Gossip (33 page)

“Uh-uh, uh-uh.” I let go of Ned to slow the bull’s hand. It only beat harder. I could feel his grin at my ear. His other hand clutched a nipple through my shirt. I threw my head back and saw the cutouts watching, but I didn’t care. I let go, loudly, angrily, too contemptuous to worry about what anyone thought of my moans and spurts.

When I finished, when there was nothing left to expose, the bull withdrew his hand, then himself. I glimpsed his proud smirk slipping out the curtain. The silhouettes returned to their corner—they didn’t know who I was. Ned fished out a pack of Kleenex, dabbed his shorts, then passed a tissue to me. “You get no nooky in jail?” he whispered. “I’d just love to hear the real story, but I have to get home.” He kissed my forehead and hurried out.

Abandoned on the bench, drained and half-open, I wiped off and stuffed myself back in. I was embarrassed over coming in public, and furious with my partners, alarmed by my disgust for them. These were the people Nick wanted to rally around me for the good of a greater cause?

Coming out into the bar, I timidly glanced at the screen, as if my mauling had been projected up there for all to see. I sensed the player piano roll from Gayworld scrolling through heads around the room. The bull in a T-shirt sat with his friend again, gloating in my direction when he showed his friend the fingers that’d done a front-page dick.

“So how did you make out?” asked Peter. “Never mind. You have that guilty why-did-I-bother look.”

“It’s not guilt, it’s—” I sat on the stool and crossed my forearms over the sensation like a runny nose in my lap. “I got mauled in there.”

“Lucky you.”

I shook my head. “No, they were devouring something else. My notoriety. My criminal reputation.”

“Hey. Whatever gets you laid.”

There was no dignity in complaining about an orgasm, but that wasn’t what disturbed me. “Nick’s wrong, you know. People don’t want an innocent man. It’s more fun to think I did it.”

“I could’ve told you that,” said Peter. “They need bad guys. Villains doing all the nasty stuff that they fear they might do themselves. A nice change from their own good gray lives.” He produced a thin, satirical smile. “Why else would anyone give a hoot about total strangers?”

“Then Nick would get more use out of me if I were guilty.”

“Nick doesn’t always get it. He’s old-fashioned that way. Good guys and bad guys.” He shrugged. “I sometimes wonder how much of his greater-cause stuff is for real.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know. I keep meaning to press him on what he hopes to get out of this. Why not do it just for you? You’re in trouble. You don’t feel you deserve his help?”

“I like to think we’re helping each other.”

“You learn to accept favors from anyone who offers. Whatever their reasons.” He gave me a look that seemed half wisdom, half pity. “Nick’s always had a soft spot for you.”

He said it matter-of-factly, without a hint of jealousy, but I quickly insisted, “No. He would’ve done the same for anyone in my position.”

“Would he? I wonder.”

He took a sip of his sidecar and turned back to the video screen, supporting his chin in a long hand whose fingers came up to his temple. A new thought seemed to shut down the light in his eyes.

“Oh look,” he suddenly said. “Sixty-nine. How nostalgic. We used to think sixty-nine the height of fairness. So democratic. So mutual.”

“R
ALPH? MICHAEL DIAZ. THE
grand jury met yesterday. No surprise. They indicted you for first-degree murder. The DA just spoke to me. If you plead guilty to manslaughter, she can get you off with ten years. She said they had you up and down but all she could cite was a taped telephone conversation. So they have it. I’ve already filed a motion in limene.”

Hearing a cool, deadpan voice on my answering machine, the tightrope walker looked down. Ten years? It was like seeing no safety net at all below me. I’d been told the grand jury would probably indict me, but the possibility they wouldn’t had been like a tiny window that gave more light than I knew, until now when it was shut.

I promptly called Diaz. My panic surprised him. He said prosecutors always bluff at this point and he’d rejected the plea bargain. The motion in limene, a motion to eliminate, would remove the tape from evidence on the grounds that it only showed my state of mind when I spoke to Bill and would be prejudicial to a jury.

“You called the DA she?”

“Elizabeth Gaskins, yes.” Unsworth, the fluffy-haired prosecutor at my arraignment, had turned the case over to her.

I disliked how the enemy changed faces. “And a woman,” I said. “I’m being prosecuted by a woman for the murder of a man who wrote a book attacking career women.”

“Oh I see. Yes,” said Diaz. “Well, irony’s such a stock-in-trade that I no longer take notice. I’m not sure what this means. If they gave it to her because it’s become a low-profile case. Or because a female DA will make the prosecution look cleaner if questions of homophobia and sexism are raised.”

“Look at this,” Nick crowed when he and Peter came to breakfast Sunday morning. He slapped down a new issue of
American Truths.
“William O’Connor Remembered,” whispered a triangle in the corner of the cover. I rapidly flipped through the magazine.

“No, no,” said Nick. “The editor’s note up front.”

Under the photo of a mean smile in glasses, the editor began by mourning the death of his “good friend and colleague.” He compared the murder to the “so-called Vincent Foster suicide,” speculating that a liberal conspiracy would save Eckhart from indictment—he was wrong there. He went on to imply that reports of O’Connor’s “lifestyle” were a media smear, trusting readers to forget the eruption on
Nightline.
“Even in death, my good friend remains a victim in a war of words and values.”

“Don’t you see?” said Nick. “We get a battle going between the left and right fringe presses, it’ll snowball. The mainstream will have to pick it up.”

“Good,” I said. “Very good.”

I found “William O’Connor Remembered,” two facing pages of brief tributes and a photo of an ebullient, boyish Bill shaking hands with the corroded waxwork of Ronald Reagan. The remarks were formal nothings about how smart and promising Bill had been, a hint of envy in their terseness. Nobody said anything that made Bill more than a byline. The sole mention of his sexuality was in a paragraph from Ren Whitaker, who discussed his mysterious death. “One should not be surprised if it later comes out that homosexual activists arranged the murder to punish a member of the tribe who rejected their liberal, antifamily line.”

“And people say
we’re
paranoid,” sneered Nick after I read the sentence aloud. He pressed on to other matters, asking if I’d given any thought to what I wanted to say at the fund-raiser, still three weeks away. “You don’t have to make a big speech. Just a few words. You’re an articulate guy. You might want to read a poem.”

I expected a wisecrack from Peter over that, but he just sat there chewing. He looked tired this morning, sullen.

He remained sullen when we left together to walk to the store. I asked if something was wrong.

“Not a damn thing. Just leave me alone.”

We hadn’t talked since our visit to Juice. “What’s eating you, Peter? Was it something I said the other night?”

“You?” he said. “God, it’s always you, isn’t it? You think you do it all, don’t you?”

His anger took me completely by surprise. “No, I just—”

“Forget it.” He quickly regained his temper. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just bored. Bored with the whole business. Aren’t you bored with it?”

“I’m in the middle of it. I can’t afford to be bored.”

“Well, I’m a bystander. I can be bored. Eckhart in the morning, Eckhart in the evening, Eckhart at suppertime. I can’t believe anything good will come of all this sound and fury.”

“We don’t know,” I said. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“A shot in the dark,” he grumbled. “Only who’ll get hit? Forget it. I’m just overdosed on politics and too many meetings in our living room.”

I wondered what had happened or been said over the weekend to spoil his infinite sense of humor. Was he jealous that I’d become the center of Nick’s attention? My crisis created a sibling rivalry? No, Peter was too smart, and too jaded, to think that. Did his bad mood have anything to do with me at all? Maybe it was only fatigue from a new treatment.

I stopped worrying about it while I did my work. Robert was the Sunday manager but constantly came to me with questions. The staff at the store had digested me by now, treating my arrest as one more ongoing story that was slightly more interesting than the usual in-house romances.

The anonymous calls did not begin until the new issue of
American Truths
appeared. Gay men, whether they thought good or ill of me, felt no burning need to hunt me down and share their opinions. Other people felt differently.

“Your kind’s made our country a sick place to live.”

“Jesus loves you but hates your sin. I don’t mean murder.”

“Is this Ralph Eckhart? If not, ignore this message. But I just want you to know that I read you like a book, Ralph Eckhart. You got AIDS and couldn’t bear the thought of O’Connor living when you were dying and so you killed him. You ever show your diseased face here in Jackson, there’s people here who’ll cut you open from your breakfast to your asshole.”

The vilest messages were all left on my machine. When they got me in person, they usually hemmed and hawed and sputtered something about God being tougher than the liberal courts. Most of the callers were men, but one young woman with ribbons in her voice called me scum for saying a cute guy like O’Connor was a faggot.

The calls didn’t upset me. I was bitterly amused, even relieved to learn that I had real enemies out there, people whose fantasies were sincere and psychotic, unlike the notions entertained by my own “tribe.” I received a dozen such calls before I got an unlisted number. It had not yet gone into effect when my phone rang early Saturday morning.

“Hello, dear.”

I hesitated, suspecting a trick. “Mom?”

“Hadn’t heard from you in ages. Just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

She didn’t know. Of course. Most people didn’t know or care. I was amazed by how pleased I was to rediscover that.

“Fine,” I said. “The same old same old. How are you?”

I had, never considered telling my family. How did I begin now? It’d taken me years to come out to my parents. When the case went to trial, then I would tell my mother. What was the point of worrying her now? I gave her my new number, claiming the phone company had asked me to change it.

“You sound a bit down in the mouth. Everything okay?”

“Just a little tuckered out this week.”

“You taking care of yourself? You been safe?” The one danger that she could imagine for me.

“Always,” I said. I took refuge in the ritual of asking about my father, brothers, nieces and the family dogs, Peanut and Reddie, the homely facts of home that I usually discussed with fond yet condescending amusement. Today, however, such innocent, private life seemed profoundly beautiful to me.

“Ralph Eckhart?”

“Speaking.”

“I’m calling to tell you something important.”

I sat in the basement at the store. I feared my hecklers had learned where I worked and the calls would resume.

“Tell your lawyer to contact Detective Harry Williams of the Baltimore City Police Department. Ask him about his investigation of a series of gay-related robberies.”

“Who is this?”

“Unimportant. Just pass that name to your attorney.”

My body remembered before my head; the officious voice reminded me of an urge to hold a stranger’s hand. “Is this Pruitt?” I said. “Agent Pruitt of the FBI?”

Silence, then, “Negative. Somebody else. Someone who wants to make amends for a gross injustice. Harry Williams. Baltimore City PD. You got that? That’s all I’ll say. It’s all you need to know. Good luck.” Click.

It had to be Pruitt. I was stunned by his concern, touched by it. Then I feared a trick, then I called Diaz.

“Interesting,” he said when I finished, his favorite word. Neither good news nor bad could ruffle his cryptic calm. “I’ll look into it. I don’t know what we can do with it. It’ll be useless if they’ve already arrested someone. A hypothetical killer does more for us than a two-bit felon. More important is knowing that this Pruitt might be sympathetic if we need him on the witness stand.”

I was amazed the tip meant so little in the thicket of legal maybes. Diaz continued to assemble the cast for a play that kept changing its script. He’d heard nothing on his motion to eliminate and didn’t expect to for another month.

“Wenceslas hasn’t returned my call.”

“She gets that way,” I said. “I’ll mention it next time I talk to her. She still doesn’t believe there’ll be a trial.”

“Well, no hurry. I just want to get your ducks in a row.”

Diaz had other cases besides mine, of course, and I was temporarily on the shelf. We communicated by phone, but I missed our meetings, his physical presence, the fact of his office. The world remained more out there than ever. You’d think murder would bring you into the center, yet everything continued to occur offstage, coming to me in conversations and phone calls. There were weeks when the chief event in the case was my Friday call-in to Greco, my bondsman, who didn’t care what I did so long as I did it in New York.

In this long unreality, dreams should have been superfluous, yet my sleep was full of dreams. Most were only symbols of what was happening, discharges of the emotions that I couldn’t quite feel when I was awake, such as the dream where I was in a cage with a rat the size of a lion. Armed with nothing but a broom, I desperately swung at its snout; its head broke off and rotting sawdust spilled out. I felt foolish for having been so terrified, and sorry for the rat. I dreamed of a Dickens courtroom, full of fog and gaslight, where I stood in a high witness stand like the prow of a ship, looking out on an audience of children, unsure if this were a trial or a play. When the wigged prosecutor asked for my favorite color, my mind went blank, I couldn’t remember. I woke up gasping and had to remind myself that the trial was months away and Diaz said we’d carefully go over all of my words before I went on the stand.