Loonglow (24 page)

It was only later that Clay wondered if the presence of all those women had been what had excited Louey, and nothing to do with him at all. It was not a thought he liked having.

“Come here often?”

Louey was walking with two packagers and an agent when Mia appeared from out of nowhere and clapped her on the back, smiling down at her.

It was worse than on the subway. This time Mia seemed to want to talk, as if nothing could be as pleasant as a chat with an old pal. Louey froze as two of her friends stopped debating where to go for dinner and examined Mia's beauty; the third stared up Columbus cynically and said rude things to passersby. For the first time Louey wished that Mia were indifferent, elsewhere, gone, but Mia stood and blocked her way, still smiling. At last her grin changed to bewilderment, then shock, when she saw Louey wasn't going to meet her eyes. After what seemed like hours, she dropped her hand from Louey's shoulder and disappeared.

Instantly Louey's friends reinstigated forward motion, putting Columbus Avenue once more under assault. Not mentioning the incident, the three discussed the usefulness of leather, pointing out examples from the streets before them. (No one complained when Louey's contribution proved minimal.)

The years with Mia had been a rich feast. Louey's life hereafter was to be a sip of tea, she saw now, a biscuit eaten hastily over the sink: at best a subtle consommé that would never leave her filled, though it did make her feel noble.

To celebrate the signing of their book contract, the group went (after prolonged drinking) to a dance club. “So, Louey,” one packager inquired as they braved a medley of Diana Ross. “Who was that hunk of woman?”

“What woman?” Louey answered. Diana called to her.

“We would all be most displeased to learn that you've been holding out,” her friend went on. “We all thought you never went in for that sort of thing. So messy, love, so—cheap. It's going to be a shock when everyone finds out you've got a heart.”

“Not anymore,” said Louey. Diana grew fainter, and the beginning rumblings of Madonna threatened to erupt into volcanic squeaks. She closed her eyes. “That was my past.”

“You gave
that
up?”

“No.” Louey lost the will to rumba. “It gave
me
up.” The faces around her looked away out of respect for a tragedy even they couldn't comprehend.

Surely in time the lure and memory of Mia would have to fade into oblivion, Louey told herself. For now, all she could do was wait.

“So when are you guys going to move in together full-time?”

Louey brought the salad bowl from the kitchen and handed a glass of wine to her oldest brother, Paul. Her other brother, Danny, was remaining tactfully silent on the whole topic, she noted, and Clay, too, seemed to be keeping a low profile.

“I'm serious,” Paul went on. “It's time you made a commitment, Louey. You've been avoiding adulthood long enough.”

“Have we met?” (I have so much work to do, thought Louey, I don't have time for this.) She had two novels to edit before the end of the month, exactly two weeks. One week per novel, she groaned: perfect.

“Meal looks great.” Danny changed the subject. “Are you sure you cooked this?”

“Clay cooked most of it,” Louey said. “I made dessert, though.”

A rare family reunion over the coming three-day holiday had brought both of Louey's brothers concurrently through New York, and after an intense campaign to persuade her, Louey halfheartedly agreed to join them in D.C. “I can't,” she'd moaned, but Clay told her it would do her good to get away from work—and him. Something in her resisted leaving New York, as if outside the city she would be diluted, forced to live a fraudulent existence.

Louey drank her wine and listened to the lively talk, marveling at the contrast Clay made with her brothers. It should comfort her to have them so clearly approving of him, Clay so obviously genuine in his enjoyment of them, yet she found herself watching, listening as if from a remove. If she were to tell Danny that she was dreaming of Mia again, even felt the stray pang for Mia to have it in her to woo Louey back properly, he would be aghast. Yet the scene in front of her was strangely surreal, like someone else's family. Her brothers welcoming a lover of hers so readily into the family—a rich blond Gentile who didn't even work for a living? It couldn't be.

She was piling dishes in the sink when Clay came up behind her. “Overdose of family?” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her. As he nibbled on an earlobe, she wriggled from him.

“I'm just tired.” She wanted to tell him what was bothering her—if only she could figure out what it was.

“Louey!” The sight of her mother's glowing face erased whatever fatigue had accumulated from the journey from New York. It had been nearly a year and a half since Louey had seen her mother, an unusual lapse in what her friends had always considered excessively frequent maternal contact. They embraced; her mother kissed her warmly.

“How's work?”

“Wonderful,” she said, not mentioning that every time the phone rang in her mother's house, she would probably have to stop herself from answering it, certain it was an author with a vital problem that couldn't be solved unless she flew back instantly. “I shouldn't be here now.”

“Your employer doesn't believe in the sanctity of Martin Luther King Day?”

She smiled. “How could I work for one that didn't?”

“So what's this Paul tells me about your having a boyfriend?” Meredith asked when they had spent some time alone in Louey's old room, going through her closet to throw out old clothes.

“Great,” Louey muttered.

“You didn't want me to know?”

“Nothing to know, Mother. I haven't changed.” She cradled an old shirt, now sadly outgrown. “Anyway, he's not Jewish.”

“You couldn't find a nice Jewish boy—or girl?” It was the first time her mother had referred to her being gay since Louey had told her years ago.

Louey laughed and hugged her mother, who patted her daughter's head. “Not for lack of trying, Ma.”

“These days you have to be careful with boys, you know.”

“I know, Ma.”

“It's just not a good idea, Louey, with all the diseases going around.”

“Next thing I know, you're going to be telling me you'd rather I was involved with a woman.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

Louey's mouth dropped. Her mother: one of a kind.

By the end of the weekend, Louey had been treated to as much familial harmony as she could bear. She'd lost count of the number of times she'd been asked when she was going to get married and the number of newly divorced third cousins to whom she'd been introduced. The number of people who remembered what she did for a living, on the other hand, she could count on the fingers of one hand.

Slipping out, she took a walk until she found herself outside city limits, where on a whim she caught a bus to the town gay bar. Unlike New York bars, this one was fully mixed, male and female. She hadn't been in a gay bar anywhere for what seemed like years.

The tall woman behind the bar raised her eyebrows when she saw Louey. After filling a middle-aged man's mug, she came over. “What can I get you?” Her husky voice was the sweetest sound Louey had heard all weekend.

“What have you got?” teased Louey.

“Oh, I don't know …” A slow smile spread over the woman's features. “For you?”

In a little while most of the customers had left. Louey helped the bartender clear the empty glasses away and put chairs up on the tables. Then the tall woman turned to Louey with a grin.

Well! Louey thought. What was a girl to do?

When Louey got home to New York, she learned that in her absence several famous people had died of AIDS. She got into the shower, letting the water soothe her, filled with foreboding at the thought of how many of her friends she would not see grow to middle age. It was only a matter of time before someone she knew would get it, she realized. The future was laid out suddenly before her one young man would fall, then another, and another, just as each one hit the prime of life. No wonder she never pushed dread too far from her mind.

At night she dreamed her friends were in the hospital, filling bed after bed. Tony, too frail ever to dance again, lay dressed in white, surrounded by strange people whose faces were obscured by masks. “They refuse to help me with my makeup,” he complained, relaxing in her embrace like a child grateful for its mother's love. She dreamed she was walking around in heaven with people she hadn't realized had died, who showed her all the sights as if she'd arrived at a resort, a fabulous new club. Night after night she woke up in a sweat, afraid to go to sleep for fear of whom she'd find in heaven next.

One night she woke to find Clay's arms around her as the now-familiar tears streamed from her eyes. His solid form ought to have comforted her, his body healthy as a young man's should be. Yet he seemed so far away, surreal. Kevin had just been the first to die, she thought; the rest would follow. Clay held her tightly: everyone would follow.

“Is it Kevin?” Clay asked in the morning. It seemed ridiculous to tell him she was suddenly afraid of everyone she loved dying. The rest of the world had learned to live with death. Becoming paralyzed by it amounted to a sort of insanity.

What did it mean to love someone? she wondered. Had it been a fluke that she'd loved Mia? Did she still love her? Did she love Clay, or was she merely responding to his love for her? Clay's hands tried to soothe away her sorrow. Grief brought her emotions so close to the surface, every sensation felt like pain.

One day she realized what was happening. How could she not have seen it? It was as if she were twelve years old again—yet now, instead of not being able to start crying, she couldn't stop.

For half her life, Louey had waited for catastrophe: she'd wake to find her home and family gone, she'd suddenly be penniless, abandoned. Her mother called her to a room and told her her father was dead.

As she'd grown older, some of her fear had begun to fade. Then Kevin died—and now this monstrous, inhuman disease would destroy her friends. All at once, the foundation she thought she'd established started crumbling. It was as if her father had died yesterday, only yesterday. How had she managed to put off thinking about it for so long?

How many young men would wake up to discover purple blotches on their bodies—boys who just the day before had leapt out of their beds and gone about delighting everyone who knew them? How many people would fear them, condemning them to death as if it were a punishment they deserved? How many of her friends would die, she wondered, get it and just die?

Clay told her she'd be less afraid in time. Yet all she saw was everyone she loved lined up to fall into open graves, toppling, body after body. Some nights she wished she'd never have to wake to face it.

Clay had thought love was something he knew nearly everything about, yet each day with Louey taught him something new. Sex he had thought he knew, too, yet his passion for her increased daily, when he would have expected it to fade. How could two such different people care for one another? Would she tire of him? As she dipped unfathomably toward despair, her body grew more precious, something he lived to coax joy from.

She seemed to be losing what he'd sensed in her for a long time—her resistance to the idea of him, to the notion of him as part of her future. Some days she even seemed to welcome what she felt for him. Their relationship went against everything she believed, he knew. Yet love was so rare. Surely she wouldn't turn her back on it because of the unexpected circumstances in which she'd found it? You love me, he wanted to shake her—was that so fucking terrible to admit?

It had to mean something, what they had: they loved each other. Yet as she grew more comfortable, a strange uncertainty began to gnaw at him, some odd, growing unease. At unexpected moments, his happiness would be pierced with flashes of self-doubt—but why?

One evening, to his horror, he heard himself ask her to marry him. She looked at him with astonishment and another emotion he couldn't identify. He threw himself from her apartment into the noisy comfort of the streets, trying to understand what had come over him. Marriage, for Christ's sake, he didn't even believe in marriage. It was regressing to some precognizant state even to suggest it: the ultimate slap in the face to a gay woman.

After a long walk he came back and rephrased the question: Did she want to live with him?

“I'll think about it.”

Was he imagining the uneasy expression in her eyes? “No rush,” he said.

“There are some things I have to tell you.”

“I only need to know one thing.” He cleared his throat. “Your future mailing address for tasteless postcards.”

“What brought all this on?”

“Thing is,” he began, “I guess I need to know what your intentions are.” He tried to laugh. “I'm so conventional.” She studied his face grimly. “Louey, I can't seem to stand just taking each day as it comes—is that unfair of me? Sometimes I don't have any idea what you're going to do next, if you want to—” He couldn't say it. “I have to know what you really feel for me. Is that—”

She swallowed. “It's not unfair.”

He should be happy she was considering living with him, he told himself. He
was
happy. Yet a queasy panic filled him, as if the ground were suddenly crumbling under his feet.

“I'm not the only one due for some thinking,” Louey pointed out. “You should take time yourself to figure out what you really want from me.”

He wanted her to move in with him, that was what he wanted. Nothing could make me happier than being bound to you forever, he longed to tell her: bound. So why was part of him suddenly terrified that she might agree? What was he afraid of—what possible thing could either of them be risking—when they'd been through so much already?