Afterlife (33 page)

The doorbell rang as Heather was taking a great dollop of cranberry sauce, so Steven had to leave them to their own devices to seat themselves. He opened the front door, and Angela gripped his arm wide-eyed. “Tell me the truth, do I look like shit?”

How could she even think so, drop-dead chic in the black silk dress with an alligator belt as wide as a cummerbund, a white angora cardigan around her shoulders. No, she looked fabulous, he told her three different ways, till the haunted look in her eyes began to soften. All right, she would stay. Steven was dispatched to run down to the curb to release the cab, in the process having to pay the fifteen-dollar fare.

When he came back up, she needed coaxing again before she entered the house, a thumbnail refresher course on who was there. He sleeked her ruffled feathers and bore her in on his arm, astonished to find his guests all seated without any bloodshed. The first thing he noticed was Margaret with the embroidered shawl about her shoulders, which she'd snatched from her bag when the doorbell rang. She winked when Steven smiled at her. The gray sack was magically transformed.

Steven had to admit, as he went round introducing Angela, that he couldn't have seated them better himself. Ray Lee was at the foot of the table, Margaret and Heather on either side. Next to Margaret was Mark, then Linda, then Dell, then a space for Steven at the head and Angela to his left. Next to Angela's place was Sonny, with Andy between him and Heather. No potential nuclear explosions.

Steven commanded them to begin, then steered Angela to the sideboard. He had to coax her through every dish, for she had a terror of getting fat, despite being cocaine-thin. Steven made sure she took a spoonful of everything, taking twice as much himself. By the time they sat down, the table was abuzz with conversations one on one, punctuated by waves of praise for the food. Margaret was heavily tête-à-tête with Mark, while Heather was practically spoon-feeding Ray.

Sonny turned from talking men with Andy to welcome Angela more warmly, his company manners as impeccable as his Ivy drag. Yet there was something else immediately, as if they caught in each other's countenance the trace of an old memory. “I bet you're a Gemini,” Angela said, all her shyness vanished now.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I am,” Sonny replied with a grin, clearly impressed by her perspicacity.

She laid down the fork with which she had been pushing around her anorexic portions. She turned and looked deep in the Greek's eyes. A passionate flush had come into her face, vivid as the expectant look he returned. “You don't have very long, do you?” she asked in a dusky undertone. Slowly Sonny shook his head. Angela covered his hand with hers. “I knew it the minute I saw you …”

Steven, who had been politely bobbing his head in their direction, waiting for an entrance, suddenly reached for an olive instead, avoiding by inches the New Age quicksand. Sucking out the pimento, he turned to his right, just in time to see Dell steal a glance at his watch. “Are we keeping you from something?” Steven asked in his crispest housemother tone.

“She's havin' a cable telethon at seven.”

“She who?”

“Mother.”

Steven swallowed his olive hard. He had been laboring under the assumption that Dell had put his obsession aside once he became a wanted man. The futility of it all was obvious to everyone. Mother Evangeline had gotten all the sympathetic press. The disks had been restored to their rightful place, and once again were spewing out weekly mailings to the faithful. Nobody ever even understood exactly what the terrorism was meant to protest. Linda smiled at Steven, thanking him effusively, as if she couldn't quite believe that the nightmare of the last weeks had resolved itself so peaceably. For her sake Steven pretended he hadn't heard the Mother Evangeline reference. Blocked it out, the way he blocked out Victor's first demented phrases, locked in his mind without any door.

He gazed around the table, satisfied that everyone was being taken care of. Ray Lee was nodding off in his chair but smiling beatifically. Then Steven looked to the right, where the dark was beginning to fall on the hillside. The sliding glass door was open about six inches. In the crack of the door lay the dog, head on his paws, nose in the room and the rest of him on the terrace. His eyes were open and staring cautiously at Steven, his nose still quivering moistly, raptured by the feast.

Steven pointed a finger at him, ready to cry “Out!” There were limits, after all, even if everyone else had decided to befriend the beast. But Steven found he didn't have the heart, not today. Deluding himself, of course, to think that any inch the dog had gained would ever be recaptured. Yet he had no choice. If he meant the house to be brimful of holiday cheer, everything perfect, an island in time, then he had to give a guinea to the chimneysweep.

He stood up at his place and reached for the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. The laughter was like music to him as he drained the last of the wine into Dell's glass and disappeared through the swing door into the kitchen. He stood for a moment dazed with satisfaction. Then he dropped the wine bottle into the wastebasket and looked around hopefully, as if it would come back to him in a second what he had come in here to get. He reached for the refrigerator door, but then pressed his head against it, between the two star magnets. “Oh Vic,” he whispered in a strangled voice, and a rush of hot tears stung his eyes.

He was flooded for a moment by the pointlessness of it all. Stranger in his own house, wandering round the edges of this party like a ghost, no one to let him in. Even so, it wasn't a full-fledged cry. More like losing his breath, and a sharp stab of pain in the chambers of the heart. Victor was almost palpable to him, as if that guttural infectious laugh were spilling in from the dining room, beckoning Steven back. The old life, the lost one, was all that made any sense. It tantalized him like a mirage, clinking its glasses and chattering happily just beyond the door.

And then the door swung open behind him, and Steven turned from the fridge and quickly wiped his eyes, facing away from who ever'd walked in. If it was Andy Lakin whining with need, Steven swore he would stuff him down the disposal. But it was Mark: “Hey, pal, you need some help?”

Steven stared at the butcher-block island, covered with pies and trifle and Linda's pudding. In two hours they would all be out of there, and then he could go to bed for a week. “No, I was just … taking a break.”

Mark laughed as if he understood completely, that after pulling off such a production Steven might need a breather. He clapped a hand on Steven's shoulder. “Listen, it's going great. First Thanksgiving I ever had where I'm not the only fag. Except—is that guy gonna make it through dinner?”

“You mean Ray? Jesus, I hope so. He deserves a piece of his fucking pie.”

They both grunted in disbelief at the awfulness of the poor Korean's situation. They couldn't have said how close he was to the end, but closer than either of them ever wanted to be. Like the other three ticking men at the table, both had made a sort of contrary vow when Ray Lee entered the portals of the feast: not to last so long. It was the timebomb at the edge of all their plates, like some ghastly party favor, the question of checking out before it got that bad.

“Margaret's dead on her feet,” continued Mark, rubbing the spot between Steven's shoulders where the muscle was tight. “She's afraid to wish it was over and even more scared it'll just keep going.” Steven nodded, stretching his neck as the muscle unknotted, happy as a dog being scratched. “She said uh … apparently you and the kid broke up.”

It wasn't certain who pulled away first, maybe it was a draw, but Steven sidled out of the massage and turned to face him, brutally nonchalant. “I wouldn't put it quite that way. You have to have something to break up
from
. We were just—” But he couldn't think of the word, and he stood there in a kind of half-shrug, half-flail, wishing they'd all go away.

“I love you, you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Steven nodded dumbly. Still his palms were open, the shrug not quite finished.

“No, I'm serious, Steven. I really love you.”

“Look, I don't think this is the time,” Steven began miserably.

“Sure it is. An hour ago you were taken, and now you're not. I think my timing's perfect.” Mark was somehow beckoning Steven out to play.

“But I don't want to be taken,” protested Steven, as petulant and stubborn as a child. “I hate my dick—ask Andy.”

There was a bare three feet between them, yet Mark seemed to take a great stride forward as he moved to grasp Steven by the shoulders. Even as he tilted his head and planted his open mouth on Steven's lips, Steven was thinking:
he doesn't kiss
.

For the moment Steven could scarcely process his own name. He stayed with it, tongue to tongue, as much as anything to give himself time to think. But he didn't think, he just kissed. And when the kitchen door swung open and Margaret froze on the threshold, pulling them apart at last, Steven wanted to say it was all a mistake. “What do we need?” he demanded—slightly panting, having just come up for air, but determined to focus things back on the matter at hand.

“It'll wait,” she said with a gloat of irony, and ducked back into the dining room.

Steven gave Mark his fiercest look. “We're going back in there,” he declared, not for nothing commander of this operation.

“Fine with me,” said Mark, grinning as if he'd never stopped, all through the kiss.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing
what?
I'm finally acting normal. What's the problem? You've been in love with me for months.”

“
Was
,” growled Steven, withering with contempt. “I'm totally over you.”

“Bullshit.”

Thus giving Steven the opening to exit in a defiant huff. He batted the swing door wide and strode back into his banquet hall, only to discover that everything had fallen apart in the interim. They'd all erupted out of their places. At the foot of the table Margaret and Heather hovered over Ray. For an instant Steven thought he'd died, but then saw the women were struggling to pull off the Korean's shirt, drenched with the lightning sweat that broke his fever. Otherwise the table was virtually empty. Only Linda Espinoza still sat at her place, eating her dinner with exquisite delicacy, smiling up at Steven as if she hoped he wouldn't notice that everyone else had run away.

“Steven,” Margaret asked him briskly, “you think we can borrow a shirt?”

“Sure,” he replied in a frazzle, darting away.

“And a towel,” Margaret called after him.

As he cut through the living room, he saw Dell hunched on the sofa watching the tube. Mother Evangeline was offering a prayer on her holiday telethon, surrounded by a melting pot of fresh-scrubbed kids. Dell licked nervously at his upper lip. He seemed about to talk back to the screen. Steven hustled across the vestibule and through the study, where Angela sat at the desk speaking earnestly into the phone. Sonny was cross-legged on the floor in front of her, hanging on every word.

“He's a Gemini,” Angela said, “and he's had an excellent regression back to Egypt.”

Steven didn't wait to hear, but guessed she was talking with her channeler. He stopped and pulled a big white towel from the linen closet, then headed for the far door in the bedroom—Victor's closet. As he flipped through the clothes, he was only thinking Victor was closer to the Korean's size than he was. He took a cream-colored dress shirt off a hanger and a yellow cardigan sweater, the latter bought on an achingly clear November day in Pisa. As Steven shut the closet door, he could practically smell the fallen leaves of the chestnut trees along the Tuscan street.

Crossing the study again, he saw that Sonny had taken the phone, though he was still sitting on the floor Indian-style. “All the dominion below the Second Cataract,” he was saying, while Angela zapped the base of his skull with acupressure. Neither one even looked at Steven.

Dell was still all alone in the living room, his eyes fixed on the TV screen. Mother Evangeline, in tight close-up, spoke with a low thrill, not a foot from Dell Espinoza's face: “To the homosexuals we say, thank God for AIDS, because it is bringing you home to Him.”

“Why don't you turn that off?” said Steven, passing through. Dell turned and stared at him, uncomprehending, eyes on fire, as if he'd taken a dose of radiated light from the Sony. Steven didn't repeat his injunction but kept on walking, suddenly realizing that the crisis of Ray was simpler.

Mark had joined the women in the dining room as they ministered to the Korean, but he stood slightly apart by the sideboard. Hands behind his back and lifting slightly off his toes, looking out at the night with an abstract smile. Steven went right to Margaret. With one end of the towel, he wiped Ray's bony chest, every rib fearfully distinct, the strings of a human harp. Margaret vigorously rubbed Ray's head, his blue-black hair still full and sleek despite the waste of the rest of him. Ray moaned in a dreamy way, enjoying the massage.

Tenderly Heather slipped the shirt over his arm, and Steven crouched and pulled Ray forward so she could bring it around his back. The other arm was a bit of a struggle, but at last the shirt was on. Steven buttoned it up the front while Heather adjusted the sleeves. The memory of dressing Victor was very intense, but Steven didn't cry. For all his own tender ministrations here, he realized he had consciously chosen not to bring a shirt of his own. He didn't want to see any threads of his on a dying man.

“I think it's time we got you home,” said Margaret, combing back Ray's hair.

“No,” he retorted with startling force, the emperor again. “I have dessert.”

The group around him burst out laughing, relieved to be restored so quick from hospital to holiday. Forget the seconds. Now they were galvanized by Ray Lee's spunk, and the women moved to clear the sideboard. Steven looked over and caught Mark's eye. Mark smiled at him serenely and spoke it again, quiet but firm: “Bullshit.”