They all found this hilarious. Charlie called down the table, “Women used to hit on me all the time. Before I started losing my hair.” And, good employees, they clamored their protest.
Yale knew most of the staff well, although there’d been some turnover. Nico, for one. And two others of the original crew were sick now too. “Is it terrible that I want to replace them all with women?” Charlie had said that fall. “It’s insurance. Dykes won’t die on me. They won’t even take maternity leave.” Yale had answered that yes, it was terrible. “Blessed be the dykes,” Charlie said, “for they shall inherit all our shit.”
Yale mentioned to Dwight, the copy editor, that he was about to head up to Door County again, and Dwight, who’d grown up vacationing there, had all sorts of advice for him, most of it seasonally inappropriate. Dwight was a tedious person, but Yale hadn’t caught a typo in Out Loud all year. Dwight also told him about the German POWs who’d been sent to the peninsula during World War II to pick cherries, and how many of them had stayed and married local girls. Yale logged this away as fodder for the ride up.
Down at Charlie’s end of the table, though, something was wrong. Charlie had his head in his hands, and he’d gone white, and he was saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rafael was saying. “I thought you’d know before I would.”
Yale said, “What?” and Charlie shook his head urgently. It was something to be dropped. Something to talk about at home. Meanwhile, no one at Yale’s end seemed to have heard whatever was said. They dutifully found conversations to cover the awkward silence. Dwight asked to taste Gloria’s tomato soup. But then Charlie was up from the table, heading out the door to the pay phone without his coat. Through the window Yale could see him dialing, listening, hanging up, retrieving his quarter, dialing again. Four times.
When he came back, he didn’t sit down but reached across the table to Yale. He handed him his credit card and whispered: “Take care of everyone, okay?” And then he turned and walked out.
The people sitting at what had been Charlie’s end of the table didn’t seem shocked, just chagrined, as if they’d made a horrible mistake. Yale squeezed his way off the bench past Gloria and went to fill Charlie’s vacant chair. He said, quietly, “What just happened?”
The two men on either side—Rafael and a new guy—both started to talk and then stopped. Rafael finally said, “It’s Julian Ames.”
“Oh. Fuck.” Yale felt faint, felt himself go as pale as Charlie had. “No,” he said. “Fuck.”
But they weren’t contradicting him, weren’t saying, “No, we only meant he broke his leg. We only meant someone beat him up.” He looked at them, and they looked at their plates.
Yale’s breath wasn’t coming on its own.
And, terribly, half his horror was selfish. Had he actually considered going up to Julian’s apartment? He hadn’t actually done it, had he? He hadn’t gone up there and then blocked it out, and here he sat in denial? He really hadn’t. He’d had vivid dreams about it since, but he hadn’t done it.
No, more important: Julian, beautiful Julian. Julian, who kept talking about the cure. Yale wondered if this was in fact what Julian had been trying to tell him in the bathroom. A confession of illness mistaken for a confession of love. He said to Rafael, “You heard this firsthand?”
“He, um. It was his birthday present to himself, to get tested. That’s kind of all I know. Not from Julian, from Teddy Naples.”
Julian’s birthday was December 2. The Howard Brown fundraiser had been—it had still been Hanukkah, hadn’t it? The thirteenth. So no, he wouldn’t have had the results by then. Unless he already wasn’t feeling well. Unless that was the reason he’d finally done it.
The new guy said, “I mean, if it’s just the virus, he could have a long time. Years!”
Rafael said, “What I heard was they called him on Christmas Eve. He woke up because the phone was ringing, and he thought it was his mom calling for Christmas. And it was the nurse, saying to come in for his results.”
The whole table was listening now, satisfying their own curiosity. No one seemed personally upset, just concerned for Yale. Either they didn’t know Julian well, or Yale and Charlie were the last to hear.
Yale reached for Charlie’s half-full glass of water and watched his own hand shake. He should call Julian, but that was clearly what Charlie had tried. He should chase after Charlie, figure out where he was going—but Yale was the one with the credit card, and people still had food in front of them. Rafael said, “Let’s take this down the street. Let’s get you a beer.”
* * *
—
Charlie wasn’t at the apartment when Yale got home two hours later. He felt disappointed, to an extent that surprised him. He’d wanted to talk it over, to lie there on the bed together staring at the walls and swearing and rehashing any details they’d picked up. But there was more to it: By holding Charlie, Yale could begin to atone for ever thinking of starting up with Julian. The tighter he held Charlie, the more he could take it back.
At nine o’clock, Yale headed to Masonic alone with some magazines and a paper party hat for Terrence. He hadn’t been up to the new AIDS unit yet, and he took the wrong elevator, had to wind his way through the pulmonology ward, but then there it was. Christmas lights and streamers on the nurses’ station. A nurse who looked like Nell Carter asked Yale if he wanted sparkling cider. Sure, he said, and she poured it into a little Dixie cup. “He’s got a new roommate in there today,” she said. “Angry guy, but he’s out cold now. Terrence is awake.”
Yale tried to peek at this new roommate as he walked in, tried to see if it was anyone he knew—but it was dark on that side of the curtain, and all he could see was the bottom of someone’s chin, stubble and purple lesions on a hollowed jawline.
Terrence was eating a chocolate pudding with a plastic spoon—a cannula in his nose for oxygen, an IV taped to his wristbone. He looked even thinner than he had at the fundraiser, but better too. Happier, at least. “Hey,” Terrence said. “You want to eat this for me?” His voice was rough, strained.
“I’m tempted,” Yale said, sitting down, “but those artificial flavors are for your health and recovery.”
Yale asked if Charlie had been in. Terrence said no, just Fiona. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We just got our signals crossed.” He said, “Hey, don’t talk, okay? I’ll talk. This place is nice. Seriously, you got a TV lounge out there? This is Club Med.”
“Club Dead.”
“No, no talking. I made your veggie chili on Christmas. It turned out okay, but I’m no expert.”