It wasn’t the cheating that bothered him most. He articulated this, mentally, down into his glass, thought it at the melting ice cubes. And it wasn’t only the disease, the exposure, although that was most of it. But the thing screwing itself into his heart right now was that he’d let himself be so cowed by Charlie’s demands. He’d been walking on eggshells for this man, and meanwhile Charlie, behind Yale’s back, had just been throwing the eggs straight at the wall. He felt, more than anything else, stupid.
By the time he walked out the door it was late, past dinner, although the clinic would still be open. But why do that to himself right now? He should wait three months. No, three months minus—today was the sixteenth. Three months from New Year’s. So, the end of March? He couldn’t manage the math. The antibodies might show up faster, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring. He’d be walking into either a meaningless negative and more purgatory, or a death sentence. He thought about going to the gallery, sleeping on his office floor. But the security guard would freak out. He thought of Terrence, who was home from the hospital. Someone ought to be at Terrence’s anyway. He could be the person at Terrence’s, the person taking care of Terrence.
He walked to Melrose and buzzed. Then he felt awful at the thought of Terrence having to get up to answer. They weren’t best friends or anything. He’d been closer to Nico. He had no right to Terrence’s energy reserves. He was about to walk away when Terrence said hello. He said, “You can come up, Yale, but I’ll be honest. It smells like shit.”
It did. Terrence’s face had hollowed, his skin was shiny and taut, but in the hospital he’d grown a patchy beard, and he hadn’t shaved it since. How had his body found the energy to produce hair? Why was it growing a beard instead of T cells?
Roscoe, Nico’s old gray cat, rubbed against Yale’s leg. “Does he need food?” Yale asked.
“No,” Terrence said, “but you’re welcome to clean his litter.” He wasn’t joking. “I’m not supposed to do it without rubber gloves, and I ran out. Not supposed to have him here at all, really.” The box in the kitchen was disgusting. Yale knelt on the kitchen floor and got to work, with Roscoe head-butting his thigh. Doing this felt right. Yale could spend the rest of the night scooping out dung and islands of dried piss, and it would feel like he was in exactly the correct place. “You know his doctor doesn’t want you here,” he whispered to Roscoe. “And he’s allergic to you too.”
Once he was on Terrence’s couch, a glass of his own scotch in his hand, he found that he couldn’t tell him anything true. He couldn’t say, “Charlie’s sick,” and he couldn’t say, “Charlie cheated on me.” It was humiliating, and the first part wasn’t his news to tell. He couldn’t go spreading word that Charlie, who had advocated safe sex in Out Loud before anyone else, was a hypocrite. Not that most people would see it that way; they’d more likely take Charlie’s side, interpret anything Yale said as blame, as vindictiveness.
Terrence was in his big green armchair, his cane beside him. He said, “Yale, you okay?”
He didn’t feel sick, hadn’t noticed anything strange. He knew that before he slept tonight he’d check himself in the mirror for spots, check his lymph nodes, check his throat for thrush. It had been a compulsive nightly ritual before the tests came out, one he’d been free of for less than a year. Now it would be back. But Terrence wasn’t asking if he was sick, only if he was about to burst into tears, which in fact he might be. He said, “Charlie just kicked me out. I think we’re done.”
Terrence puffed air through his lips, but he didn’t look surprised. He tucked his ratty quilt around his legs.
Yale said, “Wait, Terrence, do you know something about this?”
“About what?” Terrence was a bad liar, or maybe he just didn’t have the energy.
He shouldn’t have said it, but he said, “The—Charlie and Julian.”
Terrence grimaced and then nodded, slowly.
“Does everyone know?”
“No. No. It’s just that after—okay, after the memorial?”
“Oh, fuck.”
“After the memorial, when we went to Nico’s, he couldn’t find you and he was pissed about something, and he got drunk. Like, really drunk. Julian was in the bathroom with him, taking care of him. I figured he was puking. But they were in there a long time. I went in to see what was up, and they were—you know, they were at it. And a little later they left together. No one else noticed. I called Julian the next day, and he was torn up. Seriously, it was a one-time deal. Julian wouldn’t want to hurt you. Neither would Charlie. I know that. You know that.”
“No way it was one time,” Yale said. “No way. Things don’t work that way.” That was the plot of some educational filmstrip, not real life. One time is all it takes. Don’t even hold hands, you might get syphilis. But could it have been true? Was the universe that horribly vengeful? That precise?
Yale was suddenly reeling back to the night of the Howard Brown fundraiser. Dear God, this was what Julian had been trying to convey, standing there by the sinks and staring into Yale’s eyes. Julian wasn’t in love with him. He was sorry. Maybe he thought Yale knew, or figured he’d find out soon, or maybe he was trying to salve his own conscience. Like an idiot, Yale had felt flattered.
And right on the heels of those thoughts, Yale was blaming himself, ridiculously, for having gone upstairs at Richard’s after the memorial. If he hadn’t done that, if he hadn’t scared Charlie, maybe none of this would have happened. If it had truly been an isolated thing, then the moment he climbed those stairs, he’d killed Charlie. And maybe himself.
Yale let out a shudder that might have been half a sob, and he said, “He’s got the virus, Terrence. But you can’t tell anyone.”
“Fuck. Oh, Yale.” Terrence looked like he wanted to get out of his chair, like if he had the energy he’d come sit next to him so Yale wouldn’t feel so small and alone on the big couch. “I knew about Julian, but I didn’t know about Charlie. It—somehow it didn’t even cross my mind. I don’t know. Maybe it was all Charlie’s stuff about rubbers, all his safety stuff. Yale, if I’d thought of it, you have to believe me that I’d—”
“Okay,” Yale said. “Okay.”
“God.”
“Look, no one knows, and you can’t tell. It was just that stupid test. If it weren’t for the test, we wouldn’t even know. We’d be out to dinner right now.”
“Fuck. Yeah, but we need that test, right? You might not get sick. Because of the test.”
“I’ll know that in three months.”
“Listen, you get the Fuck Flu? You been sick? Stomach flu, fever, like you got steamrolled but the steamroller was full of wolves, and the wolves were made of salmonella?”