a hotel keycard, checks the driver’s license and the cash.
“You okay, baby?” he asks for the tenth time.
She makes herself ask, “Did you feel for a pulse?”
“I couldn’t feel anything. Help me get my pajamas on him.”
She crosses over and takes Stevie’s wrist. Nothing.
“What are you going to do?”
“Check him out of the hotel,” Harry stuffs Stevie’s arms through his sleeves. “There’s a bus leaving in ten minutes.”
“You’re leaving me with him?”
“One hour,” he pulls a foot through the pant leg. “Maybe less. Don’t do anything until I get back.”
“But why?”
“Guy checks out, who cares where he’s going? We don’t want anyone looking for him until we’re done.”
“I can’t stay here with him.”
“Then you go! We should have rented a car, damn it.”
Lena looks to Stevie staring up at the ceiling. “Alright, Harry. I’ll stay here.”
“One hour,” he pulls on Stevie’s jacket. “Think about what you’re gonna tell the cops.”
“The cops.”
“When I’m gone! Lena, don’t go to pieces on me now.”
***
He takes the bus to hotel row, caught in the crush of swing shift and last call stragglers, windows opened wide but the air thick with semi consciousness. They take the coast road curving south and out to the point. The hotels gleam like apparitions.
“In and out,” he matches hotel logos to Stevie’s keycard. Wind whips the saplings lashed to the median. Walls of bedrooms glassed up and sealed in stainless steel, nothing native but the latitude and the faint smell of shit. Harry stands and watches, a lone figure in the thin vapor light. A man snoozes at the desk. A couple exits the elevator past a black man pushing a floor polisher. Harry rolls up his collar and closes in, through the door and straight to the stairway. Cables clanking, televisions mumbling, three flights up in half a minute. His lungs wheeze as he tiptoes down the hall. The card trips the lock and he opens it without a sound.
He runs down his mental checklist. First the rubber gloves, then the drapes, then the bathroom light. A suitcase lies open on the bed. Harry moves around it, scooping things into the travel bag. He checks the desk and dresser, the closet shelves, under the bed. When he’s finished he forces himsel
f to do it again, then once more in reverse order.
“Medicine chest– check, cabinets– check, bathtub– check.”
Last on the list, a call to the desk. Harry punches in the number and the Snoozer answers.
“Front desk.”
“Hi yeah,” he checks Stevie’s Visa card. “This is Mr. Winslow in 3E. I forgot what day I’m supposed to leave. Could you please check my reservation?”
“Let’s see, 3E, says here you’re paid up through the weekend.”
“Thank you so much.”
Four days before the cops get involved, time enough to wrap things up unless Harry’s missing something. He flips through Stevie’s picture ID, assorted smiles and hairstyles. Ducks into the bathroom for comparison, not exactly twins, but close enough for the barely interested. Grabs the bags, starts for the door, locks in his tracks as a knock sounds.
“Stevie?” a soft voice, almost feminine. “Hey, you in there? It’s Roland.”
The knob turns and Harry presses to the wall, thinks body slam and blunt force trauma, anything he can get his hands on.
“Come on Stevie. You can’t still be mad at me.”
The knob jiggles, the voice grumbles, the footsteps slowly recede. Harry can’t move, can’t breathe, knows only that he must get out without Roland seeing him. He puts an ear to the door, forces himself to count to one hundred, then fifty, twice. Tugs it open and bolts down the hall to the exit sign. He stumbles at the stairs and the travel bag crashes to the landing, crap spilling out, tubes and sprays, pills in every direction. Harry scrambles after, catches a strap on the stair post and quick glimpse of his feet flying, suitcase flapping open, clothes raining down in an avalanche of evidence. He lies in a heap for a good half-minute listening for the rush of footsteps. A full minute, no one comes.
Somehow he manages to stuff everything back together. Crosses the lobby, sees Floor Polisher gabbing with a trucker at the delivery entrance. Harry wills them to turn away then hobbles past when they actually do, out the door and across the parking lot, stopping at the dumpsters to bury the bags.
