Drag Queen in the Court of Death (15 page)

I was fascinated by the picture Jaym had created of me and Ronnie. He had dimmed the background until the crystal mobile behind my head was an unrecognizable sparkle, softening the bright colors in the room. My eyes were looking slightly to the side, the same side Ronnie was looking at. It was eerie, unearthly. It made shivers go up and down my spine, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. A few days later I framed it, using the matte and dark red frame I had left over from my previous efforts at nesting and hung it in the living room, right beside the harpsichord.

Ryan was almost finished in the garden. I called the Annex Nursery people who were going to plant the flowers and stock the fish for the pool. Ryan seemed to have withdrawn the last few days. He had done this once before, leaving my bed for several nights, then reappearing all smiles and eager mouth and hands. I wondered if this time he was worried about the approaching end of our contract and had decided to make me miss him.

The secretary from my department at the university called, reminding me of the meeting next week, the forms that were due and to pick up my mail. I had been so wrapped up in the puzzle of Ronnie that I had forgotten about my mail, almost forgotten my job, except for the new graduate course. I was still reading and making notes about that one. I had a carton of unread articles I was meaning to get through, but it was the carton of Ronnie's memories that called to me. I opened it and looked through it again. There was no diary. I must have left it somewhere. I put the box on the bottom shelf beside the Peloponnesian War articles and turned to the table to clear off the junk mail.

The Dharman invitation.
I turned it around and around, studying it for clues. The envelope was hand addressed, either by volunteers, or they had hired someone with good penmanship to give them that personal touch, as charities often do. I suspected the latter. The writing was too good, but with just that erratic feel about it that made it the real thing. But why was I on the invitation list at all? Who put me there? Certainly not Trish. If I hadn't been certain of that before, I was after her visit.
I went to the phone and called Laura.
"How nice to hear from you, Michael," she said at once, ever the gracious lady.
We chatted a few minutes; then I told her about Trish's visit, leaving out Ryan, but not Jaym and his camera. I could hear her smile as we talked. Then I mentioned the Dharman invitation. "So you see, I know it couldn't have been Trish. She'd have been more likely to cross my name off."
"Trish? Of course it wasn't Trish, dear heart. I put your name on the list."
"You? Why?"
"Because it should be there. Your father was one of the founders, and you're a regular contributor. Why shouldn't it be there?"
"Laura, you're amazing. I never thought of you."
"I imagine you rarely do," she said.
I drew back from the receiver, physically recoiling from the simple truth of her words.
"Are you going?" Laura asked.
"Why should I?"
"I don't know. Just to see Trish in action, perhaps?"
"Laura, you devil." I began to smile. "You mean in reaction, don't you?"
"Why don't we go together?" she went on, as if we did this sort of thing all the time.
"You're an evil woman," I said, "and I love evil women."
"I never much liked Trish," Laura said, "did you?"
"You know there was never any love lost between us," I said.
"Perhaps you should bring your young photographer friend too," Laura went on primly.
My jaw dropped. "You really don't like her, do you?"
"She tries so hard she misses the whole point sometimes, don't you think?" Laura went on. "This is a charity. Perhaps she doesn't know the meaning of the word."
"You're on," I said.
"We
are
still married," she said
"And now I remember why."
She laughed and hung up.
I wondered what Trish had done to Laura recently, or if this went back to their school days at Branksome Hall, and Laura was finally letting loose. I wondered if I would really have the nerve to take Jaym and his camera. What would he think of it all?
Ryan had ordered a pizza earlier and was now sprawled in the garden eating it. Julie sat beside him, her elbows on her knees, hunched over as she talked and smoked.
What could she find to talk about with him?
I wondered. They had nothing at all in common.
No more than he and I
, I reminded myself, but what was between us had nothing to do with words. I warmed up a quiche in the microwave and ate it as I finished one of the never-ending articles on the Spartans.
About an hour later, I drove Ryan over to Ronnie's place to help lug cartons of rubble out of the basement apartment. The place was always bathed in a greenish underwater cast as the long row of narrow windows looked onto the garden and the light was filtered through grass. I thought it was eerie. Ryan pronounced it cool.
The last tenant had been a real packrat. There were papers everywhere, divided into newsprint, circulars, advertising, and magazines. Maybe he had sold it as scrap. Was that possible? There were also piles of old clothes tossed in a corner of the walk-in closet in the hall.
"Gross," said Ryan, shoveling it all into plastic garbage bags.
"When this place is cleaned out, it'll need painting," I said. "Nothing fancy, white will do. Can't rent it like this."
"White is boring," Ryan said.
"Maybe, but it's safer. You want to see a nonboring paint job, come on upstairs to Ronnie's place."
I led the way to the third floor and was ashamed to see I was out of breath when we got there. Ryan was suitably impressed. "Cool," he said, walking through the rooms. "Amazing!"
He touched the mobiles, sending a shiver of sound through the air. He went over to the Wall of Death and studied the pictures there. "Hey, I know this place!" he said, pointing to the one of Ronnie outside some store. "I've been there."
"Where is it? Some friends and I were wondering the other day."
"It's in New York City, man."
"And you've been there?"
"Yeah. When we had that fight, remember? I crashed with some guys I knew and they were going to New York in an old van one of them had, so I went along. It was cool."
"What did you do?"
"The usual. You know. Cruised the bars, went clubbing. What else?"
Of course.
"And you went to that shop?"
"Sure. It's like, famous, you know? It's even in the gay guides. Like Stone Pub."
"Stonewall Inn."
"Whatever."
"Why? What's famous about this place?"
"It was a real hangout in the old days, you know? The old queen who owned it put a display in the window of naked guys and it got the place closed down for a while. And they used to have orgies upstairs above the store. Going there was a bit of a downer, ya know? Just an old, junky place now. Dusty statues and shit. Old furniture."
"An antique store."
"Yeah. Boring."
"What's it called?"
"I don't know. The name of some street in the gay village. A guy's name."
"Houston?" I gave it both pronunciations, just in case.
Ryan shook his head. "A first name."
"Christopher Street?"
"Yeah, yeah. Christopher Street Curious, or something."
"Christopher Street Curios, maybe?"
"Whatever." Ryan had lost interest and was now looking at the picture of me and Ronnie in front of Shits Hall.
"Yes, that's me."
Ryan grinned. "Groovy outfit, man."
I took down both pictures of Ronnie outside the store and put them in my shirt pocket. Funny I had found no mention of the store in any of his writings, but he hadn't started the diary until coming to Toronto, so maybe that wasn't so strange.
* * * *

That night I called Deb and asked her about the store in New York. Ronnie had never mentioned anything to her about it. We talked for a few minutes. She had a good lead on a placement for her parents and had managed to get their names on the accelerated list because of their situation. She sounded in better spirits when I hung up.

"I'm taking a mental health day," he said. "I need some downtime."
I asked him about making an enlargement from an old photo. He asked a few questions about the sort of shape the original was in and agreed to give it a try.
"You're not far from me," I said, "I'll drop them off sometime later tonight or tomorrow morning."
"I'll get right on it," he said.
I put the photos in an envelope with Jaym's name and address on it and put it on the table by the front door.
I sat in my rocking chair, gazing out at the garden that was finally taking shape. I had been in London and Amsterdam in the late '60s, and I tended to go back there instead of to New York for my holidays. When I did visit the Big Apple, it was for the opera and ballet and art galleries, often on long weekends. I remember going to A Different Light, the gay bookstore in the Village, but no one had invited me to any orgies above an antique store.
Who did I know who would have this kind of information? I thought of Glori Daze. Maybe. But I couldn't see Duane having the money to get there in the '60s. He wasn't really making money until quite a bit later. I ran a few more names through my mind. And then I thought of Lew.
I stood up abruptly and paced through to the living room, and back again. Lew. Did I want to talk to him? No. Would he know what I wanted to know? Probably. How much did I want to know this?
Then I thought of the gay archives. If the place was famous enough to be in some gay guidebook, as Ryan had said, I might have some luck with them, even though it wasn't in Toronto. I fired up my laptop and logged on to the Gay Blade. In a few hours I had my answer, from several people. As I had suspected, Christopher's Curios was nowhere near as famous as Stonewall Inn, but what Ryan had told me was essentially true. It was
the
party place for boys and men in the '60s. And it had been closed down several times for "obscene displays" involving nude male statues in its window. The owners had taken the case to court and had won. The place was owned by Misha Vishnikov and his partner, whose name was never mentioned anywhere that my online friends knew of. Clever of him, I thought. One of them quoted an article about the place by a gay lib activist, but even the spin he put on it made me wonder about the age of the boys mentioned. Ronnie was seventeen that summer. Misha's age seemed to be midthirties. The "old queen" Ryan had mentioned, perhaps. I grinned. All things are relative.
Ryan was playing MuchMusic loud on the TV in his room, and I could smell smoke, though I suppose he had the window open. On impulse I grabbed my keys and the envelope with the photos, went outside, and walked down the street to Logan's. As I went into his apartment, I noticed the place was beginning to have that sickroom smell, probably from the ointments and lotions he used liberally on so much of his body. He would hate that. I imagine he was so used to the smells, he was no longer aware of them.
"How's it going?" he asked, pulling himself up straighter in his padded chair. A plate of half-eaten vegetables was on the table.
I told him about Christopher's Curios and showed him the pictures.
"You get leads from the most unexpected sources," Logan said, squinting at me in the bright lamplight.
I adjusted the shade and agreed.
"You want to go to New York." It was a statement. I didn't answer. "You don't need my blessing, you know."
I went to his small kitchen and fixed us the green tea he consumed in such quantity. I added lemon and gave him his.
"Fall is creeping inexorably closer," I said.
He grunted.
"I want to know," I said.
"Are you sure this is something you
need
to know?" he asked. "How much can you handle?"
Good question. I shrugged.
Logan slurped at his tea. "Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go," he said. "If this were last year, I'd come with you."
For the first time I realized how tired he looked, and felt guilty. "I'd love that," I said. "When I get back, I'll give you all the details."
"All of them, mind," Logan said sharply. "Every sleazy, titillating bit."
I laughed. "I doubt there'll be much sleaze or titillation," I said. But I wondered. What would I find there? Memories? Shadows? Ghosts? I realized that in that brief span of time, I had made up my mind to go. And Logan had known that when I came in the door.
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Jaym dropped in with the photos two days later. It was early evening, and Ryan was just leaving to go to a movie with some friends. He had even invited me, which I appreciated but would never consider. That way lies feeling your age. Jaym's quiet maturity, on the other hand, made me almost forget his boyish good looks and relative youth.

I showed him the garden, and he got the concept right away.
"This is going to be wonderful," he said, looking around. "I love water gardens. I'd like to have one myself, but I'm afraid I'd forget to do some vital thing and the place would flood or something. I live in a condo. They wouldn't appreciate it."
I laughed. When I had dropped off the photos a few nights ago, I had been surprised by the upscale building he lived in. When I looked at him more closely, though, I realized his clothes were expensive, high-end labels, but they were lived in and he wore them with a casual disregard I found quite attractive. Seeing him always with Ellis had colored how I perceived Jaym. Did he use his drag queen friends as a camouflage? I wondered.
He had done a great job with the photos. Ronnie's young face smiled out at me with the mischievous spontaneity I remembered so well. That smile had really never changed. I glanced at the framed photo of us both on the living room wall. Jaym smiled when he saw it there.
"I'm afraid this one's not quite good enough to frame," he said, misreading my look. "I tried to get rid of some of the age spots, but there are a few things I couldn't do anything about. It's pretty old."
"It looks to me as if you've done quite a lot," I said. "How much do I owe you?"
"Please, Michael. Don't insult me."
"God, you are unusual for your age!" I exclaimed.
He shot me a sudden hard look. "You don't really know me," he said.
"I'd like to."
His face softened at once. "I'm sorry. It's just that.... for one thing, I'm older than I look."
"How old?"
He grinned. "I'm thirty-three."
"I thought you were Ellis's age."
"It's useful in some ways. People tend to underestimate me."
I bet
, I thought. Floor trader. I can see it now. The tap dancing, well, that was a bit harder to grasp.
As if reading my mind, he said, "Tap dancing is good exercise, you know. Besides, it's fun."
"I don't doubt it!" I would have to be really careful around this man.
I opened a bottle of the Beaujolais I had made last fall. It wasn't bad, and it made our quiet hour sitting in the garden with no light but the two citronella torches a little special. I was totally relaxed when he rose to go.
"Thank you for a pleasant evening," he said, shaking my hand.
"I'm going to New York for a few days," I said. "I'll give you a call when I get back and we can arrange about the beer making."
"Have a good trip," he said and disappeared into the summer night.
* * * *