Teresa let out a small, shallow laugh.
“I’m not telling it right,” he said.
“No, I like that. I like it very much. He had such good friends, didn’t he? He had a family here.”
And there was the low buzzer, a sound from his distant past. Yale kissed Teresa’s cheek and she told him again to walk carefully, to breathe fully.
* * *
—
Asher didn’t have his car. “It’s too nice out to drive,” he said. Yale promised he was okay walking—it really only hurt when he bent or twisted—and Asher suggested they stroll around and wind up at St. Joe’s, where he had a two o’clock appointment. “I’ll get you a cab from there,” he said.
Yale was too nervous to talk normally. He found himself chattering and then falling silent for long stretches. Asher needed to duck over to Halsted to find an ATM. As he pocketed his cash he said, “You heard about County, right?” No, Yale hadn’t. “Cook County Hospital is now officially, drumroll please, treating female AIDS patients.”
“Seriously? That fast? Like, because of the protest?”
“You didn’t think it would work, did you. Listen, Yale, I’m not making it up. This shit works. I want you to stay involved.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I need to tell you something.” They turned down Briar again, although there were more efficient routes to St. Joe’s. “I’ve put off telling people, and I’ve particularly put off telling you. But I’m moving to New York.”
“Oh.” He felt it as a pain in his rib, even though he hadn’t twisted, hadn’t bent. They were back in front of the apartment now, in front of the same place he’d gotten his heart broken four years ago, so why not break it again in the same spot? His cheeks stung. Not his eyes, but his cheeks—how odd. Asher stopped and faced him.
“There’s stuff I can do nationally with ACT UP from there, stuff that’ll make a bigger impact than what I can do from Chicago.”
“Yeah, who needs Chicago.”
“Yale.”
“No, sorry. It’s good. That’s really good.”
“Listen, it’s like, I was born to fight. I was born angry. I hated my dad, I hated the world, I pick fights with strangers, right? And I look back and it all makes sense, because maybe I was born for this. Maybe I’m getting religious or something, but it feels like I’m here for a reason.”
Yale looked at everything that wasn’t Asher, nodded. “You know what Charlie said about you once? He said if we didn’t have you, we’d have to invent you.”
Asher laughed. “Well, you have me. You had me. You still have me, just—”
“It’s okay.”
They started walking again. He could ask him to stay. He could kiss him again and tell him he’d do anything if he just stayed in Chicago. But it wouldn’t work. Asher might kiss him back, but there was no version of the future in which Asher chose love—temporary, fragile, illness-laden love—over the fight. (And who was he kidding? It wasn’t love. It was attraction. It was a seed that might have grown, given better soil, more sun.) In every version of the story, Asher was correct. He shouldn’t stay here, just to make Yale happy for a year, three years, until they both got too sick to make anyone happy. He should be in New York banging on doors and making news. In a way, Yale had already asked at the protest; he’d already received his answer.
Here was the house, the one Yale had picked out for himself a thousand years ago, the piece of the city he was supposed to own.
Yale said, “Stop a second.”
“What?”
He faced the house, closed his eyes, and he put his hand on the rolled-up cuff of Asher’s shirt. He wanted to bathe in it for five seconds, the future he might be having if it weren’t for everything. He’d have broken up with Charlie, sure, and Charlie would be coked up in some downtown condo by now, and Yale would have this house, and he and Asher would be together. He was sure. Asher would be lighting the grill in the backyard. Fiona and Nico and Terrence were on their way over for dinner. Julian was hanging out on the porch with a drink, fresh from rehearsal.
Asher said, “Are you okay?”
Yale opened his eyes and nodded.
* * *
—
They walked east to right below Belmont Harbor, and then they walked through the park on the path.
They talked about Richard, whose solo show was coming up that summer at a gallery in the Loop. “Who ever thought Richard would get an actual show?” Asher said. “I thought it was all an excuse to meet models.”
They talked about where in New York Asher would live (Chelsea) and when he was leaving (two weeks) and how often he’d get back to Chicago (occasionally, mostly for work).
They talked about Yale’s rib, about the stupid bottle of Imodium that had broken it, about how he didn’t care and he’d do it all again.
Yale told him about Bill leaving the most important artist out of Nico’s great-aunt’s show, the guy she loved her whole life. “It was the whole point,” Yale said. “It was the point of everything.”
Asher told him he shouldn’t be the one holding power of attorney for Yale anymore. “You need someone who can be at the hospital right away. If I’m in New York, I can’t make decisions for you. You should ask Fiona. I’ll draw up the papers.”
Yale might have protested that it took just as long to drive from Madison as to fly from New York, and he might have said he couldn’t bear to do that to her, but Asher was right. And there was no one else left, no one he trusted as much.
“She’ll be done with college by the time you get sick. You have a lot more time.”
Yale said, “I used to worry about Reagan pressing the button, you know? And asteroids, all that. And then I had this realization. If you had to choose when, in the timeline of the earth, you got to live—wouldn’t you choose the end? You haven’t missed anything, then. You die in 1920, you miss rock and roll. You die in 1600, you miss Mozart. Right? I mean, the horrors pile up, too, but no one wants to die before the end of the story.
“And I really used to believe we’d be the last generation. Like, if I thought about it, if I worried about death, it was all of us I was thinking about, the whole planet. And now it’s like, no, it’s just you, Yale. You’re the one who’s gonna miss out. Not even on the end of the world—like, let’s hope the world goes on another billion years, right?—but just the normal stuff.”
Asher didn’t answer, but he took Yale’s right hand in his left hand, wound their fingers together. They walked on like that, Yale’s heart pinballing around his battered ribcage.