Yale whispered to Charlie, “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
And then they were apart once more, thinking completely different things, and Yale knew Charlie was remembering whatever he’d done with Julian, memories Yale was forever—mercifully—locked out of. Yale took off down the hall to the youth room for his box.
But when he’d picked it up and turned around, Charlie was there in the doorway. Just looking at him.
Yale said, “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re sick. But beyond that, I have very little sympathy for you right now.”
The lights were off in the room. Streetlights through the windows, but that was all.
Charlie said, “I think I’ve figured out why I did it.”
“Oh, do tell.” Yale held the box in front of him, a barrier.
“This might not make sense, but I think I did it because I was tired of being scared.”
“You were terrified of a disease, so you went out and got it?”
“No. No. I was scared of you leaving me, of you cheating on me with someone younger and better looking and smarter. I know it’s fucked up, but somewhere in my mind it was like, if I did the worst thing I could think of, then every time I saw you flirt with someone else I’d almost hope you would go for it, so it would even the score.”
“You thought this all through.”
“Not at the time, no. I was blotto, Yale. And Julian had these poppers he’d stolen from Richard’s house.”
“Poppers last all of ten seconds.”
“That’s not what I meant, I mean what we did in bed, I wouldn’t have—”
“Jesus, Charlie.”
“I wouldn’t have let him.”
“I think your little self-analysis is way off. I think you were absolutely trying to get sick.” Yale was yelling, and he didn’t care. “Why is the question, but that’s for you to figure out. Maybe you hate yourself. Maybe you hate me. Maybe you want the attention. There’s no good reason, is there? When you know the risks. You’re not naive. You’re the fucking condom czar of Chicago.”
Charlie was shaking his head. Charlie never seemed to cry actual tears, but his eyes would turn pink and puffy. He hadn’t come far into the room, was standing near the doorway as if he might run out. He said, “We used a rubber. We did. We were in Nico’s apartment at first, when things, you know—and we were in the bathroom, and it was dark, and before we left I asked Julian if he had a rubber, and he said, ‘I bet there’s one here somewhere.’ And he groped around the medicine cabinet, and he put a couple in his pocket. And then we went back to his place. But later, before I left, I saw the wrapper, and it was lambskin.”
“Holy fuck, Charlie. It was probably old too.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t even believe you. Really. You used a rubber, but it was dark, and oops, it was lambskin? Why would Nico even have lambskin? For what? To prevent pregnancy? You can come up with a better story. How many times did he fuck you really? I was willing to believe you. I was almost ready to believe you. And you come up with lambskin.”
“It was one time.”
“Just one great postfuneral fuck. Why not make it two? He’s out there right now. Have at it.”
“Yale.”
“Teddy fucks half the city and gets nothing, but the one time you mess up, with a rubber, you magically get sick. You should go on the talk show circuit. You should go into high schools and give them the scare talk. Tell the Republicans! They’ll love you!”
“Yale, stop.” Charlie was shouting now too. “You know it doesn’t work like that. You know it’s random.”
“Are you aware that you haven’t apologized? Has that crossed your mind? You’re making excuses and stories about lambskin, you’re coming up with theories about your motivation, and you haven’t once asked if I’m okay. You have not once acknowledged that you’ve blown up my entire life.”
Charlie opened his mouth, but Yale kept going.
“You spend five years playing up this monogamy thing, putting a fucking leash on me, and meanwhile you’re doing whatever the hell you want. You know what? It’s all greed. Our relationship was about you, and whatever the hell you did, that was about you, and your refusal to consider anything but your own feelings right now, that’s definitely about you.”
Charlie put his hands on his head. He said, “That might be true, but I cannot begin to deal with your emotional needs right now. My mother is draining me enough.”
Yale pushed past him with the box, rammed the corner into Charlie’s chest. He said, “At least you have her. I have no one.”
He went down the hall and past a woman he didn’t know, and then past Teddy and Asher, who were close enough that they’d probably heard the shouting.
* * *
—
Back at Cecily’s place, all the lights were off. She’d given Yale a key, and he opened the door quietly, the box balanced on his hip. A latchkey kid, like Kurt.
He changed in the apartment’s only bathroom. Cecily’s makeup and face creams and curling iron littered one side of the sink; the other held just Kurt’s red toothbrush and an egg timer. Yale took his shirt off and checked his chest, his back, the smooth, pale skin on the insides of his upper arms. Not that there weren’t a thousand other ways the virus could manifest, not that it wouldn’t wait, invisible, for years. When Terrence was first diagnosed he’d said, “It’s like putting a quarter in the toy machine at the grocery store. You know the possibilities, but you have no idea what you’ll get. Like, will it be pneumonia, or Kaposi’s, or herpes, or what?” He mimed opening one of the plastic balls. “Ooh, look, toxoplasmosis!”
How many times had he and Charlie had sex between Nico’s memorial and New Year’s? Only slightly less often than usual. Maybe ten times. Maybe Charlie had put his faith in that lambskin, if it was even real. Or in Julian not being sick. Julian had looked so healthy. Still, Charlie could have made excuses, could have said his back was out. He could have gotten tested, although maybe he’d been waiting for the three-month mark, the same way Yale was now. But then when he heard about Julian, he went ahead and did it. And lo and behold, early antibodies.
Yale put his T-shirt on, and when he went back out, Cecily was in the kitchen, pulling a tea bag out of her mug. She wore a robe and slippers, and she looked (Yale had learned this his first night there) like an entirely different person without makeup.
She asked how he was feeling, and then she said, “I’m afraid there’s a problem.”