Yale looked now for Terrence. It took a minute, but there he was, sitting halfway up the stairs, too surrounded for Yale to chat with him yet. Instead, Yale took one of the mini quiches off a passing tray and slipped it to him through the balusters. “You look stuck!” Yale said, and Terrence put the quiche in his mouth, held his hand out again, said, “Keep ’em coming!”
Fiona had wanted to trick her parents, to exchange Nico’s ashes with fireplace ones and give the real ones to Terrence. It was hard to tell if she was serious. But Terrence wasn’t getting any ashes, and he wasn’t getting anything else either, besides Nico’s cat, which he’d taken when Nico first went into the hospital. The family had made it clear that when they began dismantling Nico’s apartment tomorrow, Terrence would be excluded. Nico had left no will. His illness had been sudden, immediately debilitating—first a few days of what had seemed like just shingles, but then, a month later, moon-high fevers and dementia.
Terrence had been an eighth-grade math teacher until this summer, when Nico needed him around the clock and Terrence learned he was infected himself. And how would Terrence get through the fall, the winter, with no Nico, no job? It wasn’t just a financial question. He loved teaching, loved those kids.
Terrence had some of the vague early symptoms, some weight loss, but nothing serious yet, not enough to go on disability. He’d taken the test after Nico got sick—whether out of solidarity or just to know, Yale wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if there were some magic pill. Yale and Charlie had, just on principle, been among the first to get tested that spring. Charlie’s paper had been advocating for testing, education, safe sex, and Charlie felt he had to put his money where his mouth was. But on top of that, Yale had just wanted to get it over with. Not knowing, he figured, was bad for his health in and of itself. The clinics weren’t giving the test yet, but Dr. Vincent was. Yale and Charlie opened a bottle of champagne when they got the good results. It was a somber toast; they didn’t even finish the bottle.
Julian was back at Yale’s ear, saying, “Get yourself a refill before the slide show starts.”
“There’s a slide show?”
“It’s Richard.”
At the bar Yale found Fiona talking to someone he didn’t know, a straight-looking guy with a jaw. Twisting her blonde curls around her finger. She was drinking too fast, because that was an empty glass in her hand. And she’d gotten it since she gave Yale her half-drink, and Fiona weighed maybe a hundred pounds. He touched her arm. He said, “You remember to eat?”
Fiona laughed, looked at the guy, laughed again. She said, “Yale.” And she kissed his cheek, a firm kiss that probably left lipstick. To the guy she said, “I have two hundred big brothers.” She might fall over any second. “But as you can see, he’s the preppiest. And look at Yale’s hands. Look at them.”
Yale examined his palm; there was nothing wrong with it.
“No,” she said, “The back! Don’t they look like paws? They’re furry!” She ran her finger through the dark hairs clustered thickly on the pinky side of his hand. She whispered loudly to the man: “It’s on his feet too!” Then, to Yale, “Hey, did you talk to my aunt?”
Yale scanned the room. There were only a few women here, none much over thirty.
He said, “At the vigil?”
“No, she can’t drive. But you must have talked, because I told her. I told her, like, months ago. And she said she had.”
He said, “Your aunt?”
“No, my father’s aunt. She loved Nico. Yale, you have to know that. She loved him.”
Yale said to the guy, “Get her some food,” and the guy nodded. Fiona patted Yale’s chest and turned away, as if he were the one whose logic couldn’t be followed.
He got his refill, almost straight rum, and looked for Charlie. Was that his bearded chin, his blue tie? But the curtain of people closed again, and Yale wasn’t tall enough to see over a crowd. And now Richard dimmed the lights and pulled up a projector screen, and Yale couldn’t see anything but the shoulders and backs boxing him in.
Richard Campo, if he had any job at all, was a photographer. Yale had no idea where Richard’s money came from, but it let him buy a lot of nice cameras and gave him time to roam the city shooting candid photos in addition to the occasional wedding. Not long after Yale moved to Chicago, he was sunbathing on the Belmont Rocks with Charlie and Charlie’s friends, though this was before Yale and Charlie were an item. It was heaven, even if Yale had forgotten a towel, even if he always burned. Guys making out in broad daylight! A gay space hidden from the city but wide open to the vast expanse of Lake Michigan. One of Charlie’s friends, a man with wavy, prematurely silver hair and a lime-green Speedo, had sat there clicking away on his Nikon, changing film, clicking again at all of them. Yale asked, “Who’s the perv?” and Charlie said, “He might be a genius.” That was Richard. Of course Charlie saw genius in everyone, prodded them till he discovered their passions and then encouraged those, but Richard really was talented. Yale and Richard were never close—he’d never set foot in the guy’s house till today—but Yale had grown used to him. Richard was always on the periphery, watching and shooting. A good fifteen years older than everyone else in their circle: paternal, doting, eager to buy a round. He’d bankrolled Charlie’s newspaper in the early days. And what had started as a strange quirk had become, in the past few months, something essential. Yale would hear the camera’s click and think, “He got that, at least.” Meaning: Whatever happens—in three years, in twenty—that moment will remain.
Someone messed with the record player, and as the first slide displayed (Nico and Terrence toasting last year at Fiona’s twentieth birthday) the music started: the acoustic intro to “America,” the version from Simon and Garfunkel’s Central Park concert. Nico’s favorite song, one he saw as a defiant anthem, not just a ditty about a road trip. The night Reagan won reelection last year, Nico, furious, played it on the jukebox at Little Jim’s again and again until the whole bar was drunkenly singing about being lost and counting cars and looking for America. Just as everyone was singing now.
Yale couldn’t bear to join, and although he wouldn’t be the only one crying, he didn’t think he could stay here. He backed out of the crowd and took a few steps up Richard’s stairs, watching the heads from above. Everyone stared at the slides, riveted. Except that someone else was leaving too. Teddy Naples was at Richard’s heavy front door, slipping his suit jacket back on, turning the knob slowly. Usually Teddy was a little ball of kinetic energy, bouncing on his toes, keeping time with his fingers to music no one else could hear. But right now he moved like a ghost. Maybe he had the right idea. If he weren’t trapped on this side of the crowd, Yale might have done the same. Not left, but stepped outside for fresh air.