In Memory of Angel Clare (25 page)

He pictured his body being found on a wide, blood-soaked bed—or maybe in a bathtub. Only here it would be strangers who found him. The others wouldn’t see him until they came down to the police station or morgue, if then. That made it too easy for them, too neat. He didn’t want to set his death outside their lives, just as Clarence’s death had been safely outside, in a hospital. To bring it all home to them, he should do it in one of their homes. Ben and Danny. Laurie and Carla. Jack. Even Peter and Livy. His bitterness toward them was so strong he regretted not being able to kill himself four times, a death in each apartment.

He signaled the waiter for the bill. “I’ve changed my mind,” he told the man. “I won’t be waiting for my uncle after all.” He needed to get out of the hotel before he changed his mind again and did it here. This was the wrong place. His act would be wasted here. He pocketed the notepad and pen, left twenty dollars on the little tray, and left.

Stepping out into a shock of bright sunlight, he squinted around at the street and started walking quickly. It was as though he were fleeing from the hotel. He wondered if his decision not to do it there had been his subtle way of deciding not to do it at all. Each step he took toward the act made the act feel less necessary. Would he go on with his life by procrastinating his death? But as soon as he imagined that, as soon as he conjured up a tomorrow, a next week, a next month, all his pain and self-hatred came back to him, a nausea in his bones and skull as if his own body were sickened by the person it housed. Michael couldn’t live with such loathing. It was only the thought he soon wouldn’t live at all that made this minute and the next minute bearable. No, he knew what had to be done and couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t do it.

Standing on the corner of a broad avenue, he kept turning around and feeling the outsides of his pockets while he tried to decide which way to go. Enormous faceless buildings towered overhead, grooved like machinery. All around him streamed men and women on their way to work or already out on coffee breaks—Michael had no sense of what time it was. When a pack of people behind him stepped off the curb and into the street, Michael stepped with them. He continued in that direction and realized he was walking downtown.

Jack lived downtown.

Jack worked at home. Yes, he would go to Jack. He wanted to prove himself to everyone, but he suddenly understood he wanted to prove himself to Jack most of all. His thoughts kept coming back to Jack. Who was alone, like Michael now. Who had been closer to Clarence than the others. Who would be the chief executor of Clarence’s memory when Michael was gone.

That last thought distressed Michael. In Jack’s mind, he’d be remembered as only a minor episode in Jack’s long, dreary friendship with Clarence, nothing more. The past would close over Michael as if he had never lived. He considered going on with his life simply to spite Jack. The only other alternative was to make Jack part of his death, blocking out Jack’s memories of Clarence with something more memorable and awful. He wanted to take all memory of Clarence with him.

The light was so harsh and Michael’s eyes so tired all he could see clearly on his walk downtown were individual shadows isolated in the brightness.

The angle of light looked like noon when Michael climbed the front steps of a rust-colored sandstone building on Charles Street and pressed the button labeled “Arcalli.” He could hear the buzzer blare inside the building, but there was no answer. He pressed again, then stepped outside to lean over the balustrade and see what he could see through Jack’s window. The apartment was on the first floor and the front windows a few feet to the left of the stoop. The windows behind bars were opened a few inches, and a radio softly played in the darkness inside. Michael knew Jack turned his radio on only when he was out, to discourage burglars.

Something suddenly hit the window from inside, rattling the blinds.

It was Elisabeth Vogler, bounding up to the windowsill to see who was there. She gazed wide-eyed at Michael through the hazy screen and opened her mouth at him without a meow coming out.

“Hello, cat. Happy to see me?” Michael said sweetly. He wanted to hold her, run his fingers through her fur, even bury his face in her warm silkiness. He leaned out and lightly scratched at the screen with an outstretched hand. “
You
love me.”

She lifted her nose to the hand, glanced sadly at Michael, then folded her forelegs beneath her chest and settled on them, pretending Michael wasn’t there.

He sighed and drew back. He stepped down and sat on the stoop. Jack had probably gone out for food or to Xerox something. Michael could wait for him.

When he leaned against a vase-shaped pillar that was part of the balustrade; things in his coat pocket pinched his side. He reached into the pocket and brought out the notepad, pen, and bag with the packet inside. Could he do it? Would he? He seemed to have made and remade his mind a dozen times, and it angered him to find he still had room for doubt. He was angry with Jack for not being home and forcing him to prolong this anxious doubting.

He put the pad and pen in the bag with the packet and left the bag at his feet. Settling back with the pillar between his shoulder blades, he discovered he was exhausted. He had never gone to sleep last night, had he? He wondered how much that fact had to do with how he felt, yet the burning in his eyes and stretched state of his nerves—like violin strings tuned so tight their pitch was too high for human hearing—felt nothing like sleepiness.

This street seemed sleepy, however. It was so quiet the rustle of air when an occasional car drove past was indistinguishable from the steady breathing of the trees full of leaves like big paper stars. The tree trunks lining the curb looked badly scarred, sycamore trees with patches of gray and yellow bark. The long building across the street looked scarred too, patched red stucco full of cracks and seams, a wall like a mass of sunburned faces.

If he slept, would he wake up without his pain and self-hatred? He imagined sleeping, then awaking to find everything fine again, his craziness gone, his real self lovable and loved again, his memories only a bad dream. Perhaps Clarence would even be alive when he woke up.

Knowing Clarence was dead instantly killed the fantasy about sleep. He could not undo that fact. He turned to a new fantasy, wanting to hold himself to his decision: he imagined meeting up again with Clarence in death. It was a sweet, beautiful fib, perfect for funerals and widowed grandmothers, and Michael could not believe it for a second. He did not believe in life after death, not for himself, not even for Clarence. Which was what made death so attractive, as appealing as the idea of sleep was to him right now. He felt he was already dead. This blind groping inside his head was the initial stage of death, the front stoop, the foyer, the front door. It was a minor annoyance to know a physical act was still necessary to make this state of mind final.

The front door squeaked open. Michael turned and saw Jack Arcalli standing in the foyer, looking down at Michael and gesturing for him to come in.

Confused, Michael stood up. Jack had been home all along. Or no, Michael had fallen asleep and Jack had returned, walking right past Michael and not seeing him because Michael was sound asleep, or not recognizing him because he had never seen Michael sleeping.

“I looked out the window and thought it was you,” said Jack, leading Michael down the hall and into his apartment. He seemed genuinely glad to see Michael.

With all the lights on, the apartment looked bigger than usual. Jack had bought the Sousza’s kitchen and brought it here from Phillipsburg. It was late and Michael was wearing pajamas, the buttons on the fly disappearing and reappearing each time Michael checked them. He stood by the peninsular counter while Jack fixed a sandwich, carefully arranged it on a plate, and left it on the kitchen table with an opened can of beer. Noticing Michael’s baffled look, Jack said, “He still comes by late at night. I like to leave a little snack for him.”

Michael wanted to hide in the cupboard under the sink and wait for Clarence, just to catch a peek of him and see how he was. But before he could explain what he needed, Jack took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom.

They became naked when they embraced and kissed on the bed. Michael felt funny doing this with Jack, but his body enjoyed it so much he couldn’t stop. Jack’s beard was as soft and chewy as cat’s fur, and his skin felt like warm sunlight. People walked past on their way to the bathroom, Ben and Laurie among them, politely averting their eyes. Michael’s only real worry was that by doing this he might miss Clarence.

Then the warmth left their bodies, like the sun slipping behind a cloud, and Michael found an extra arm, an extra shoulder, and a familiarly knuckled hand here with him and Jack. Clarence was somewhere in the bed! Michael kissed and held Jack harder, wanting to conjure up more of Clarence, enough so he could see and talk to him, and apologize for still being alive.

Clarence’s hand gripped Michael’s. Overjoyed, Michael opened his eyes to see Clarence.

And he saw Jack standing in front of him.

Everything was framed in bleared reddish gold light—sun shining through the balustrade on Michael’s eyelashes. The tilted shadows of trees were stretched like a net across the building behind Jack Arcalli. Jack stood on the sidewalk, staring in astonishment at Michael. As if he had watched every minute of Michael’s dream.

Michael was stung awake, hurt it was only a dream: the forgiveness and the sex and the affection for Jack. Here was the real Jack, stolid and baggy, his shoulders and the circles under his eyes heavy with judgment. Jack’s stare seemed sharp and indignant, as if he couldn’t believe Michael had the gall to be here.

There was no possibility of sympathy, no chance of understanding. There was no way to get through to him except to do what Michael had intended all along.

“M
ICHAEL?” SAID JACK. HE
was thrown by the way the boy looked at him, eyes wide and mouth open for air, like a frightened child, a heartbreakingly ugly look that turned him into an entirely different person.

Then he pulled his hands from the space between his legs and rubbed his face, as if he’d had his real face balled up in his hands and was putting it back on. “Dozed off,” he muttered behind his hands. “Bad dream.” He lowered his hands and looked like himself again, aloof and self-important despite his bloodshot eyes. “Where have you been?” he said sharply.

“Just out,” Jack said guardedly. Michael’s insolent tone made him feel like a fool for fretting all afternoon. He already felt like a fool after Ben’s accusations and was sure he looked like a perfect fool to Michael, standing here and gawking the way he did. He refused to confess his foolishness to the boy. “One might ask the same of you. Laurie and Carla were wondering where you disappeared to last night.”

“Out,” said Michael. “Dancing and stuff.”

“Dancing?” What an idiot he’d been to imagine this arrogant twit was capable of dangerous emotions. “You could’ve at least given them a call and told them where you were.”

Michael responded with a bored sigh and stared past Jack.

Jack wanted to slap him. He propped his hitting hand against the front post of the stone railing and stood there, making a special point of not inviting Michael inside. “So what brings you to this neighborhood?”

Michael continued to look past him. “I wanted”—he cleared his throat—“to take a bath.”

Jack snorted and smirked. “You’ve got a perfectly respectable bathtub at home, Michael. Why’re you really here?” As soon as he asked, Jack realized he didn’t want to know, but a bath was too absurd a request to be a disguise for something else.

“Didn’t they tell you?” Michael said contemptuously. “I don’t have a home. They threw me out.”

“They didn’t throw you out.” Was that why he was here, to ask for sympathy? “I’ve talked to them. They asked you to start looking for your own place. That’s all. You shouldn’t be so melodramatic about it.”

Michael glared at him. “I’m not being melodramatic. I’m angry at them and I’m not going back there. Not tonight anyway. I came here to bathe and shave, and then I’m going out dancing again. I’m not going back to those… women until I’m good and ready.”

There was so much false drama to wade through with Michael. He may have stayed out last night to get back at Laurie and Carla, or maybe he simply never thought to call them. Jack suddenly wondered if “dancing and stuff” included spending the night with someone. It must, if Michael intended to do it again, although he didn’t look like he’d had much sleep the night before. The idea of Michael going to bed with another man infuriated Jack. Because of the worry he had wasted on the little shit, he told himself.

“Well?” said Michael. “Can I use your bathtub or are you rejecting me too?”

Jack’s anger had reached the point where his automatic reaction was to go against it, bury it and be polite. “Don’t be silly, Michael. Come on in,” he said wearily. “Scrub-a-dub-dub.”

Michael slowly gathered his limbs together and stood up as Jack climbed the steps past him. Michael continued to stand on the steps and look out at the street when Jack opened the front door and waited for him.

The sun had dropped below the horizon while they talked. The gold light and shadows were gone, and the buildings seemed to crowd closer together. The electric light in the foyer and hall was brighter than the street. Michael stood with his back to Jack, then finally bent down to pick up the paper bag at his feet and came up the steps to the door.

“Been shopping?” Jack asked, trying to be civil.

“Toiletries,” said Michael.

When Jack opened the door to his apartment and turned on the kitchen light, Elisabeth Vogler thumped to the floor in another room and promptly slithered around Jack’s ankles.

“Cat!” cried Michael and he bent down and scooped her up in his arms, leaving his bag on the floor. “Fat cat. Pretty kitty. Hello there,” he baby-talked, brushing his cheeks against her whiskers. He closed his eyes and smiled. His change was so abrupt it seemed schizophrenic, the way people often change around animals. Then, just as abruptly, he looked up and demanded, “What’s that?”