“Can I come with you?”
Arnaud looked exasperated. He stuck a tuna roll in his mouth.
“Sorry,” she said, “I know, I know, but you don’t even know what to look for. If I’m there, and I see something that used to be Claire’s—I’d recognize it. You wouldn’t.”
Arnaud exhaled slowly. Invisible smoke from the pipe he ought to have had. Or at least a cigarette. And a trench coat. Today he wore a bright yellow V-neck tee and jeans. “I might only have ten minutes to get in and out.”
Fiona said, “Wouldn’t the landlord be more likely to let you in if I came too? If we explain that my daughter’s missing?”
“No,” he said. “But look, yes, okay, if I can get in, I’ll bring you. You won’t meet the landlord, but you can come in the flat. Okay?”
She promised she’d keep her phone on, be ready to fly across the city. But not yet, not yet. Arnaud had to learn Kurt’s schedule, find the landlord, etcetera, etcetera. It would take a couple of days.
1986
Yale had the place entirely to himself. Bill Lindsey and the gallery registrar had both called in sick; the art handler and the bookkeeper were both part time. Yale blasted some New Order and ate a sloppy turkey sandwich at his desk and worked. He scheduled dinners and researched grants and followed up with the Sharps. He called Nora’s lawyer again, got a message saying the office was closed for the holidays. God, it was January 7. He prepared to leave a message, but the tape let out a shrill beep that didn’t end. He wrote to both Nora and the lawyer saying they’d be driving up next week unless he heard back that they shouldn’t. He poured himself into reimagining the official gallery brochure.
When he showed up the next day and the office was still empty, he decided to call people to invite them up to see the place. It would help keep his mind off Julian, how close he’d come to Julian’s apartment that night. Teddy and Asher were the two who were available, and they showed up in the afternoon. Yale was glad it wasn’t Asher alone; he wouldn’t have known how to act. And for totally different reasons, for Charlie reasons, he was glad it wasn’t just Teddy. Yale showed them the current exhibit—twelve Ed Paschke portraits that made him dizzy every time he walked through—and then they sat in Yale’s office and Teddy used Yale’s MoMA mug as an ashtray. He smoked alarmingly fast, a puff every couple of seconds.
They talked about Julian, which was at least better than thinking about Julian.
“He’s been out every night,” Asher said.
“Doing what?”
“Drinking,” Teddy said. “Finding other infected guys to fuck.”
“He told you this?”
“He was joking about Russian roulette.” Teddy might have sounded more concerned—this was a sometime lover he was talking about—but then Teddy’s love of gossip generally trumped all. He said, “Did Fiona tell you she found him on her couch last week with no shoes or coat? He traded them for like five quaaludes and a joint.”
“And this is in the house where she nannies,” Asher added. Asher was playing with Yale’s four-color pen, clicking the colors down in rotation.
Yale felt out of the loop. How had all this happened in a week? Well, it had been cold; he hadn’t gotten out much. Charlie had been throwing himself into the paper harder than ever since New Year’s, as if articles about housing laws and drag shows would magically generate a vaccine. If he wasn’t at the office or at meetings, he was working at home, his Macintosh humming like a life support machine. He’d joined Asher’s effort to bring the Human Rights Ordinance back up for a vote, something he’d formerly wanted to stall on. They knew it would fail, knew city council had zero interest in their rights, but it was a starting point; they’d get in the Trib and on the evening news. Charlie talked about it, suddenly, with the zeal of a religious convert.
He’d been too tired for sex, or too stressed for sex, or too moody for sex. On Saturday night they’d gone to see The Color Purple, and when they came home Charlie couldn’t stop ranting about how Spielberg had watered down the lesbian plotline to a single kiss. “I have more contact with my dentist,” Charlie said. Yale had unbuttoned Charlie’s shirt, tried to lead him to the bedroom. Charlie buttoned his shirt back up and, pinning Yale to the wall, ran his lips along his collarbone and then knelt and gave him an efficient blowjob that would have felt disturbingly perfunctory if it hadn’t also felt good.
Teddy lit another cigarette. He said Julian was planning to refuse any antibiotics, any vitamins, even the papaya enzymes Terrence was always talking about. “There’s the combo of the two drugs from Mexico, right? I know a guy who brings it up. And Julian doesn’t want it.”
Yale said, “I thought he believed they were about to find a cure,” and Asher said, “Belief is a fragile thing.”
Asher kept leaning his chair back on two legs, and Yale worried it would tip.
Yale said to Teddy, “You look good. Your face. You can’t even tell.”
Teddy raised his left fingers to the bridge of his nose.
“I want him to sue the school,” Asher said. “He won’t listen.”
“Well it doesn’t even make sense! Everyone wants me to be madder than I am. Charlie wants me to write a thing, a personal account. I just—it doesn’t feel like that big a deal.”
Asher said, “Teddy, you were attacked. It’s nothing compared to people dying, but it’s something. And it’s related. It’s not like it isn’t related.”
Teddy laughed and said, “Remember Charlie yelling at Nico? Outside Paradise?”
It was before Nico was sick. Nico had said, “I think we’ll have to worry less about getting beaten up, you know? People are afraid of blood. I mean, they might throw something, but no one’s going to punch you in the mouth coming out of a bar now, right?” And Charlie had said, “Are you fucking kidding me? Attacks are up threefold. You should try reading the paper you draw for. Threefold, Nico.” They’d all imitated him the rest of the night. Threefold! I shall now consume threefold beers, forsooth!
There was a knock, then, on Yale’s open door, and he jumped. It was Cecily; he’d left the gallery unlocked when he let his friends in.
He hoped she’d take Teddy and Asher for donors or at least artists, but she might well have recognized them from the fundraiser, and Teddy, at least, in his duct-taped Docs and his stained white T-shirt, cigarette at his mouth, looked like he’d just blown in from the after-party of a Depeche Mode concert. She clearly thought nothing of interrupting them, because she walked right in and said, “I hope you had a lovely holiday.”
“Several of them, in fact. And you?”