In August’s waiting room the receptionist behind the glass restrained her smile enough to hide the braces he’d seen many times before. “Morning, Michael.”
“Hi, Lacey.”
“You’re early, aren’t you?”
“I’ve got pentamidine at nine, but I was hoping August could take a look at something.”
She nodded. “He’s out till noon.”
“Oh.”
“He’s testifying in Sacramento.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You know, funding…something like that. Joy is here. You wanna see her?”
Joy was a nurse practitioner. “Sure. I guess. It’s just a place on my leg.”
“O.K.” Another camouflaging smile. “Have a seat. She’ll be free in a little while.”
He sat down, grabbed a copy of HG, and thumbed through it mechanically. One of the featured homes was Arch Gidde’s house at Sea Cliff, almost unrecognizable amid the jungle of exotic flora imported for the photograph. He checked the date of the magazine—two months back. The realtor must have been close to death when it hit the stands.
“Hey,” said Lacey, “did you see where Jessica Hahn is making a video?”
Michael managed a chuckle.
“Is that disgusting or what?”
“That’s pretty bad.”
“They say she’s had a boob job.”
“Chances are,” he said.
He returned to his magazine and, feeling his palms begin to sweat, studied the lucite-framed cavalry uniforms in Arch Gidde’s bedroom.
Five minutes later, Joy met him at the door and led him down a sunny hall lined with August’s collection of Broadway show posters.
“By the way,” she said, “that was me who honked at you yesterday.”
He drew a blank.
“On Clement,” she explained. “You were leaving your nursery, I think.”
“Oh, yeah.” He pretended to remember. At the moment he couldn’t focus on anything. Certainly not on yesterday.
“I hate it when people honk at me and I can’t see who they are. It fucks up my whole day.”
“I know what you mean,” he said.
When they reached the examining room, she said: “What can I do for you?”
He sat on the table and rolled up his pants leg. “Is that what I think it is?”
She studied it in silence for a moment, then straightened up. “How long has it been there?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t noticed it before.”
“When did you find it?”
“Last night.”
She nodded.
“Is it?”
“It looks like it,” she said.
He made himself take a deep breath.
“I’m not a hundred percent certain.”
He nodded.
“August’ll be back at noon. He should look at it. We can take a biopsy.”
“Whatever.”
“Are you feeling O.K. otherwise?”
“Fine.”
“I’m not completely sure,” she said.
“I understand.” He smiled faintly to show that he wouldn’t hold her to it.
He loitered in the waiting room until nine, then went to the third-floor lab for his pentamidine. While he sucked away on the phallic plastic mouthpiece, the nurse who attended him carried on his usual monologue.
“…so George went to this big, fancy gay and lesbian banquet in Washington, only the airlines lost his luggage with all his leather in it, and…well, you can imagine…he had to get up in front of everybody in wool pants and a white button-down shirt…”
Michael smiled feebly under the mouthpiece.
“He was totally upstaged by this S-and-M dyke, who made her entrance in a merry widow…with visible lash marks on her back. Is that a fashion statement or what?”
Michael chuckled.
“Are you O.K., guy?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Am I talking too much? Just tell me, if I am.”
“Not at all.”
The vapor, as usual, left a bitter, tinfoilish taste in his mouth.
He left the building just before ten and walked down the hill to the park, where he wandered amid people frolicking with Frisbees and dogs. Three years of daily fretting had left him overrehearsed for this moment, but it still seemed completely unreal. He had vowed not to rail against the universe when his time came. Too many people had died, too many he had loved, for “Why me?” to be a reasonable response. “Why not?” was more to the point.
And there were lots worse things than KS. Pneumocystis, for one, which could finish you off in a matter of days. August had assured him the pentamidine would prevent that, if he did it faithfully. And KS had been known to disappear completely with the proper treatment. Unless it spread, unless it got inside you.
He remembered Charlie Rubin when the lesions moved to his face, how he’d joked about the one on his nose that made him look like Pluto. They had covered him eventually, forming great purple continents. Charlie was blind by that time, of course, so at least he was spared the sight of them.
He sat on a bench and began to cry. It wasn’t major grief at all, just another pit stop in the Grand Prix of HIV. He still felt fine, didn’t he? He still had Thack and a home. And Brian and Shawna. And Harry. And Mrs. Madrigal, wherever she might be.
He tilted his head and let the sun dry his tears. The air smelled of new-mown grass, while what he could see of the sky seemed ridiculously blue. The birds in the trees were as fat and chirpy as the ones in cartoons.
As soon as he returned to August’s office, Lacey’s face grew soft with concern. She had obviously gotten the word.
“August is back,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”
He found the doctor in the first examining room, washing his hands. “Young man,” he said, smiling. “Sorry we missed each other.”
August was in his late forties, not that much older than most of his patients, but he called them all “young man.” Over the years he had watched his peaceful little dermatology practice grow into something that seemed more like a fraternity than a medical venture.
“How’s that handsome husband of yours?”
“Fine,” said Michael.
“Good, good. Sit on the table for me.” He tore off a paper towel and dried his hands.
Michael sat.
“Where is it?”
He held out his leg and pointed.
August leaned over the place and squinted at it. “Does it hurt?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah.” August shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so.”
“What?”
“I don’t think that’s a lesion.” He let go of Michael’s leg and left the room, returning moments later with his nurse practitioner.
“Hi again,” said Joy.
“Hi.” Michael was sure he could feel his heart beating.
“There’s a sort of ring around it,” Joy said, looking at the spot again. “That’s why it seemed to me…” She didn’t try to finish this.
“I can see why you’d think that,” August said evenly, “but there’s only one of them.”
She nodded.
“They almost never come singly.”
“Yeah…I see.” She gave Michael an apologetic glance.
“It doesn’t really warrant a biopsy,” the doctor told him. “If it’s not gone in a week, we can talk again, but I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t clear up on its own.”
Michael nodded. “There’s nothing I need to do, then?”
“You might try a little Clearasil,” said August.
Like the other false alarms he’d experienced over the years, this one sent him on his way with a noticeable spring in his step. He felt an irresistible urge to buy something. Clothes, maybe, or furniture. Or maybe he’d just go ride the circular escalator at the new Nordstrom store and see what occurred to him. Nothing extravagant; just something useful and commemorative.
He knew this
feeling well. When his T-cells soared to six hundred following his first six weeks of AZT, the orgy of consuming that ensued had not been a pretty sight. Limiting himself to the bare essentials, he had pushed his Visa card to the limit in the linen department at Macy’s before going berserk with his pocket cash at the Fair Oaks Street garage sale.
He phoned Thack at home from the garage of the medical building. “It’s me, sweetie.”
“Oh, hi.”
“August says it’s just a zit.”
“Well…great.” He could hear the relief in Thack’s voice. “Told you.”
“You working today?” Michael asked.
“No.”
“I thought I might call Brian and tell him I’m taking the day off.”
“Good idea. Do it.”
“You wanna have lunch somewhere?”
“Sure. You pick.”
“It doesn’t matter. Someplace cozy and lesbian.”
His lover laughed. “Sounds like you’re on the verge of buying things?”
Michael chuckled. “I might be.”
“Can we do it together?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it gonna be?”
“I dunno,” said Michael. “I thought maybe chairs.”
“Chairs?”
“You know…for the kitchen table. Like we decided.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“We could go down to the Mission, check out the junk stores.”
“O.K.”
“Mrs. Madrigal swears by that one at Twentieth next to the organic food…”
“Oh,” said Thack. “She called.”
“Mrs. Madrigal?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. Just sent her love. It was on the machine. She was in Athens, apparently.”
“She must be on the way home.”
“Yeah,” said Thack. “I guess so.”
D’orothea’s Grille was a little short on celebrities that day, so their people-watching centered around the bubble-butted boy who brought them their Chinese chicken salads. DeDe emerged from the kitchen when they were almost done, kissing Michael’s cheek, then Thack’s. “Hi, boys. Like the new decor?”
“Not bad,” Michael told her.
“Not finished either. We’ve still gotta knock out that back wall, open the whole thing up. God, it makes me tired just thinking about it. How were the salads?”
“Great,” said Thack.
“You should’ve come earlier. Chloe Rand was here.”
Thack grunted.
“You know her?”
“No,” said Thack. “But her husband tried to fuck my husband last night.”
DeDe turned to Michael and let her jaw drop comically. “No!”
Michael chuckled.
“Did you do it?” asked DeDe.
He smiled cryptically.
DeDe glanced at Thack. “I think he did, don’t you?”
Thack laughed.
“Where was this?” asked DeDe.
“Out at Arch Gidde’s.”
She nodded. “We were invited to some brunch thing at Prue Giroux’s, but D’or didn’t think she could stomach it. She used to model for him, you know, back when he was still gay.”
This got a hoot out of Thack.
An hour later they scored big in a junk store on Valencia Street: two matching wooden dinette chairs, covered in cruddy white vinyl but displaying an unmistakably Deco silhouette. They paid an old man ten bucks for the pair and tied them onto the VW, fussing like nuns with a fresh busload of orphans.
Back at the house, they set to work with hammers and crowbars, ripping away two, three, four layers of plastic and stuffing, until the original chairs were revealed. Their peaked backs and oval handholds conveyed a sort of Seven Dwarfsish feeling, which Michael thought suited the house perfectly.
At dusk, as the fog rolled in, they lay on the deck completely spent, staring at their treasures.
“What should we paint them?” asked Michael. “A Fiesta color, maybe?”
“How about turquoise?”
“Perfect. God, look how many tacks there were!”
“Yeah.”
“They must feel better,” said Michael.
“Who must?”
“The chairs. To have all those tacks out.”
“Right.”
“Well, think about it. It was like a crucifixion or something.”
Thack gave him a sleepy smile. “You’re such a weird guy,” he said.
Michael reached over and took hold of Thack’s cock. It felt fat and warm through the padding of his sweat pants. Holding on, he slid closer and kissed Thack softly on the lips.
“Feeling better?” asked Thack.
“Much.”
“I want you to stick around, O.K.?”
“O.K.,” said Michael.
They heard the hiss of a pop-top in the kitchen and realized without looking that Brian had come home.
Inheritance
ON HER WAY BACK TO NEW YORK THE MORNING after, Chloe had left a chirpy see-you-soon on Mary Ann’s machine, so whatever nastiness had transpired between Michael and Russell must not have made its way back to his wife. Thank God for that, anyway. Four days after the debacle in Sea Cliff, Mary Ann still hadn’t heard from Michael, and knowing him, he wasn’t likely to relent anytime soon. His tantrums had a way of lasting.
Ditto Brian. Yesterday she’d left a message on Michael’s machine, telling her husband that she’d be gone by the end of the week, that Shawna should not be deprived of her father any longer than necessary. He hadn’t called back. She’d begun to wonder if he was deliberately trying to screw up her departure, knowing she couldn’t leave in good conscience without turning over Shawna to his care.
Shawna, thankfully, had taken all this grownup childishness in stride. (If anything, she seemed more distressed by her father’s current absence than by Mary Ann’s impending one.) The same could not be said for Mary Ann’s bosses at the station. Their ill-disguised resentment over her new position had been gratifying only to the degree that it confirmed—or betrayed, rather, since they’d always kept it a secret—her real value to the station.
As she’d sat there outlining her new duties and watching a vein throb in Larry Kenan’s temple, it was all she could do not to pull a Sally Field and blurt out the revelation that had finally come to her after all these years:
You like me…you really like me.
She had endured Mary Ann in the Morning for one last program—“The Truth About Breast Implants.” Now she was home in her walk-in closet, dragging out a trunk, which had been there unopened for ages. It was crammed with things from Connie’s apartment in the Marina. Connie’s little brother, Wally, had brought it by Barbary Lane only days after he’d shown up with the newborn Shawna. “She might want this someday,” he’d told them somberly, bestowing a sort of heirloom status on stuff he’d simply been too softhearted to throw out.
When Mary Ann pushed back the lid, Shawna all but dove into the musty interior.
“Hey, Puppy. Take it easy.”
“What’s this?”
It was a filthy terry-cloth python with plastic eyes that rolled. She remembered it all too well. Connie had kept it on her bed, next to her giant Snoopy. “It’s a snake, see?” She made the eyes roll for Shawna.
“Was that hers?”
“Sure. All of this stuff was.”
“Gah!” Obviously impressed, the kid lunged into the trunk again and pulled out a little cardboard crate that Mary Ann recognized immediately.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Shawna did so and frowned. “It’s just a dumb rock.”
“No, it’s a Pet Rock.”
“What’s that?”
“Well…people used to have these.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain, Puppy. Look at this, though.” She removed a satin pillow, maroon faded to rose, and read
the inscription: “School Spirit Day, Central High, 1967.”
“What is it?”
“Well, that’s where your…birth mommy and I went to high school in Cleveland. She was head majorette. You know what that is?”
Shawna shook her head.
“She marched in front of the band. With a baton and this really neat uniform. It was a big deal. Everybody saw her. You know, I think maybe…” She foraged through the trunk, hoping that Wally had rescued Connie’s Buccaneer.
Sure enough, there it was, tucked behind an atrocious painting of a bullfighter on black velvet. The raised medallion on the front cover had been rendered medieval by mildew. “I’ll show you a picture,” she said.
It was a full-page photo at the front of the sports section: Connie strutting her stuff, buttons gleaming, teeth and tits to the wind. At the time, Mary Ann had written it off as slutty looking, but she had probably just been envious. It seemed almost virginal now.
Sitting Indian style on the floor, Shawna took the yearbook on her lap and studied the page. “She was pretty,” she said at last.
“She was,” said Mary Ann. “Very. I think she looks a lot like you. Don’t you?”
Shawna shrugged. “Did you move out here with her?”
“No. She was here a long time before I was. But I stayed with her when I came out here from Cleveland.”
“How long?”
“Oh…a week.” It had been a long week too, what with Connie dragging home guys from Thomas Lord’s and Dance Your Ass Off. She had moved out with a sense of profound relief, putting all that tackiness behind her. Or so she thought at the time. Who would have dreamed she would end up as the custodian of Connie’s memory?
“Didn’t you like her?” asked Shawna.
This caught her off guard. “Of course, Puppy. Sure I liked her. Why would you say a thing like that?”
The child shrugged. “You left her.”
“I didn’t leave her.”
“But you said…”
“I found a place at Anna’s house. I wanted my own apartment. I was only at your birth mommy’s place for the time being. She knew that.”