In Memory of Angel Clare (3 page)

Then it was over. He tried shuddering up another wave of tears, but he was dry. He looked up and found Tim’s face next to his, pale and staring, the boy’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, the other hand gripping Michael’s beneath the table. Biting his lower lip, Tim looked sweetly helpless.

“It’s all right. It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’ll be okay. Maybe we should—” He hunted around the table, then rummaged in his canvas bag, but all he could offer Michael to blow his nose with was a map of Paris.

Michael smiled politely and shook his head. He sniffed his nose clear and looked around. The people at the nearest tables were silent, their eyes averted.

But instead of feeling ashamed, Michael was proud he had cried in public. And at the Café de Flore. Grief was such a pure, honest emotion.

“W
E REALLY SHOULD HAVE
had a drink with him,” Peter moaned, “but Livy was adamant. And you know Livy.”

Jack Arcalli nodded. He certainly knew Livy and her faintly nervous decisiveness, and he knew Peter too. He suspected Peter had wanted to avoid Michael as much as his wife did, but had been too much the Southern gentleman to admit it to himself.

“She insisted she hadn’t come all the way to Paris to be trapped for another evening with Michael. So we made our excuses and snuck off. We had to sit
inside
Deux Magots for fear Michael might see us if we sat out front. We didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” Peter quickly added. “And it’s not that Michael’s really so terrible. He’s just not very interesting company. None of
us
were at that age. Poor Michael.”

“Poor Michael,” Jack uncomfortably agreed. “You sure you don’t have time for a cup of coffee?”

Jack and Peter stood in the lobby of the Brill Building, where they had run into each other, Peter on his way in to see a distributor, Jack on his way out after a screening. It was late afternoon outside and spokes of light spun through the cool, shadowy lobby each time another lawyer or messenger came through the brass-trimmed revolving door. They had been standing here talking for five minutes.

Peter tapped the portfolio under his arm. “I have to get upstairs and show these sketches. But we really should get together sometime soon.”

“We should,” said Jack, knowing it might be months before they did. Peter Griffith confused him. Warm and effusive each time they met, grinning in his friendly red beard, Peter seemed to promise friendship yet had never delivered on that promise. Jack didn’t know if he misread Peter because Peter was straight, or because he himself was single and had different expectations.

In his usual dutiful manner, Peter still didn’t say good-bye. “You’re back in the city for good?”

“I only got away for a couple of weeks,” said Jack. “The Jersey shore with my mother and aunt.”

“You don’t look like you got much sun.”

Jack gestured at his bulky body and smirked. “This isn’t a shape one parades around in a swimsuit.”

“You’re not the only one,” laughed Peter, patting his own paunch and bowing his head to show Jack his pink bald spot. “The joys of pushing the big Four-O.”

Peter had in fact a few years to go yet. Jack was thirty-nine but already felt like he was in his fifties. Jack protected himself by thinking ahead. He had felt forty when he was thirty and thirty when he was twenty. He had never felt twenty.

“But Michael seemed in good spirits?” Jack asked.

“Quite happy, yes. I was glad to see he’s enjoying his trip. He certainly deserves it.”

“He does. Did he say how much longer he’s staying over there?”

Peter couldn’t remember. When Michael left for Europe a couple of months ago, his plans were wide open. Jack hadn’t given any thought to the boy these past weeks and was annoyed to find Michael weighing on his consciousness again.

“Well, I better get upstairs to fight the philistines in sales,” said Peter. “But we’ll talk. You seeing Laurie and Carla anytime soon?”

“As always.”

“Give them my love.”

“My love to Livy.”

They shook hands and Peter headed for the elevators, looking back at Jack with an apologetic grin, the courteous Southerner to the end.

Walking toward the subway, Jack did not feel like going downtown to his apartment, where nothing waited for him except his cat and the chore of reviewing the movie he just saw. Chatting with Peter made him hungry for a real conversation, which he could have with Laurie. She should be getting home around now. He went down the steps to the uptown train without bothering to call her first. There was no feeling of duty or ceremony between Jack and Laurie. Today was Monday and he knew she’d be in.

The train was crowded and Jack had to stand on the ride uptown, unable to look over the publicity packet from the screening or pull out the paperback of
The Old Curiosity Shop
that was his subway reading this month. He hung on a bar and found himself swaying beside his reflection in a darkened window.
He
still had a full head of hair, unlike Peter. Ben Slover was losing his hair, too, through politics or life with Danny. But Jack lived alone and kept his hair, although it was full of gray now. The reflection in the window was too weak to show the threads like steel wool in his full black beard or the permanent bags under his eyes, but Jack knew they were there. All of them were growing old, the women more gracefully than the men. It was still odd to remember that Clarence would never be forty. Jack wondered why Peter Griffith’s distance bothered him: Peter had been Clarence’s friend, not Jack’s.

He got off at Ninety-sixth Street, walked down Broadway, then stepped briskly downhill toward the river, to the homey loaf of stone and windows near Riverside Drive. He pressed the button for Laurie and Carla’s apartment.

“Who is it?”

“Jack. Just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“Great. Come on up.”

She buzzed him in, and Jack entered Clarence’s building. Even after a year he still thought of the building as Clarence’s. There were days when Jack barely noticed that fact, and days when it was very important to him.

Laurie Frazier was waiting for him in Clarence’s door when the elevator opened. “Perfect timing, Jack-o. Just got home.”

She still wore one of the suits with floppy bows she put on when she spent the afternoon at her investment service’s parent company. Overdoing the corporate look was Laurie’s way of staying ironic about her work. Her short blond hair was still brushed down in its executive mode, but her shoes were off, her feet blurred by nylons. She went up on her toes and Jack bent down when they kissed each other hello. Her grin was lopsided, as if she had something else on her mind.

“Don’t let me interrupt anything,” said Jack, stepping past her into the long front hallway.

“Nothing to interrupt. I had a feeling you’d show up.” She closed the door and followed him down the hall.

Walking by the bathroom, Jack glanced in and saw women’s things. Walking by the spare bedroom, he saw a suitcase and green garment bag sitting on the bed.

“Oh.” He stopped and stared into the room. “
Michael’s
back?”

“Yup. Buzzed us out of bed yesterday morning.” Laurie stepped around him and continued to the kitchen. “Tea? I was just about to put some on.”

Jack pictured Michael still sitting in a sidewalk café in Paris. It was a shock to see his things on the bare mattress. He joined Laurie in the large, dark kitchen. “Peter told me they saw him in Paris just last week.”

“Well, he flew back on Sunday,” Laurie said wearily. “Tea tea or herbal?”

“I’ll fix the tea. You finish changing.”

Jack wasn’t eager to talk about Michael either, and he knew Laurie hated remaining dressed like that at home. She padded out of the kitchen, already mussing her hair with both hands.

Michael was back. So what? They knew he’d be back sometime. Jack tried telling himself it wasn’t important while he glanced over Laurie and Carla’s unopened mail on the painted breakfront. He put on water for tea, then rinsed out the teapot and set out two mugs. He looked in the refrigerator to see if they had something sweet for him to nibble.

“Have an apple!” Laurie shouted from the bedroom.

Jack took an apple, although he had wanted something artificial. “Where’s Michael now?” he called out.

“Off to Connecticut. To see Ben and Danny.”

“Whatever for?”

“Danny told him to come if he got back in time. And he wanted to see some letters Ben took with him.” She stopped in the kitchen door on her way to the bathroom, looking more herself in jeans and a bra. “Fine by me. It gives me time to decide how to tell him.”

“You still want Michael out.”

“Yes,” Laurie said firmly. “Back in a jiff,” and she went down the hall.

Jack quietly groaned to himself. Waiting for the water to boil, he ate his apple and wandered out into the dining room, the living room, then around the corner into the deep alcove that Laurie used as her office. It was a wonderfully huge apartment, one room opening into another under high ceilings, an apartment you could waltz in. Jack never felt as big and clumsy here as he did in other private spaces. He often regretted not having had the money to buy the place himself. If he had, would
he
want Michael here?

The building had been going co-op when Clarence died. Jack didn’t understand all the legal technicalities, but Clarence’s right as a tenant to purchase the apartment at an insider’s reduced price was retained by his brother in Danville, Virginia. The brother sold that right to Laurie and Carla for a reasonable sum. Jack encouraged them to take the apartment. The women wanted to move out of their shoebox studio after Laurie’s recent financial success and were the only ones in their circle who could afford the place. Jack had his selfish reasons for wanting them to buy. This way, he could still come here, still visit a past that might otherwise be sealed off to him.

The past expressed itself chiefly in absences this afternoon. A framed anti-nuke poster hung on the living room wall where there had been a brown photo of a boy in knickerbockers, a French foyer card for
The Conformist,
and the collage Clarence had made himself that featured a famous athlete in jockey shorts standing in a cornfield with Marcel Proust and Charlie Chaplin. Jack had the collage in his kitchen now, but he often missed seeing it here.

The untuned baby grand in the alcove, always layered with art books, storyboards, and cigarette ash, had been replaced with filing cabinets and a desk heaped with newspapers—Laurie’s success came when she branched out from tax preparation into socially responsible investing. The great black camelback sofa was gone. Even the ashtrays were gone. Laurie and Carla did not own enough things, or care enough, to redo the apartment and make it completely theirs. But the only real physical evidence of Clarence was a long gouge across the dining room floor left by his rented Steenbeck film editor. And, once again, there was his last boyfriend.

Michael was back, like an obnoxious ghost. Jack found it both sad and ridiculous. The spirit of their talented, contented, gentle friend hung on in the form of an arrogant boy. There had been many boyfriends in the twenty years Jack had known Clarence, although none so young. Yet it was the youngest who was there at the end, then through the end and after, long after his presence made sense. Clarence’s brother, a Fundamentalist but a decent man, did not contest the will. All money remaining after the apartment was sold and the debts were paid went to Michael: $37,000. But instead of using the money to start a new life, or going wild with it as some feared, Michael set the money aside and stayed put. He continued to live in the spare bedroom where he slept when Clarence became ill. He never saw anyone except Clarence’s friends, not understanding they had been his friends, too, only out of deference to Clarence.

Nobody actively disliked Michael, and they weren’t indifferent to his situation. They had been touched at first to see such loyalty to their friend, then worried when Michael’s mourning continued. Then they became irritated. Jack often questioned the emotions beneath the irritation. Being bored with Michael was natural enough, but he wondered if they were annoyed and sometimes angry because Michael was behaving in a way they felt they should behave. A friend had died and yet they went on with their lives. Jack went on with his life, too, but, unlike the others, Jack was single. He felt he was more conscious of Clarence’s absence than they were, conscious enough to want to look past his irritation with Michael to the sympathy and respect he had for the boy. Jack and Michael had something in common.

Jack was pouring tea when Laurie strolled into the kitchen, the sleeves of her flannel shirt rolled up and the shirttail out. She saw the publicity pack. “Good movie?”

“Wretched. More misunderstood teens. God but I don’t want to write another what-does-this-tell-us-about-society review.”

“None of the boys took off their pants?”

“No. And they were too cute and insipid for me to care.” Jack was annoyed when Laurie teased him about sex; there was always a note of condescension. But he sounded condescending when he teased her about being politically correct on Wall Street. Their friendship included stepping on each other’s toes. “Speaking of cute and insipid…”

Laurie sighed. “Okay. I don’t
want
to throw him out. But it’s gone on much too long. And I resent his blind assumption this is still his home. I know you think it’s a humungous apartment, Jack. But Michael takes up a lot of psychic space. It was heaven while he was gone. Carla and I discussed it last night. When he gets back from Connecticut, we’re going to tell him, nicely, that he has a month to find his own place.”

Jack nodded understandingly, then said, “He’s going to feel rejected.”

“Well? We
are
rejecting him.” Laurie frowned. “We know he’s been through a terrible experience. We do feel sorry for him. But we can’t continue to baby him. How would you like to live with Ego in Arcadia?”

It was Jack’s phrase, coined in a fit of irritation. As if their lives were remotely Arcadian. “I wouldn’t,” he admitted. “I just wish there were a gentler way.”