Yale had no idea how to respond. “He seems like a quick study,” he said.
As he got in his car, Bill winked.
* * *
—
Yale sank onto a barstool in the darkest corner of Cheeks and pried his feet loose from the stickiness of the floor and ordered a Manhattan. It was a safe place to spend time, and they wouldn’t close till four, and he kept seeing faces he vaguely knew. The receptionist from the gay-friendly dentist on Broadway, Katsu Tatami’s ex, the tall Canadian Nico had once been obsessed with. He had a long purple lesion on his left cheekbone. A former staffer of Charlie’s came up to say hi, and one of Julian’s theater friends, the one who’d played Fortinbras in Hamlet. The place was oddly full for a Monday; some kind of bat signal had been sent up, apparently. The cute bartender wasn’t there, but the one on duty had a generous pour. A dusky guy in a ripped T-shirt dropped a matchbook in Yale’s lap, and when Yale opened it he found a phone number on the flap. It occurred to Yale that he was essentially single now, that he could go home with someone, take advantage of a warm bed and a shower, a distraction. The problem was he wasn’t sure he remembered how to flirt. It had been too long. That, and the fact that all he could think about were germs and bodily fluids. The whole bar looked to him like a petri dish.
Despite the number of people, everyone seemed subdued, just kind of nodding their heads to the Bronksi Beat and standing in little groups. Maybe because it was so cold out that the frost blasted in every time the door opened. The whole cruise-with-your-shirt-off thing worked a hell of a lot better in L.A.
Someone squeezed the back of his neck and he looked up to see Richard, the silver waves of his hair catching the bar lights. He got close to Yale’s ear, spoke loudly. “This is a rare sighting! Yale down here in the Deep South, slumming with the likes of me!”
“I just needed somewhere to go.”
Richard nodded like he understood. He said, “Museums should stay open all night, for this very reason. You could wander around the Field Museum. No one would dare assault you in front of a sarcophagus.”
“We should move all the museums to Boystown.”
Richard laughed. “If we moved the museums to Boystown they’d just turn into bars. That’s why I don’t move there myself.”
“You’d turn into a bar?”
“No, a raging alcoholic.”
He told Richard about running into Bill Lindsey outside. Richard said, “Start watching for him and I bet you’ll see him crouching in the corner every time you’re out.” He was surveying the room. “I want to shoot some video in here,” he said. “It’s so viscerally sleazy.”
Yale said, “Are you kidding? You’d be banned for life.”
“Mr. Technicality.”
“That’s my job. To suck the soul out of art.”
Richard said, “You either need more booze or less. Shall we get you more?”
The door opened again and more icy wind flooded the room. A new cluster pushed in, loud, already drunk. Julian was in the midst of them. Of course he was.
He hoped Julian wouldn’t see him, but Richard was waving him over—Richard had always had a thing for Julian, was always asking him to pose—and now Julian was heading straight toward them. He put both arms around Richard’s neck and hung there like a huge, drunk necklace. He wore a hat and a sweater but no coat. He slurred what sounded like “Richard, I can live in your house.” It might have been something else. He sounded like an old man who’d forgotten his dentures.
Richard said, “Julian, what are you on?”
Julian fell between Richard and Yale, caught himself on the bar. “It’s kid stuff. We were at Paradise! Let’s go back to Paradise! I didn’t wanna leave. Oh, Yale.” He put out a hand and touched Yale’s chin. “Yale, I had to tell you something.”
“No, you don’t.” Yale wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t. He was so pathetic. How could he hate someone this pathetic?
Julian reached up and took off his hat, and Yale coughed in surprise, struggled to recover. Julian’s head was completely shaved, albeit badly, his beautiful black hair—his unicorn lock—reduced to patchy stubble and scabs.
Richard ran his fingers along the top of Julian’s scalp, horrified.
“Why did you do that?” Yale said.
Julian made a phlegmy noise, a sick animal noise.
“Whoa,” Richard said. “Hey. We need to get you home.”
“I lost my key.”
“Yale, can you take him to your place?”
Yale blew out a mouthful of air and almost said, “I told you about the snoring,” but instead he said, “Charlie and I split up.” Because he’d have to say it sooner or later. Charlie couldn’t coerce him into sitting together at every event, putting on the couple show.
Julian, to Yale’s horror, began to cry. He put his face on Yale’s chest and didn’t get him wet but just sort of heaved there, his whole body shaking.
Richard said, “I didn’t know, Yale. I’m sorry. He can—Julian, don’t cry. Julian, you can come to my place, okay?” And Julian nodded, without taking his face off Yale. “Yale, where are you staying? Are you alright?”
“I have no idea. I mean, I’m fine. I was kind of gonna sit here till four.”
“Oh, Yale. Come with us, then. Is that why you asked me the other day? I’m a dolt.”
Yale said, “You’re not. And I shouldn’t. I can’t.” Not if Julian would be there. He couldn’t wake up sober in the morning and eat eggs with Julian. He couldn’t take care of Julian vomiting in the night.
Richard said, “My friend owns a little hotel on Belmont. It’s in a beautiful old house. We’ll walk you there, okay?”
It seemed as good an option as any.
* * *
—
Richard hugged the hotel’s owner, an older guy in a bolo tie and aviators, and gave him a fifty-dollar bill and asked him to take good care of Yale. As the owner showed Yale the elaborate key system (one for the front door, one for the upstairs hall, one for the room), Richard and Julian took off.
In the morning, there was coffee and powdered doughnuts. There was a little dog that lived downstairs—a fluffy white thing named Miss Marple—and a TV that broadcast two channels. Yale came back the next night with his bag and his box, and reserved his room for the rest of the week. It would deplete his checking account, but if he had to dip into savings, he would. What the hell was he saving for, exactly?
* * *
—
On Friday Yale went to the Laundromat, and there was Teddy, pulling his clothes from the dryer, peeling apart his staticky shirts. He said hello—coldly, Yale thought—and went back to his folding. But as Yale was starting the washer, Teddy came up and stood there, arms full of clothes. Of course Teddy couldn’t just hold clothes; he bounced them in his arms like a baby.
“Listen,” he said, “There’s something I need to say.”
“Okay?”
“After you left the church on Sunday, Asher and I went in there and found Charlie in a pretty awful state. So let me just start by saying I know what’s going on, I know he’s sick.”
“Alright.” Teddy didn’t say anything, so Yale looked around, saw no one was listening, whispered. “Well, no, he’s not sick, he just has the virus. Do you know how he got the virus?”
“No, and I don’t want to. That’s where judgment and blame come in, and I want no part of it. I mean, what, we’re gonna make an infection tree? A flowchart? Come on. Everyone got it from someone. We all got it from Reagan, right? We’re gonna blame someone, let’s be productive and blame the ignorance and neglect of Ronald Fucking Reagan. Let’s blame Jesse Helms. How about the Pope? Here’s what I know. I know your lover of—what, five years?—is scared shitless, and you decide the appropriate response is to walk out and leave him alone with his terrified mother, and then to yell at him at the fucki
ng funeral of your friend.”
Yale said, “Wait. Wait. He kicked me out.” Although that wasn’t precisely true, was it? How had it even happened?
“Yeah, he’ll be acting irrationally for a while. Come on.”
He wanted to ask if Asher was mad at him, too, if every gay man in Chicago had heard Charlie’s side of the story, if Yale’s name was being mentioned around town in the same breath as Helms and the Pope.
“Teddy, he doesn’t want me there. And he’s the one who should be crawling to me.”
“The sick don’t do the crawling.”
“Is that a philosophical tenet?” Yale tried to lower his voice; the woman at the counter was staring now.
“Sure.”
“So you’re out there tending the ill? Walking the streets and giving out morphine shots? You’re running the clean-needle exchange?”
“As a matter of fact.” Oh, God. Yale had stepped right into it. “As a matter of fact, Julian just moved in. I’m taking care of Julian.”
Teddy and Julian hadn’t been an item, a real item, in a year or two, but there had always been that possibility, a thread left hanging.
“When?”
“Two days ago. Richard called me Wednesday morning. He said you were out cruising together when you found him.”
“Jesus. I was not cruising, I was homeless.”
“Anyway, he’s at my place now, and one of the things I’m realizing is how much I love him, how much I always have. When you’re going to lose someone, it puts things in a new light.”
“You’re back together?”
“Well, not physically. Not yet, but it could happen. The point is, you have to take care of the people you love.”
Yale considered blurting out that Julian was the one who’d infected Charlie, but what was the point? It would get around, it would hurt people. And if Teddy was so happy to take care of Julian, why throw a wrench in the works?
He said, “You must be a better person than I am, Teddy. I wish you all the best.”
2015
Fiona had the door to Richard’s only half open when Serge flung it wide. He grabbed her arm and drew her in. He said, “I look for you an hour! Your phone is, ah, asleep.”
Fiona pulled it out of her purse. How had she let it die?
“He’s here!” Serge said.
“Who is?”
“Your detective. He’s very, um, excited? Yes?”
Richard appeared behind him. He said, “Serge was out combing the streets for you! Your guy found us. I mean, that’s a decent detective, to track us down here.”
Fiona looked back and forth between them. “Excited” could have meant agitated, coming from Serge. It might have meant alarmed or panicked. Or happy.
Serge said, “He uses the bathroom! One second!” and then he vanished down the hall.
She said to Richard, “What, tell me!”
“Well, I’ll mangle it, dear. Be patient.”
And here came Arnaud, tucking his shirt back into his jeans.
Arnaud said, “Ah, okay, hello! Yes! Your phone was dead all day! But I have double good news. She’s ready to meet with you.”
“She’s—what? Who, Claire?”
“Ha. I’m good, right? Fast. She’s here in the city. Well, she lives in Saint-Denis, not a very nice suburb. But she works at a bar-tabac in the eighteenth.”
Fiona found herself leaning against the wall.
She said, because it was the first question she could think of, “How did you do it?”
“I cut the Gordian knot! I asked the wife. I walked up and down the street early this morning, and when she comes out I say, Are you Claire Blanchard? When she says no, I say Claire owes a parking ticket, does she know her place of work? So she sends me there.”
Fiona said, “Oh my God. You went there? You saw her?” She was vaguely aware of Serge and Richard grinning at her. Kurt must not have told his wife about the visit or she’d have been on guard.
Arnaud said, “Yes. A couple of hours ago. She’s fine. A little thin but fine. She didn’t look, ah—not like she was in a cult. Little bit of lipstick, you know. Not so bad.”
“And the girl?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t see the girl. But yes, that is her daughter. I verified. It’s her daughter with Kurt Pearce. She has the girl.”
“She does!”
“Nicolette. I didn’t see her, but she told me.”
Fiona’s whole face stung. “Her name is what?”
“Nicolette.” He enunciated. “You want me to spell it out for you?”
“We—” She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t look at Richard. She finally managed: “What am I supposed to do?”
“Well. You pay me. Ha. And I’m going to give you the address. After that, it’s up to you.” But Claire didn’t want her coming by till tomorrow. Arnaud said, “She wants, you know, some time. To prepare. She was a bit shocked.”
“You don’t think she’d leave?” Fiona said. “What if she runs away?”
“Well. I have no idea. But this was not my impression.”
She wanted to go right away to the address Arnaud had just handed her, but why? It could only do damage.
Arnaud had to leave; this was not his only case, and he’d spent all day tracking her down. Serge took her dead phone out of her hand to charge it, said he’d bring some food to her room. She was shaky, and she must’ve looked it.
* * *
—
It was too early to call Damian in Portland, but not too early to call Cecily.
Cecily must be at least seventy now, but in Fiona’s mind she always looked as she had in the mid-1980s. Shoulder pads and gelled hair, her face bright and unlined. She’d seen Cecily only once since Kurt and Claire first joined the Hosanna Collective. Cecily was in the process of packing up her Evanston house then, getting ready to move to the Upper Peninsula, and she sat with Fiona at the table in her otherwise empty kitchen. She expressed concern for Claire, for Fiona, but said she’d written Kurt off long ago. She said, “I could’ve told you. I would have told you. If I’d known you were introducing them. He’s his father all over again. Well, no, he’s smarter than his father. But that doesn’t help. He thinks himself in circles and he acts impulsively. It’s a cycle, the overthinking and the compulsion. I’ve tried. Fiona, I’ve tried. He’s an adult, and I’ve made my mistakes, and I can’t unmake them anymore.” This was when Fiona learned that Kurt had stolen more than twenty thousand dollars from his mother, that he’d lied his way through rehab, lied his way through the counselors she’d paid for.
Now Fiona listened to Cecily’s phone ring, and when it went to voice mail she tried again. Serge was back in the room with a tray: toast, grapes, some wedges of soft cheese. A tall, thin glass of water.
Cecily finally answered, her voice dry, tired.
Fiona said, “Well, I have news.”
“Is it news I want to hear?”
“Yes,” Fiona said. Serge put the tray on the little bedside table and sat on the foot of the bed, listening. Fiona didn’t mind—it gave her someone to make eye contact with as she talked. “Kurt is fine. I talked to him even. He seemed clean. As in sober. And healthy and everything.” She told her that he was living with someone, not Claire, but didn’t say married. She didn’t say that he’d been arrested. And then she said, “We’ve found Claire. I’m seeing her tomorrow. This might be premature, but you ought to see about flying out.”
Cecily sighed, a long, tired sigh. Fiona imagined her in a bathrobe. She said, “I understand why you need to be there. I love Kurt, but he’s a grown man, and I don’t consider myself a mother anymore, not in the same way. There was a season for that, and the season is done.”
Fiona said, “Yes. But I need your help.” She dug her fingernails into her knee. She said, “And we have a granddaughter.”
1986
It was a relief to head to Wisconsin on Monday, all his stuff in the trunk, Roman in the passenger seat. The roads were slick, the trees black against a white sky. They were headed, in a rented Nissan that smelled like artificial pine, to 1920s Paris. Yale tried imagining that every hour they drove took them fifteen years into the past. They’d reach Sturgeon Bay in time for the Hindenburg. They’d pull up not to Nora’s house but to a café lit by gas lamps.
Yale had circled the date of January 26 in his pocket calendar at some point—he didn’t remember doing it, which meant he’d probably been drunk—and he’d recalculated several times in the past weeks. And today was the twenty-seventh. Twelve full weeks and one day since Nico’s memorial. If that was truly the night Charlie had been infected, then Yale could have been infected soon after. He could wait till the end of March, three full months from the last time he’d had sex with Charlie, or he could pull the trigger now. Because even if he hadn’t been infected till that last time, any antibodies were, according to two different people who’d answered the Howard Brown hotline on two different nights, 80 percent likely to have shown up by now. And some doctors believed transmission rates were highest right after infection—he knew, thanks to several helpful articles in the newspaper of the asshole who had possibly murdered him.
Yale tried to get Roman talking, asked him about his childhood. “It’s not what you think of when you picture California,” Roman said. “Truckee is where the Donner Party got stuck.”
“They got stuck in California?” It hit Yale as absurd.
“Cannibals and skiing. That’s what we’ve got.”
Yale asked if he still considered himself Mormon and Roman grimaced, hesitated. “They make it really hard to leave. It’s like trying to quit Columbia House.”
“Ha! They send you sheets of stickers?”
“Yeah,” Roman said. “You get eleven years of guilt for only a dollar.”
The Great Believers Page 28
