Curled in the Bed of Love (11 page)

Lawrence says he plans to go to Paris later this spring.

“Maybe I should go when you're there,” Jordan says. He used to go to Paris every year, before he got sick, before he met Jim.

Jim hasn't made the effort he should have to share Jordan's interests. But then there's the effort Jordan should make. Jim says, “You promised we'd go to Hawaii this spring.”

Jordan turns to Lawrence, puts a hand on his wrist confidingly. “He wants to go to this place called Kona Village—Kontiki thatched huts and a pool where you lie around in swim trunks and drinkpiña coladas from coconut shells.”

Jim has wanted to go back to Kona Village for a long time. Even if it was all put on for the tourists, he'd been captivated by how lazy life was there. “You'd look good lying around in swim trunks,” he says to Jordan.

Lawrence gives Jordan a rudely appraising look. “I was gonna ask you what gym you go to.”

The truth is, Jordan looks buff thanks to steroids. The
AZT
he's taking wastes muscle tissue almost as drastically as the disease, so the doctors automatically put everyone on steroids to beef up before the drug begins to make inroads.

“'Cause my gym . . . I don't know,” Lawrence says. “It's such an autoerotic scene. Mirrors on every wall. Some of these guys get hard-ons looking at themselves on the Nautilus machine.”

“Safe sex takes another turn for the worse,” Jordan says.

Jordan has never looked so beautiful as he does now. There was a time, early in their relationship, when Jordan made Jim
agree to help him die if it came to that. Such promises Jim made, lover's promises like no others. They considered smothering Jordan, debated whether plastic bags or pillows would be better, then thought maybe they could collect enough sleeping pills to do the job. Jim conned one doctor after another into prescribing Vicodin for back pain. It was
their
stockpile,
their
beautiful death: they joked about lighting candles and listening to a Bach concerto at their very own glorious send-off.

Lawrence reaches for his wine glass with a blunt paw. The glass tips over, threading red wine over the edge of the table onto the carpet, and Jim jumps up and runs for the saltshaker and a rag.

He shakes salt on the stain and blots it carefully, ignoring Lawrence's apology. It's an Oriental carpet, an heirloom from Jordan's family.

“You're such a hausfrau,” Jordan says.

Jordan can afford to be casual about the plenty with which he grew up, has retained the habit of nonchalance even though the expense of surviving has transformed his wealth into a finite resource.

“That's me,” Jim says. He rocks back on his heels, pinches the flesh at his waist between his fingers. “I've got my little matronly pudge, my apron for every day of the week. I sing along to
Miss Saigon
when I dust the furniture. A real fairy.”

Jordan laughs. “
OK
, I had that coming.” He blows Jim a kiss but speaks to Lawrence. “He wins every argument. He's got it down cold, that cute little
miffed
thing.”

Jim can't decide whether or not he feels mollified, whether that's such a good thing. So he retreats to the kitchen, to the calm task of scraping plates and loading the dishwasher. His years as a physical therapist have taught him to take delight in small tasks, the minute increments of progress, as his patients perform the simple recuperative exercises he teaches them. After so many years of chaos, he's happy to indulge this urge. Though their names are still on a phone tree for
ACT-UP
, he and Jordan no longer get urgent
calls summoning them to a zap—a sit-in at an
ER
that turned away a patient with
AIDS
or a choreographed heckling at another scientific conference. Their warrior days are over.

When he comes out to clear away the dessert dishes, Lawrence and Jordan are bent over the portfolio again, their heads so close that each time they exhale their breath must pool. Jordan glances up once, and Jim raises his wrist and points at his watch, but Jordan ignores him. It's vital for him to adhere to his drug regimen, but of course he won't take his pills while Lawrence is here. With new people, Jordan is closeted about his Hiv-positive status.

Jim listens to the flattery coming out of Jordan's mouth, the cooing and seduction that he'll later dismiss as “just business.” But Jim isn't blind. He knows what it means when Lawrence lets his hand linger on Jordan's, when the slender corridor of space between their two bodies narrows.

When they were still running scared, when they didn't know if Jordan would respond to combination therapy, Jim would fill a bubble bath for Jordan every night. Jordan would sink into the tub, and Jim would sponge suds onto Jordan's back, remove an arm from the froth to stroke it, lift a leg and work the sponge in circles until he got as far down Jordan's thigh as the bubbles, pausing at the lighter-than-air barrier of the froth. Then he'd dip the sponge below the surface so deftly that Jordan would arch his back with pleasure, shake with the desire they were so deliciously holding off, so artfully sustaining in the face of all their necessary precautions.

Lawrence says something in a sly voice, and Jordan leans against him. And Jim can't help the spiteful, hausfrau sentiment: After all I've done for you.

Jordan comes home looking feverish, but it's happiness that has flushed his skin. When he kisses Jim, he presses his hips against Jim's insinuatingly.

“You should get out more often,” Jim says.

Jordan counts on his fingers the clubs he and their friends visited—the 1100, the Eagle, the Motherlode. “There are still guys who wear chaps,” he says gleefully. “But they're fighting a losing battle. All the clubs are going upscale, renovating. Half the people in them now are straight. They're trying to assimilate us.”

Jim envies whoever was present to witness Jordan's pleasure tonight. Jordan was supposed to call and leave a message on the answering machine so that Jim could meet up with the gang later, after his volunteer shift at the hospital was over.

But it's not too late for him to take advantage of Jordan's mood. Jim moves back into Jordan's arms, maneuvers him slowly but steadily toward the bedroom, where he carefully laid his seductive trap while he waited for Jordan's call. He set out brandy glasses on the bedside table, put on a jazz
CD
, lit the fat scented candles on the bureau. He swept the brocade pillows and Kewpie doll from the bed and stuck them in the closet with his other tacky treasures, retired one by one over the last two years.

He tugs Jordan down onto the bed when their knees bang against it, offers him the glass of brandy so handily within reach, and watches him take the tiniest sip. Jim peels off Jordan's shirt with a choreographed boldness. They've been together long enough that trying anything new feels awkward, but Jim has rehearsed his tactics. He oils his hands and begins to massage Jordan's back. Earlier tonight, when he gave massages to the patients on the
AIDS
ward, he experimented with scented oils and gentler chakra techniques, trying to expand his therapeutic repertoire to include the lascivious.

“You're so good to me,” Jordan murmurs.

Sleepily Jordan turns over and reaches up to pull Jim down for a kiss.

“You're not too tired?” Jim says.

Jordan gives Jim a kiss that sets off flares in his veins. Then Jordan pulls away. “Pete and Rory were downing Depth Charges all night. And we're in this dance club, and there's a circle of guys dancing with their pants pulled down around their ankles—don't ask
me
why. And Pete gets it in his head that he's hot tonight, and he goes out on the floor and joins them. Pete! In his plaid boxer shorts.”

“You didn't drink like that, did you?” Jim asks.

“I outdid them all,” Jordan says. “Pete and Rory had to go home in a cab, and Lawrence and I were the only ones left standing. We went on to Badlands before we called it a night.”

“Lawrence was with you?”

“Well, you know, we ran into him at one of the bars. And it was like the good old days—running into people and moving on in a horde to the next place.”

Jealousy burns through Jim. He won't let it spoil their evening, interrupt the long, passionate kiss that Jordan gives him. It's been so long since they have had sex that he feels he could come just from being kissed. But is it some halo effect of Lawrence that makes Jordan so responsive?

Jim is sorry that he made a point of doing his duty tonight. And it has become a duty. More and more of the patients on the ward are intravenous drug users, people who don't come in until they're way too sick, who don't hug the volunteers and make kiss noises in the air. The fancy brunches are down to once a month now. Sometimes before he enters a room, Jim has to tell himself, I'm not scared. He gets thrown out of the room by these patients or has to work their wasted muscle tissue in grim silence, at a loss for cheery chat. When they yell at him or complain, he's reminded of the one time he and his mother ever discussed
AIDS
, a disease she wished to keep as remote from her field of vision as his sexual preference. His mother said that she felt sorry for the innocent victims, the people who got
AIDS
from blood transfusions. What
good is mercy, he thinks, if everyone arrives at some boundary line of exhaustion or indifference?

“It was kind of cool kicking around with Lawrence,” Jordan says. “Did you know he's having a one-man show at the Knoedler in New York next fall? He's only twenty-eight. He's a real golden boy.”

For Jim there's some comfort in the envy that saturates Jordan's voice.

Jim raises himself on an elbow to stroke Jordan. Jordan squints and blinks, squints and blinks. “What is it?” Jim says.

Jordan laughs. “I really did drink too much. You keep splitting in two when I look at you. Sort of separating out from yourself.”

“You're seeing double?” One of the warning signs of
CMV
is blurred vision. If he and Jordan are alert, they can catch an opportunistic infection like
CMV
in time to treat it.

Jordan shoves Jim off of him abruptly. “What was really nice about being with Lawrence was that he wasn't monitoring me every minute.”

Tears shimmer Jim's own vision. “That's not fair.”

“You act like it's your disease too. The pill timer goes off at 5
A.M.
for me, but you're the one jumping out of bed to fetch the pills.”

“Sometimes you just turn off the beeper and roll right over.”

“I just want—I want some goddamn privacy.”

Jim rolls away from Jordan. He bunches the sheet in his fist and tears at its seam, shredding the hem, a surreptitious destruction. Jordan remains on his back, rigid, and Jim imagines him pinned beneath the same weight that forces Jim's own fingers to wreak their vengeance on such a small scale.

After a long time Jordan reaches over to touch Jim's shoulder. “I'm sorry.”

Their lovemaking is nothing like the wild bash that Jim had planned. But their bodies are only slowed, not halted, by the weight that compresses them. In his head Jim hears Miss Saigon
belting out her woes, lamenting all that she's sacrificed for love, only to be abandoned, but his body ignores the soundtrack, shamelessly pursues pleasure. After they make love, Jordan lets Jim fold around him momentarily and then disentangles himself. They lie with their backs to one another, each curled into a tight knot, a closed, hard bud.

They have arranged the beach umbrellas as a windbreak and wrapped themselves in the towels they brought to lie on, all except for Rory, who lies shirtless in the sand, insisting it's warm. Baker Beach, sheltered by the curve of Land's End and closer to the mouth of the bay, is a better bet than Ocean Beach would have been, and the fog has already retreated to unveil the rust-orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Still, they have to imagine that the weather at the beach is summer weather. This is what they always have to do, Jim thinks, reimagine foggy San Francisco into tropical California real estate, just as they must struggle to sustain a mirage of whimsy in a world that wants to hurt them.

Only Rory's black lab, Guinevere, dares to go near the water. Pete, Rory, Jordan, and Jim remain huddled together on the sand. Rory extols the virtues of echinacea and valerian to Jordan. Rory believes in former lives and aromatherapy, and Jordan enjoys bedeviling him. “What about people poisoning themselves with L-tryptophan?” Jordan says. “None of this stuff is regulated by the
FDA
.”

“Oh, the good old
FDA
,” Rory says. “We know that they're our friends. You put
AZT
in your body, but you're afraid to take a little packet of dried flowers.”

“I'm sick of running after every new fad,” Jordan says. “Searching the Internet every time there's another rumor about a new drug.”

Guinevere bounds toward them, and when she halts beside
Rory to shake herself, the rest of them scoot out of her way. But Rory lies unperturbed.

“You'd rather trust the government?” Rory says. “With its excellent track record? You gotta go to the underground. It's the only place where people still tell the truth.”

Jordan laughs. “Dream on, Rory. What's next—the conspiracy theory?”

Rory makes a tsk-ing sound. “You've turned out to be so bourgeois. We all have. We don't even go to the nude end of the beach anymore.”

“Why bother, now that they've closed the Presidio?” Mournfully, Pete glances up at the cliffs above the beach, studded with cypresses that screen the former barracks of the army base. “It's not as much fun anymore. The soldiers aren't up there with their field binoculars trying to get an eyeful.”

From this distance the few lunatics willing to go naked on the beach today look like big pink thumbs.