“You weren’t a student of mine, were you?”
“No,” the man said. “Not remotely.”
“Well, then I really can’t recall,” Hugo said, faintly uncomfortable now.
“We know your son,” the woman said. “We know Will.”
“Ah,” said Hugo. “Well then good luck to you,” he said dryly. “Have a good night, won’t you?” And with that he started on his way.
“Where is he?” the woman inquired as Hugo passed by.
“I don’t know,” Hugo replied, not glancing back at her. “He could be anywhere. He flits around, you know. If you’re friends of his, you’ll know what a flitter he is.”
“Wait up!” the man said, leaving his lady friend’s side to follow Hugo. There was nothing aggressive about his manner, but Hugo took a firmer grip of his stick, just in case he needed to wield it. “If you could just give me a little help here—”
“Help?” Hugo turned to face the man, preferring to stand his ground and send the fellow on his way than have him following.
“To find Will,” the man said, his manner all conviviality. It was an abomination, Hugo thought, the buttonholing manner people had these days. An American import, no doubt. Thirty seconds of conversation and you were bosom buddies.
Altogether loathsome. “If you want to get a message to him,” Hugo said, “may I suggest his publishers?”
“You’re his father—”
“That’s my burden,” Hugo snapped. “But if you’re admirers of his—”
“We are,” the woman said.
“Then I must warn you he’s a terrible disappointment in the flesh.”
“We know what he’s like,” the man said. “We all know what he’s like, Hugo. You and I particularly.” The inference of kinship here was too much for Hugo. He brandished his stick in front of his face. “We have absolutely nothing to say to one another,” he said. “Now leave me alone.” He started to back away from the man, half expecting him to give chase. But he simply stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Hugo retreat.
“What are you afraid of?” he said.
“Absolutely nothing,” Hugo replied.
“That I don’t believe,” the man said. “You’re a philosopher. You know better than that.”
“I am not a philosopher,” Hugo said, resisting the flattery.
“I am a third-rate teacher of third-rate pupils who have no interest whatsoever in anything I impart to them. That is my lot in life and to the extent that I might have done worse, I’m proud of it. My wife lives in Paris with a man half my age, my best beloved son has been dead and buried thirty years, and the other is a self-promoting queer with an opinion of himself out of all proportion to his achievements. There! Are you satisfied? Does that put it plainly enough for you? In short, may I go?”
“Oh,” said the woman softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“What for?”
“You lost a child,” she said. “We’ve lost several, Jacob and I. You never get over it.”
“Jacob?” Hugo murmured, and in that instant knew to whom he was speaking. A wave of feeling passed over him that he could not quite identify.
“Yes, it’s us,” the man said softly, sensing that they’d been recognized.
Relief, Hugo thought. That’s what I’m feeling, I’m feeling relief. The waiting’s over. The mystery is here, or at least a means of access to it.
“This is Rosa, of course,” Steep said. Rosa made a comical little curtsy. “Now, shall we all be friends, Hugo?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know.”
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking about Delbert Donnelly. She was responsible for that and I’m not going to mislead you on the matter. She can be cruel sometimes, dangerous even, when she’s roused. But we’ve paid the penalty for that. We’ve had thirty years in the wilderness, not knowing where we were going to lay our heads from one night to the next.”
“So why did you choose to come back here?” Hugo said.
“We have our reasons,” Jacob said.
“Tell him,” Rosa prompted. “We came back for Will.”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, we know,” Jacob said, “you don’t speak to him and you don’t care to.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, let’s hope he cares more for you than you do for him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let’s hope he comes running when he hears you’re in trouble.”
“I hope that’s not a threat,” Hugo said, “because if it is—” He didn’t see the blow coming. There was no flicker in Steep’s eye, no indication, however slight, that his civil chat was now over. One moment he was smiling, all courtesy, the next he struck Hugo such a blow it threw the man five yards.
“Don’t do that,” said Rosa.
“Shut up,” Jacob said, and, going to where Hugo lay sprawled, picked up the stick that the old man had brandished two minutes before. While Hugo moaned at his feet, he examined the stick, moving his hands up and down its length to get its heft.
Then he raised it above his head and brought it down on Hugo’s body, once, twice, three times. The first blow won a yell of agony.
The second a moan. The third, silence.
“You haven’t killed him, have you?” Rosa said, coming to Jacob’s side.
“No, of course, I haven’t killed him,” Jacob replied, tossing the stick down beside its owner. “I want him to hang on for a while.” He went down on his haunches beside the wounded man. With a solicitousness that would have shamed a doctor, he reached down and lay the back of his fingers against Hugo’s cheek. “Are you with me, my friend?” he said. He rubbed his fingers back and forth a little. “Hugo? Can you hear me?” Hugo moaned pitifully. “I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” Jacob said.
Again, the man moaned. “So here’s the plan,” Jacob said. “We will be leaving very soon, and if we don’t call somebody to come and find you, there’s a better than average chance that you’ll be dead before dawn. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Nod if you understand.” Hugo made a barely perceptible nod. “Good enough. So. It rests with you. Do you want to die here under the stars? Nobody’s going to be coming by here tonight, I suspect, so you’ll have the place to yourself.” Hugo tried to speak. “I didn’t understand that, I’m sorry. What did you say?” Hugo made a tiny sob. “Oh now, you’re crying. Rosa, he’s crying.”
“He doesn’t want to be left alone,” Rosa said. “That’s a big thing with you men,” she complained. “You’re like kiddies half the time.”
Jacob returned his attention to Hugo. “Did you hear that?” he said. “She thinks we’re kids. She doesn’t know the half of it, does she? She doesn’t know what we go through. But I’m assuming she’s right. You don’t want to be left alone. You want us to find a telephone and have somebody come and find you. Is that right?” Hugo nodded. “That I will do, my friend,” he said. “But here’s your side of the bargain. I don’t want you saying a word to Will. Do you understand me? If he comes to see you and you tell him anything about us, what you’re feeling right now—the pain, the panic, the loneliness—will be as nothing beside what we will do to you. Do you hear me? As nothing. Nod if you understand.” Hugo nodded. “That’s good. You needn’t agonize about this. He’s—what did you call him?—a self-promoting queer? You’re not his number one fan, obviously. Whereas I, I am devoted to him, in my way. Isn’t that strange? I haven’t seen him in thirty years, of course, so I may not feel the same . . .” His voice trailed away. He sighed, and stood up.
“Lie very still,” Rosa advised him. “If you’ve broken your ribs, you don’t want to puncture a lung.” Then, to Jacob, “Are you coming?”
“Yes.” He looked straight down at Hugo’s face. “Enjoy the stars,” he said.
XVII
i
The morning after the love feast Will woke on the living-room floor, having apparently slid from the sofa, where he’d
made a nest of the clothes he’d stripped off the night before. He felt like shit. His entire body ached, even his teeth and tongue. His eyes burned in their sockets. He got to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and made for the bathroom. There he doused his face in cold water, and then looked at himself in the mirror. The calm and clarity that had been such a revelation the previous afternoon were gone. The face he was looking at was just a rag-bag of weary particulars: pallid skin and red-rimmed eyes and furlined mouth. What the hell had he been up to? He vaguely remembered there being some dispute with Drew, but he had no idea what it had been about, much less how it had been resolved, if indeed it had. Clearly he’d been out on the town, and to judge by the state of his body it had been quite a party. He had scratches on his back and chest, bite-marks on his shoulders. And there was more damning evidence still between his legs: a dick and balls so red-raw they might have been massaged with sandpaper.
“Question one,” he said, looking down at his groin, “what the fuck have we been doing? And question two, who the hell do we need to apologize to?”
When he ventured into the bedroom, of course, he was confronted with chaos. The air was rank with rotting food and stale vomit, the floor a garbage heap. He stood in the doorway, surveying the carpet of remnants, while tantalizing flashes of how the celebration here had come to an end entered his head. He’d crawled on all fours through this muck, puking like an overfed Roman in the vomitorium, hadn’t he? And out in the hallway, where there was blood and broken glass—he’d cut his foot while he was hauling himself to the top of the stairs.
What had happened after that? His mind refused to confess.
Rather than wrack it for answers, he left the fragments of recollection, along with the trash, where they lay and, dosing the bedroom door, he went to shower. There was a pattern here, he thought, of sleeping, and waking to visions, and showering, and waking again, as though the cycle of diurnal duties had been turned to the purpose of Lord Fox. A canny trick, this: to use the safest rituals of his domestic life to make him shed his assumptions. Washing himself proved a delicate business—the soap and water found broken skin he hadn’t noticed—but he emerged feeling a little better. He was in the process of drying himself when somebody rapped hard on the front door. He wrapped a towel around his middle and headed for the stairs, stepping gingerly past the glass as he went. The rapping came again, and with it Adrianna’s voice:
“Hey, Will? Will? Are you in there?”
“I’m here,” he said, opening the door to her.
“Your phone’s not working,” she said. “I’ve been calling for the last hour. Can I come in?” She peered at him as she entered.
“Boy did you ever have a late night.” He led the way into the kitchen.
“What did you do to your back?” she said, following him.
“No, never mind, don’t tell me.”
“You want some coffee, or—?”
“I’ll do it. You should just call England.”
“What for?”
“Something’s happened to your dad. He’s not dead, but there’s something wrong. They wouldn’t tell me what.”
“Who wouldn’t tell you?”
“Your agents in New York. Apparently somebody was trying to find you, and whoever it was called them, and they tried you, but they couldn’t get you, so they tried me, only I couldn’t get you—” She kept up the story while Will went into the living room, where he found the phone unplugged. Drew’s handiwork, no doubt, so they’d not be disturbed during their night of decadence. Will plugged it back in again.
“Do you know who made the call?”
“Somebody called Adele.”
“Adele?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Will.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Will. I’ve been trying to contact you—”
“Yes, I—”
“He’s in a terrible state. Just terrible.”
“What happened to him?”
“We don’t really know. I mean, somebody tried to kill him, we know that much.”
“In Manchester?”
“No, no, here. Half a mile from the house.”
“Jesus.”
“He was just beaten unmercifully. He’s concussed. He’s got three broken ribs and a broken arm.”
“Do the police know who did it?”
“No, but I think he knows, and he’s not telling. It’s peculiar. And it frightens me, it really does, in case whoever it is,” she started to dissolve into tears, “whoever it is . . . comes back . . . I didn’t know who else to turn to . . . so . . . I know you and he haven’t talked in a long while, but . . . I think you should see him.” It was plain enough what she was saying, even if she wasn’t putting it in so many words. She was afraid he wasn’t going to survive.
“I’ll come,” he said.
“You will?”
“Of course.”
“Oh that’s wonderful.” She sounded genuinely happy at the prospect. “I know it sounds selfish, but it’d take such a weight off my shoulders.”
“It doesn’t sound selfish at all,” Will said. “I’ll make arrangements right now and I’ll call you the moment I get into London.”
“Shall I tell him?”
“That I’m coming? No, I don’t think you should. He may not want to see me for one thing: Better just let it be a surprise.”
The conversation ended there. Will gave Adrianna a quick summary of what had happened, and then asked her to see what she could do about arranging a flight: any airline, any time. Leaving her to make the arrangements from the downstairs office, he went up to pack. This meant facing the filth in the bedroom, of course, which wasn’t particularly pleasant, but he wrapped up the mess as best he could in the sheets on which the feast had been laid, dumped them all in plastic bags, and left them out on the landing to take downstairs. Then he opened the window to let in some fresh air; hauling his suitcases out of the closet, he set about filling them. Adrianna secured him a flight out of San Francisco that evening. An overnight flight that would deliver him into Heathrow Airport at around noon the following day.
“If you don’t mind,” Adrianna said, “I’d like to come in while you’re away and look through all those pictures you took down—”
“The consumptives?”
“Yeah. I know you think I’m crazy, but there’s a book in those pictures. Or at least an exhibition.”
“Help yourself. I don’t want to look at another photograph right now. They’re all yours.”
“Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“That’s how I’m feeling right now. Extreme.”
“Any particular reason?”
It was too big a subject to explain even if he’d had the words, which he doubted he did. “Maybe we’ll talk about it when I get back,” he said.
“Will you stay long?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. If he’s going to die then I’ll stay until he does. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“That’s a strange question.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s a strange relationship. We haven’t talked for ten years, remember.”
“But you talk about him.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Trust me, Will, you talk about him. Offhand remarks, usually, but I’ve built up a good picture of him.”
“You know, that’s a damn good idea. I should get a picture of him. Something that’ll catch him, for posterity.”
“The man who fathered Will Rabjohns.”
“Oh no,” Will said, heading up to pack his camera, “that wasn’t Hugo.” And when Adrianna asked him who the hell it was if it wasn’t Hugo he refused, of course, to answer.
ii
He went to see both Drew and Patrick before he left for the air-port. He had called Drew several times, but nobody picked up, so he caught a cab to the apartment on Cumberland. Through the bars of the security gate he could see Drew’s bicycle in the passage, almost certain proof that its owner was
in residence, but Will’s repeated ringing of the doorbell brought no reply. He’d come prepared for this eventuality, with a scrawled note that he jammed between the, gate and the brick, three or four lines simply informing Drew that he had to go to England on short notice, and that he hoped to be in contact again soon. Then he went back to his cab and had it take him up Castro to Patrick’s apartment. This time the doorbell was answered, not by Patrick but Rafael. He was sneezing violently, his eyes bloodshot.
“Allergies?” Will said.
“No,” Rafael replied. “Pat just came from the hospital. Not good news.”
“Is that Will?” Patrick hollered from the living room.
“Go on in,” Rafael said softly, and disappeared into the kitchen, still sneezing.
Patrick was sitting in the window—where else?—though the vista of the city was largely obscured by a glacial bank of fog.
“Pull up a chair,” he told Will, and Will did so. “The view’s fucked, but what the hell?”
“Rafael said you were at the hospital.”
“I introduced you to my doctor at the party, didn’t I? Frank Webster? Tubby little guy, wears too much cologne? I went to see him this morning and he just told me flat out he’d done all he could. I’m getting weaker and there’s nothing more he can do for me.” There was a new barrage of sneezes from the kitchen. “Oh jeez, poor Rafael. As soon as he gets upset, he starts sneezing. He’ll be like that for hours. I went to his mother’s funeral with him and the whole family—he’s got three brothers, three sisters—they’re all sneezing. I didn’t hear a word the priest said.” This was sounding more and more like one of Patrick’s tales, but what the hell; it was bringing a smile to his face. “Remember that beautiful French guy Lewis used to date? Marius? You had a fling with him.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Then you were the only one. Anyway, he sneezed after he’d come. He sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. He fell downstairs at Lewis’s place, sneezing. I swear.”
“Terrible.”
“You don’t believe me.”