Charlie never proposed meeting. After that first, needy letter, he never asked for anything at all. Yale had become a figure in a writing exercise, a static memory for Charlie to bounce feelings off of. He never apologized, either, not in so many words. There were just the lists, and then, in jagged print that carved at the page, meticulous accounts of his days: what he ate, his weight, his digestive issues, the plots of movies he’d seen. He was keeping strictly vegetarian, and Dr. Vincent implored him to eat more protein. Teresa had gotten herself an apartment not far from Charlie’s, and Martin seemed a permanent appendage, although Charlie spared Yale any details about their sex life, including whether they even had one. Sometimes the letters weren’t about Charlie at all. Once, for no discernible reason, there were five pages about Wanda Lust, a drag queen who’d died before Yale even moved to the city.
Yale tended to wait a few days before opening a letter. He’d sit, finally, on Saturday morning with coffee, consider the thickness of the envelope, and finally slide a finger under the flap. He’d never written back. Not out of spite or stubbornness so much as the fact that he couldn’t imagine where to begin.
The letters had softened him on Charlie, at least a bit. Had made him seem less the villain and more the pathetic sap Yale had always known he really was.
Over the past two years, he’d seen Charlie from a distance a number of times. He imagined Charlie had seen him from a distance too, on days when Yale was too distracted to notice. He imagined that Charlie caught his breath, turned, made some excuse to leave the party, the bar, the meeting—the same way Yale always did.
Yale tried to picture an infected eyelid. Puffy, he assumed. Red. It made his own eyes water.
They turned off the Drive and at least the engine was quieter now.
Asher said, “I think he’s scared. I—Okay, I’m just going to say this. He wants to see you.”
“I doubt it.”
“No, he told me. Several times. I’m supposed to tell you that he wants to see you.”
Yale had meant to knock the side of his head into the window, but since the window was down, his head flopped out into the rushing air.
“Think about it. I’m just planting a seed.”
“If he wants to apologize, that’s one thing. I’ll—I’d consider giving him some closure. But I’m not swooping in to hold his hand.”
“I know.”
Asher had one of those “GAY $” stamps and a pad of red ink in his center ashtray, and Yale wondered if he was still stamping all his money. He picked up the stamp, ran his thumb along the letters. Leave it to Asher to keep this stuff in the car so he could engage in civil protest the instant he got his change at the McDonald’s drive-thru.
Yale would at least have things to talk about with Charlie, information with which to fill the void. The fact that he’d never written back meant he had endless fuel. Charlie might not know yet about Fiona’s college acceptance; she only got the notice last week. People had surely told him Yale was working in fundraising at DePaul, but they might not have conveyed the dreariness of the job, the way everything was about money; no art, no beauty. He’d sweated his way through the insurance interview, said no to the AIDS question. Dr. Cheng had submitted the first claim for AZT five months ago, and it was still under review. The insurance company wanted the names of every doctor who’d treated him in the past ten years, and Yale was worried they’d do to him what they did to Katsu—find some minor illness from years back or the one dermatologist he’d forgotten to list, and then claim misrepresentation. The insurers had a year to review it all, while Yale paid thousands of dollars out of pocket, hoping he’d eventually get reimbursed. But at least he had the job, a desk to cling to.
He could tell Charlie that Bill had delayed Nora’s show till the fall of ’90 at the earliest, and that although Yale was in great shape, thanks for asking, he was afraid he’d never see it happen. He could tell him Nora had passed away last winter; that he’d hoped so much he could at least send her photos of the show, even if they couldn’t roll her into the Brigg as they’d dreamed. Of course Charlie might not even remember who Nora was.
He could say that his lymph nodes had been swollen last summer, but they were fine again, and his T cells were fantastic, and he was drinking vitamin shakes and doing visualizations. He could tell him Roscoe had gone to live with Cecily and her son after Dr. Cheng had told him he could not, under any circumstances, keep the cat and its litter box in his apartment. He could say he’d left the Marina Towers finally, was living in a sublet in Lincoln Park, that the paint was peeling but the place had its own washing machine.
Asher said, “Can I get you to the DAGMAR meeting next weekend?” Yale was never clear on DAGMAR’s mission, in part because the R kept changing—Dykes and Gay Men Against Reagan, or the Right, or Republicans, or Repression. Every time you asked it was something different.
Yale said, “It’s Rutabagas now, right?”
He pressed Asher’s stamp onto his left palm; the slightest trace of red ink came off.
“You’ll feel better,” Asher said. “Everyone I know who isn’t political, it’s just because they haven’t tapped into their anger. And once you do, it’ll feel right. Listen, direct action—direct action is the third best feeling in the world.”
“What’s the second?”
“Peeling off a wet swimsuit.”
“Huh.”
Yale actually wanted to say yes, but the way he felt around Asher was unsustainable. It wasn’t good for the nervous system. Besides which, what he’d seen of direct action protests involved lying down in the street, pepper spray, getting handcuffed and locked in a paddy wagon—where, in summer, they’d close the doors and turn the heat up. He hadn’t even been able to fight off other boys in his seventh-grade locker room. How was he supposed to hold his own, in front of Asher Glass, against third-generation Chicago cops? He said he’d think about it. He had a lot going on at work, he said.
The one place he did see Asher regularly was at support group. Asher would consistently show up half an hour late, loosening his tie. If Yale had managed to keep an open seat next to him—usually by leaving his coat on it casually for a while, and then removing the coat as if he’d just suddenly remembered it was there—Asher would take it, squeeze the back of Yale’s neck as he sat down. Otherwise he’d stand outside the circle, refusing the therapist’s offer to grab him one of the chairs that was still folded against the wall. When Asher talked, it was to make a speech—not to share anything about himself, about his own diagnosis or its aftermath. He’d never acquiesced to the test, but last year his weight had suddenly dropped, his stomach had revolted, and his doctor had insisted on checking his T cells. His count was below one hundred. About once per meeting, he’d go off about the cost of AZT. As if they were the ones responsible, as if they could do anything about it. He’d start yelling that it was the most expensive prescription drug in history. “You think that’s a coincidence? You think that isn’t pure hatred? Ten thousand dollars a year! Ten thousand fucking dollars!” He was never one to break down in tears, never one to sob over lost friends or mortality or survivor guilt.