It was humiliating how happy Yale was to say yes. Julian was almost the last person he wanted to spend time with, but it was someone, and he wouldn’t be staring at the TV alone for the next few nights. He wondered how much he’d wind up babysitting, wondered what drugs Julian had in that backpack—but it felt like a triumph to be asked. A year ago he’d have thought about germs, but he was over it. “Do you need any more of your stuff?”
“I can’t go back there. Not for a second. And you can’t tell anyone where I am, okay?”
So Julian helped Yale carry his grocery bags all the way back to River North on the El, all the way up the very fast elevator and into the apartment.
They ate pizza and drank beer at the dining table, and turned off the lights so they could look out the windows at the city. Julian said, “This is like The Jetsons. Like, a flying car should pick you up outside your window.”
It had been nearly two weeks since Julian had shaved his head, and at least you couldn’t see white patches anymore. Still, it was all wrong. His ears stuck out, his forehead looked broad and pale.
Yale said, “I want you to know I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at Charlie, and I’m mad at the world, and I’m mad at the government, but you’re hard to be mad at.”
“It’s because I’m so pitiful. No, really, it is. I’ve learned this recently. When you’re a sad sack of shit, no one feels anything for you but pity.”
“I don’t think you’re pitiful,” Yale said.
“Just wait till I weigh eighty pounds. I mean, you won’t ever see that, ’cause I’ll be gone. That’s my point. I hate being pitied. I wish you’d just be mad at me. I wish you’d kick me in the head. No one’s willing to be mad at me but God.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Yale said. “You can stay over, but Jerry Falwell can’t, okay?”
“I can’t shake the feeling that God chased me up here from Georgia. I tried to make my life perfect, and I came up here and everything was beautiful, it was so good, and I should have known. I should’ve been waiting for this.”
“I understand, but that’s—you’re internalizing a lot of bullshit.”
“Did I ever tell you about Disney World? Not when I worked there, the first time I went.”
Yale said no, got them more beer.
“They have this thing called Grad Night, when they keep the park open all night long for kids about to graduate high school. And Valdosta’s right across the border, so the Parents’ Association got us buses and bought us all tickets. You could go on any ride, no lines, and there were bands playing. You just had to stay awake all night. Everyone had a flask.
“And at first I was sticking with my friends, all these theater girls who thought they were gonna marry me, and then I start noticing these three guys from some other school. So beautiful. And so gay, like dripping with gay. Which wasn’t something I’d really seen in Georgia. We’re waiting behind them for Space Mountain, and one of them, this kid with an earring, starts talking to me and says they’re getting food next, do I want food. So by the time we get off the ride, I’m following these guys, eating ice cream with them, and my friends are gone. And the guy with the earring wants us to do the PeopleMover. It’s not even a ride, really, it’s like you go in this little box along an elevated track, but slow. So his friends go in one car, and he and I go in the next one, even though we could have squeezed together. And at this point in my life, just being in the same space as this guy is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. I’m terrified.
“So the ride goes through some buildings, and at one point it goes into the dark. And it’s only supposed to be a few seconds, but the ride gets stuck there. In the dark. Everyone’s shouting and laughing.”
Yale wasn’t sure if the story was about to turn pornographic or romantic or terrible, so he just said “Oh God,” which covered all three possibilities. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. The kid got down on his knees and unzipped my fly and sucked me off. It was the most amazing two minutes of my life. I mean, I was terrified they would turn on the lights, but I didn’t really have much mental space for that. The ride started moving again like half a second after I zipped back up.”
“That’s—wow.”
“Well, yeah. And my takeaway from the whole thing, besides the fact that I was definitely gay, was that there were good places and bad places in the world. Disney World was a good place, and Valdosta was a bad place, and I had to get back to Disney as fast as I could. Which I did. And then after a couple years it was about getting to a real city, so I tried Atlanta, and then it was about getting out of the south, getting to a bigger city, a bigger theater scene. Like, the more steps I took away from Valdosta, the safer I’d be. It was a ladder that just went up and up and up, right? And it ended in some kind of mansion in San Francisco. But look at me. I feel like such an idiot. That I ever thought I could have a really good life.”
Yale said, “You’ll have a better life if you stay here than if you go. You need to stay where people love you. Aren’t you falling into the same trap again? Thinking there’s some better place out there?”
“I mean, there are warmer places. I’ll say that. If I’m gonna die, I want to die with the sun shining on my face.”
“Fair enough.”
Yale made sure Julian had towels in the master bathroom. He imagined the Sharps coming home next month to find an entire fifty-eighth-floor refugee camp of the recently diagnosed. Sleeping bags and cots, vitamins and protein shakes.
* * *
—
On Monday morning, the heat in the office was broken. Yale walked straight back to the El, relieved he wouldn’t have to see Roman but dreading an empty day, one in which he now had no excuse not to get the test over with. But when he got off the train he just stood there by the pay phone, because he wasn’t even sure where he was going.
He thought of calling Dr. Vincent, but it was as if Charlie had inherited him in the breakup, the same way he’d inherited most of their friends. He couldn’t imagine walking in there and awkwardly trying to figure out how much Dr. Vincent already knew. And maybe Dr. Vincent had known for months, for years, that Charlie was cheating. Maybe he’d been treating him for gonorrhea, telling him to be careful. Yale couldn’t face him, his sweet, watery eyes. He thought of calling Cecily, but he’d caused her enough stress as it was, and he didn’t want anyone connected with the university believing he might be sick. He thought of going back to Marina Towers, but seeing Julian would scare him out of going through with it. What had the test done for Julian but wreck his life? He considered calling the Howard Brown hotline, but the thought of some kind lesbian talking him through his options—reading to him off a form, cautiously choosing her words—made him ill. Worse, Teddy’s friend Katsu might answer, might recognize Yale’s voice. Plus the hotline wasn’t open till evening, and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. So although he knew better, although she was the last person who needed to be put through all this again, he called Fiona Marcus.