Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (48 page)

 

Playing his part, Andy waited a moment before answering. "Sure," he said. "If it's not too much trouble."

"It's not," said the actor. He looked at his watch. "In fact, we could start now. The view of the city from the Empire State Building is phenomenal at night. If we leave now we can just make it before they close."

"Sounds good," said Andy, handing me his unfinished drink. "I'll call you tomorrow," he said. The actor handed his drink to Taffy, who held the glass in her hand as if it was an Academy Award. "It was nice meeting all of you," he said.

We said our good-byes and the two of them left. As they reached the bar, Andy excused himself and came back to us. "I almost forgot," he said to a still-stunned Taffy as he held out his hand. "You owe me twenty."

CHAPTER 47

"Ned, it's Jerry from GMHC."
"Hey, Jerry," I said. "I was just about to come by and pick up John's lunch."

"That's why I'm calling," said Jerry, and my heart sank. A call from him could mean only one thing.

 

"When did he die?" I asked.

 

"He hasn't," Jerry answered. "Not yet, anyway. But it doesn't look good. He won't go to the hospital, but we have someone with him."

 

"Can I go see him?"

 

"I think he'd like that," said Jerry. "He really looks forward to your visits. He missed you while you were gone."

 

"I'll go over there now," I told him. "Thanks for calling."

I hung up and got ready to go out into the cold. I'd just gotten back from spending Christmas with my mother and Walter. I was in Pennsylvania for five days, and was glad to be back in New York. Alan was still with his family in Indiana, and was due to return on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, when we planned on ringing in 1984 in Times Square.

I hurried to John's apartment, more than a little afraid that he might die before I could see him. In the year and a half that I'd been his buddy, I'd come to be very fond of him. He'd lasted so much longer than most men with AIDS that I'd even begun to hope that he might be the one to beat the disease. Now, it seemed, he was losing the battle.

I let myself into the apartment, which felt overly warm and stuffy. As always, there was music playing. For Christmas John had bought himself a CD player, which were relatively new then and of which many people were still suspicious. But John had wanted one, and he'd given me the outrageous amount of

$800 to go to Crazy Eddie's on 8th Street to get it for him. I'd subsequently made more trips to look for opera recordings on CD, horrified by the prices, which at twenty to thirty bucks were three to five times the cost of an album. But every time I commented on how expensive the new technology was, John would roll his eyes and say, "What am I supposed to do with my money, Neddie, invest in twenty-year bonds?"

I'd become familiar with many of John's favorite operas, but I'd never heard the one that was playing when I arrived that afternoon. Not that I was thinking all that much about it. I didn't even take my coat off as I rushed down the hall to his bedroom. I stopped in the doorway, looking in on a horrific scene. John, looking even more skeletal than when I'd seen him the week before, was propped up against a bank of pillows. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and an oxygen cannula affixed to his nose was connected to a small tank standing beside the bed. Even with that added assistance, he was breathing raggedly. His hands, dead birds in his lap, looked like claws. A young man was bending over him, a stethoscope pressed to his chest.

"How is he?" I asked.

 

"You can talk to me," John said, his words faint and labored. "I'm not dead yet, you insensitive prick."

"As you can see, he's doing as well as can be expected," the attendant said. "I'm going to leave you boys alone to chat. If you need me, I'll be in the living room watching All My Children . I want to see if Devon and Dr. Carson finally get together."

"Imagine," John said as I sat down. "That nice girl from Angie is television's first dyke character."

"Yeah, well, she sort of looks like one," I said.
"How's your family?" John asked.

"Fine," I answered. "My mother's redecorating the bedroom and Walter is spending the winter reading every book James Michener ever wrote. I think he's up to Chesapeake ."

John tried to laugh, but ended up choking. I patted him on the back, recoiling from the feel of his bones beneath the flannel pajamas he was wearing. It sounded as if his lungs were filled with water. A wet, strangling sound came from his throat, and I could see him struggling for each breath. I was about to call for the attendant when he stopped, falling back against the pillows.

"Are you trying to kill me?" he joked.

I didn't answer. Instead, I smoothed down his hair, which had gotten tousled during his coughing fit. Thin and limp, it barely covered the top of his head now. Looking at him, I had an uncomfortable memory of Jack and I watching Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera years before. I'd been as startled as Mary Philbin's Christine when she unmasked the Phantom and revealed Chaney's disfigured face. Looking at John now, I understood how she was also able to feel compassion for him.

"I have something for you," John said. "On top of the dresser. The envelope."

I turned and looked at the dresser. The top was crowded with old perfume bottles, hairbrushes, and other dressing items from a hundred years earlier, more of John's set pieces that allowed him to live in his fantasy world. Leaning against one of the bottles was a red envelope with my name on it. I picked it up and turned back to John.

"I wasn't sure I'd be here when you got back," he said. "So I put your name on it. Open it."

I ran my finger under the back flap, separating it from the rest of the envelope. Inside was a card. I pulled it out and something slipped out and fluttered into my lap. I picked it up and saw that it was a ticket to the Metropolitan Opera for a performance on January 6.

"It's La Bohème ," John said. "My favorite. Ileana Cotrubas is singing Mimi. I dressed her for her Met debut in that role in 1977 with José Carreras and Renata Scotto. I have the costume she wore in her death scene. I'm going to be buried in it."

"Thank you," I said. "I don't know what to say. I…" I stopped as I found myself beginning to cry. I felt John's hand, dry as dust, on mine. "You'll go, and then you'll come back and tell me all about it,"

he said. "I want to hear how she sounds, what she looks like, how the hall echos when the crowd stands and gives her an ovation."

He closed his eyes, and for a horrible moment I thought he had gone. Then he opened them again, staring up at the ceiling as if looking at something only he could see. "You'll come and tell me everything,"

he whispered.
"Sure I will," I said, squeezing his hand gently. "It will be just like you were there."

He smiled, his cracked lips turning up at the corners. He sighed deeply. "Thank you," he said. "For coming here."

I tried to answer, but couldn't. I knew we were saying good-bye, but I couldn't speak the words. I needed to believe that he would really be there in a week for me to talk to. I needed to believe it for myself as much as for him. I wanted to say something to reassure him, but nothing came.

"I think I'll sleep now," he said, turning and looking at me. "I'm tired."

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "I'll come see you tomorrow." I leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead, like you would a child you were tucking into bed for the night. When I pulled back, his eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling slowly.

I left him there and went into the living room, where I sat down beside John's attendant, whose name I never knew. He glanced at my face and patted my knee. "I know," he said. I started to shake as the tears came out. I sobbed silently, not wanting John to hear me. My throat ached from holding the sound in, and my breath came in short bursts as I tried to breathe without wailing. My nose began to run, and I sniffled, feeling completely helpless.
"Is he your first one?" the attendant asked.

I nodded.

 

"I know this won't help, at least not right away, but you did something special for him," he said. "You let him go knowing somebody cared about him, and that's really all any of us can hope for." I sat next to him for a long time, until I calmed down enough to speak. When I could, I said, "You'll stay with him, right? Until the end."

"I'll be here," he said. "And someone will call you to let you know."
"Has anyone contacted his family?" I asked.
"They tried, but no one called back."

I leaned my head back and took a deep breath. "I can't believe that they don't want to be here," I said.

"We see it a lot," he told me. "The families don't want to know."
"What will happen to him?"

"He was smart. He left a will and instructions for his funeral. It's all set. The Met is getting his money and everything else is going to GMHC to sell off."

"Him and that damn opera," I said. "I think it's what's kept him alive this long." "Have you seen the wigs?" the man asked.
"Oh, yeah," I said.

We both laughed. It made me feel better, being able to do that. I looked at the television, where Devon McFadden was sitting in her psychiatrist's office. "So, is she a dyke now?" "Nah," he said. "Dr. Carson admitted to her that she's a lesbian, but she told Devon that she's not. She says she's just projecting or something."

 

"Too bad," I said. "They would have made a nice couple."

I left him to the rest of his soap and went home. The next day, I received the call I'd been dreading. John had died during the night. Hearing that he was actually gone, I found that I was relieved. All his pain, all the waiting for the end he knew was coming, was over. Although I missed him already, I was glad that he didn't have to suffer any longer.

"He wanted you to have some stuff," the man from GMHC told me. "Some stereo equipment and a lot of records. You can pick them up next week when we finish boxing up the apartment." Alan returned on Saturday, and I met him at the airport, giving him a big hug when he walked out of the gate. He was surprised and happy to see me.

"I thought you were going to wait at your place for me," he said as we walked to baggage claim. "I was," I said. "But I couldn't wait to see you. There's something I want to talk to you about." "What's his name?" Alan said, stopping in his tracks. "I'll kill him."
"What?" I said. "No, it's nothing like that. It's something good."
"Good how?" asked Alan, still regarding me suspiciously.
"I want you to move in with me," I said.
"Is that all?" he said. "I thought it was something major. Yes, I'll move in with you." "You will?" I said, not sure if he knew I was serious.

"Yes," he repeated. "I'll move in. I think it's time. And Peter and Fred have been talking about getting their own place anyway, so the timing is good."

 

I was so happy that I didn't know what to say. I hugged him again, lifting him up and twirling him around like Robert Redford spinning Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were .

"Okay, Hubbell, you can put me down now," he said in his best Streisand imitation. "I love you," I said as people walked around us to get to their bags.

"And I love you," said Alan, kissing me. "Now can I get my bag? It's gone around three times already."

We decided that New Year's Eve was the perfect day to begin our life together as a cohabitating couple, so when we got back to my apartment, I cleared out space in the dresser and closet for Alan's clothes. Then we toasted ourselves with the bottle of champagne I'd bought for later. We ended up making love, and by the time we finished and got dressed, we were almost late for meeting up with Taffy in Times Square. We got there in time to see the ball drop, though, and afterward we celebrated the arrival of 1984 by singing show tunes at Don't Tell Mama, where Taffy's rendition of "The Boy from Ipanema" brought down the house.

As for Andy, I didn't know where he was that night. Since arriving in New York, he'd been elusive. We saw him once or twice a week for dinner or drinks, but his activities remained a mystery. He spoke of friends we never met, always using only first names, and rarely provided details about anything. But he seemed happy, and I attributed his circumspection to his familiar self-centeredness. We'd invited him to join us on New Year's, but he'd declined, saying he had some business function to attend. The Friday after New Year's, I found myself at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time. Seated in a box in the center parterre, I felt out of place among the grandly-dressed people surrounding me. But I was so entranced by the beauty of the hall that I soon forgot about that and fell under the spell of the building itself. Waiting for the opera to begin, I began to understand what John found so magical about it. I felt as if I'd stepped back in time, to an era when things were simpler, when men didn't die because of unnamed viruses and life's greatest tragedies were reserved for the stage.

The mood was deepened when the orchestra began to play the overture. I'd tried listening to a recording of La Bohème that had been among the records left to me by John, but had abandoned it when I discovered that it was the one that had been playing the day I saw him for the last time. Listening to it, I realized that he'd known his death was imminent, and I'd been unable to bear it. But hearing it live now, the musicians visible as they played their instruments, I felt only the music. I tried to listen the way I thought that John would, letting the sounds carry me to Paris of 1830, where Marcello the painter and Rodolfo the poet lived in their tiny Latin Quarter garret, burning pages from one of Rodolfo's manuscripts to keep warm.

When the curtain rose, revealing the stunning set designed by Franco Zeffirelli, I believed immediately that I was peering through a window into the shabby house. I felt the cold of winter, the wind that blew through the cracks in the walls. I grasped immediately the poverty in which these men lived, and my heart ached for them.

The singing only intensified the feelings. Although I understood nothing (the Met would be the last of the great American opera houses to employ the use of supertitles, dragging its feet until 1995), it didn't matter. The passion and sadness of Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica's libretto rang through every note of Puccini's music. When Rodolfo and Mimi, their candles extinguished by the drafts blowing through the miserable room, sang in the darkness to one another of their dreams of spring and the return of warmth, I sensed their loneliness and isolation. When in Act II Rodolfo and the other bohemians left the wealthy Alcindoro to pay their tab at a café, I rejoiced at their cleverness. And when in Act III Rodolfo and Mimi had their lovers' quarrel, I prayed that they would reconcile. When they did, I felt my spirits lift. By Act IV, I was so engrossed in the lives of the characters on the stage that I forgot they were actors in costume. They had become real to me, and although I knew things couldn't possibly end well, I held out hope that they would. When Mimi, dying of consumption, came to Rodolfo's garret, I knew it was too late for her. Yet when Musetta went to pawn her earrings and Colline his overcoat to buy her medicine, I silently urged her to hold on until they returned. As she sang her final aria, telling Rodolfo of her love for him, I cried, and when she died and his heart broke, so did mine. I wept for Mimi, and for John, but mostly I wept for the death of love.