Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (14 page)

“Of
course
I’m going back to Transylvania,” Emil said lightly. He picked a kernel of white cheddar cheese popcorn from the bag he was carrying, tossed it into the air, and tried to catch it in his mouth. It bounced off his teeth and fell to the ground, and was immediately stepped on by a passerby.

Lionel walked besides him, hands in his pockets and eyes on his Weejuns. “You never mentioned it before,” he said wanly. Now that he’d heard the worst from Emil’s own lips, he felt the final ebbing away of his last, delirious, ridiculous hopes that Emil had for some reason been lying to Uncle John about going back — and with the waning of those hopes came an overwhelming exhaustion. His nervous passion for Emil had drained away all his energy, and now he was left with nothing to restore him. He dragged his feet along the sidewalk as though each weighed as much as a Lincoln Town Car.

“Well, you didn’t think I came to America to
stay,
did you?” Emil said merrily. He tossed up another kernel, which hit him square in the eye and rolled off his face. He ignored it and said, “Why would I fight so hard for Transylvanian sovereignty if I never intended to go back to Transylvania?”

Lionel, feeling foolish and hurt, shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I thought it was just the principle of the thing.” They rounded the sharp corner at Diversey and Clark and, distracted by dismay, Lionel accidentally hit his thigh on a newspaper vending machine that jutted into the sidewalk. He snarled at it and gave it a good, swift kick.

Emil dug into the bag of popcorn again. “I wouldn’t fight for a principle I couldn’t put into practice, Lionel. I am, above all, a
practical
man.” He flicked another kernel into the air. This one actually hit his lips, but ended up falling down his shirtfront.

Lionel exhaled deeply and resigned himself to the eventual departure of his One True Love. “I guess I can understand that,” he said. “You want to go back and make sure democracy takes hold. Who wouldn’t?”

“Democracy?” Emil muttered caustically. He plunged his hand beneath his collar and scoured the area between his chest and shirt for the stray kernel. “Who said anything about
democracy
?”

Lionel was caught by surprise. “What do you mean? You still believe in communism?”

“I never believed in communism.” He discovered the kernel in the approximate region of his navel, retrieved it, and tossed it high in the air again, determined to catch it this time. It fell on his head and got entangled in his hair.

“Well, what else is there?” Lionel asked, Emil’s carefree attitude irritating him.

He raised an eyebrow. “What else
is
there? Are you serious?” He shook his head and dislodged the popcorn from his jet-black locks. “I thought you had more imagination than that, Lionel.” Abruptly, he stopped to tie his shoe.

Lionel lurched to a halt. “I don’t,” he said with a frown, looking down admiringly at the muscular expanse of Emil’s back. “Not about that. Enlighten me.”

He stood up again, plucked another kernel from the bag, tossed it into the air, and caught it neatly between his teeth. “A-
ha
!” he cried. “See there? I
knew
I could do it!” With a flick of his tongue he swept the kernel into his mouth and swallowed it, then resumed his stroll.

Lionel followed suit. Ahead of him, he espied a woman walking two bull terriers; their leashes kept getting intertwined and he could hear her cursing at the dogs. “Sons of
bitches
!” she screamed. He didn’t know which irked him more: that she was abusing her pets, or that she was too stupid to realize she was in fact calling a spade a spade. He felt nothing but contempt for her, nothing but contempt for everyone. Emil was going to leave him someday, and he didn’t seem to care. All he could do was play silly games with popcorn.

“So what’s the answer?” he asked. “You don’t want communism, you don’t want democracy. What’s left?”

“Anarchism, my friend,” Emil said gleefully, content now to transfer the popcorn to his mouth manually. He shoveled in a handful and began chewing.

Lionel shook his head. “Everyone running around crazy, like chickens with their heads chopped off? Everything going to hell? I can’t believe you mean that.”
Please, God, make him crazy,
thought Lionel;
at least then medical science might be able to cure him.
And a boyfriend in a straitjacket is better than no boyfriend at all.

Emil swallowed hard and said, “Lionel, you confuse anarchism with chaos. Chaos is the absence of order; anarchy is the absence of a
central
order — of a
system.
Why must a country have a system? Because there are men who seek power, Lionel, and a system is the only way they can attain it. Anarchism prevents that. Anarchism is the rule of a
million
systems, all of them interrelating, like cells in a body. It’s a beautiful concept, and what’s more, it’s the natural state of human affairs. Look at attempts to regulate trade: failures! Every country has a rich black market. I tell you, Lionel, I
love
the sheer enormity of production, the ingenuity of trade, that no governmental apparatus can contain. It is mankind’s highest calling.” He pointed to a storefront with a grimy window on which was painted the name LYLE’S NOVELTIES. “Even when I enter a shop such as that, I feel as though I have entered a holy place. I have a reverence for trade, because it is the earliest invented means of social interaction — it is uniquely
human
. Of
course
it overwhelms any system that tries to control it. It’s like the urge to mate.” He stuffed another fistful of popcorn past his jaw, then made little noises that told Lionel to wait till he swallowed because he had more to say. “You know who I admire? Prostitutes. More than anyone else, they exemplify the anarchist rule that regulation is against human nature. You can find whores in every country on the face of the earth, even the most repressive. All by themselves, they show that both trade and love cannot be restricted or regulated or directed or derailed. They are the high priestesses of anarchism.”

“That’s the kind of society you want in your homeland?” Lionel said, wanting to splash Emil’s face with a dose of good, cold common sense; anything to change his mind. “A bunch of old trollops running around? A pimp on every street corner?
That?
”

“Oh, yes,” Emil said. “That kind of vitality, that kind of freedom — that is
exactly
what I want for Transylvania.” He picked at a popcorn shell that had become lodged between his tooth and gum. “But no pimps. I think whores should represent themselves. Whores should unionize.” He freed the shell and flicked it onto the concrete. “I think
everyone
should unionize. Unions should be the means by which all trades co-relate. I suppose at base I’m more of a syndicalist than an anarchist.”

Lionel looked at his reflection in a store window and could see how deeply he was scowling. Emil was becoming more and more foreign to him — and he was finding that foreignness less and less attractive. His exoticism had been alluring when it had been remote and unknowable, when he had been a musk-smelling peasant with a billboard-wide chest, Day-Glo blue eyes, and a paint-spattered placard. But now that Emil’s exoticism had turned out to be not merely physical but intellectual — now that he had revealed that the realm of ideas held him faster than the realm of the flesh — Lionel found him increasingly annoying.

He turned and said, “I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that that kind of wide-open system would just give a lot of people license to be corrupt and to steal and to damage other people’s lives.”

Emil squinted into the sun and grimaced. “Which
never
happens in a democracy. Is that what you’re saying? Honestly, Lionel.” He tipped the nearly empty bag of popcorn into his open mouth, and the remainder of its contents slid down into his throat. Then he crumpled the bag and tossed it into a trash can without breaking his stride, munching on the dregs as he went. When he finally swallowed, he said, “Have you never read Emma Goldman, Lionel?”

He knit his brow. “Didn’t she used to be on
Dynasty
?”

Emil wiped his crumb-encrusted hands on his pants. “She is a great thinker who lived and wrote in this country, Lionel —
this
one.
Your
country. You would do well to study her. Before Ceausescu took over the presses, my father bought a copy of her book
Anarchism and Other Essays,
in English. I first learned this tongue by reading Emma Goldman. To me, the English language and the tenets of anarchism are inextricably bound together. It astonishes me that here, in America, it is so discredited an ideology. Perhaps it is because of the violence espoused by so many of its adherents. But Americans are a violent people; if you can celebrate Bonnie and Clyde or Bugsy Siegel at the movies, why do you so revile violence in pursuit of social change?”

“Because it’s useless. There’s no utopia, Emil.”

“No, there is no utopia, nor can there ever be. But we can at least strive for better ways to live. And there
is
better than this. What is democracy but mob rule? John Stuart Mill said, ‘Democracy leads to the tyranny of the majority.’ Let me ask you: who are the disenfranchised in this country? Ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities. Defend that, Lionel. Defend the marginalization of minorities by the majority. Defend democracy.”

At the mention of sexual minorities, Lionel’s heart quickened. As long as they’d come to The Big Question, he might as well have an answer. Maybe in the process he’d lose Emil forever, but Emil was going sooner or later anyway. And if the answer to The Big Question turned out to be affirmative, he and Emil might at least have a few good rolls in the hay by the time that happened. In the absence of a lifetime love affair, he’d settle for a few cheap thrills.

His fingers, still thrust deep in his pockets, nervously rattled his keys and pocket change. Then, looking Emil in the eye, he said, “Well, I can’t defend that. Being a sexual minority myself.”

Emil stopped dead in his tracks, forcing Lionel to do the same. The flow of people on the sidewalk was thus forced to move around them, like a stream of water around an outcropping of rock. “You, Lionel?” he asked, his eyes as wide as Susan B. Anthony dollars. “
You
are a homosexual?”

“Yes. What of it?” His heartbeat drowned out the clang and thrum of urban life around him. He felt oddly light, as though he’d quietly slipped gravity’s moorings.

“Well,
well
.” Emil stood back and looked at him with a sly grin — the type he’d have worn had he caught Lionel naked, or with a sign on his back that said KICK ME. “I wouldn’t have guessed,” he said. He turned, and with a little wink of appreciation said, “You hide it very well.” Then he continued walking, a little spring in his step.

Lionel paused for a moment, then scooted ahead and fell back into pace with him. Nothing was said for a few moments, but at least Emil was still grinning. This sufficiently emboldened Lionel to say, “I thought
you
might be, too.”

Emil once again came to an abrupt halt.
“Me?”
he hooted. “Oh, no, Lionel. No.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t ever — well, not to insult you or anything — but the very
idea
of —” He shuddered involuntarily. “What on
earth
gave you that idea?”

Wishful thinking,
he almost blurted, but he caught himself and said instead, “You told me you’d been to a bunch of AIDS rallies. It seemed like a logical conclusion.”

All at once, Emil’s face darkened and he started walking again, very swiftly this time. Lionel jogged to keep up with him, oblivious to anything but his friend’s mood, which was suddenly so heavy and impenetrable. He felt a tremor of fear; he’d said something wrong, something terrible. Emil might not be gay, Emil might never be his lover, Emil might someday go away and never return, but never mind all that, Emil was still Emil, and Lionel couldn’t bear the thought that he was responsible for his friend’s glowering expression at this moment.

Emil said nothing; then more nothing; then even more nothing, and Lionel didn’t dare to interrupt the terrible silence, until he found himself beneath an awning that bore the name CHEVEAUX D’AMOUR, and had to say, “This is it, Emil. This is where I’m going.”

Emil turned and nodded. His hands were balled into fists. Both his knuckles and his lips were milk-white. Even his hair looked clenched.

“Thanks for having dinner with me,” Lionel continued with ridiculous cheerfulness. “Sorry I couldn’t hang out more. But, like I said, I made this appointment weeks ago and — you know how it is.” He dribbled out some nervous laughter, then lightly hit Emil on the shoulder. “Take care, okay?” He felt as though he were an actor in a play, who had mistakenly learned the wrong script.

“Six years ago my niece Mircea died,” said Emil all at once.

Lionel felt a jolt of alarm. Emil’s voice sounded half deranged — quiet and even-toned, but with something wild in it, something flapping above the calm like a flag in a gale. What had Lionel let loose here?

“She was two years old,” he continued. “My brother Vasile’s daughter. I loved her very deeply, Lionel. Very, very deeply. But under Ceausescu there were such limited funds for hospitals that hypodermic needles were re-used, again and again and again. The result was an epidemic of pediatric AIDS. Mircea was born a perfect, healthy, beautiful infant. But before she was a week old she had been exposed to HIV.” He took a long, thin breath. “That was when I began my medical training. Also when I became a radical. I helped to kill the system that killed her, and I will help kill to the virus that killed her, too. I will help to kill the virus that killed my heart.”

Lionel, stunned, said, “God, Emil. Forgive me. I never — I
never
 —
God
. I’m just so terribly … hell, sorry doesn’t begin to cover it.”