Afterlife (36 page)

Mark gave him back the steadiest look, his gray eyes clenched in a kind of amazement, about to go over a cliff. “It's a deal,” he said in a husky whisper—his ancient bond, worth millions in the days of Bungalow 19.

“How many years?” goaded Steven, never satisfied.

“How many do you need?”

“Eight—no, ten.” Shooting the moon.

“Deal.”

There was nowhere else to go now. Freely like brothers in arms, they went to meet their fate, closing the last door. But the laughter continued, rippling under the door and through the feasted house. If this didn't work they were out of luck, and not a minute left for the next time. Somehow, waiting so long, it must have got easy. No one was ever supposed to laugh, yet there it was, like a knife through butter.

11

At the first session, the balding man swathed in Polo seemed as ordinary, as colorless as a white-bread shrink. Indeed, Sonny did most of the talking, beside a pool in the Palisades, the chairs placed so the man called Salou could take the sun on his cordovan face. If it hadn't been for Angela's enthusiasm, Sonny might never have stayed. And yet it surprised him to hear his own voice, spilling the long tale of the men in his life, details he'd never told anyone. He had to force himself to return to the Second Cataract.

Salou's eyes were mostly closed as he drank the November sun. At four o'clock he looked directly at Sonny, so piercingly that he stopped talking mid-sentence. “You're not gay,” announced the channeler, not exactly dismissive but almost droll, as if someone had played a harmless trick on Sonny. “But you've stayed too long in one place. You've clipped your own wings.”

In that moment Sonny lost all doubt of the other's gift. He felt a sudden pound of surf in his ears, and the hair at his nape shivered. An unbearable weight was lifted from him. It was as if he'd been waiting to hear it all his life, and always it was the opposite, one man after another wild to make him a pagan god. He understood there would be no further elaboration today, that the first session was meant to end with a sort of psychic diagnosis. Sonny was grateful for the breathing room, a chance to savor it overnight, pure as ozone. But he couldn't just walk away with his release. One thing had to be said, though his eyes flinched from the channeler's in shame as he spoke the words.

“But I have the gay disease.”

“That will pass,” declared Salou. “Once you leave the path. Your soul is too old to die young.”

Sonny stared at the sun on the water. It flowed like a river in flood, uncontrollable, seething with life. He hardly remembered leaving the channeler's house and driving home. The evening had passed in a dream as he waited, awesomely calm, for the next day's session. Before he went to bed he cleaned his house. Tossed in a Hefty bag his porno tapes, his poppers, butt plug, leather straps. Even his jock-strap. All the evidence he could gather of his carnal ride across the world of the body. He regretted none of it, missed none of it, as he dumped it all in the trash can at the curb. Just an immeasurable sense of relief. For the first time since the summer of his twelfth birthday, he didn't come before he slept.

Immediately things began to go downhill, in a way that was horribly déjà vu. Ray Lee slept twenty-four hours straight after Margaret got him home, barely able to swoon up into consciousness so she could feed him his pills. His brave little plateful of turkey and fixings, topped with a sliver of mince, turned out to be the last solid food he ever took. He drenched his sheets with sweat every three or four hours, and a murmur of soft Korean scored his dreams, playing like incidental music as Margaret stared at the VCR, one forties weeper after another.

The doctor point-blank refused to let her bring him into the hospital: “What for? There's nothing we can fix.” But Ray was just fading and fading, Margaret protested, and no one was even trying to figure out what it was. Did it really matter anymore? the doctor sighed wearily. After all, at least he was home. “Isn't that where
you
want to die, Miss Kirkham?”

On his end Steven practically bit his tongue through, so much did it not feel right to be gushing over Mark. Margaret didn't ask, not even when he brought over a turkey sandwich and helped her give Ray a sponge bath. Only on his way out did Steven manage to blurt the headline, that he and Mark had passed the night in each other's arms—news that was spoken in sober tones appropriate to the stench of death seeping around the seals of Ray's brief lock on life.

Margaret smiled politely, as if she only understood Korean these days. “Nice,” she replied mildly, but Steven wasn't at all sure as he walked away that she didn't mean it ironically, as if to say, “
Now
you've done it.”

They'd put in a wonderful sleepless night, replaying all the blind turns that had kept them apart so long. Each of them took full blame for the ridiculous delay, salaaming back and forth, but finally they agreed that Mark was the bigger jerk. And the love part went just fine, by the time they got around to it, hard as rocks. They groaned and roared when they got off, first one and then the other and then the other way around as the first streaks of morning combed the walls through the Levelor blinds. Mark whistled and applauded the first time Steven came, but that was because they were 1 and 0 from the previous round six weeks ago.

They had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together on Friday, all of it left over from the feast. While Steven was checking in at Ray's, Mark went over to Skyway Lane and picked up clothes for the weekend. For ten years boys had stayed over at Mark's because the places they lived in were like dorm rooms, not the right style for entertaining a CEO. On paper Skyway Lane was in every way superior to Sunset Plaza for falling in love: no widower tenants or memories of Victor. But already there was a tacit agreement that Steven had to be close to Ray's for the end run. And though he wouldn't admit it, Steven didn't dare leave his pair of delinquents entirely to their own devices. A house without a mother was not a home.

Mark liked the sudden feel of being transient, with no possessions but what he could pack in his gym bag. He had no sentimental attachment to Skyway Lane. He was also not-so-secretly pleased to be throwing a monkey wrench into the boardinghouse arrangements of Sonny and Dell. Mark didn't say it to Steven in so many words, but these two had to go.

Steven arrived home shaken from Ray's. “We're down to the short strokes,” he told Mark, hugging him close in a way that was awfully melancholy for twenty-four hours in love.

They made up the last of the turkey sandwiches, stripping the carcass bare, then holed up in the bedroom. They ate in front of the television, gaping at each other now and again as if they still didn't quite believe it. They tried to recall the time when they couldn't stand each other, awful West Hollywood parties before the war. Steven did a dead-on impression of Mark at his most arrogant—“That's
senior
VP, and please have that boy delivered to my office for inspection.”

“Oh, really?” Mark retorted with an arched brow. “I'm Steven Shaw and I've been everywhere. Pardon me while I drop some names.”

“Actually, I'm a has-been actor,” Steven purred maliciously. “The last time I played a kid I was older than my mom.”

“Victor and I would never stay in a place without a concierge,” said Mark, draining the last word of its full pomposity. “You must come over and see my pretentious collection of masks.”

Steven flung a spiced crab apple at him, which he ducked, and it ricocheted off one of the masks in question, a lacquered red Balinese with its tongue out. They shrieked with laughter and wrestled each other to bed again, but it went no further than a sprawling kiss because they were dead from the night before. They definitely weren't twenty-eight anymore. They fell asleep in their clothes, Steven first, Mark gently stroking his hair, trying to pat down the cowlick, then going under himself. They woke around midnight, pitched off their clothes, and crawled under the covers in their Jockey shorts.

When the phone smashed him awake at seven, Steven felt the arm cradling around his belly and thought for a tilting moment it was Victor in the bed. He picked up the phone and knew it wasn't good news. When was the last good news in the morning? Margaret: “I think it's another stroke.”

And as he listened to the appalling details—throwing up black all night and a nosebleed at dawn that sopped two facecloths, then rigid and twitching—Steven tucked himself deeper into the warmth of Mark's body against his back, the curl of the arm around him, all its muscles intact. Margaret was beyond drowning. She spoke as if she'd had a stroke herself. She didn't ask, but he said he'd be right over, anything to stop the litany of miseries.

Groggy but gallant, Mark staggered up and groped for his clothes. Steven protested, but only a little. They were still half-asleep as they tumbled outside to the Jeep, and Mark dug a hand in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out Steven's car keys. They'd put on each other's pants by mistake. For some reason it struck them as incredibly funny. They whinnied their way downhill, slapping each other's shoulder.

“
I
'm Steven Shaw,” bellowed Mark.

Steven pulled the wallet from his back pocket, whipped it open, and flashed a rainbow of credit cards. “My life is platinum,” he trumpeted. “Wednesday night is mine!”

Near delirious by now, they swung by Winchell's for a dozen glazed and coffee to go. Then they parked on Fountain by Arturo's Flowers, the dumpsters along the sidewalk rotten with heaps of dead Thanksgiving arrangements. Mark rescued a stem of yellow Thai orchids, and they tramped together to Ray's apartment, Mark's pants as baggy as Chaplin's, Steven poured into his like a hooker.

As they came up the steps to Ray's tiny porch, his white Siamese shrank back from them, unimpressed and vaguely offended. Steven rapped on the door, then leaned with a leering grin and kissed Mark wetly on the mouth. Mark made a hissing sound, commanding him to behave. They stood up straight and austere, wiping the grins like spittle as Margaret opened the door.

Her puffy eyes went straight to Mark, instantly suspicious. He was still a stranger to her. She stood back and let them in, pulling her flannel robe closer. Nobody said a word. She stared at the bag from Winchell's, which Steven guiltily passed to Mark, who in turn laid the sprig of orchids on a table, without any presentation.

From the bedroom Ray Lee was screaming a blue streak of invective, furious at somebody. Since Steven had expected him to be mute and paralyzed, he looked questioningly at Margaret, but all she could do was shrug. Steven moved toward the bedroom, and Mark hung back so that Margaret would understand he knew his place. The etiquette of a death watch was as elaborate as Kabuki.

Ray's naked body thrashed back and forth on the bed, the covers awry. His hands were balled into fists, and he thumped the mattress, pounding a beat like a Kodo drummer. He was clearly wrestling demons. The noise he made was singsong, all in Korean, roller-coastering up and down from shriek to the barest whisper.

“It started about ten minutes ago,” said Margaret during a momentary lull.

He didn't seem to be in any pain. It was all rage. Startling because the Korean's demeanor had always been so placid. His rib cage was a pair of praying hands, every bone distinct. Steven couldn't help but see his dick, long and uncut, the foreskin tapering generously like an anteater's snout. Steven blushed at the violation of Ray's privacy, then flinched with self-flagellation to find himself wondering if uncut was the general rule for Asians. Surely not. They were so fastidious.
Shut up
, he screamed in his head.

Ray bucked and rolled on the bed, one arm slamming the bedside table, keeling over the lamp, which Steven snatched midair before it could hit the floor. “If it gets any worse,” said Margaret, “I guess I should tie him down.”

But the snarling and shrieking sank once more to a murmur. The convulsive fury abated, and Ray crossed his hands chastely over his collarbones, pure as a maid. “He looks so clean,” said Steven, somewhat irrelevantly, but in his head he was still wrestling with the images of black puke and blood-soaked washcloths.

“Mm,” she replied dreamily, asleep on her feet. “I wish I could just wrap him up right now in a white linen sheet and walk out of here.”

Just then the snout end of Ray's dick gave a small shiver, and a stream of piss came out, fanning along his inner thigh, pooling by his balls. With a soft moo of resignation, Margaret reached for another white hand towel on the dresser. Even before he had finished dribbling, Margaret was swabbing it up.

“Honestly, I don't know where it all comes from,” she said. “He hasn't had a drop to drink since yesterday afternoon.” She spoke with a queer dispassion, as if it were nothing more than her own modest science project, like sprouting seeds on a windowsill. When she gently lifted Ray Lee's dick to wipe it, Steven was stabbed with a memory of Victor at Cedars-Sinai, the nurse about to plug the catheter in. He turned with a gasp and lurched to the doorway.

Mark sat quietly at the table in the living room, staring out the window at the preening cat. He had set the table with plates and mugs for three, the bag of doughnuts in the center. Sensing Steven's presence, he turned with a sad smile. Steven worked his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He pointed at the table, where the little setup for breakfast suddenly seemed unbearably moving, for Mark could hardly boil water. Steven's eyes filled and blurred. Mark half-rose from his chair.

And then Margaret slipped by Steven briskly, holding the wet towel out in front of her, grimly matter-of-fact. For her sake the two men pulled back from too much feeling. She ducked into the kitchenette and tossed the towel in a bucket by the back door, where the washcloths floated in sudsy water pink with Ray Lee's blood. When she came back in, they sat all three at the table, Steven dry-eyed now, and passed the doughnuts. Mark transferred the coffee from the Styrofoam to the mugs. They each scarfed the first doughnut as if there was a famine on.