Afterlife (42 page)

“I'm sorry, but patients aren't allowed to take incoming calls.”

“Well, could I leave her a message then?” asked Sonny plaintively as he pulled on his lizard cowboy boots, the gift of a two-week trick last spring. Not everything had to be thrown away.

“We can't reveal the name of any patient,” replied the switchboard primly.

“Please—just tell her that Sonny called, will you?”

“I can't confirm that the lady is here,” declared the resolute woman at Betty Ford.

But there was something in her voice that left the door ajar, an appreciation perhaps of his burning sincerity. Sonny rushed in to fill the gap. “Say that I'm leaving on a long journey,” he declared with breathless fervor. “And when I'm finished I'll be back. But if I'm not—if I don't—” He couldn't even say the words, for fear he would jinx his voyage. “Then tell her I'll meet her the next time around.”

“All right,” acknowledged the receptionist, gravely accepting the commission.

Sonny rang off, convinced the message would get to Angela. He went in the tiny bathroom and grabbed up his razor and toothbrush, but as much to check himself in the mirror a final time, the last sight he would ever have of the incarnation he was leaving. He stared with cold dispassion at the end of his youth, Narcissus cured. Nothing so decadent as beauty looked back at him. For once he didn't touch his hair or arch his brows, but turned on his heel and left cold turkey. His pair of nylon duffel bags were by the door, and he tucked his odds and ends in a side pocket and zipped it. One look around, as little sentiment as if he were exiting a Motel 6, and he stepped from the room beyond the garage into the morning of a new life.

The dog was waiting sentry in the driveway just outside. He'd made no move to return to his old haunt under the lantana. Since Sonny let him out an hour before, he'd pissed in the bushes and come right back. One night indoors and he was hooked. It had taken him months to domesticate to the point where he'd wheedle for shelter, but he had reached that shameless place. He looked up at Sonny with beseeching eyes.

“You don't want me to go, huh?” Sonny asked playfully, touched when the dog trotted after him down the driveway. He went around behind the Mercedes, propped one of the bags on the bumper, and opened the trunk. It was empty except for one thing—his black canvas gym bag, which sagged open, a jumble of bicycle shorts and tank tops, sweat socks, Speedos, workout gloves, a pair of Reeboks tied to the handle. The full raw uniform of his sunlit days as Apollo.

He reached and lifted it out, then walked over to the trash barrels at the foot of the drive. He lifted the lid and stuffed the bag in, not even bothering to root out the shampoo and moisturizer, both still perfectly good. Did it mean he planned never to exercise again, that his hero's journey would unfold without aerobic conditioning? He didn't really think that far. He only knew he had to dispose of the weight of that persona, so charged with being gay, like a soldier burning his combat fatigues.

The dog sat patient beside the car as Sonny went back and hefted the duffel bags, stowing them into the carpeted trunk. He slammed the lid and grinned at the animal. “Next time we meet, you probably won't even be a dog.”

Steven's eyes fluttered open when he heard the sound of the slamming trunk. He glanced over to the bedside table—8:37. Mark was deep underwater, arms across his face. Gently Steven slipped out from under the sheet and comforter. He padded naked around the bed, grabbing up the boxer shorts Mark had shed the night before. He closed the bedroom door behind him going out, then rushed across to the front door, dancing into the shorts, fearful Sonny would peel away without a wave good-bye.

But he was putting down the convertible top, folding it like an accordion into the hollow behind the seat. “Are you trimming your sails, boy?” called Steven from the top of the steps. “Should we crack a bottle of Dom across your bows?”

Sonny looked up startled, flushing with unexpected pleasure. He didn't want to leave unheralded after all. “Beautiful day for it,” he declared, hearty and butch as either of his straight brothers. “You take care of yourself now, Stevie. I'm not gonna be around to watch you.”

He opened the door and slid into the driver's seat. When he flipped the ignition, filling the morning air with power, it seemed no further words would pass between them. None were needed. Sonny was already waving over his head and pulling away from the curb when Steven suddenly bolted down the stairs in his shorts.

“Wait!” he shouted, and Sonny braked, eyeing Steven guardedly, leery of too much good-bye. Steven pointed to the dog, who sat in the driveway still, idly licking his balls. “Please—take him off my hands. I don't need one more thing to take care of.”

“I can't,” protested the Greek, wishing now he had slipped away unnoticed. “He's got his own destiny.”

“Excuse me, but that's a crock. He's totally in love with you, and it's all your fault.” Nobody else could have gotten away with it. The dog blinked stupidly, but was clearly aware he was the subject under discussion. Sonny hesitated, engine roaring to go like a stallion. “Besides,” said Steven, “I can't stand him. Especially now that he's so
doggy
.”

The last thing Sonny had ever permitted, the very last thing—except for Ellsworth—was someone in love with him, but that of course was the old life when he was still gay.
What the hell
, he thought, and reached over and flung open the passenger's door. The dog stood up, loped over and jumped in, casual as could be, as if he'd never doubted the outcome at all.

Steven slammed the door behind him, and the Prince of Thebes was ready. This time they parted with truly minimal ceremony, nodding a bare half-inch, so as not to call attention to the boy-and-his-dog maneuver. As Steven watched the 380 disappear round the turn, he thought how he didn't have a clue what went on in Sonny's head, and he supposed the feeling was mutual. Had he been good for Sonny? The question had no meaning. He'd simply been a sanctuary for a while, because life had happened to deal them exactly the same card, like a pair of Jews at the opposite ends of Europe, a Dutch banker and a Polish tailor.

When he came back in the house, all he wanted to do was go back to bed, but the housemother instinct made him turn and glance into the living room, to see if Dell was up. The pristine tidiness of the place, as if no one had stayed there at all, didn't especially surprise him, for he was used to Dell rolling and stowing the bedclothes. Yet it was something about Dell's insistent unobtrusiveness that drew Steven into the room, even though he ached to sleep. Sonny, by contrast, had taken over the house, and the beast he carted away was only the most extreme proof of the claim he'd laid. Dell had barely left a dent in the sofa cushions. Hardly ate, even on Thanksgiving. The only evidence of his presence was the green of the hillside where he'd watered, the rosebushes clipped to the bone for the winter.

Steven stood in the middle of the room and looked around. He saw the cupboard door slightly ajar in the wall beside the hearth, and the crumpled brown paper in the fireplace too, but none of that meant anything. A sort of vacuum gripped the place. He couldn't have said why he leaned over the sofa and pulled the button on the Sony, since he wasn't a fan of morning TV, except that the room suddenly felt colder and more silent than even Ray Lee's apartment.

A street reporter was shouting over the noise of a crowd. Right at that moment—“
LIVE
” flashed on and off in the upper left corner of the screen—a team of paramedics was barreling through with a body on a gurney, all zipped up in a bag and very dead. Steven wondered idly why they bothered to hurry so if it was all over. There was always a murder on the morning news. “Two dead,” Steven was able to make out, a man and a woman, murder/suicide. A lover's quarrel, probably, or a marriage on the rocks.

Except for the size of the crowd, a mix of races that seemed to be beating their breasts with grief. Then, as the camera swung wildly to show the chaos, Steven could see the stone facade of a church in the background. His stomach seized with a slight clench of dread. “The second body is just coming out,” declared the reporter, and another team of useless paramedics emerged with a gurney, three on each side like pallbearers. Only here there were several police officials as well, hovering close as if the killer might at any moment leap out of the body bag.

Steven knew it all now. He didn't require any further information. Nevertheless, the station broke away momentarily from the live report, and a still of Mother Evangeline flashed on-screen, her in the meadow surrounded by children, the Sermon on the Mount. The coverage was already starting to accrue the nimbus of martyrdom, and the body was barely cold. Back to the studio: a bimbo anchorlady with a honey-blond do just like Mother's.

“Police have not yet identified the killer,” she intoned, “but it's believed he may be a member of the radical gay underground. Mother Evangeline has long been known for her vocal attacks on the gay lifestyle.”

Steven could see just where it was going. Within hours the telegenic priests and rabbis would be coming out of the walls to denounce and decry. Mainstream guys, not just the Jesus fringe and the Aryan nuts. With one fell stroke, it seemed, Dell Espinoza had set things back a generation, all the making nice and the coalition-building.

And Steven could feel himself keeping his distance, here even more than with Sonny, as if it were some kind of test to see how shockable he was. You wouldn't have known to look at him that he was at all acquainted with the parties to the crime. The blood didn't drain from his face. He didn't cry or wince in pain. And the screen before him was full of examples of how to do it—an entire congregation keening and moaning, stunned to the soul.

All he wanted to do was go back to bed.

The telephone rang in the study. As Steven leaned over to turn off the tube, a psychologist joined the bimbo, to try to probe the mind of the killer. Steven recognized the man as an expert on California murder, who had proven indispensable after the McDonald's massacre.
No thanks
, thought Steven, tuning out. He shuffled into the study and picked it up on the third ring. It was Linda.

“What's he done?” she cried in anguish. “How could he do this?”

“Honey, I'm sorry,” Steven said brokenly, feeling the rush of protectiveness. “There was no way to know. He had a pain we couldn't touch.” This sounded, even as he said it, as mindless as the TV expert.

“But he
killed
somebody. Why?”

Steven bit his tongue, because he realized the killing didn't bother him. That part at least seemed to have some social value. As to why, it was perfectly clear why. Mother Evangeline was a pig.

“I have to go down to the police,” said Linda. “They can't have him. I want him next to Marcus.”

“Sure, I'll be right over,” said Steven, remembering how he'd said the same thing to Margaret three days before. He didn't want to, but he had to. This was called being a real prince.

“No, it's okay. Heather's going with me.”

Fine, he told her, let the two of them go to Parker Center and claim the body, and they would all meet later at Linda's to figure out the obsequies.
Later
was all he could think of, his eyes drooping as if he was drugged, as Linda turned the phone over to Heather, who asked if she could close Shaw Travel for the day. Yes, yes. Anything.

He hung up the phone and swam back to the bedroom, a man whose privacy had been restored at last, in a most ambiguous fashion. Mark was still lying on his back, arms across his face. The coverlet had slipped to just below his navel. With his torso stretched by his upraised arms, he looked ten years younger. Steven kicked off the shorts, surprised to discover his dick swaying out to quarter mast, more awake than he was. He crawled into bed beside the man he was still too shy to call his lover, except “boyfriend” sounded even worse, as if they were both sporting toupees.

He snuggled up close, one arm cradling Mark's chest, and breathed in the smell that was no one else. Mark stirred and reached an arm about Steven's neck, holding him tight the way he did at the cemetery. Still half in a dream, he murmured: “What was all that?”

“Nothing,” Steven whispered. “Just the tenants leaving.”

Mark accepted the half-truth unquestioningly, not of a mind to wake all the way, and burrowed into a full embrace. He felt the swell of Steven between them and mumbled, “You horny?”

“Uh-uh—let's just sleep,” replied his friend, swooning now in the warmth of the body that held him, letting go of all his fellow widowers. Even going under he could taste the simple wish that over; rided all the rest: to stay in the middle of this with Mark as long as he could. Perfectly selfish, except it was deeper than that—the last dance, the last pocket of air. Nothing else was happening right now in Steven's house, a luxury beyond calculation. The sleepers had all they needed. Only to lie like this between the bombs, dreaming away and not alone, because time was very short.

A Biography of Paul Monette

Paul Monette (1945–1995) was a prolific, award-winning American author and prominent AIDS activist. His novels, memoirs, and poetry gave shape to a volatile era in which gay men forging their new identities confronted the unforeseeable and devastating AIDS epidemic. Late in life, Monette wrote, “AIDS is the great cleave in the world, and nothing will ever be the same again.” A winner of the National Book Award for his memoir
Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
, Monette helped establish the broad cultural significance of gay and AIDS literature.

Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on October 16, 1945, to Paul Monette Sr. and Jacqueline Monette, Paul was considered by all accounts “perfect.” Attending the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as a “townie” on scholarship, he grew increasingly tormented by his suppressed homosexuality and the class divisions he observed all around him. In
Becoming a Man
, he describes those early years as a time in which he never lost his temper or raised his voice: “A bland insipid smile glazed my face instead, twin to the sexless vanilla of my body.”