Afterlife (40 page)

There was a grating noise as the workman slipped the box in. Then he reached for the bronze plate that covered the front and sealed the tiny tomb. Drawing a screwdriver from his pocket, he began to fix the cover in place. Heather, still the only one with tears, was thinking how awful it was that a full-grown man could be rendered so small, but then this was her first. Linda beside her, holding her arm, thought with a shiver how cramped and claustrophobic was the slot in the wall. Fiercely she comforted herself that Marcus Flint was scattered on the mountain, so at least his soul could breathe. Steven wasn't thinking of Ray or even Victor. He held himself back, abstracted, almost bored, yet hungry to be out of here and back in the soup of life. He felt selfish and loved the feeling, greedy to have his time with Mark. He glared at Mr. Corazon with loathing, as if that manicured queen were Death's doorman himself.

The workman put in the last of the four screws on the bronze plate. The lettering on it was all in Korean, ordered months ago as part of the package. The characters probably spelled out Ray Lee's name, but none of the mourners knew for certain. Maybe it was a Shinto scrap of wisdom. There was a proper moment of silence as the workman stooped to the barrow and wheeled it away. For a brief few seconds everyone stopped thinking and stared blankly at the finality of one life shut away.

All but Dell Espinoza, whose eyes were fixed on his sister's hand where it cradled Heather's arm. He hadn't stopped looking at that since he took his place at the end of the line. This time he was sure. He might have been jumping the gun, of course, since he had no way of knowing what had been declared, let alone consummated. But there was no mistaking the intimacy of the touch, the way the two women folded toward each other. Linda's shyness couldn't hide it, nor Heather's little-girl grief. He felt it in his viscera, the last rope slipping loose, the final heave of ballast weighting him still to the ground.

Mr. Corazon raised his brows once more to Margaret, indicating that Forest Lawn's part was over. In response, Margaret raised the veil from her face and tucked it up over the hat brim. The seven mourners broke ranks, turning to greet one another with the ambiguous relief of survivors. Mark laid his roses at the base of the wall. No after-party of any sort was planned, no provision having been made by Ray himself, who was otherwise so punctilious. This was it. No lingering. Margaret led the way out of the garden, allowing Mr. Corazon to take her arm, and was followed by the others in pairs: Steven and Mark, Heather and Linda, Sonny and Dell. A regular procession.

When they reached the line of cars along Eternal Way, Margaret turned to Mark. “I assume you're taking my boss home,” she said, hitching a padded shoulder in Steven's direction. The counselor held the door of the Cadillac open for her.

“Wait, I'll go with you,” Steven protested.

“Please—can't you see Mr. Corazon and I wish to be alone?”

The counselor managed a wincing smile, but he looked as if he'd rather have a root canal than drive down the hill with Margaret Kirkham. She waved good-bye to the little group as Mr. Corazon started the car. Steven knew it wasn't just the wish to put Ray behind her that made her bolt, but also an awkward desire to get out of Mark's and Steven's way, no more crowd of three. Steven saw it and felt helpless, watching her drive away, feeling as if he'd failed her. It didn't seem fair that she had to lose Richard in the bargain, even if he did hate fags.

Dell and Linda were comforting Heather, who was still the most sniffling of all of them. Mark was already waiting in the Jeep as Sonny touched Steven's arm. “I'm leaving real early in the morning. If I don't see you, thanks.”

“But you'll be back,” retorted Steven, putting off all finalities.

Sonny didn't counter him, letting him believe what he needed to. “You know what, Stevie? You're practically the only guy who ever left me alone.” A different sort of passion flashed in his eyes, a vast sentimentality worthy of his father, who wept at Little League games. Sonny threw his arms about Steven's neck. “I'm gonna start over,” he said, choking on the emotion. “Wish me luck.”

It was so raw and naked, how could Steven be cynical? He found himself wrapping the boy in a bear hug, tears stinging his eyes. “Yeah, good luck,” he whispered fervently, touching wood for all of them.

He had never held Sonny before, and for all the rippling muscles in his torso, he seemed unaccountably frail, but perhaps it was just the spillover effect of this week's death and funeral. Certainly Sonny appeared revitalized by the embrace, as if he'd brought off another feeling that didn't stink of desire. He sauntered away toward the Mercedes, no good-byes for anyone else. He waited for Dell to finish with the women as Steven climbed into the Jeep.

“Can we please go get out of these clothes,” Steven pleaded. “I can't stand being a grown-up one more second.”

“I think you're very sexy in a suit. Can we go see Victor?”

Steven felt a sudden knot in the pit of his stomach, as if he'd just been found out. “I don't think that's necessary,” he said.

“I'd like to.”

Steven nodded, unable to think of a reason not to. Mark laid a hand on his knee, very gentle, and he covered it with his own. Tears blurred his eyes again, and he realized with an odd shock that he and Mark hadn't touched at all throughout the burial scene. Was it for Margaret's sake, or Mr. Corazon's, that they'd held themselves back? How would anyone have even known they were lovers? Now, as if to redeem the betrayal, Steven raised Mark's hand to his lips, grazing tenderly over the fingers.

“I love you, Steven Shaw.”

Steven nodded, nuzzling his face in Mark's palm, then pointed left along the rolling hills. Mark had to disengage his hand so he could shift gears. He swung the Jeep in a brisk U-turn, not touching the grass on either side, where the graves came right up to the pavement. Steven gave a vague wave in the direction of the little group remaining.

Only Heather waved back, always an eye on the boss, even through tears. Linda couldn't focus on anything but her brother. There was an air of animation about him as he shifted from foot to foot, as if he had just emerged from a long hibernation. Maybe it was being outdoors again, the quick winter green of the lawn on every side. It didn't seem to matter that it was a cemetery. Something had brought out the gardener in him, like an omen of early spring. As he talked with his hands, he might have been casting seeds in a meadow.

“So we walk out of the zoo,” he was saying to Heather, “and the little one's very quiet.” He glanced impishly at Linda, the butt of his story. “‘What's wrong,
poquita?
You eat too much licorice?' She looks at me very serious. ‘Lorenzo,' she says, ‘I don't want to be a horse no more. I want to be a panda.'”

Heather laughed, charmed by the gardener—but softly, so as not to be rude to the dead. Linda smiled coquettishly, falling back into the role of baby sister. Dazed by his sudden good cheer, she had no idea it was she who'd done it. She saw what she wanted to see, that Dell was coming back to life. She'd prayed for nothing else since Halloween. What she wouldn't see, as he teased her with the past, was how hyper he was. She'd been afraid of his gloom so long that she grasped at anything.

“So that's what you are,” said Heather playfully, making Linda blush. Then to Dell: “I thought she was a unicorn.”

“Because she's magic,” said Dell.

“Stop it, both of you,” Linda protested, never good at being the center of a circle.

“Let me give you girls a piece of advice,” said the older brother, wagging a finger. “Stay away from funerals. The dead, they have each other. Don't forget now.”

Bowing his head in a mock courtly way, he spun around to the gray 380. Sonny started the big engine as Dell climbed in. He turned to look one last time at Linda. Both women were smiling, still basking in all that charm. So it must have seemed like a trick of the failing light that he looked so sad. It was as brief as a spasm of pain, and the next moment they were off, but in that half-second the losses of Dell Espinoza were total. Linda went tense with doubt as the Mercedes pulled away. Then Heather turned and grinned at her.

“He's wonderful,” she said—she who always found something nice to say about everyone. “And he's got great taste in baby sisters.”

Linda smiled at her new friend, and for once let the worry go. Happiness was so simple. She turned to it like a flower in the sun. Fifteen months of being afraid to laugh, afraid to feel, and now it all came back, as easy as riding a bike.

“C'mon, panda,” Heather said softly, taking her hand. They moved toward the Toyota, walking in a garden where death was banished. Everything was going to be fine now, Linda was sure of it. Not only had she found a friend, but Dell had blessed it. Soon he would cease to be a fugitive, and she would be a secretary, and all of them would laugh together like a family.

Across the bowl of the hills, where the cemetery's eastern edge bordered a gully choked with chaparral, dusk was feathering down as Mark and Steven came up the rise. To take the marble edge off death, Forest Lawn had mandated that there would be no gravestones in the park, only bronze plaques set in the lawn, so you had to know where you were going. Victor was between a pair of umbrella pines high on the slope, in an area sparsely populated. The old who did most of the burying couldn't climb that far. The two men's feet were wet to the cuffs by the time they reached the site, and both of them were breathing hard. It looked out over the Valley, clear after the rain all the way to the San Bernardinos. They stood there like a pair of mountaineers, catching their wind, not looking down at the grave yet. Steven straddled the plaque, Mark a step below, waiting till he was ready.

“If you leave flowers, the deer come down and eat them. Sometimes I bring lettuce. Or strawberries.” Steven's voice was thoughtful, very private, as if Mark weren't meant to fully understand the protocols of deer. He stooped to the plaque, the wet grass shaggy around it, and still Mark held back. Carefully Steven gathered off the bronze the sprigs of pine needles blown down in the storm. “Well,” he asked dryly, “aren't you going to say hello?”

“Hi, Victor.”

Mark crouched down beside him. The bronze hadn't tarnished at all yet. It would take the second winter to fur the edges. In block letters it said
VICTOR LOUIS OATES,
and below that the dates, and below that
NO REGRETS
.

“He wanted it just to say ‘Queer,' but I told him I didn't want him desecrated.”

“You think anyone bothers to look at the people they don't know?”

“Sure. Me, I've read this whole neighborhood looking for dead fags.” And he waved his arm, taking in the grassy slope from the line of umbrella pines at the crest to the Jeep on the road below, perhaps a thousand graves. “That's when I used to come every day.”

“And where are you?” asked Mark, emphasis on the pronoun.

It might have been a question heavy with metaphysics, but Steven understood it in purely concrete terms. “Right here,” he said, reaching to pat the grass to the left of Victor. “All paid for, just like Ray.”

A moment's pause, in which they both stopped to wonder where Mark was going to go. He didn't even have a will yet. Where Steven was always waffling between having his ashes scattered and getting planted here, Mark was pointedly silent on the subject. Perhaps it didn't really matter to him, or else it mattered too much.

“How many, would you say?”

“How many what?”

“Dead fags.”

“Oh, maybe twenty in the last three years.” Unconsciously as he spoke, Steven traced his fingertips across the letters of Victor's name, as if he were reading Braille. “That's just counting guys under forty, where it says ‘Beloved Son' or ‘Baby Brother,' that kind of thing. Maybe a quote from
Hamlet
—always a telltale sign.”

It was five minutes to five, closing time. Lights were coming on all across the Valley, and the traffic on 101, heavy with commuters, rippled like neon in the middle distance. The cloudy sky was darkening, and here on the crest of the ridge they were solitary as shepherds, shivering slightly in their suits.

“It's never going to be over, is it?” asked Mark, not really expecting an answer.

“Someday. Not for us.”

“Will anyone understand what it was like?” It was curiously easy, perched on the mountain of death, to speak about the future when all of them would be gone.

“Maybe the gay ones will.”

“Yeah, but they'll have to see through all the lies. 'Cause history's just white folks covering their ass.”

Mark's knees hurt from crouching, but the only concession he made to redistributing his weight was to rest a hand on Steven's shoulder. In a few minutes a pickup truck would rattle along the winding road among the hills, stopping at every parked car. A worker would get out of the truck and, using his hands for a megaphone, shout among the graves that the main gates were closing. Always a car or two overstayed, a fresh widow, a prostrate orphan. A single shouted reminder was usually enough. No one really wanted to spend the night.

“We might as well travel, huh?” said Mark. “Think of all your discounts.”

“Great. Where do you want to go?”

“Everywhere.”

“Okay, but forget India—too many bugs. And Russia, because they can test us at the border and send us to Siberia. Otherwise, we can chalk up some fabulous mileage—”

“Steven.” Mark tightened his grip on Steven's shoulder, pointing into the twilight, sharp as an Indian scout. Barely twenty feet away a deer cropped the grass, or at least it looked that way till the animal raised its head, and they saw in its mouth a bunch of flowers. Coolly it watched the two men as it chewed, big ears faintly quivering but otherwise quite unstartled. Living above the cemetery, where everyone came unarmed, it had unlearned the fear of hunters. When it had eaten all the flowery part, letting the stems and leaves fall to the grass, it trotted a few steps down the hill, but even closer to Mark and Steven. Again it dipped to the ground and fetched a fresh bouquet.