A series of aldermen and state senators in convertibles, most looking pained.
The Out Loud float. A red flatbed truck. Yale took a small step back so Katsu couldn’t see his face, so he didn’t have to worry what his eyes and mouth were doing.
Posterboard signs all over it: “Fight Out Loud for Safer Sex!” and “Out Loud Says / Cover Your Head!”
Six beautiful shirtless men—Yale didn’t recognize them, except for Dwight the copy editor—angling cucumbers from their crotches, slowly rolling rubbers onto them. Peeling them off, doing it again. Opening new packets with their teeth, milking the crowd for cheers.
From the side of the truck, Gloria and Rafael threw rubbers from a bucket.
He couldn’t see Charlie. And then suddenly he could. He had shaved his beard. He was the one holding the boom box that blasted “You Spin Me Round.”
Yale tried to wrap his mind around the irony of the whole thing, but his body was busy reacting with some strange combination of high and low blood pressure.
A Trojan hit Katsu on the chest and he caught it, laughing, and handed it to Yale. He said, “I’m a LifeStyles man. You want?” And although Yale could not see an occasion in which he’d want to use a rubber that had come, indirectly, from Charlie, he stuck it in the pocket of his shorts. He’d need to get used to them. Until he’d redone the test in March, until Dr. Cheng had told him that again the ELISA was negative—though this time he really had made Yale wait two weeks, as he’d vowed—Yale had barely let himself ejaculate in the same room as Roman. Lately, since the second negative, he’d been letting Roman suck him off—though what did “lately” really mean, when it was all so sporadic?
Yale wished the Out Loud float would disappear, but it was still making its slow way down Clark, Trojans still flying.
Someone scratched him between the shoulder blades, and he turned to see Teddy grinning, bouncing. “Look who came out of hiding!” Teddy said. Yale should have known that Teddy might have been part of Katsu’s group—and honestly it was good to see him. Good, especially, that Teddy was talking as if he didn’t think Yale was a monster.
Teddy told them about the Klan activity in the park. He said, “They’re gone now. They didn’t want to actually see any of this, you know? They left right before the parade started.”
Katsu said, “I bet half are secretly sticking around. Bet they’re jacking off under their robes.”
“Only one guy had a robe, actually. I found that so disappointing! They had, like, combat gear, with these weird little shields.”
Yale said, “What do they even want? Besides attention?”
“Um, according to their giant banner, they want to quarantine the queers. Real original. Anyway, we yelled back for a long time, and these dykes made out right in front of them. Then they just packed up. I stuck around to talk to a reporter. Anyone want a hot dog? I’m starving.”
There was no point trying to move till the parade was over, and when it finally was, they followed the crowd to the park for the rally. Katsu took off, and Yale found himself alone with Teddy in an endless line for food. Yale said, “I hope we’re still friends.”
“I was mad at you, but it was temporary. I was judging you for being judgmental. Ironic, right?”
“I’m not sure I was being judgmental. I know that for you the news was Charlie testing positive, but for me the news was him cheating on me. Maybe everyone else already knew, but I didn’t. And things hadn’t been great between us for a long time. We actually—he accused me of sleeping with you, the night of Nico’s memorial.”
Teddy whistled between his teeth. “Yeah, I don’t remember fucking you.” He laughed. “Must not’ve been that good.”
The line lurched, and Yale checked to make sure the guys behind them were strangers. He said, “I feel like we’re all caught up in some huge cycle of judgment. We spent our whole lives unlearning it, and here we are.”
“The thing is,” Teddy said, “the disease itself feels like a judgment. We’ve all got a little Jesse Helms on our shoulder, right? If you got it from sleeping with a thousand guys, then it’s a judgment on your promiscuity. If you got it from sleeping with one guy once, that’s almost worse, it’s like a judgment on all of us, like the act itself is the problem and not the number of times you did it. And if you got it because you thought you couldn’t, it’s a judgment on your hubris. And if you got it because you knew you could and you didn’t care, it’s a judgment on how much you hate yourself. Isn’t that why the world loves Ryan White so much? How could God have it out for some poor kid with a blood disorder? But then people are still being terrible. They’re judging him just for being sick, not even for the way he got it.”
Yale tended to find Teddy mentally draining, but he was right this time.
Way over at the bandstand, Mayor Washington had begun to speak. “As a black man who has suffered discrimination,” he was saying, “as part of a race of people who have suffered . . .” and Teddy said, “He’s a good one, yeah? We lucked out.”
“He’ll be up for reelection by the time we get out of this line.”
Teddy said, “Check out the cast of The Addams Family over there.”
Yale looked and couldn’t see.
“Three o’clock, behind the guy with the bird.”
Yale saw, first, a dark-haired man with a blue and green macaw perched on his shoulder. He was laughing with someone, and for a second it was hard to look at anything other than this beautiful man and his beautiful bird. But then behind him, Yale saw a group of terribly chic young people, all dressed in black. One of them was Roman. Yale started to wave but stopped.
He had never seen Roman’s friends, and this wasn’t what he’d pictured: two tall, pale, handsome men who may or may not have been gay, but given the surroundings probably were, and a young woman with waist-length blonde hair, a silver ring in her nose. What on earth had he imagined? He hadn’t let himself think about it that much, was the thing. In general, the more he thought about Roman, the more confused he became. Roman was best as a shadow that came in the night, an empty screen onto which he could project whatever he wanted. Roman was not the kind of person who showed up to Pride, on his own, with fabulous friends Yale had never heard about. Roman stayed home and worked on his dissertation.
Teddy said, “I know the one with glasses.”
“The one with glasses?”
Yale’s brain turned slow, arthritic cartwheels. Roman wasn’t even supposed to be here. That wasn’t Roman. He tried to get a better angle. Roman’s glasses, Roman’s bony shoulders.
“He’s a piece of work,” Teddy said.
“Where do you know him from?”
“I mean . . .” Teddy shrugged and laughed.
“No, seriously.”
How many nights had Roman come over? How drunk had Yale been? What had happened, exactly, and on what bed and when? He’d been careful about himself, protecting Roman. They hadn’t been careful the other way. Because Roman was a virgin. Because Roman was a virgin. Yale said, “Tell me.”
“He’s not that hot, chill out. I met him last year at my friend Michael’s lecture at the Cultural Center. He’s got this whole tortured artist thing going on, like he just suddenly has to leave the room and be alone.”
“Oh.” Yale relaxed. “I thought you met him at a bathhouse or something.”
“God, Yale, I go other places. I mean—” he laughed, leaned close “—I ploughed him like a fresh spring field, but we definitely met at the Cultural Center.”
Yale let Teddy step ahead of him in line. The park was more sound than color now, more vibration than reality. If he opened his eyes, he’d be in bed next to Charlie, and it would be last summer. He told Teddy he’d be back and he stepped toward Roman’s group, which was still quite far away. He needed to see that it wasn’t Roman. The mayor was still talking, and the air still smelled like hot
dogs, and yes, it was Roman standing there looking bored, just like his bored and beautiful friends.
Yale might have run home and hidden under his blankets, but instead he made his way past a pack of leatherdykes, past the guy with the bird, and straight to Roman. Roman tried to angle his body away, a teenager who didn’t want his friends knowing that this embarrassing person was his dad. Yale said, “May I have a word?”
One of the boys in black hooted; the other said, “Who is she?”
Roman opened his mouth as if he wanted to make an excuse not to talk, but then he wiped his brow with the back of his arm and stepped away with Yale. Yale didn’t care if Teddy looked over and saw them together. He was far beyond caring.
He said, “We’ll make this really quick. Did you misrepresent yourself?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I should have been—I should have asked you more questions. I should have made you take some kind of written exam. Is this what you do? You go around doing the confused Mormon act? Like, role-playing?”
Roman said, “What are you talking about?” His friends were watching, snickering. They were too far away to hear. “I’m a Mormon. That wasn’t a lie.”
“But you’re a Mormon who sleeps with a lot of men. Who’s been doing this for a long time.”
“Well, no. Not a lot. I mean, I used to. I was trying to be monogamous.”
For a second Yale thought Roman meant monogamy with him, that their hazy midnight assignations were meant to be some kind of steady relationship, but that made no sense. And Roman kept talking.
“Or, like, I had been, and then he was—like, he felt kind of suffocated, I guess. He was trying to get rid of me, or I thought he was. He wanted me to be with you, and I didn’t even really want it. Not that I’m not attracted to you, just—I don’t know. But then after that first time in Wisconsin, he knew, and all of a sudden he was so jealous. He wanted me to quit.”
Yale tried to understand who this boyfriend was who knew about Yale, who knew about Wisconsin, and then he got it, he got it.
Roman said, “If you’re mad because he fired you or whatever, I mean, I’m mad, too, but it’s not about us. I mean, really you quit, right? He likes you! He was seriously bummed when you left. Look, did he tell you to do it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Since we’re already talking. I’ve always wondered, and it won’t hurt my feelings. Did he tell you to come on to me, that first time? It’s so weird, he wanted to push me away, and then ever since it happened, he got possessive as hell. He’s still—I don’t know. Do you think I should leave him?”
Yale had too much to work out, and the sun was too hot, and his stomach was too empty, and what he needed to do was go home and find his fucking pocket calendar, go through the whole hellish calculus again. And it should be easier this time, he should feel stronger, knowing he’d already dodged a bullet, but it wouldn’t be, because this didn’t feel like a bullet but a cannonball.
Roman was still looking at him, earnestly waiting for advice. He’d been nothing but honest, it was true. Whatever Yale had projected onto him was his own fault.
Yale said, “Yes, you should leave him. For fuck’s sake. He’s married to a woman, and he smells like mothballs. I need to know if you’ve been tested.”
“What, like the—oh. That. I don’t know, I keep reading all these things about how it’s not really accurate. And also, like, I don’t do that kind of stuff.”
“I’m sorry, what kind of stuff?”
“You know, needles and fisting and alleys.”
“Needles and fisting and alleys?”
“You know what I mean.”
Yale turned from him without saying goodbye, and he didn’t go back to Teddy either. He headed south through the park instead of north, even though he should walk straight to Dr. Cheng’s office. Well, no: It was Sunday, and it was Pride, and no one would be there.
He walked along the harbor and then the lagoon, and he wandered back up through the zoo, and he ended up in the conservatory. He hadn’t been inside in ages: a glass bubble of tropical plants, the only sound the waterfalls, the only light the filtered sun.
He walked back to the third room, the quietest, the emptiest, and he sat down right in the middle of the floor.
2015
Fiona didn’t sleep at all, but she waited till morning. When Richard was in the shower and couldn’t stop her, she stepped outside onto the eerily quiet streets. The movie production had halted; the vans remained in place, the blockades stacked against the buildings. On nearly every corner stood paratroopers with red berets and machine guns, as if some child had spilled a tub of army toys all over Paris. She was surprised to find a cab. The driver might have been Somali or Ethiopian. He didn’t talk. He took her to the address she gave for Claire’s bar, and when she saw the gate pulled over the entrance, the hand-lettered sign, she directed him straight back to where he’d found her.
* * *
—
Cecily’s plane had landed just after the attacks began, and she was at baggage claim when the news reached her. She’d managed to get through to Fiona at one in the morning, and by early afternoon she was in Richard’s flat, taking her shoes off in the doorway. Fiona hadn’t seen her in ten years, didn’t know which changes were exhaustion and which were age. Cecily did look like a grandmother. People in their seventies could be grandmothers. Fifty-one-year-olds should still be leading spin classes and staying out too late, in Fiona’s opinion.
“What happened to your hand?” Cecily asked, and Fiona said, “Stigmata.” Cecily didn’t laugh. Well, she’d never had much of a sense of humor.
Fiona got her some tea, told her about her meeting with Claire, although she didn’t quite convey the humiliation.
Cecily sat on Richard’s couch, her body angled toward the window. She said, “I’ve never seen Paris before. What a strange time to get here.”
“I hate that we have to live in the middle of history. We make enough mess on our own.”
Cecily smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
“Richard says hello. He’s gone to his studio. It’s funny, I went out myself today, but it scares me that other people are out. I mean, Richard can’t run if something goes wrong.”
Cecily agreed, and Fiona told her she couldn’t reach Claire. Cecily said, “It’s natural to worry, but I’m sure she’s fine.” It hadn’t occurred to Fiona till then to worry about Kurt as well. Kurt was more likely to be out at night. She didn’t imagine he liked heavy metal, but still.
Serge came through the front door then, hair sticking up with sweat, eyes ringed. He nodded at them both and ducked into the bedroom.
“I feel I’m imposing,” Cecily said, and Fiona assured her she wasn’t.
“We’re all in crisis mode here,” she said, “just for different reasons. Listen: What I think we could do, is go to Kurt’s apartment. Maybe he’d let us have Claire’s number, given the situation. And now that I’ve seen her myself.”
Cecily examined her unpolished nails. “Better if I go alone, don’t you think?”
Maybe—and besides, they’d want privacy. Fiona wouldn’t have wanted some third party there when she’d seen Claire the first time.
So after some lunch, after Fiona walked her down and got her a cab, Cecily took off for the Marais. She promised to call the instant she knew anything.
When Fiona came back upstairs, Serge was in the kitchen with his laptop. “I yelled at you last night,” he said. She understood this was his apology. “Your daughter is not on Facebook?”
She almost laughed. How much easier that would have made everything. A message to her in-box, rather than flights and detectives. “No,” she said. “I’m not either.” Damian was, and he’d checked obsessively over the past few years.
“So, two things. One is, people can check in safe, like this.” She looked
over his shoulder, saw a list of names and faces, friends of Serge who’d marked themselves alive. “But here,” he said, and he clicked to something new, “this is a forum to ask after people. I write a message, okay?”
She nodded and he started to type.
“Claire what?”
She grabbed the grocery pad and pen from beside the stove and wrote for him: Claire Yael Blanchard. “I guess she could be using Pearce. For a last name.” And she wrote that too.
“Okay,” he said. “Posted. We wait.” Dear God, it was exactly what Arnaud had said to her, what felt like a thousand years ago. We wait.
* * *
—
Damian called and she filled him in.
“Do you think she’s scared?” Damian asked.
“I hope not. I mean, not more than everyone else. She’s not a kid anymore.”
“But she’s a mother.”
“Right,” Fiona said. “Right.”
“Maybe this is how we get her home.”
Fiona doubted it. The chaos of the world had never helped her before. That it might help now seemed ridiculous.
She said, “Let’s not get greedy.”
July 15, 1986
Lake Michigan, impossibly blue, the morning light bouncing toward the city.
* * *
—
Lake Michigan frozen in sheets you could walk on but wouldn’t dare.
* * *
—
Lake Michigan, gray out a high-rise window, indistinguishable from the sky.
* * *
—
Bread, hot from the oven. Or even stale in the restaurant basket, rescued by salty butter.
* * *
—
The Cubs winning the pennant someday. The Cubs winning the Series. The Cubs continuing to lose.
* * *
—
The Great Believers Page 40
