Afterlife (38 page)

Did he know what he wanted? Not quite yet. He was still making this up as he went along, since the very first call to the water department. He astonished himself every step of the way. It was all he had anymore to prove he was still alive, the surge of unlikeliness, the opposite of reason. Carefully he covered the gun again with the brown paper. The taste of metal was on his tongue, thrilling as blood. He replaced it under the cedar log, closed the cupboard, then stood up and lumbered into the kitchen.

All month he'd been careful to keep his calls local, not wanting to abuse any privileges. But now he dialed Manhattan Beach, taking the small liberty because his tenure in the house was almost done. When the kid picked up the phone, Dell said, “It's me, Lorenzo.”

“Hey! I thought you dumped me.”

“Sorry, I've been tied up. How you doing?”

Kevin chuckled. “Well, my dick's gettin' hard. What else is new?”

Dell ignored the provocation. “You getting along with your father?”

“That asshole? Gimme a break. You want to fuck me?”

“Kevin, listen—we're not gonna be able to talk anymore. I have to go away.” Kevin was silent, didn't ask where. He seemed to finally hear the gravity in Dell's voice. “It doesn't matter if he's an asshole. You want him to send you to college. After he pays the bills, then you can tell him you suck dick.”

“You mean I'm never gonna meet you?”

Dell felt a stab he didn't want to feel. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked roughly. “You get yourself a life that
works
. You understand?”

“Okay, okay. But don't I even get a kiss good-bye?”

Silence for a moment. There was a great strain in Dell's face, as if he were craning to listen for any sound in the house. Faintly from the living room he could hear the Stooges brawling. His voice dropped to a husky whisper: “Take off your clothes.…”

The call came through at five-thirty, on the hairline crack between dusk and twilight. “He died at five-thirteen,” said Margaret. “They like to know the time, don't they?”

Mark and Steven were down there in twenty minutes, just in time to see the stretcher come out with the body bag. Margaret stood on the porch with the Siamese in her arms, watching them stow the Korean into a panel truck, on the side of which it said beneath the logo
IN TIME OF NEED.
When Steven and Mark came up the steps to hug her, she said dully, “They don't exactly use a linen sheet.”

Nobody cried. They took turns on the phone calling the names in his little address book, but there weren't very many. They decided against sending a spate of telegrams to Korea, figuring the modest legacies would arrive there soon enough. In any case there was no family. Ray Lee had always been quite specific about that: “Just me. All alone like Marilyn.” And since they were all the immediate family he had, they decided to make it short and quick. They didn't need a wake, and they didn't need to sit shiva.

Besides, it was the twenty-eighth of the month, and the rent was paid only through Monday. So Mark went out to an all-night Thrifty and bought wrapping paper and packing tape and double-strength garbage bags. Margaret and Steven sat at the table sorting Ray Lee's leavings, wrapping them up, tucking notes inside, half condolence and half legalese. They were a two-man assembly line, loving the mindless business.

And while they worked, Mark went around with a garbage bag, disposing of everything else. He felt like the Grim Reaper in the flesh, brutally unsentimental as he threw away all that was not on Ray Lee's master list. In the kitchen were canned goods and cleaning supplies still perfectly good, easy to pack up a bagful, shameful to waste. Regrettably, Mark was not in a discriminating mood. Despite all the hungry children in the Third World, he tossed the Campbell's soup and the packets of oatmeal into the bag.

By eleven, when they decided to break, Mark had four bags full to bursting at the curb. Steven had prevailed upon him not to trash the Korean's clothes. These were piling up on the bed as Mark went through drawers and closets, to be donated to Gay Central. Ray's relentless quest for fashion rightness would thus be passed on to the street kids of Hollywood, glints of chic in the bad parade along Santa Monica Boulevard. Meanwhile, Steven and Margaret had finished about a third of the grab-bag packages to Ray Lee's heirs.

When they turned off the lights and went outside, the cat was purring, rubbing up against the porch railing. Margaret shot Steven a searching look, and he boomed, “No! I've already got a dog I don't want.” Margaret frowned. “But I'm allergic,” she said fretfully. Then they both had a brainstorm. “Heather!” they crowed in unison, and the Siamese problem was as good as settled. They all agreed to reconnoiter at noon on Sunday.

Steven finally cried in the shower, sobbing into the drumming spray, for Victor more than Ray. He could feel the membrane of toughness crack that had kept him detached all day and fussing with details. He stared into the cauldron of what would never heal, and he hated Ray Lee and AIDS and the whole world, in that order. He didn't turn the shower off till the noisy part was behind him, but Mark knew anyway. When Steven came out of the bathroom red and wrinkled, rubbing his scalp with a towel, Mark was lying on Victor's side of the bed, watching the end of “Saturday Night Live.”

He pressed the mute and felt a flood of inexpressible feeling, catching the barest stoop of grief in Steven's shoulders. “Maybe you want to be alone,” he said, but with some topspin on the last word, turning it into a question that allowed no room for yes.

Steven sat down beside him, steaming a bit, and laid the flat of his hand on Mark's shirt. It would have been very sexy, one naked and one still dressed, if it hadn't been for the dead part. “You shouldn't have to go through this one,” declared Steven with a sigh. “You don't even know him.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it goes with the territory. From now on I'm going to have my boyfriends fill out a questionnaire. ‘How many friends do you expect to lose in the next twelve months?' If it's over three, I walk.”

Steven didn't seem to be listening. “You know what's weird? Getting used to it.” He laid his head on Mark's chest, his hair still damp. “I don't mean getting
over
it. But it's like nothing surprises me anymore. I expect it all to be horrible, and it is.”

“AIDS or life?”

Steven shifted his head, propped his chin on Mark's breastbone and gave him a baleful look. “There's a difference?”

They slept fitfully, each trying to stick to his own side so as not to wake the other with tossing. In the morning they snuggled for an hour or so, achy and blurred and putting off the day, but there was no question of making love. Somehow it would've been the height of inappropriateness. “Like farting in church,” as Victor used to say.

So they picked up the Sunday papers and dragged themselves to Pennyfeathers for pancakes and sausages, Steven asking the waitress for an extra helping of nitrites, Mark requesting a small bowl of cholesterol on the side. The first time they'd really laughed since Margaret's call the night before. The waitress, no friend of Dorothy's, walked away unruffled. She didn't even listen anymore to the camp requests of mad queens.

“Are we really not going to work anymore?” inquired Steven, tossing the business section aside.

“You still have a business,” Mark countered accusingly.

“Now, there's an idea,” said Steven, dumping three packets of Equal into his decaf. “You can come work for us. We happen to have an opening.”

“Interesting. Of course you'd have to match my salary. I'm very, very important.”

“Please—Shaw Travel is a major player. And the perks are royal. Free theme-park weekends, vinyl flight bags, star clientele. Including Barry Manilow's hairdresser.”

“In that case, I could start tomorrow. But there's one thing you need to know.” Mark took a small pause as the waitress laid the plates down. “I'm sort of dying.”

“Well, you'll fit right in then,” Steven purred reassuringly. “All our male staff is on respirators. That's our motto at Shaw Travel—‘Keep moving, even if it's just a twitch.'”

This last was delivered with a gelid smile to the waitress, who was refilling their cups, sealing her ears to all they said. She knew AIDS talk when she heard it. They were just two blocks from Cedars, in the middle of the Warsaw Ghetto. Now she asked in a singsong voice if they needed more butter. And they let her go because it wasn't her fault, and the whole elaborate riff suddenly died for want of an audience.

They ate their pancakes greedily, like a couple of kids after Mass. They passed each other the funnies and “Arts and Leisure” and avoided sports like the plague. As for death, they didn't think they were handling it very well at all.

They didn't know just how well till they saw Margaret. Ashen and ravaged, not a wink of sleep, foundering all night long in a sea of tears. By the time she met them at Ray's, she was cried out and barely ambulatory. She collapsed on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, hissing like the cat when Steven crouched to speak. She didn't want to be home, but she didn't have an ounce of sociability left either. She was bottomed out on AIDS.

They understood completely. All afternoon they worked around her, Steven at the table packing up the remainder of the legacies, Mark with Hefty in hand, trashing shelves of paperbacks and tearing posters off the walls. Nobody needed to talk, which was a relief. Every now and then Margaret would turn her face to the pillows and weep softly, but only for a moment. About two-thirty the phone rang, and they all three froze and gaped at it as if it were something returned from the dead. Steven picked it up on the fourth ring, steeling himself to break the news, suddenly sure the call would be from Seoul.

But it was the mortuary phoning, to let them know the ashes would be available for pickup Monday morning. Before he knew it, Steven had been put through to an Interment Counselor. He cupped the receiver and asked Margaret what she wanted, but all she did was wave her hand like a white flag of surrender. Steven listened as Mr. Corazon ran through several grisly options. Steven said they would forego a chapel service and simply gather at the columbarium to place the ashes in the wall. No, no priest would be in attendance. Mr. Corazon sucked his lips, clearly disapproving, then asked how many they would be.

“Uh, 'bout ten,” said Steven vaguely, realizing only then that he meant to invite the entire Thanksgiving table. Somehow they would stand in for all the lost threads of Ray Lee's life. Tomorrow afternoon at four would be fine. Steven should tell the mourners to park along Eternal Way and go to the North Garden of Repose. Mr. Corazon himself would greet them there.

“He sounds like Liberace,” Steven observed, scribbling a quick list of his holiday guests. He saw right off that his ballpark estimate was overly optimistic. With Ray Lee gone and Angela in treatment, and any call to Andy Lakin bound to be received like salt in a wound, they were down to seven already. Still the idea seemed right, to pull together the sudden family the plague had left them with. Linda's phone didn't answer, so he left a message on Heather's machine, laying out the details and asking her to be in charge of bringing Dell's sister. Then he dialed his own number, hoping both his tenants were home.

Sonny answered—silent after the first hello, as Steven announced the Korean's journey was over. Then he extended the invitation to join them at the tomb, but made it clear there were no excuses. Two months' free rent in the room beyond the garage demanded his appearance.

“Sure, no problem,” he replied, disarming as ever. “I can't get outa here before Tuesday anyway.”

“Where are you moving exactly?”

“Nowhere,” retorted Sonny with an easy laugh. A trifle thick on the astral plane, and he seemed to make an effort to bring it back to earth. “I figure I'll head up to Vegas, then maybe Wyoming. Doesn't really matter. The thing is to get off the path.”

“Right,” said Steven, impeccably neutral. “So, four o'clock in the North Garden. You know where that is?”

“'Course. Ellsworth's just around the corner.”

He promised to give the message to Dell. As Sonny hung up, he grinned at Steven's discomfort. He'd always gathered strength from the leeriness of unbelievers. It only made the link more clear between him and the rest of his rare breed, their souls wide open like windows on time. He was still almost dizzy with truth as he floated out the door to the back terrace. His bare feet left beautiful vanishing prints on the cold slate paving stones. He fell to his knees like a praying man.

And the dog rolled over on his back, his tail batting lazily between the roots of the sycamore. Sonny Cevathas, prince of Thebes, gripped the beast around the neck and wrestled into its arms. They growled with love, sparring and playing it tough as they sprawled on the brink of wildness. “Yeah, you're just a big baby, aren't you?” declared Sonny, pushing his wrist between the dog's bare teeth as if daring it to draw blood. The animal's white fangs clenched lightly, not breaking the skin. They both knew just how far to go.

His second session with the channeler had been much more metaphysical. Salou wore a purple caftan and two gold cobra bracelets. Again they sat by the pool, but this time on a wrestling mat in the shade of a pergola. They drank a cup of yellow tea, and then Salou went into a trance, abrupt as a station change. The XVIIth Dynasty, where he'd served as Pharaoh's chief healer, was as palpable as his own backyard. He gabbled a while in a disconnected monologue, jeweled scarabs and scented oils and even a mummy's curse. Then he began to talk to Sonny direct, cousin of Pharaoh, as if they were on a terrace of the palace, slaves fanning them with bullrushes. Cross-legged, head bowed, Sonny went with the flow, never quite leaving his body but utterly free of it now. They chatted back and forth, ancient to ancient, building pyramids.