Arkansas (19 page)

“I'm fine,” Phil repeated patiently. “Anyway, Justin—my buddy—he takes care of all that for me.”

“Oh, your buddy.”

“Yeah.”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“That's right. Still, you're nice to offer.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Well, see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

He waved goodbye with the remote control.

As I let myself out I heard the television switching back on.

 

Now, about the buddy: I would be a liar if I didn't admit that even at this early stage of my friendship with Phil, the knowledge of his presence made me jealous. This was an irrational reaction, of course. After all, I was in no position to make a claim on Phil, or deny him the right to all the help he could get. And yet something about the way the buddy's name kept coming up made me nervous. For that matter, something about his
name
made me nervous: Justin. It sounded like granola and good teeth. Brown ankles. Penny loafers without socks.

In my imagination the buddy blossomed into a nemesis: handsome, young, in better shape than I was; the sort of fellow who would never hang out at the Circus of Books, or talk on phone sex lines, or balk at eating an Angels' lunch. If he were a writer, I decided, he would probably be the kind who worked diligently, getting up at seven every morning so he'd have time to make coffee and take the dog on its walk. Probably he flossed regularly. Probably he owned a Lexus, and listened to Scarlatti, not Dr. Delia, when he drove.

In the world, meanwhile, I was starting to have lunch with Phil every day. Sometimes I even brought him extra goodies, fruit smoothies and whole-wheat fig bars, to supplement his regular meals. This went strictly against policy, as I later learned. In lawsuit-happy L.A., the last thing the Angels wanted was to be held responsible for food poisoning. And yet I knew Phil would never squeal on me. He liked organic fig bars too much—and he liked me. Soon we were openly colluding in defiance of our overseers, with the result that our friendship shed its volunteer-client protocol. Officiality faded into the background. It was understood that even if I quit delivering, I wouldn't quit delivering to Phil.

At that time I didn't have many friends in L.A. Oh, I had plenty of acquaintances—some cousins whose number my mother had given me, my bosses at the production company, men I'd arranged to meet after talking on the phone sex line. With none of these people, however, could I enjoy the easy, uninflected intimacy I shared with Phil. Not that we did much together. Usually we just watched videos; or we talked; or we sat next to each other on the sofa and didn't talk, while outside the drawn shades kids splashed in the swimming pool. This not talking in particular was a new experience for me, since in the past I had always shrunk from silence; indeed, my relationship with Julian might best be described as a nine-and-a-half-year conversation driven by fear, as if to stop talking would be to stop living. But from Phil I was learning that those couples Julian and I had always pitied in restaurants, the ones who didn't say a word to each other, might actually have been happier than we were, might have been not talking not because their marriages had collapsed into stagnation and aridity, but because they had reached that level of comfort and mutual ease that obviates the need for chatter. Or, to invert that famous act up slogan,
SILENCE
does not necessarily =
DEATH
; sometimes it =
LIFE
. Yet so few people seem to know that.

One day when I arrived with lunch he asked me rather sheepishly if I might do him a favor. That afternoon he had his weekly checkup at a nearby AIDS clinic. Usually Justin drove him, but Justin's car had gotten sideswiped on the 101.

“So you want
me
to bring you?” I asked—a little startled, if truth be told.

“Hey, if it's a problem, don't worry,” Phil said. “I can take the bus.”

“No, no, of course it's not a problem. I'd be delighted. I'd be—” I didn't say thrilled, lest I sound too much like that actress, getting off on her own virtue. And yet my heart raced, my skin flushed. I cringe to admit it, but the prospect of driving Phil to his checkup excited me.

He went into his bedroom; didn't shut the door. Out of the comer of my eye I watched while he shed his polo shirt and cutoffs, threw off his flip-flops, stood naked before the dresser sorting through boxer shorts and T-shirts and wads of white socks. And I thought, Anyone else, anywhere else, this would have been exhibitionism; this would have been seduction. And yet with Phil you could never be sure. It was possible he was giving a show, but it was also possible that his willingness to undress in front of me sprung from an absolute unconsciousness of sexual effect: the nonerotic immodesty of locker rooms.

I turned away, pretended I wasn't looking as he pulled on faded blue boxers, a V-neck T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes and a rayon shirt patterned with bougainvillea: a really ugly shirt, I thought at first, until I noticed that his chest hair spilled out the collar with the same exuberance as the bougainvillea. Phil had so much chest hair you'd have had to dig for his nipples.

“Okay,” he said, coming into the living room. “I'm ready.”

“Let's go.”

We stepped outside. “Hot today.”

“Did you put on sunblock?”

“I forgot. Whoa, that's bright!” Squinting into the light, he felt his pockets for dark glasses.

I unlocked the passenger door.

“This is a nice car,” he said, getting in. “What is it, a Pontiac?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I'm not really a car person.”

Phil laughed. “You're one of a kind, Jerry. You're the only person I've ever met who didn't know what kind of car he drove.”

“Hey, it's a rental! Anyway, in New York no one has a car. A car is a liability.”

I turned the key in the ignition. Immediately Dr. Delia's loud voice boomed out the speakers. “And so we send our kids the message that it's all right to behave in these inappropriate ways—”

I shut her off as we pulled out onto Saturn Street.

“I used to own a Jeep Cherokee like that one,” Phil mentioned. “Cobalt blue. I'd only had it six months when I got sick.”

“You sold it?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Why?” Phil looked at me incredulously. “Because I didn't have any money, that's why.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't ... of course that's why you sold it. I have this bad habit. I talk before I think.”

“You don't need to apologize. But anyway, yes, I had to sell it, see, when I came down with PCP, I didn't have health insurance, only life insurance. And suddenly I was looking at, like, fifty thousand bucks in medical expenses. So first I went to one of those, what do you call them, viatical brokerage services, you know, where you can cash in your life insurance if you're terminally ill? But I only got half what the policy was worth. So I work out this payment plan with the hospital. Then just when everything looks like it's going to be okay, like I'm going to be able to dig out after all, this queen in Pacific Palisades I'd done a kitchen for up and sues me. The sink sprung a leak or something. Well, I don't know if you've had much experience with lawyers, but they'll sic the Dobermans on you twice as quick as any car dealer. So it was ‘swing low, sweet Cherokee'...my beautiful car's swan song.”

His voice faded.

“That's lousy, Phil,” I said.

“Oh, it's not that bad. I can always take the bus if I need to.” He cranked open his window. “Still, there's nothing quite like cruising down La Cienega on a hot day, is there, Jerry? Listening to talk radio. You get hungry, maybe you pull into the Beef Bowl, or have a hot dog at the Hot Dog. You ever been to the Hot Dog? ‘Where eight inches is only average.' That's their slogan.”

“I'll go this afternoon.”

Phil grew quiet. It seemed we were lapsing into one of those easy silences of which in the past I'd been so distrusted. I looked at him: elbow bent in the open window, shirt collar billowing. And I thought, Movement really is his medium. Really, he belongs behind the wheel of a cobalt blue Cherokee, drinking Coke from a huge plastic go-cup as he heads up to—where? Ventura? Lompoc? Some on-the-way place that had never felt like a destination in its life.

And now we were passing a coffee shop straight out of
The Jetsons,
a chunk of L.A. cold war architecture that startled by virtue of its very incongruity: the past's fantasy of the future, grown old. This coffee shop had fins and upthrusts. It had an aerodynamic logo like the emblem on Captain Kirk's chest. It was called Ships, naturally, below the name, the words

 

NEVER
CLOSED

 

shrinking away to nothing.

“Ever eaten there?”

“Ships? Sure. I remember when I first came down from

San Francisco—this was years ago—we passed it on the way from the airport, and I made George pull over. George was my lover then. Every table had its own toaster, which at the time I thought was pretty cool. I must have been twenty, twenty-two.”

“We could go for lunch one day. Maybe on Sunday.” The Angels didn't deliver on weekends.

But Phil only shrugged. “The place is sort of sad now. Mostly old men eat there. The waitresses are old. There's even this little disclaimer on the menu, for people who like their food spicy. It says, ‘We are salt and pepper cooks.' That always broke my heart, ‘We are salt and pepper cooks.'”

“Do you think it's a coincidence, Ships being so close to Saturn Street?”

“It's a good question. To be honest, I never thought about it. But maybe. I mean, L.A. in the fifties was so hung up on this idea of itself as the future. Now all that tomorrow-land stuff's become nostalgia. You know what I'm talking about.” And he intoned, “The housewife of the future need never ruin her hands doing dishes! Robots will take care of all those everyday chores, leaving her plenty of time for leisure activities.”

“Cars are a thing of the past. The businessman of the future flies to work in his personal shuttlecraft.”

“Nuclear-powered monorails have done away with pollution.

“Underground cities leave the surface of the earth an immense park for everyone's enjoyment.”

“Vacation time? ‘What'll it be this year, honey? Venus?' ‘But Jim, we did Venus last year!' ‘I want to go to Mars!' ‘Hush, Junior! You know we can't afford Mars!' ‘But, honey, I just read in the paper, United has a special family rate to Mars, only three thousand monetary units!' ‘Hooray! Junior can have his vacation on Mars after all!'”

Phil stopped. I looked at him, amazed.

“Is that real?”

“God knows where it came from. Something stuck in the memory banks. Another one I like is ‘Blastermen, activate your scopes.' Have you ever seen—”

The hospital's monstrous facade interrupted him. It filled the viewscreen. Yanking us from space, it pinned our bodies to the earth; demanded obeisance, sacrifice.

I parked in the immense garage. We undid our seat belts, stumbled out of the car into the cool shadowy air. Up we rode in the elevator, up floor after floor to the AIDS clinic, which turned out to be as aggressively cheerful a place as the Angels kitchen, its walls papered with safer sex posters and posters of bright-eyed men and women declaring their HIV positivity and signed headshots of minor celebrities who had once visited, leaving behind these relics so that no one would ever forget they had done a good deed.

We sat down to wait. Across from us a man in a jogging suit was reading
Highlights for Children.
A woman next to him held
Arizona Highways.
Phil was thumbing through an old issue of
Smithsonian.

I remembered as a kid sitting in dentists' waiting rooms, rifling through stacks of old
Highlights for Children.
I always looked for the “Goofus and Gallant” column, in which the behavior of a very good boy, Gallant, was contrasted with that of his less than polite cousin: “Gallant offers to help Mother with the dishes”; “Goofus leaves the table without saying thank you.”

What would have been a modem equivalent? “Gallant asks, ‘Am I hurting you?'” “Goofus says, ‘Shut up and take every inch of it, faggot.'”

Needless to say, I'd always had something of a crush on Goofus.

A nurse in street clothes emerged from behind some swinging doors. “Hey, child,” the nurse said, rubbing Phil's shoulder. “And where's Mr. Justin today?”

“He got sideswiped. This is Jerry, by the way. Jerry, Lamar.

“Nice to meet you, Jerry.” Lamar offered me his long brown hand to shake. “It was very good of you to give Master Featherstone here a lift.”

“My pleasure.”

“Well, I hope you enjoy our fabulous selection of magazines. In the meantime, Phil, Paula's ready for you.”

“Okeydoke.” Standing, Phil followed Lamar toward those ominous swinging doors.

“Bye-bye,” Lamar said.

“Bye-bye,” I said.

“Oh, and by the way, Phil, tell Justin if he still hasn't sold that Soloflex, I might know someone who's interested...”

They disappeared. I fell back into my seat. I was thinking of all the waiting rooms I'd languished in during my childhood: most particularly the waiting room of Dr. Craig, our G.P., where I read “Goofus and Gallant” while my mother knit, and in the corner the fish in the fish tank swam from one end to the other; turned around with a single jerk; swam back. There was a diver in that tank, an open buried treasure from which bubbles rose. Probably because I feared needles, even the most mundane visit to Dr. Craig provoked in me that peculiar admixture of fear and boredom for which no quantity of fish tanks or “Goofus and Gallant” columns can serve as antidote. Fear and boredom: it is the odor of waiting rooms. Even now, the accompanying friend, I still smelled it.