Yale laughed. “Feef! Like unrequited love, or like you’re getting some extra credit?”
“I mean, he calls me. At home. But we haven’t—it’s not against the law or anything!”
“Tell me he’s not sixty,” Yale said. “Oh God, is he married?”
“No, and no. He’s your age, maybe.”
“But you’re in his class.”
“Right. Well, I was. Exams are this week.”
“You should be studying.”
“Shut up. So, I take the exam, and then what?”
Fiona was flushed. If she was trying to keep her face neutral, it wasn’t working. It was a beautiful thing to see: a happy Fiona, Fiona in love.
He said, “Maybe you wait till grades are filed. For propriety. And then. You know.”
“Really? I thought you’d be the one to talk sense into me. You’re supposed to be my most sensible friend.”
“Feef, you’re asking advice from someone who’s increasingly aware that life is very short. Wait till you have your grade, then go to his office and unzip his pants.”
He’d been talking quietly, but Fiona shrieked. “That is such a gay move, Yale!” No one looked; if anything, they thought she was insulting him generically.
“I’m pretty sure it works on straight guys too. Seriously. How many lives do you have? How many times are you gonna be twenty-five?”
Fiona raised an eyebrow. Her eyebrows were darker than her hair, and Yale loved that it gave her a perpetually sardonic look. She said, “Are you following your own advice?”
“I’m about to take part in some mob action, aren’t I? Does that really seem like a thing I’d do?”
“Not at all. But I know why you’re doing it. It’s not because life is short. It’s because you’re in love with Asher.”
He was going to protest, but the blood had come to his cheeks and ears so fast he could hear it, and it would be even more embarrassing now to attempt a denial. She’d seen him at the vigil after all, mooning around, worrying whether Asher was sleeping with his friend from New York, watching the way the candle lit Asher’s face from below. Yale said, “Well, he had some good points.” He was no more or less in love with Asher than he’d always been, which is to say, he’d always been fairly deeply in love with Asher if he admitted it to himself, which, lately, he was willing to do. It wasn’t that he’d been spending more time with him than he always had, but he had more opportunity to sit back and watch him—as Asher spoke at benefits, headed up community meetings, got himself on TV when the Quilt came to Navy Pier, got himself on TV when he was arrested—and Yale was finally letting himself, from that distance, look at something he’d always known would burn his eyes.
Asher had spent a full hour at the vigil talking Yale into marching today. “You embarrass someone on the six o’clock news,” he’d said, “how much more effective is that than writing a letter? Nothing else you do will make this much difference. And this is the big one. This is it.” His full New York accent had come out. He’d jabbed a finger at Yale’s chest way too hard, and then apologized.
DAGMAR had rolled into the Chicago branch of ACT UP, and Asher was providing a lot of its legal counsel, plus facing the pepper spray himself. Most protests brought out twenty or thirty stalwarts, but this one was national—people flying in from all over to target AMA headquarters and the AMA’s opposition to national insurance. And the county hospital system, too, and the insurance companies, and lord knew what else. The whole thing felt confusing to Yale, but bigger was better, according to Asher. “If we’re not fighting for poor black women who need beds at County,” Asher said, “we’re as bad as the fucking Republicans. You don’t just go into this looking out for yourself. And Yale,” he’d said, and Yale was slightly surprised that Asher had remembered his presence, remembered he wasn’t just giving a speech to the ether, “I think you’d be great at this, long term. Maybe behind the scenes, but we need you. We’re gonna need new leaders all the time. The problem with this movement is the leaders keep dying. We gotta have subs.”
There’d been a drop of wax rolling down Asher’s candle, getting dangerously close to his hand. Yale had reached out and stopped it with his thumbnail. Which is probably when Fiona had realized, if she hadn’t already.
* * *
—
The crowd was indeed on the move by the time Yale and Fiona joined it, streaming north over the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Some of the protestors wore doctors’ coats, a nice touch, and most carried signs—“Death by Loophole,” “Bloody Money,” an elaborate one about George Bush having a drug czar but no AIDS czar—and Yale felt like a bland supernumerary. No one wore double backpacks, not a single person; he was glad he hadn’t showed up looking like an overprepared kid.
But Fiona eagerly joined the chanting, and once Yale did, too, he found that the rhythm of his feet on the pavement matched the rhythm of what he was shouting and soon his heart fell into sync, as it used to when he’d go out dancing.
“People with AIDS,” a woman with a megaphone would yell, “under attack! What do we do?”
And together they yelled, “ACT UP! Fight back!”
Yale watched for people he knew, but he’d have to be patient; there were thousands of protestors, and in fact it was nice that these faces didn’t all have the look of someone he’d seen around Boystown for years but just couldn’t place. It was good to be part of a horde, a wave of humans.
A chant would die out and then stop, as if it had been cut off by an invisible conductor, and then a new one would travel toward them up the street, fuzzy at first, and then he’d hear it clearly once through before joining in. As they passed the Tribune Tower, with dazed tourists looking on: Health! Care! Is a right! Health care is a right! Outside the Blue Cross building, right on the Magnificent Mile: We’re here! We’re queer! We’re not going shopping! Walking down State, the crowd tighter now, louder: Hey, Hey, AMA! How many people died today?
Three laughing teenagers ran right near Yale and Fiona for a while, doing a limp-wristed mocking dance that no one paid attention to. Someone threw an empty cigarette packet out a car window, and it bounced off Fiona’s shoulder.
Yale spotted Rafael from Out Loud, walking with a cane, but he was too far away to talk to. There were police all around, blowing whistles, shouting things Yale couldn’t understand, but no one seemed to be under arrest yet. No one was getting headlocked.
But before they reached the AMA, Yale felt his stomach liquefy. He told Fiona he needed a bathroom, and she told him he looked pale.
They ducked into a hotel, where thankfully no one stopped them, and Yale made it to a fancy single-occupancy restroom down a hall behind the concierge desk, Fiona standing guard outside the door. He called to her that she could leave, and she told him that was silly. She ran out to find a Walgreens and came back with Imodium and Gatorade, although he was feeling better even before she returned. He took his time, sat there fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, worried there would be a crowd of bemused spectators when he emerged. He came out to see just Fiona sitting cross-legged against the wall, and he shut the door quickly behind him. “This’ll be my defense if they arrest me,” he said. “I can just shit my pants. I’ll be like a skunk, or an octopus.”