“Is…what’s your husband’s name?”
“Brian.”
“Is he O.K. about it?”
She faltered for a moment, then decided to come clean. Chloe had felt like an ally from the moment she met her. “He’s not going with me,” she said. “We’re getting a divorce.”
Chloe nodded slowly. “Uh-huh.”
“It’s been coming on for a long time.”
“Was this your idea or his?”
“Both, really.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I’m kind of freaked out about it. I mean, I know it’s the right thing to do, but…it’s a lot of new stuff all at once.”
“You’ll be O.K. Look at you. You’ll land on your feet like a cat.”
“Think so?”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s not just him I’m leaving, though. It’s my whole life here, my friends…Michael out there…”
“They can come see you. This isn’t Zanzibar you’re moving to.”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“Look, you’re talking to an Akron girl, remember? If I can do it…”
“But you did it with somebody you care about…”
“Yeah…well…”
“I am so envious of that. Having somebody on your own wavelength. Who loves the same things you love, laughs at the same jokes. Goes to things with you.”
Chloe looked as if she didn’t quite understand.
“It’s never been that way with me and Brian.”
“What has it been?”
“I don’t know. Sex, mostly.”
Chloe fixed her lips in the mirror. “Poor baby.”
Mary Ann laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t mean we did it all the time. I mean that’s what…you know, kept us together.”
“Is that what you married him for?”
“No, not completely.”
“Then what?”
“He was also…very gentle.” Mary Ann paused. “Plus he didn’t have a name for his dick.”
“Excuse me?”
She rolled her eyes. “For the longest time every guy I dated had a name for his dick.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Ol’ Henry or something.”
Chloe snorted. “Ol’ Henry? Was this here or in Ohio?”
“Here! It was so depressing!”
They laughed together raucously.
“So,” said Chloe, recovering. “Ol’ Brian came along with this nameless wonder between his legs…”
Someone knocked on the door.
Muffling their giggles, they composed themselves. “Come in,” said Chloe with exaggerated mellifluousness.
The door swung open slowly and a face appeared. Mary Ann recognized her as one of the pillars of the ballet board. “Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman blurted. “I thought…”
“No problem,” said Chloe. “It’s all yours.”
She recognizes us both, thought Mary Ann. Won’t she have something to tell the girls?
They were in a sort of glass gazebo now, high above the water.
“Shouldn’t we look for the guys?” Mary Ann asked.
“Fuck, no. Let ’em look for us.”
Mary Ann chuckled. She felt a little guilty about deserting Michael, but she knew he could handle himself. Besides, he was probably thrilled to death to be hobnobbing with Russell Rand.
“This house is weird,” said Chloe. “So seventies.”
Mary Ann nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure what Chloe meant.
“This looks like one of those elevators at the Hyatt Regency. You know?”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it was pretty hot shit once upon a time. Russell said it was, anyway.”
“This house?” said Mary Ann. “He knows it?”
“He knew the guy who lived here.”
“Oh.”
“Not well, but he came to a few parties.’
Mary Ann nodded.
“If you know what I mean,” said Chloe.
That Eternity Crap
ISN’T THIS WHERE WE STARTED?” ASKED RUSSELL RAND, grinning boyishly.
They had wandered from one crowded level to another in search of Mary Ann and Chloe. So far, all they’d come up against were slack-jawed fashion victims, people who simply stopped what they were doing and gawked when the famous New Yorker appeared.
“I think you’re right,” said Michael.
“I know I’ve seen that one before.” Rand nodded toward a champagne-blond matron in gold lamé knickers.
“You’re right. Maybe she moved, though.”
“No. She’s been there the whole time. A veritable beacon. I’m sure of it.”
“Well…”
“Oh, Christ.” The designer spun on his heels, ducking his head in the process.
“Who is it?”
Rand seized Michael’s elbow and steered him away from the advancing menace, all the while pantomiming a surprised, jovial greeting to an imaginary person in the other room. Michael played along, waving vaguely to the same phantom.
When they had made their way to a lower, less populated level, Michael laughed and said: “Who was that?”
“Prue Giroux.”
“Oh.”
“You know her?”
“No. I know of her.”
“Don’t ever know her. You’ll regret it deeply.”
Michael laughed. “She likes to talk, I hear.”
“Oh, Christ. I thought we could get through here without seeing her this time.” He gazed imploringly at Michael. “Let’s get some air. This is too much for me.”
Without waiting for a response, the designer opened a door leading out to a cliffside rock garden. A pink spotlight beamed through the fog at a bank of succulents. At the end of the path was a stone bench, where Rand sat down with a sigh of relief. “The people in this town are carnivores,” he said.
Michael joined him on the bench. “Not everybody.”
“Well, everybody here.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“What do you do?” asked Rand.
“I’m a nurseryman.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s a nice solid profession.”
“Well…” Michael shrugged, not sure what to say about that.
“Have you known Mary Ann long?”
“Years.”
“Has she told you about her new show?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Why isn’t her husband here tonight?”
Michael decided not to elaborate. “He doesn’t like this kind of stuff.”
Rand nodded ruefully. “But you do.”
“Not really. She asked me as a special favor.” He hoped he hadn’t come off as her walker.
After a pause Rand said: “You’re not married, then?”
Michael smiled. “To a woman?”
His interrogator obviously hadn’t expected this.
“I have a lover.” It was hardly necessary to specify the gender.
Rand nodded.
“Three years.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah…it is.”
The silence breathed heavy with suggestion.
“Is it an open relationship?”
“Oh, sure.” Michael smiled at him. “Everybody knows about it.”
Rand shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh…”
“I’ve got a suite at the Meridien. You could be home by midnight.”
Well, well, thought Michael. How do you like this? “What about your wife?”
Rand’s lip curled handsomely. “She’s got her own suite.”
“Right.”
“Ours is open.”
“Your suite?”
“Our marriage.”
“Oh.”
“How ’bout it?”
“No, thanks.”
/>
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“We’d play safe,” said Rand. “I believe in that.”
“It’s cold out here,” said Michael. “I’m gonna look for Mary Ann.”
“C’mon, sport. Stay for a minute.”
Michael stared at the ground for a while, then said: “You’re really amazing, you know.”
The designer’s brow furrowed.
“How can you live with yourself?”
“Look, if you mean Chloe…”
“No. I mean your own self-worth. What do your friends think when you start spouting that crap?”
“What crap?”
“You know. About the love of a good woman. The joys of being straight. I saw you on the Today show last week. I’ve never heard such a line of shit in my life. You’re not fooling half as many people as you think.”
Even in the fog, and under a pink light, Rand colored noticeably. “Look, you don’t know me…”
“I know you’re a hypocrite.”
Rand took a long time to react. “You run a nursery, for Christ’s sake. Nobody expects you to be straight.”
“You think they expect dress designers to be?”
Rand nodded dolefully. “The world doesn’t want to know. Trust me.”
“Who cares?”
“I do. I have to.”
“No you don’t. You’re just greedy. Keeping up a front while your friends drop dead.”
Rand gave him a flinty glare. “I’ve raised more money for AIDS than you’ll ever see.”
“And that lets you off the hook? Entitles you to lie?”
“I think it entitles me to…”
“You had a chance to make a real difference, you know. You could’ve shown people that gay people are everywhere, that we’re no different from…”
“Oh, get real!”
“Why not? Are you that disgusted by yourself?”
“Why should the public know about my private life?”
“We sure as hell know about Chloe, don’t we?”
Rand grunted and stood up, obviously beating a retreat.
“You’re a dinosaur,” Michael said. “The world has moved on, and you don’t even know it.”
Rand glowered back at him as he headed for the house. “What do you know about the world? You live in San Francisco.”
“Thank God for that,” yelled Michael. “And good luck getting laid.”
When Rand was gone, Michael remained there in the rose-tinted fog, filling his lungs with the stuff as he collected his thoughts. Then, remembering suddenly, he leaned over, lifted his pants leg, and examined the purple spot again.
When he found Mary Ann, she was in the act of autographing a cocktail napkin for an ecstatic fan.
“Are you about ready to go?” he asked.
She handed the napkin to the fan, who looked at it disbelieving, then backed off, bobbing like a court servant. “I guess so,” she answered. “Are you bored?”
“No. I’ve just sort of…done it.”
“Right.” She perused the crowd. “We should say goodbye to Russell and Chloe.”
“No,” he said. “We shouldn’t.”
She frowned. “What’s the matter? What happened?”
“We had sort of a scene. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Mouse…”
“I’ll get the car.”
She followed him up the path to the valet parker. “What sort of a scene?”
“He made a move on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“He invited me back to his hotel.”
“Well, that may not have been…”
“I think I would know,” he said.
In the car, after a weighty silence, she asked: “What did you tell him?”
“Not much. That he was a closet case and should go fuck himself.”
“You didn’t.”
“In so many words, yes.”
“Mouse…”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“It isn’t what you say, it’s how. Were you rude to him?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ve been very nice to me. Chloe’s helping me with my move, and…”
He laughed as bitterly as he could.
“I mean this,” she said.
“What was I supposed to do? Suck him off to show your gratitude?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“The guy is a slimeball.”
“You’ve been hit on before,” she said. “You know how to turn somebody down in a pleasant way.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Where do you get off being so sanctimonious, anyway? You picked up plenty of guys before you met Thack.”
As usual, she had missed the point entirely. “This has nothing to do with picking up guys,” he said.
“Then…what?”
“He’s a liar, Mary Ann.”
“He’s a public figure.”
“Oh, I see. Can’t have Amurrica knowing he’s queer. Anything but that, God knows.”
“There are practical considerations,” she said. “You’re not being at all reasonable.”
“I haven’t got time for people who don’t like themselves.”
He peered sullenly out the window. Pale stucco facades slid past in the darkness. It made him sad to realize that she hadn’t grasped this fundamental concept in all their years of knowing each other. If she, of all people, didn’t get it, was there any hope for the serious bigots?
She turned and looked at him. “You sound so strident. It isn’t very becoming.”
He kept quiet.
“You liked Russell the other night. Did Thack bad-mouth him or something?”
“No.”
“Then what’s gotten into you?”
His beeper went off, answering her question more eloquently than anything he might have said.
She looked flustered for a moment. “Do you want me to stop for water?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll take it when I get home.”
“I can always…”
“I’m fine, all right?”
They were silent for a while, staring out of different windows. As they dipped into Cow Hollow, he turned to her and said: “You’re the one who’s changed, you know.”
“Have I?” Her voice was surprisingly gentle.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry if my leaving…”
“It Isn’t that. It happened some time ago.”
“Oh.”
“I wish there was some way to convince you I’m not dead yet.”
She gazed at him, blinking.
“That’s the way you’ve acted,” he added. “Ever since I told you I was positive.”
She pretended not to understand. “What do you mean? Acted how?”
“I don’t know. Careful and distant and overpolite. It’s not the same between us anymore. You talk to me now like I’m Shawna or something.”
“Mouse…”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “You don’t wanna go through Jon again.”
“What do you think tonight was about? And that day at the Wave Organ?”
“He shrugged. “Insecurity.”
“C’mon.”
“You needed somebody to hold your hand. Somebody to listen. Nothing more.”
“That’s not very kind.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s true.”
“If I can’t count on you, Mouse…”
“Hey, it works the other way too.”
She looked wounded. “I know that.”
“You’re leaving more than one man, you know.”
She seemed to be composing her words. “Mouse…you and I will always…”
“Horseshit. You scrapped our plans tonight as soon as that closet case walked through the door. Don’t gimme that e
ternity crap. You’ve got your new friends now. The rest of us are just an interim measure.”
“I know you don’t mean that.”
“I do mean it. I wish to hell I didn’t, but I do. You don’t give a shit about anybody.” He looked away from her, out the window. “I’m amazed it took me this long to figure it out.”
“I don’t believe this,” she said.
“Believe it.”
“Mouse, if I’ve said something…”
“Jesus, why are you always so innocent?”
“Look, if you’d tell me where this coffee place is…”
“Fuck that. Stop at the next corner. I’m getting out.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
He turned and gave her a look to signal his seriousness. “I said stop, please.”
“How will you get home?”
“A bus, a cab. I don’t care.”
She pulled next to the curb at Union and Octavia.
“This is so unnecessary,” she said.
He opened the door and left the car without looking back. As the Mercedes sped away into the fog-fuzzed corridor, he stood on the curb and wondered bleakly if she even cared, if she was feeling anything at all.
Love on the Machine
HE WOKE AT DAWN THE NEXT MORNING. THE ONLY dream he could remember had been a real doozie, a full Dolby extravaganza involving dead turtles, vintage biplanes, and a brief, heart-stopping walk-on by the Princess of Wales. Out of old habit, he lay there for a while reconstructing this epic, honoring it with his stillness, like a moviegoer who remains in his seat until the credits are over.
Leaving Thack in bed, he slipped into jeans and a corduroy shirt and took Harry on his morning walk—the abbreviated version—before sorting the laundry and fixing a breakfast of apples and yogurt. His pentamidine appointment was at nine, but the office opened at eight. He knew from experience that August wouldn’t mind squeezing in an unscheduled examination.
As he left, Thack was lurching toward the shower in his morning muddle. “Want me to come with you?”
Michael told him no.
“Are you coming home afterwards?”
This was a hard one to call. “I dunno.”
His lover pecked him on the shoulder. “Call me, then. Or I’ll call you at work.”
“O.K.”
“And don’t worry,” said Thack.
August’s office was in a black glass building on Parnassus opposite U.C. Med Center. Michael parked in the basement garage, then rode an elevator smelling of disinfectant and the hot dogs in the fourth-floor snack bar. On the fifth floor he was joined by a bulky Samoan lady who smiled pathetically and held up a splinted forefinger. He offered his condolences, then got off at the seventh floor.