The Snow Garden

by Christopher Rice

  Eric flipped the magazine shut and tossed it onto the sofa.

  Under-celebrated? Michael’s sculptures were crap. They always had been.

  When the two. men met during their sophomore year at Atherton, it had been in an introductory sculpture class called The Kinetics of Form. Michael had mastered the technical aspects in no time flat, so the other ten students in the class decided to take out their frustration on him when he presented his finished pieces. Michael had defended his perfectly proportioned, physically accurate representations of the human form with a passion that turned into self-righteousness, all of it made more intolerable by his always-coiffed movie-star good looks matched with an excess of charisma, which, Eric guessed, had charmed everyone except his fellow sculptors.

  Represent something intangible or spiritual? Michael had practically sneered at the idea.

  “My genius is for making people,” he had announced. “I deal in the real.”

  Eric held his tongue as the war dragged on for a semester, watching Michael put up a fight and feeling anger and a measure of envy toward his arrogance, until the cabal of art students at Atherton banished Michael with their silent disapproval, which led Michael to shift majors. To Eric that seemed like a desperate move, but Michael had ended up laying the foundation for a career that was as impossible to avoid as Atherton’s Tech Center, But the fact remained that Michael was not an artist. Eric found all of his projects to be towering amalgamations that, for all their flash and their defiance of gravity, dazzled, clashed with themselves, and then died of asphyxiation.

  Perhaps that was why Eric had forced himself to read the article. So that he could make sure that, after all these years, Michael was still a collector and manipulator of styles, one whose ego made up for his absence of vision. He needed to know that the man he had lived with, the first man he had ever felt something close to love for, still had the same fault lines running through his soul.

  Still, when he shut his eyes, he saw Michael descending the front steps of the house they had shared together for almost a year. “Eric, you study art because you’re envious of people who can actually create. Because you can’t. Because when you try, all your hear is the scraping of your fingers against the wall of your empty soul.”

  The phone rang. “Hello,” Eric answered, sounding drugged. “Can’t make it tonight.” Randall’s voice was low and slightly hushed. Maybe he was trying not to be overheard by his roommate.

  “How is it?”

  “What?” Randall asked.

  “Your hand.”

  “Better.”

  He thought of Michael Price, who had narcotized him and led him where he promised he would never go again. Pamela Milford’s dead eyes rose up from the ice to accuse him. But whoever else he was, the fact remained that Randall Stone was not Michael Price. He had to remember that.

  “Randall?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We need to be careful.”

  In the ensuing silence, Eric anticipated anger, but all Randall said was, “Aren’t we?” Eric heard a door open on the other end of the line, and before he could say anything else, Randall hung up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE MCKINLEY BALLROOM WAS USUALLY RESERVED FOR THE MOSTexclusive of alumni fund-raisers, but for one Friday night it had been transformed into a gay club. “Absolution" was the theme of the second Gay and Lesbian Alliance Dance of the year. The word was written in string lights on the wall. Crepe paper hung between the brass chandeliers, and strobe lights flickered over the plush burgundy draperies. The dances were some of the most popular on campus, regardless of sexual orientation of the clubgoers, and as Randall pulled her onto the dance floor, Kathryn found herself searching the gyrating crowd for Mitchell Seaver.

  She still hadn’t spotted him by the time Randall fell into rhythm beside her, dancing with restricted hip motions, his neck rigid as he scoped out the crowd around them; he exercised just enough movement to look into it, but not so much that it distracted from his perpetual search for the next hottie. Or maybe he was just looking for Tim, considering that the two of them were giving it “another shot,” whatever that meant. She felt the first familiar seizure of awkwardness and found the best that she could manage was shifting her weight from foot to foot while she held both fists in front of her chest, as if to protect herself from the flailing arms on either side of her.

  Across the dance floor, Tim Mathis spotted her and gave her a wave with his glow stick. Most dancers were wearing them around their necks, but Tim had unfastened his and was waving it through the air like a wand. She shouted into Randall’s ear, “Tim’s right there!” and stopped dancing.

  “Nobody likes a quitter!”

  “I can’t keep up tonight, Riverdance. Go mingle with your own kind!”

  She gave him a slap on the ass as she left. April and her date for the evening were sitting on the burgundy upholstered chairs that had been shoved to the wall. Kathryn had barely exchanged a word with April’s new squeeze, mainly because she’d been so whispery she was difficult to hear on the way to the dance and was now unintelligible over the music. She thought her name was Kelly, but didn’t want to risk saying it out loud. She flounced down into the empty chair next to April; it barely gave under her weight and she pitied the alum who had to sit through entire dinners in it.

  On the dance floor, Randall had fallen in with Tim and his circle of bopping, tank-top wearing boys, all of whom had exerted considerable effort to look like twelve-year-old white supremacists. Their buzz cuts were all the same color, a flat shade of gel, and their limbs extended, lanky and shaved smooth, from their sleeveless shirts. Tim, clad in a two-sizes-too-small T-shirt that screamed out Porn Star in red letters and black pants made out of some material that reflected the disco lights above, inched closer to Randall before hooking one arm around his waist and bringing his crotch to Randall’s rear end in a pose that might have ended in their murder anywhere off the hill.

  Randall let his head roll forward, eyes shut. He was either enjoying the pressure of Tim’s groin so intensely that she shouldn’t be watching, or he was enduring it without protest. Kathryn couldn’t decide which. In contrast to the rest of the group, Randall seemed strangely adult, moving in rhythm but without the excessive arms-in-the-air antics of the surrounding dancers. All the other gay boys took to the dance floor with a newcomer’s enthusiasm enlivened by a sense of newfound liberation. Randall shared neither their joy nor their acrobatics.

  “I don't get it!” April shouted, and Kathryn anticipated a remark that was intended more for Kelly’s amusement than hers. “Fags take all these perfectly good songs and then mix in a bunch of pots and pans falling down stairs while some disco diva groans out half a lyric over and over. The only way I could dance to this shit is if you set me on fire!”

  Kelly said something inaudible, and April took it as an excuse to laugh and slide her arm around her shoulders. “Hey Kathryn! Why don’t you go back to the dorm and call your boyfriend so you don’t bring the rest of us down?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Kathryn shouted back. “We haven’t been on a date.”

  “Talk to someone at Atherton for longer than fifteen minutes and it’s a date.”

  “He lives off campus.”

  “What?”

  “I said he lives off campus!”

  “So what?”

  “I looked him up in the directory and he wasn’t listed.”

  “Kathryn, you have his phone number!” April shouted.

  “He’s probably thirty.”

  She wasn’t about to tell April that Randall’s dislike of Mitchell had wormed its way under her skin, forming a perfect excuse not to make a potentially awkward call every time she reached for the phone. Never mind that Mitchell had been one of the first people to whom she’d expressed her feeling of listlessness and repression and in return received flashes of wit, a phone number, and an abrupt departure. She was listed too. Kathryn knew this was all bullshit, but April would probab
ly point that out soon enough,

  “Fine. Don’t call him,” April barked. She threw one arm out toward the dance floor. “And welcome to the rest of your college career.”

  On the third floor of the Student Union, the ballroom’s terrace offered an expansive view of the quad below and the campus beyond, which ambled over the hill in a sea of sloping rooftops that looked stark and semi-nude without leafy branches to bridge the gaps among them. Smokers crowded between the ballroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows and the waist-high stone banister, which Randall rested his butt against as he held Tim around the waist. Both of them puffed cigarettes and watched Tim’s gel-haired, tank-top-clad circle crouch, around a guy named Taylor, who had curled into a ball, his arms clamped around knees that were weakly bent against his chest.

  “X?” Randall asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Tim said. “He’s a cute kid.”

  Randall grunted, wondering if Tim’s entourage of activists and scholars-by-day, muscle-hungry whores by night, would have been paying as much attention to a party foul if it didn’t involve a stocky, corn-fed boy with dimpled cheeks and pouty lips. “Now looks like your time to score,” Randall said.

  Taylor’s caretakers had begun vigorously massaging his shoulders and back.

  “You’re sick, you know that, Randall? He’s from Tennessee.”

  “What? That puts him out of your league?”

  “Parents are also total Bible thumpers and he’s thinking of letting them in on a little secret over Thanksgiving.” Taylor’s head rolled forward and a weak groan fought to escape his chest. His masseurs exchanged worried looks and struggled to keep his shoulders upright. “Someone needs to call Health Services,” Randall said gravely. Obviously not wanting to leave Randall’s embrace, Tim barked, “Ethan! Call Health Services!”

  The guy Randall assumed was Ethan shot Tim a withering look to thank him for his input as he and several others hoisted Taylor to his rubbery feet. Taylor’s athletic arms, covered in a sheen of sweat, and his shoulders, taut against the tight-fitting club gear he had probably been outfitted in by his caretakers, bore too much of a resemblance to Jesse’s for Randall, so he downed a slug of scotch while Taylor was carted out of sight. The flask was full. It had been a Catch-22 in his jacket pocket for the last three days; each time he thought about how he had filled it he wanted to take a drink to sand the edge off his guilt, and each time he brought it to his lips he saw Lisa Eberman’s face.

  He clamped his eyes shut, wiped his brain clear, and swallowed more. The slug had a stringent bite to it. It burned as it went down and Randall sucked in a breath to cool the inside of his mouth. Just then, Tim let out a small cry when he saw Randall’s blistered hand wrapped around the flask. “What’s that from? Intro to Juggling Flaming Batons?” he asked.

  “Close,” Randall answered. “Where are they taking him?” Confused, Tim followed Randall’s gesture toward the window where Taylor had been. “Don’t know,” Tim answered, glancing again at the blister. “Maybe Health Services. Thank God it doesn’t go on your record. The guy’s got enough shit to go through with his parents as it is.” Tim clasped the flask, trying to pull it from Randall’s hand. Randall pulled back. “Shouldn’t you have something on that?”

  “Everyone’s a doctor,” Randall mumbled.

  Tim threw up both palms and took an exaggerated step backward. “’Scuseme!”

  Randall drew him back in with one arm around his waist. Tim went taut for a second before giving in fully to Randall’s halfhearted embrace. “I’m so glad I came out to my parents when I did.”

  “Were they?” Randall asked.

  “They were all right. They didn’t exactly throw a parade. What about yours?”

  Silence, Randall knew, only encouraged Tim the journalist to dig further. So Randall summoned his rehearsed lines and took a moment to stud them with sordid detail that might scare Tim off the topic. “If I walked into my mother’s room one day and told her I was gay, she would drown herself in a bathtub of Glenlivet. The woman’s like a hairsbreadth away from being a character in a Jackie Susann novel. I would rather old age push her over the edge before I even have the chance.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

  “Clean up enough vomit and I earn the right.”

  Tim winced and lifted his head from Randall’s chest. “It’s that bad?”

  Randall managed a half smile at the sympathy in Tim’s question, but which he hoped sent the message that he could handle his domestic traumas if everyone just gave him some space and stopped asking questions. “Sorry,” Tim muttered. “What about your father?”

  No such luck, Randall thought. “I think he knows. And he’ll be fine as long as we never talk about it.” Randall heard the impatience in his tone, and brought the flask back to his mouth.

  “You will, someday.”

  Tim’s declaration ignited anger in his chest, which didn’t mix well with the stinging wash down his throat. The result was a series of hacking coughs that turned Randall rigid against the banister, and forced Tim off his chest. Tim slapped him on the back several times until the coughing subsided. He must have seen the anger in Randall’s eyes, but he misread it. “Your sordid family life makes you all the more mysterious and alluring—you know that, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Randall answered, voice thin. He turned to the banister and the view of the quad beyond—anything to distract him from Tim’s prying questions and presumptions.

  “I thought you said scotch was going to turn you into a gentleman.”

  Back to Tim, Randall shut his eyes and drew a breath, trying to forget the certainty in Tim’s words, You will, someday. Feeling like he had stepped back into the spotlight, he turned and gave Tim a broad grin. “Maybe I need some more,” he announced, and brought the flask to his mouth. This time the slug exploded in his throat and the result was another coughing fit. Tim didn’t touch him this time, just backed up a step, and through smarting eyes, Randall could see his wrinkled expression of concern. “This stuff is rancid,” Randall finally managed.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “The liquor store,” Randall got out. “Where else?”

  “Right. The one that sells scotch to eighteen-year-olds.”

  “Which would be everyone on Brookline. How the hell else are they going to make their money?” Still coughing, Randall capped the flask and tucked it back inside his jacket. Gooseflesh crawled up the back of his neck; his entire body shivered. “So .. .” He swabbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Any big break in your story?”

  “Not really. I did have another meeting with my contact.”

  “Richard? The guy at the Journal?”

  “Yeah. He told me something kind of interesting, but not earth-shattering.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  Randall seized one cheek of Tim’s ass and brought their crotches together. He squeezed. Tim would tell him.

  “Yikes. All right. How gentlemanly. Let me put it this way. Lisa Eberman is not the first woman the good professor’s been involved with to end up drowning.”

  “Who’s the other one?” Randall asked.

  “You ever heard of Pamela Milford?”

  “That was years ago, wasn’t it?” Randall tried not to sound interested. His body felt as if it were easing free from his brain.

  “Eighty-three. She was dating Eric Eberman. Hey ... Randall?”

  Black spots clotted in Randall’s vision. Tim’s hand clamped his shoulder. Randall blinked, and he saw that he was staring up at the roof of the Union. Tim let out an alarmed cry and Randall felt the stone banister dig into the small of his back; he had pitched backward and suddenly Tim was holding him by both shoulders, staring at him as if he had to peer through several layers of gauze.

  Nausea boiled Randall’s stomach and he batted Tim’s arms away.

  "I’m fine . . . I’ll be back in a second.” His voice came out reedy.
The only lucid thought he could pluck from his brain was that he should get the hell out of there. Away from anyone who might see him vomit up his entire stomach.

  He heard Tim calling out his name from a great distance and suddenly realized that his feet had landed on the hardwood floor inside the ballroom. The disco lights painted slow, thick swaths across his vision, streaks that blinded him briefly before fading into pinpricks of light and vanishing completely. Dancing bodies seemed to slide past him, a few rocking him back on his heels and almost throwing him off balance. The exit sign was a rectangle of light and he moved toward it as darkness began to crowd his vision.

  “Bullshit!” Kathryn cried.

  Neither April nor Kelley considered Randall’s sudden departure from the dance to be an emergency, and Kathryn had been angrily striding paces ahead of them since they had left the ballroom. She slid her ID card into the slot at the Stockton entrance, flung the door open, and bounded up the stairs to the first-floor hallway.

  Randall’s door was shut and she tried the knob. Locked. She knocked and got no answer.

  April and Kelly shuffled up behind her.

  “He might still be there, Kathryn. We didn’t look everywhere.”

  “Tim did.” She turned to face them. “He checked the bathrooms. He checked outside—”