Like People in History (6 page)

The logical next assumption was that I was the one being unfair.

"I'm not playing against Augie. Period,"

"Then give me the tourmaline," Alistair said.

I didn't know what to do. Looking at Augie was no help. Despite his terrific shooting, he now wore that hangdog look that showed that he was already defeated—not by a marble shooter, but by the complications my second cousin had introduced into the game, into our friendship, into poor Augie's until-then Edenically innocent life.

"We're waiting!" Kerry sang out.

I promised myself that the minute Alistair had gone back to Michigan, I'd waylay the little creep and beat him to the consistency of tapioca.

I snuck a look at Alistair. He was enjoying this, really and truly enjoying the predicament he'd gotten me into, watching and waiting what I'd do to get out of it. That infuriated and decided me.

"Fine! I'll shoot against Augie!" I declared.

Before any of them could respond, I went to the circle, dropped to one knee, pulled out the tourmaline, and shot it hard, directly into the blank, glazed surface of the onyx lying in the middle of the ring.

It gave the onyx a good smash and sent it whirling and gyrating out of the circle, then sent it whirling and gyrating back in again, where the onyx stopped, inert.

"No fair!" Alistair shouted behind me.

"It was a good shot!" the others shouted.

It had been a good shot, an honest shot with a freak result. Any marble player worth his oats could see I'd really given it everything.

The next shot was Augie's, and he took my tourmaline easily. A few days later, he actually tried to let me win it back. I said no, he should keep it.

As for Alistair, he was livid. Truly livid, in that I'd done the honorable thing the honorable way and had honorably lost a valuable—even a legendary—marble, even if to my friend, and not one among them could say I'd in any way balked or complained about it.

He waited until we got home before shoving me into the wall behind my bedroom door. Holding my own bat horizontally against my neck until I began to feel faint from lack of blood and oxygen, he spoke in the quietest and nastiest voice I'd ever heard out of a human.

"I really thought I'd taught you a lesson back there, Cuz. But you just won't learn, will you?"

His face was mine, but distorted dreadfully.

I got a grip on the bat and tried to push it away.

"You think just because you stuck up for that poor, stupid, fat boy that you're some sort of hero, don't you?"

I'd gotten a grip on each of his hands, but he had the angle and leverage on me.

"Well, just remember this, Cuz. Schmucks like that will come and go in your life. They don't mean a thing. I'm the one who counts. I'm the one you're going to have to face and deal with. Because I'm the one who's going to be around for a long, long time.

"You got that?" he emphasized with another burst of pressure, as I began to see spots in front of my face and black out.

"Good!" he said. "Don't ever forget it!"

"Missing him already?"

I snapped to attention. Alistair was leaning into the little cul-de-sac behind the enormous fake columns he'd had installed and painted
faux
marble a year ago by a former trick, now part of some rehab program funded by Afghan or Moroccan millionaires to "Aid the Arts" and help some of their best former customers recover from decades of drug abuse.

"Him who?" I asked.

"Who else? Wallace the Red. I saw him vanish into the crowd and out the door like a sword through hot butter."

"He was hungry for Szechuan food." "Bless his metabolism," Alistair said, with less irony than usual. "Indeed. Bless anyone for still having a metabolism! I was thinking of installing paramecia or something prevertebrate like that into my intestine so I might once again recognize what used to be called an appetite."

"You don't look that bad," I lied.

"You mean I don't look like 'Gee, guys, I've been in Auschwitz and I managed to get out' yet?" Alistair asked. "The Duchess of Windsor was wrong: You
can
be too thin. Give me a hand," he added, literally dropping a nearly fleshless and thus lightweight and fragile arm onto my shoulder.

"Where we going?"

"The loo."

"What happened to what's-his-name?" I asked as I steered Alistair into the hallway. "The star?"

"He left."

"How was he?"

"Flawless. He didn't once mention
It"
Alistair said.

"Is that good or bad?" I asked; these days one could never be certain whether one should or shouldn't The epidemic seems to have developed an ever-metamorphosing construct of etiquette. I sometimes think there should be an Illness Manners Crisis Hotline you can phone to get the latest subtle twist.

"Good for him," Alistair explained. "He'd only say the wrong thing."

We'd gotten to the john, and I knocked hard enough to awaken anyone catnapping within.

"It's all yours," I declared, opening the door.

"Come in with me."

"It hasn't come to that, has it?"

"No, silly. I want you to fix my face."

Alistair's bathroom was large, but when he'd redone the apartment a year ago during a burst of unexpected energy, he'd enlarged it further by absorbing two closets, then he'd followed through the postmodern architectural theme of the building to what I considered illegal lengths. If the large living-dining area was post-Pompeii, the bathroom was late Dark Ages. The stall shower—big enough to hold a medium-sized dyers' guild—was in the color of, and with that puddinglike texture of, alabaster you see only at the Cloisters. The floorboards had come from a twelfth-century Norman mill. The sliding doors were artfully mosaicked chunks of stained glass of the same period, but from a Silesian monastery. The rest of the large room followed the motif: the fixtures looked like baptismal fonts, the walls were scattered with sour-faced Madonnas holding goggle-eyed infants against fields of ancient gold leaf, each set within its own little house—a frame resembling nothing more than a cowshed, behind which lurked a cabinet for toiletries. Next to the Madonnas floated several antique mirrors of varying sizes, the bluish glass much impinged upon by thick frames filled with hordes of pouting, rather bony cherubim. It was into one of these that Alistair thrust his face.

"Hit those pin spots," he commanded. "The controls are inside that little baldachin right by your hand."

After some hit-and-miss, I found the correct button and Alistair's head was thrown into strong, white illumination.

He'd opened one of the cabinets and withdrawn two vials of ecru liquid.

"Where would we be without Cover-Up?" Alistair sighed, handing the two little bottles to me. "You'll have to do it for me. The way my hands shake I'll end up looking like Clarabelle."

"You don't need it," I said. But of course in this light I could very clearly see he did. The White Woman had been far too stinting earlier, and I could see three KS lesions already showing through his ministrations.

"Use the darker color in front, the lighter on my neck," Alistair said, as I chose and began applying. "Old trade secret of the stars, that!" Alistair went on. "Keeps the wrinkles from showing under key lights."

His skin looked papery as a wasp's nest wherever a bone was prominent—on the bridge of his nose, at either eyebrow ridge, under his imperfectly shaven chin.

"Garbo teach you this?" I asked.

"Actually it was Bette Midler. Before she got it fixed, her nose bone bent like that road sign in Monterey spelling out 'Hills and Curves Next 74 Miles'! I watched her paint a line straight down and shade in both sides. Not that it was ever a petite button, but she made herself look like Esther the Queen redivivus."

"When was that?'

"Continental Baths. Seventy-two? Seventy-four?" Alistair slowly shifted the planes of his face in the mirror. "You're in love with that little schmuck, aren't you?"

"Hold still."

"I can tell. All the signs are there," Alistair said.

"Nefertiti, gone four thousand years, could tell," I said. "I mean Wally's only been living with me over a year."

"Have you awakened in the middle of the night and wanted to strangle him in his sleep? That's the only way I've ever been certain I loved someone."

"There are less homicidal ways."

"None as certain," Alistair argued. "You're not bad at this. I guess it was all your zits that made you master of the makeup jar."

"I never had zits," I said. "You taught me how to do this."

"I did?" Alistair seemed amazed. "When?"

"When we were adolescents. We practiced on that pretty girl with all those beauty marks she hated. Judy something. In California."

"She married a maharaja," Alistair said, musing. "Or became a maharishi. I don't remember which. So are you and the little beast going to exchange rings in the Sheep Meadow and all that homo-tripe?" Alistair asked.

"Wally would gather blow up the Sheep Meadow," I said.

"He sort of reminds me of myself at that age."

"Come off it. At Wally's age all you wanted was your name etched on double glass doors on Fifty-seventh and Fifth."

"That's enough," Alistair said. "I don't want to look like Dietrich."

I pulled back a second. Then I placed my own face next to Alistair's in the mirror. Difficult to believe we'd once looked so alike. Oh, the structure was there all right: the identical wide brows, the little dents at each temple, the long, somewhat aristocratic nose. But the lower part of my face was round—though not yet jowly—whereas his was pointed. And his lips were fleshier; even the gauntness of his illness hadn't affected them.

"You do!" I said louder than necessary. "You look like Dietrich in the early seventies in Paris. When she was wearing those silver sequined gowns they had to break several ribs to stuff her into and singing 'Lili Marlene' for the eleven thousandth time during yet another of her innumerable farewell performances at the Paris Opera House."

"Shameless flattery," Alistair sniffed, but he preened too.

He was busy making big lips at himself in the mirror and saying "Daw-a-ling" when he suddenly asked, "You did bring my gift?"

I turned away and began deliberately shoving the little brush inside each vial of Cover-Up and carefully screwing closed each cap.

"Remember when my mother called us the Gold Dust Twins?" I asked.

"Your mother was a doll, but she saw things no one else did."

"Must run in the family. Remember Great Aunt Lillian? How she used you in her séances?"

"Did you bring my gift?" He repeated his question quietly but firmly.

"I brought it, but I still don't think..."

"What you think is inconsequential at this late date, Cuz."

"It's not that late."

"Be real for once. Nothing is working anymore."

"Nothing?"

"Oh, Dr. Jekyll says he recently discovered a T cell, and my Billy Reuben is about the same as that of an Arctic sardine." He turned to me. "But do let's face facts. I spike a fever to a hundred and four every other day. And it's already passed the brain-blood barrier and damaged my cerebral cortex. I can't remember anything anymore. Orkney's taken to using little yellow glue-on notes on things like salad forks and needle cases so we won't be too embarrassed."

"It's age, my own memory is—"

"Shut up and listen, Rog. My boats are burned," he said, carefully enunciating. "And I'm a big enough girl to realize it's time for a final Viking do. Shields inverted! Flames to the top of the mast! Floating out in Long Island Sound!"

I half sat, half collapsed on the toilet.

"Oh, come on! Don't be like that!" Alistair said brightly. "We've planned this for weeks. Don't spoil it."

"I can't believe it's... over."

"Look on the bright side, Cuz. You'll soon be the last queen left in New York who necked at Le Jardin with the son of a President in Office."

"I never did that."

"You did too! Stephen Ford. Was it Jack Ford?
One
of the Ford boys."

"Not me," I declared.

"It was. A big beefy blond. Remember? Fran Lebowitz was at the next table, and as we entered, you said, 'Don't let her see me,' even though she wouldn't have known you from King Kong. Ultraviolet came over to her table with Jack or Steve or Whomever Ford in tow, and he sat down next to you while she joined Fran, and next thing I knew you two were gone. I later found you in the men's room lounge pressed into the wallpaper doing the heaviest fully clothed petting act I've seen outside of Tijuana."

I remembered the incident, and the boy, but I still disbelieved him about it being one of President Ford's sons.

"If it is true," and I stopped him from interjecting, "who'll be around to remind me?"

"You'll remind yourself. You'll sit yourself down with magnums of Dom Perignon and write your memoirs."

"I never did anything, and what I did I'll need you to remember."

"It would be fun if I remained as a tiny voice. Who was that pretty boy in Ovid? Tithonus? He became Aurora's lover, and she managed to get him eternal life, but she forgot to ask for eternal youth too and he shriveled away to the size of a cricket."