Читать книгу No-Accounts: Dare Mighty Things - Tom Glenn - Страница 11

Chapter 2

Three Seconds

Martin parked behind the Quebec Towers on Porter Street and glanced at his watch. Almost nine.

He tapped at 736. Silence. He went in. No lights. The stench stopped him.

“Martin.” Peter’s voice.

“I’m here.”

Martin dropped his briefcase on the chair by the desk and snapped on the lamp. Peter lay in the same damp pajamas.

“I was such a queen yesterday.”

Martin’s nostrils twitched. Most of the stink was coming from Peter himself. “Let me get you cleaned up.” He turned toward his briefcase.

“Would you fix something to eat first? There isn’t much.”

“Let me take a look.”

Martin turned on the floor lamp by the wing chair to make the room less ghostly. On the kitchen floor, in a pool of thick liquid, lay a half-eaten chunk of cheese. He sniffed. Vomit. He breathed through his mouth. The refrigerator was open. Yellow slime clung in strings to the chrome racks. He donned latex gloves and found half a loaf of bread on the second shelf. Moldy. The orange juice in a glass pitcher on the top shelf had separated. He closed the refrigerator. He’d get to it later. Prowling through the cabinets, he found a package of saltines, an unopened jar of pickles, and a box of salt. He went back to the living room. “Is there a grocery near here?”

“Safeway block and a half down Connecticut.”

“What’s your favorite dish?”

“Lobster with drawn butter. And a carton of Marlboros.”

“Try again,” Martin laughed. “Can’t afford lobster.”

“Hamburger patty on rice and a vegetable.”

“Is there any rice anywhere? Any frozen vegetables?”

Peter shook his head.

“I’m going to the Safeway,” Martin said.

He bought ground beef, frozen peas, and instant rice for tonight’s dinner; eggs, bacon, bread, orange juice, milk, and coffee for Peter’s breakfast; fresh carrots and apples for snacks; a room deodorant, bleach, germicide, and detergent. And a carton of Marlboros. He hurried back to the apartment. Peter hadn’t moved.

While Martin was putting away the groceries, Peter called from the living room. “Hope you’re going to fix something to eat.”

“As soon as I clean up and make room to cook.”

Martin refused to think about what he was facing. He put on fresh gloves and scrubbed vomit from the floor and refrigerator, cleared the sink and the stove, put water on to boil, and took the first load of garbage to the basement. When he came back, he poured rice into the boiling water, fried hamburger patties, and brought the peas to a boil.

As Peter sat in bed and wolfed down his dinner, Martin, praying Peter wouldn’t throw up again, washed dishes in steaming water spiked with bleach, cleaned out the refrigerator, and scoured its walls and shelves. He used disinfectant on the floor and counter tops. The astringent vapors defeated the putrid odor. Martin’s eyes watered, and his lungs smarted from the fumes. As he was finishing, Peter called from the living room.

“Martin, you mad at me?”

Martin stripped off the gloves. Poor Peter. Martin had been so intent on disinfecting that he’d barely spoken. He went to the living room. “No. Why?”

“You look mad.”

Martin laughed. “Guess I do. So much to do all at once. Tell you what. You need a shave. I’ll talk to you while I shave you.”

“Better wear gloves.”

Martin put on gloves, took off Peter’s pajama top, laid him on his back, and shaved him. He’d never shaved another man. He learned as he went. Peter kept up a stream of chatter. “There’s someone I want to visit. The mother of a friend of mine.”

“Hold your face still.”

“He died. I haven’t seen her or anything.”

“Stop talking.”

“I don’t even know where she lives.”

“Zip it, Peter. I can’t shave you when your face is moving.”

Peter frowned but shut up.

“Open your mouth,” Martin said. “Pull your chin way down. That’s right.” When he finished, he leaned back and folded his arms. “You look like a prince. Now we need to cut your hair.”

“Don’t you dare touch my hair.”

“I won’t, but you need a haircut.”

“I’m too sick to go to a hair salon.”

“Let’s get you into the tub.”

When Peter peeled off his wet pajamas and faltered into the bathroom, his naked body again brought memories of David to Martin’s mind—except that Peter’s bones were visible through his skin. He had little muscle left in his chest and arms. And unlike David, Peter’s body was etched with hair. It started at the base of his throat and ran like a long, sculpted shadow to his toes.

Martin lathered and rinsed him, drained the water, and refilled the tub. For good measure, he added bath salts from the medicine chest and left Peter to soak while he carried the rank pajamas, towels, and sheets to the laundry in the basement.

By midnight, Peter was in a clean bed drinking coffee and watching “The Dance Theater of Harlem” on television. Most of the laundry was done, the dishes were washed, the worst part of the cleaning in the kitchen was finished, and Martin could walk through the living room without stepping in something. The place reeked of bleach and air freshener. Martin poured himself a cup of coffee and dropped into the desk chair next to Peter’s bed.

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” Peter said. “I’m ashamed.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because everything was such a mess. Including me.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” Martin said.

“I made it worse than it had to be. I didn’t call the clinic until I was desperate. Then I was embarrassed to call you after I acted like such a shit.”

“Forget it.”

Peter leaned forward. “There’s a cigar box in the top right drawer of the desk. It’s where I keep my money. How much is in it?”

In the box, Martin found a gold key, a hundred dollars in bills, a fistful of change, and an uncashed paycheck for seventy-eight dollars and forty-seven cents. “What are you living on, Peter?”

“I have a few weeks of sick pay left. Savings.” He laughed with a bitterness that took Martin off-guard. “I was saving to buy a subscription to the Kennedy Center dance series. Take whatever you spent for groceries. Go ahead. I’m not a charity case. Yet.”

“I didn’t consult you about what I bought. Didn’t pay much attention to what things cost. Besides, I ate dinner here.”

“Let me pay for your dinner. How much did you spend?”

“About twenty dollars,” Martin lied.

Peter grunted. “That was all?”

“I’d like to get you to the doctor, Peter.”

Peter grimaced and shrugged.

“Want me to make the appointment?” Martin said.

“I’ll do it.”

Martin rose. “I’ll be back in the morning to fix breakfast. Sleep late. You need the rest.”

Peter’s eyes were round. “I don’t know how to thank you, Martin.”

Martin checked him over one last time. He was clean and warm and fed, but his cheeks were concave, his blue eyes too large for his face. Martin put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Good night, bunkie.”

Peter smirked. “Bunkie, huh? Guess we’re going to be on intimate terms after all. Want to crawl in?”

Martin withdrew his hand. “That’s not what I meant. Old navy term. Means your workmate, your buddy, the guy who bunks next to you.”

“I liked my version better.”

“Night, Peter.”

“Night, bunkie.”

When Martin got home, the house was dark. He went to the bathroom, poured peroxide over his hands, rinsed them with rubbing alcohol, and showered with germicidal soap. Exhausted, he set the clock for six and went to bed. As his mind drifted toward sleep, he saw Michelangelo’s David with a sling over one shoulder. Uninvited, the tang of Scotch roused him. No. He’d ruled that out. Consciousness dissolved—he saw Catherine walking away from him. He called to her, but she kept moving until she disappeared.



Martin’s team, made up of buddies for AIDS patients and a team leader, met each month at the Charbonne Clinic in a decaying row house in Adams-Morgan where there was never a place to park. The meetings cost Martin time he could have spent with Peter. The other dozen or so buddies on his team were gay; and although Martin was embarrassed to admit it, he felt uncomfortable in a whole room full of homosexuals. In fact, he hoped nobody he knew would see him going into a clinic known to serve gay men. Worst of all, the team leader invited buddies to vent. Martin didn’t want to vent. The venting of other buddies made him squirm. Never mind. He had to attend.

So, on the second Wednesday of September, he showed up in the stuffy second-floor conference room just before eight. He listened to a series of announcements about upcoming events and endured a talk on the absolute necessity of using latex gloves. “We don’t know for sure how the HIV virus is transmitted,” the clinician counseled. “Always use gloves.” Next came a lecture on T-4 helper cell count and an interminable graphic film on the diagnosis and treatment of the incurable and eventually fatal Kaposi’s sarcoma—or KS as the other team members called it—a cancer of the vascular tissue in the skin and internal organs. The team leader’s talk that week emphasized the need to expect the unexpected. “They’re at death’s door one day, ready to bar hop the next. That’s how this disease works. We call it the Roller Coaster Effect.” Martin paid dutiful attention as each buddy reported on his patient’s progress. Mercifully, only one vented. Martin gave a terse run-down on Peter and his own emotional state. By nine-thirty, the meeting was over.

As he was standing to leave, the man on his left smiled at him. “Hi.”

The man was an aging preppie, a small, lithe, blond guy with bright eyes, shining teeth, and—Martin checked to be sure—white shoes. All the man needed was a tennis racket. His face was familiar.

“I’m Mort,” the preppie said. He extended his hand. “I did the intake on Peter.”

Why didn’t anybody use last names? Mort shook his hand—exactly like a straight man would have.

“We’ve met,” Mort said. “At Johnny’s funeral.”

Of course.

“Feel like a cup of coffee or a beer or anything?” Mort asked.

Martin moved back. “Thanks, but I’ve got to get home.”

“This your first case?”

Martin laughed. “I’m pretty new at this.”

“It’s going to get a lot rougher, you know.”

“What?”

“Working with Peter. As they get worse, there’s sweat, diarrhea, and mucus. And the endless baths. Then they get so sick, you think they won’t make it through the night. The next day they rally. You never know what to expect. In the end, death wins.” Mort lowered his eyes. “We’re here to help each other. Give me a call if you want to talk. Here’s my card.”

“I’ll be fine,” Martin said.

“Keep the card in case.”

“Thank you.” He put the card in his breast pocket and left for Wheaton.



Driving to the Lincoln College campus the next day, Martin watched September descending in flecks and dabs on Rock Creek Park. The brisk air awoke an odd yearning in him, a longing without focus or target. He relaxed his mental grip and allowed the feeling to flow over him. Then he knew. The old ache. Like a festering ulcer. He was homesick. And he missed Catherine.

She lurked behind every thought. The smell of the air, the quizzical expression on the face of one of his students, the throaty laugh of the girl at the supermarket, a glimpse of his white dress shirts hanging in the closet—they all evoked Catherine’s face. She’d be in her dorm by now. She’d be experiencing college classes for the first time. He could see her as she hurried about the campus in the fall sunshine, bought books that smelled of fresh print and new paper, met new people—strange people, odd people, exciting people. Was she still seeing that boy she mentioned, Albert or Allen or something? Martin wished he could ask her. He wished he could listen to her talk about her first semester at college. He wished he could just see her.

Never mind. Autumn had brought him comfort. It had brought him Peter.

The comfort went beyond doing good. He’d become attached to Peter. Peter’s body—despite the ravages of AIDS—was so beautiful that looking at him was an aesthetic experience. And Peter was touching in his winsome feebleness. Martin’s feelings for Peter didn’t stop there, though. Peter moved him. Yes, Peter was a first class son-of-a-bitch, a spoiled brat, and a prima donna. He also had insight—though he rarely used it. He had a lost and pathetic quality, a waif-like aura, that Martin couldn’t fathom. Peter had something else, too—a sort of indefinable goodness. Martin sensed it, though Peter kept that part of himself carefully hidden.



Watching the trees and bushes on Porter Street from the window by his bed, Peter saw the season change. He longed for autumn’s cool touch and the rose and orange on the maple and oak leaves. The sky was the piercing blue that trumpeted autumn’s arrival. He remembered—smiling, his eyes closed—the wind whistling on 42nd Street in New York.

Most of all he waited for his young blood to be stirred with industry as it always was in the fall. He looked forward to the swirls of energy he knew would charge his muscles, exhilarate his mind, spark his soul, make him want to boogie. This year he needed the recharging, the awakening that autumn brought.

Bit by bit, his strength was returning. He wasn’t imagining things. Martin saw it, too. Soon he’d be able to tell Martin not to come every day. Maybe, with Martin’s help, he could even escape the apartment for a short outing. Maybe he could snooker Martin into taking him to Cunniption’s. Maybe Martin could help him find Johnny’s mother.

Maybe Peter would be the first to beat this disease.

His improvement was Martin’s doing. For reasons Peter couldn’t imagine, Martin actually enjoyed working in the apartment, shopping for groceries, and especially seeing to Peter’s physical needs. He took pride in shaving and bathing Peter, swathing him in pajamas still warm from the dryer. Maybe Martin was gay and didn’t know it.

Gay? Maybe not. Martin handled him with a strength, respect, and reverence he had never experienced from a man. Martin made him feel that his body had its own brand of sacredness. Martin believed that men always touched each other with respect—if they touched at all—as if all men were brothers. Peter shook his head. Martin was so naïve.

And yet, there was more to Martin. He had about him a sort of presence that attracted Peter. It was a kind of dull dignity, a boring nobility. Martin was slow-witted, bumbling, ridiculous, occasionally pathetic, certainly wimpy, sometimes genuinely sad. But before all else, Martin was a decent man. He treated Peter like a decent man. Martin thought all men were decent.

Peter surveyed the trees on Porter Street. The leaves would sport rose and orange soon. He smiled. Martin was a fool, but a good sort of fool.



Martin understood perfectly well why Peter didn’t want to see Doctor Cohen. The doctor couldn’t do much for him right now, and he always had bad news. Martin insisted. Peter temporized. Martin glowered. Peter made excuses. Martin threatened to call Cohen himself. Finally, Peter made an appointment the last week in September.

Cohen’s waiting room—white and chrome and smoked glass and shadowless, lit by hidden fluorescent tubes—could hold six patients if three of them shared the sofa shaped like a heap of accumulating snow. Martin sat in a nubby white chair next to Peter. He had never before seen Peter fully dressed. Peter wore black jeans and a cashmere sweater of royal blue. The clothes did little to conceal the angularity that sickness had visited on his body. His colorless complexion didn’t help. And his thick black locks hung loose over his eyes, ears, and neck. He resembled a hippie somebody’d gussied up for a visit to a rich aunt. But no emaciation, no ungainliness, no lack of grooming could destroy the exquisite shape of his head.

Two young men Peter’s age came in. They wore white sweatshirts, white denims, white sneakers. Clean-cut, wholesome, all-American. They sat next to each other on the sofa without speaking, glanced at Martin, ogled Peter, riffled through the magazines, twiddled.

“Mr. Christopher?” a woman’s voice said.

The room was smaller after Peter had gone. Martin watched the two young men. He was sure they were lovers. Peter had told him that Cohen specialized in AIDS and related diseases. When the eyes of one of the men skimmed over Martin, he realized with a shock that they probably assumed he was Peter’s lover.

Were gay men always better looking than straight men? No, they worked harder to make themselves attractive, and they spent more money on clothes and grooming. These two smelled just right, faintly musky, faintly sweet, a scent so unobtrusive that it hovered at the edge of awareness. The dark one had a Caesar haircut, combed forward, so that a wavelet of hair cast a shadow on his upper forehead. The blond’s hair was barely long enough to lie down. Both were slim and muscular, skin faintly tanned and clear. Their matching sweatshirts and jeans were athletic in cut but snowy clean. Martin could imagine them perfecting their biceps and pecs before walls of mirrors at a trendy gym. He couldn’t visualize them roughhousing in the mud with a football the way he had at their age. Might bruise or break something. Such solicitousness about their bodies somehow detracted from their handsomeness, made them seem not quite real, like fashion models. They lacked the innocence, the unawareness of self that young people shared with young animals. They knew how to show themselves off to the greatest advantage. That knowledge aged them.

Martin got to his feet and wandered toward the hall door. He browsed without interest through an offering of leaflets in a wall rack—the principles of safe sex, a listing of the symptoms of AIDS, information on the HTLV-III antibody test, and ways of fighting anal warts—all his, free for the asking.

Peter reappeared, flushed.

Martin turned. “What did he say?”

Peter moved past him and hurried down the hall to the men’s room. Martin followed. He heard Peter inside a stall. More diarrhea.

The traffic on Connecticut Avenue made the drive home all creeps and stops.

“Tired?” Martin said.

Peter nodded, leaned his head on the backrest, and closed his eyes.

“Are you hurting?”

Peter shook his head.

“Hungry?”

Peter shook his head again without opening his eyes.

Martin let him be.

Back in the apartment, Martin put fresh sheets on Peter’s bed while Peter soaked in a hot bath, then helped Peter into clean pajamas. He waited for Peter to tell him what Cohen had said. Peter was silent. Resigned, he told Peter he’d be back in the evening and left to teach his afternoon class.



Peter listened to the last echo of Martin’s footsteps dwindle to nothing. He wanted to call Martin back. The silence of the apartment was marred only by the drone of the refrigerator, the hiss and hum of an occasional car on Porter Street, and the murmur of a television from the floor below.

Peter wept. He had steeled himself against regret. He had cultivated his cynicism and refused to look back or care about anything or anyone. Except the bastard who had infected him. No way to figure out which one it had been. There’d been too many. Half of them were dead now, anyway.

And yet, if he were honest with himself, he knew it wasn’t hatred that made him cry. It was regret. Despite his smugness, despite all his defenses, despite the shell he had worked so hard to develop, he ached.

Sally had disappeared. Maybe she was dead by now. Billy. He’d hit Billy. He’d never see Billy again.

And Johnny, who never meant anything to him. Tall, blond, tan, and solid, more boy than man, with a silly grin. A good one-night stand. It had been in November only a month after Peter recovered from his first attack of pneumocystis. Johnny played the piano in The Back Door after the regular pianist left. A modern dissonant piece he’d written. Peter leaned across the keys, kissed him. “Can we go to your place?” “No. My mom. Yours?” “No.” Peter took him to a hotel. “You believe in safe sex?” “Any reason I should?” “No regrets,” they had laughed the following morning. Five months later, Johnny was admitted to the Hospice of Saint Anthony and died there.

Peter had known the risks. Johnny hadn’t. Peter never told him. Peter never told anybody. Peter didn’t care. If Johnny were alive, he’d go to him, tell him the truth. Maybe Johnny would forgive him and still this ache. Nothing could change it now. Johnny was dead, as Peter soon would be. Peter could have spared Johnny, but Peter hadn’t cared.

But, as far as Peter knew, Johnny’s mother wasn’t dead. She could forgive him, for herself and for Johnny, too. She probably lived in one of those Victorian houses in old Alexandria. She’d meet him at the door. She’d be tall and handsome and sad and wise, her hair gray at the temples, parted in the middle, pulled away from her face and caught at the back. She’d be wearing an understated long-waisted frock with a full skirt. He could hear her contralto voice saying, “So glad to meet you, Peter.” They’d sit in the drawing room in front of a bay window looking out on a brick patio and seamless lawn. There’d be a fire in the fireplace. She’d serve him tea in a cup as fragile as a baby bird, so thin that he’d have to be careful not to crush it in his fingers. She’d wait, hands folded in her lap, head tilted, and listen to his story. He’d tell her the truth. Her eyes would shine. Maybe a tear would escape down her cheek. “Thank you for your honesty,” she’d say. Maybe she’d even take him in her arms.

He had to find her. She could free him. He saw her stately figure, the tasteful drawing room, the patio, the fireplace. Around the edges of the image boomed the ashen surf. In his chest he felt the suffocation of pneumocystis. Terror of Kaposi’s sarcoma flashed through his belly like quicksilver. The picture of his skeleton pressing against rotting skin blocked out Johnny’s mother. Peter was dying. The end wouldn’t come today or tomorrow, but as he listened to his body, he knew.

Shit, shit, shit. What was the use? He could pretend to himself that his predicament was touching, poignant, even gripping. He could conjure a scene with a wise and beautiful Mrs. Logan in a setting from Renoir. He was seeing his life as if from the audience. There was no audience. He was not Camille or Violetta or Mimì. He was head-to-head with death. No one was watching, brought to tears by the sadness of his plight. No one but himself. The heart-rending images wouldn’t work anymore. Death was real and gritty and in-your-face. And there wasn’t much time left.

When he pushed away the fantasies, what was left? Nothing but the steady trickle of his life, the leaking of precious time, the need to remember and try to repair the damage. To forgive and be forgiven. Never mind the fake Mrs. Logan. He had to find the real one. To do what he could to make up for Johnny’s death.

Now it was Peter’s turn. Cohen had as much as said so. He had told Peter that if he wanted to delay the next attack of the pneumonia, now overdue, he had to do everything he could to avoid exhaustion and unhealthy living. He must exercise fifteen minutes a day. And Cohen insisted that Peter stop smoking. Peter pushed back the covers, blew his nose, and lit a cigarette.

And of course, no alcohol. Or drugs.

“Every time you smoke or drink, you’re shortening your life,” Cohen had told him.

“Without all that—and sex, too—what’s there to live for?”

Cohen shrugged.

“Then I don’t want to live,” Peter said.

“Are you talking suicide?”

Peter drew back. “I don’t know.”

Peter put down his cigarette and pulled the sheet and blanket up to his chin. Was he talking suicide? Like Billy?

The night Billy talked like that, the November moon was crumbling blue marble in an iridescent sky. A magic night. Only two months after Peter had been diagnosed—though nobody but Peter knew it. Kirk had picked him up in a cab at the Nouveau Riche at the end of his shift. They’d met Joey and Billy and Ron at a new bar in Adams-Morgan, The Cock Pit. The four of them had ranged themselves around Peter at the corner of the bar where Peter could keep an eye on the action. All the talk was about who’d been diagnosed. Joey downed one too many shooters and puked. Kirk and Ron had taken him home. When the bar closed, Billy invited Peter back to his place on Connecticut Avenue to do some coke. As they walked down Calvert toward the park in the cold, piercing moonlight, the city around them was a medieval cityscape in a Disney film, blue and powdery and mysterious. Billy kept stumbling. Too much beer. Peter was drunk enough to feel daring. Right before the bridge, they pissed on the sidewalk, giggling. Then onto Calvert Street Bridge over Rock Creek Park, lost in a blue shadow far beneath them.

“You always see this bridge in movies about Washington,” Billy said. “Maybe that’s why there’s so many suicides.” He ambled onto the pavement from the sidewalk.

“Stay out of the street,” Peter said. “Cars.”

“No cars.”

Peter looked both ways. He could hear the traffic from Columbia Road behind them and see an occasional headlight on Connecticut Avenue some blocks beyond the bridge, but no cars came their way.

“They always jump from the northern side,” Billy said. He clopped across the pavement in his boots and stepped up on the sidewalk by the guard rail. “From the middle of the bridge.” He stretched his arms over the thick top bar of the rail. “Right about here.” He hoisted his weight, rested his chest across the railing, and stared down. “They’re talking about putting up a fence to stop people from jumping.”

Peter ran toward him. “Get down from there, you asshole.”

Billy turned his face toward Peter. “Here I am all bent over, asshole in the air. Want some?”

“Billy, get down.”

“My ass is too fat for you. You like bubble butts. Or all muscled up.”

Billy’s body shifted forward.

Peter tensed. “Will you please get down from there?”

Billy’s face disappeared into the darkness, as his head ducked downward. “It’d be easy. Slide over the edge. Wouldn’t be but three seconds before you hit. You’d never feel nothin’. Three seconds.”

Billy’s body slid. His feet came off the ground. Peter caught his breath.

“Boost myself over and let go.”

In a panic, Peter grabbed Billy’s studded cowboy belt and pulled. Billy rolled off the railing against Peter. They both fell backwards into the street, Billy on top of Peter.

Billy, his back on Peter’s chest, spread his arms and legs wide. “Take it, man, take it.”

Peter pushed him off, stood, and brushed his clothes. “Pig.”

Billy laughed and staggered to his feet. “Scared you, didn’t I? You thought I was going right over the edge.”

“You’re sick.”

Billy chuckled. “I had you goin’ that time.”

“Come on. I’m cold.”

Peter headed toward Connecticut Avenue in the middle of the bridge, following the yellow median line, as far from the rail as he could get. Billy skipped and stumbled along beside him, still guffawing.

“You’re not funny,” Peter said.

Billy’s laughter dwindled and died. “Sorry, Peter. I was only kidding around.”

“Don’t kid with me like that.”

“I said I was sorry.”

They reached the end of the bridge in silence. Peter breathed easier. “We better get on the sidewalk before we get hit.”

A block from Connecticut, Billy glanced sidelong at Peter. “I wasn’t really kidding.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that . . . if I was ever diagnosed, I’d boost myself over the edge and let go.”

“Come off it.”

“I mean it. You ever see what AIDS does to someone?”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay, but I’d do it, Peter.”

Peter stopped and took him by the shoulders. “What’re you talking about? Neither one of us would do it. We’d keep having a ball right up until they carted us away. Man, we’d boogie.”

Billy nodded loosely. “Yeah, I know. We’d fuck until our cranks fell off.” They began walking again, more slowly. “You never seen one of those guys. Jeez.” He shook his head. “Peter, what are we going to do when we can’t boogie anymore?”

Peter whisked a stray ash from the sheet, took a long drag on his cigarette, leaned back against the headboard, and let the smoke float from his lips. He hadn’t boogied in a long time. Boost himself over the edge and let go? Three seconds until impact. Three seconds of terror, then nothing. His stomach felt cold. No, never. He wanted to live, as passionately as he could for as long as he could. He wanted life to be magic and rich, full of rose and orange, lilting and graceful. Not just lying here all day every day, fighting his way out of the gray miasma and waiting for something to happen.

He stumped out the cigarette. Maybe waiting was all there was left. How could he face another battle with pneumonia? His bowels glittered with panic. Suffocation. And yet he didn’t want to die hooked to a respirator, a catheter stuck in him, all wired up, more lab rat than human being.

Or what if he got Kaposi’s sarcoma? The lesions would shrivel his skin, turn it purple, brown, black, hideous. He’d hide from all human view, as Johnny had.

Peter’d found out about Johnny’s KS one night in February, in The Long Shot. Kirk and Joey and Ron were there that night. And Billy.

And Eric. What a hunk. All bulges and fur in painted-on jeans and a torn tank top. Peter had seen him before and tried to strike up a conversation, but somehow Eric always escaped after a few opening lines. That night, Peter was determined. Eric sat there at the end of the bar cruising the scene, hunting for some ass. Peter tried to catch his eye.

Billy got in the way, as Billy always did. He was already a little drunk. He kept following Peter around and talking non-stop.

“Jesus,” Billy was saying. He pushed his wild hair back from his face, squinted up at Peter, and blinked over his contact lenses. “Everybody’s gettin’ diagnosed. You know that cute bartender at The Wild Boar? The one with the beard? He’s been diagnosed.”

“Billy, let’s talk about something else. This is depressing.”

Billy nodded. “It is, real depressing. I found out a guy I met in The Back Door a few months back has KS. Real bad. They don’t think he’ll make it much longer. And he won’t let nobody see him.”

“Billy,” Peter said, “that’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“You don’t know him anyways,” Billy said with a wave and a belch. He rubbed his paunch through his cowboy shirt, rocked on his heels, and flapped his eyelids. “Sweet kid. Only twenty-two. Tall, with a big gawky smile. Johnny Logan—”

“What?”

“Sad case. Diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. You know him?”

Peter swallowed. “Never met him.”

“They say Johnny’s dying, Peter. Just diagnosed. And the Kaposi’s is already killing him.”

“That’s enough, goddammit!”

Billy put his hand over Peter’s. “Can I ask you something? What were you sick of when you were in the hospital? Level with me, Peter. Have you got it, too?”

“Fuck you.”

Peter slid from his barstool and moved toward the hunk. He stood next to him for several minutes, then brushed against him, as if by accident.

“Sorry,” Peter said with an engaging shrug.

“No problem.” The hunk smiled, all teeth, like Burt Reynolds. “I’m Eric. I don’t remember your—”

“Peter.”

“Peter. Right. Peter.”

“That’s my name, not my most important feature.”

Eric laughed. His teeth shone. Peter rested one foot on the rung of Eric’s barstool. Eric leaned toward him, his eyes intent, exactly as Peter expected. What Eric lacked in verbal skills, he probably made up for in bed.

“You live close by?” Peter said.

Eric’s eyes flashed. He was getting the message. “Close enough.”

“What’re you into?”

“Hi,” said a voice from behind Peter’s shoulder. It was Billy, beer mug in hand. “Mind if I join you?”

“Yes, actually,” Peter said. “We’re having a private conversation.”

“Sorry,” Billy said. “I know you guys don’t want me interrupting or anything.” He turned to Eric. “I sort of thought I ought to tell you that we all think maybe Peter . . .” He stopped and looked away, burped, blinked, and looked back. “I don’t know how to say it exactly, but, uh, we all been talking and all, and, um, we think Peter has AIDS.”

Peter’s mouth dropped open.

“I thought I should tell you,” Billy said, “so you could think twice, you know—”

Peter hit him in the face with all his strength. Billy staggered backwards and fell with a thud. His beer mug shattered beside him. The room was deathly quiet. Three men knelt beside him.

Peter examined his knuckle. “I’m bleeding. Do you have a handkerchief?” He held his fist in front of Eric’s face.

Eric pulled his head aside and stepped backwards. “No—look, I . . .” He was edging away, slipping out of Peter’s grasp. “Hey, listen,” Eric said, “take it easy. Listen, I got to go anyway. It’s late.” He fumbled in his pockets and threw bills on the bar.

In the silence, Peter could feel all eyes on him. People were sidling back, moving away. They know.

“No!” Peter shouted, “let’s not get together. Don’t you leave. I was the one coming onto you. I’ll leave. And for all I care you can fuck every queen in the place!”

Peter ran. Out of the bar, out to the street, out to the darkness. Humiliated, raging, hurt. No regrets. No remorse. He’d wanted Eric. And he wasn’t going to tell him. Goddam Billy.

Peter rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. He hadn’t seen Billy since that night. He hadn’t seen Johnny, either. Johnny hid himself and died. At least Peter had escaped KS so far. He shuddered. Please, God, no KS.

He stopped. He was so changed from what he had been, but he was not so weak that he would abandon his atheism. What had become of him?

When he heard a key in the door, he realized that he’d been asleep. “Hi,” he heard Martin say. He rolled over and opened his eyes. There stood Martin, grocery bags, mail, and keys in hand.

“What time is it?”

“Little past six,” Martin said over his shoulder on his way to the kitchen. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you for dinner. You really got tuckered out today.”

Peter slid from the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. He checked his eyebrows in the mirror, pissed, and returned to bed. Lying on his back, his hands behind his head, he listened to Martin putting away groceries, drawing water for coffee, lighting the stove. Finally, Peter got out of bed and dragged a dining room chair to the door of the kitchen. “I’ll sit here in the doorway so we can talk while you work.”

“Sure.” Martin frowned. “You need your robe.”

“No, I don’t, either.”

Martin was past him and back again with the robe before Peter could protest further. “Put it on, grumpy.”

Peter gave Martin the finger and put the robe on.

Martin went back into the kitchen and finished peeling potatoes. “What did the doctor say?”

“My T-4 helper cell count is down.”

“How low?”

“Seventy-one.”

Martin grunted and put the potatoes in a pot of water.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” Peter said.

“Is it?” Martin lit a burner with a match and put the pot on it. He stopped. His eyes met Peter’s. “Yes, it’s bad. I know it’s bad, and so do you.”

“What’s a healthy count?” Peter asked.

“You know.”

“Yep. Do you?”

“At least four hundred.”

They eyed each other. Martin turned back to the counter and unwrapped chops. “These were on sale. Hope you like lamb.”

“Fuck the lamb. I’m in the danger zone with a T-cell count that low. Martin . . . I’m going to die, you know.”

Martin blinked at the chops as if trying to remember what he was doing. He took a frying pan from the cupboard.

“My weight’s down to one-fifty,” Peter said. “If I go below one twenty-five, I won’t live long.”

Martin put the chops into the frying pan, lit another burner, and slid the pan onto it.

“Cohen told me,” Peter said. “I was suffering from malnutrition.”

Martin stopped. “What?”

Peter nodded. “Before you started taking care of me.”

“Weren’t you eating?”

Peter shook his head.

“I thought,” Martin said, “you had all these friends coming in all the time to help you.”

Peter shook his head again. “I lied. I was ashamed that everybody keeps staying away.” He took a tissue from his robe pocket. “Where did you think they’d all gone since you started taking care of me?”

“Thought I shouldn’t ask.”

“I scare them shitless.”

“You’re the shadow they live in, day after day.”

“Fucking cowards.”

“Fucking cowards,” Martin repeated with a nod.

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

Martin lowered the heat under the chops. “I’m at no risk. I’m not gay, I’m not an IV user, no hemophilia, no blood transfusions, not Haitian.”

“But we don’t know for absolute certain that the virus can’t be transmitted casually.”

“Not likely according to the most recent research from NIH. They talked about it at the buddy meeting. High probability that it’s bodily fluids.”

“That’s probability, not proof.”

“Science is probability, Peter. We can’t even prove that electricity exists.”

“The point is,” Peter said through his teeth, “that you know there’s some possibility that you’re risking your life by being here with me.”

Martin peered at the chops. “Yes, I know.”

“Other than me, you’re home free. You don’t smoke, you don’t drink, you don’t carry on with women. The model of wholesome, boring health.”

Martin grinned. “I carry on with women every chance I get. I mostly don’t get any chances.” He slid the pancake turner under the meat and shook the pan.

“You could make chances. If you’re alone, it’s because you don’t care enough to make the effort.”

Martin’s eyebrows went up. “Since when are you an expert on courting women?”

“I know, that’s all. For instance, where is it written that you have to be here taking care of me and risking your life? If you spent the same amount of energy chasing skirts, you’d boogie. Shit, you’d have more nooky than you’d know what to do with. Why are you here, anyway?”

“Because you matter.”

“Matter?” Peter snorted. “My parents are from the south. My mother was raised to lounge on the veranda and drink mint juleps while the darkies sang down by the levee. That’s why she never did so good as a lawyer’s wife in Baltimore. Anyway, she always talks about menfolk who aren’t man enough to do nothin’. They’re the kind that when they finish some work or other, you can’t say, ‘Nice goin’. You done good.’ You don’t say nothin’ ’cause there’s nothin’ good to say. These men, they’re no-accounts. They don’t count for nothin’. They don’t do nothin’. They don’t matter. And when they die, nobody much notices.” He coughed, took a drag on his cigarette. “I’m one of them, the no-accounts.” He blew smoke at Martin. “That’s why it don’t matter what I do. That’s why nobody much notices. People don’t pay no attention to no-accounts.”

“I notice,” Martin said.

“You’re a no-account, too, aren’t you? You’re a wimp, and you ain’t got no balls. If you did, you wouldn’t be here. You already said so. So it don’t much matter if you care about me because you don’t count for nothin’ to begin with.” Peter laughed.

Martin put down the pancake turner. “Let’s say I don’t amount to much. Let’s say I’m a no-account. And a wimp, too. You’re worthless and I’m worthless and I care about you and I want to look after you. We got one no-account caring for another no-account. Maybe that’s all right.”

Peter started to speak, then stopped.

“Get back in bed,” Martin said. “You’re getting tired out.” Martin helped him to his feet, followed him back to the bed, and returned the dining room chair to its place. “Stay in bed while I finish dinner.”



Martin watched Peter grow stronger, as if in defiance of Cohen’s warning. By the second week in October, he was bathing himself. He asked Martin to come every other day.

“Wrap food in plastic and leave it in the refrigerator.”

“Can you shave yourself?” Martin asked.

“No, but I’m strong enough for an outing. Will you take me to the park while the weather’s still nice? How about today?”

“I have a buddy meeting tonight. How about Friday if it doesn’t rain?”

Peter gave Martin his haughtiest sneer. “It wouldn’t fucking dare!”

Friday morning, when Martin unlocked the apartment door, Peter was in the desk chair in loose jeans and a plaid shirt, grinning like a child.

“I’m ready,” he announced as soon as Martin was in the door. “You?”

“Ready?”

“The park. Can we go right after breakfast?”

Martin smiled. “Sure.”

Peter was too tall to fit easily through the door of Martin’s VW Bug, but Martin finally wedged him in. He plunked the picnic basket and the army surplus blanket on Peter’s lap and drove down Porter Street toward Rock Creek Park. At the creek, he turned left on Beach Drive and headed north. He parked, found a picnic table near the creek, and spread the blanket on the grass in the brisk October sunshine. Peter lay on his back, hands behind his head, and sighed.

“Don’t lie in the sun.” Martin said. “You’ll burn. You weren’t out all summer.”

“I won’t stay long.” Peter glanced around. “I might take off my shirt. What do you think?”

Martin shrugged.

“I don’t like it when people stare,” Peter said.

“Worry wart.”

Peter stripped off his shirt. His skin was so pale it was blue in the sunlight. The body hair on his chest and belly emphasized his protruding ribs. He caught Martin watching. “I look like something out of Auschwitz, don’t I?”

“It’s not that bad.”

Peter arranged himself again, hands behind head, and closed his eyes. Martin rested in the grass next to him.

“Martin, you ever get horny?”

“No,” Martin said, “I stay that way.”

“What’s it like?”

“Being horny? You don’t know?”

“Being horny for a woman.”

Martin surveyed him through half-closed eyes. “Level with me, Peter. You never leched after a woman?”

“Never did. I mean, they’re pretty and cute and nice and all, but I never wanted to fuck one.” He wrinkled his nose. “Doesn’t seem natural. What’s it like?”

“Don’t know how to describe it.”

“You think about a woman’s body and you get excited?”

“Or how a woman feels when she’s close to you. Or what a woman smells like.”

“What do they smell like?”

“Come on, Peter.”

“No, honestly, tell me. What’s it like?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said, “they smell—I don’t know—good. They all smell different.” He relaxed and closed his eyes. “When they’re aroused, sexually I mean, they change. Did you ever smell warm milk? It’s sort of like that. Milk and honey, sometimes. Sweet. And rich. Like the smell of the earth in the spring.” He opened his eyes and laughed. “I don’t know.”

Peter lay quiet for a moment. “Why did you leave your wife?”

“She threw me out. Found out I was having an affair.”

“How come you were screwing around?”

“I really don’t know why. Guess I was lonely and frustrated, and when Hedda offered, I accepted.”

Peter raised his eyes to the sky. “What’s it like to be a father, Martin?”

Martin shrugged. “You love in a whole new way.”

“What’s your daughter like?”

“Big girl. In heels she’s almost as tall as I am. She’ll have to keep an eye on her weight when she gets older.”

“Blond?”

“Brunette. Her skin is on the pale side. She has hazel eyes. She can be quite attractive when she sets her mind to it.”

“What’s the trouble between you and her?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“You never see her. I got the idea you’re mad at her or something.”

“She doesn’t want to see me.”

Peter bit his lip. “I hope it works out for you. I hope she gets over it.”

Was Peter being sarcastic? His face was serious, his blue eyes wide.

“Thank you,” Martin said.

“I wish you’d talk to me about things. I’m a good listener. Maybe it would help.”

Martin shrugged. “You’ve probably been in the sun long enough.”

Peter huffed. Martin moved the blanket under a tree. Peter stretched out in the shade. In less than a minute, he was dozing.

The breeze shifted branches above them. Leaves, beautiful in death, swirled across the grass. The creek prattled out of sight. The air was rich with the smell of decay, the shadows long and hard, the sky a passionate blue. Autumn. The time of homesickness.