In Memory of Angel Clare (17 page)

Michael promptly stopped dancing and casually walked back to them. “You guys need another drink,” he told them. “We all need drinks. Where’s Lloyd?”

Nobody knew and nobody cared. They went to the bar, where Michael was tempted to let the two twits buy their own drinks. They had grown too accustomed to Michael’s money and were not showing the proper appreciation for his company. Then he remembered that spending this money was supposed to accomplish something that had nothing to do with James and Arnie, although he couldn’t remember exactly what. James and Arnie ordered beers and Michael stuck to his gin and tonic. “Never mix, never worry,” he said, then winced when he recognized the phrase was his father’s.

More people arrived but nobody was dancing yet. Michael stood with James and Arnie against yet another wall and watched people. A pack of boys, three or four years younger than they were, stood in the opposite corner in jeans and jerseys. They had a tough, loud quality that made them look like gaybashers. Only the self-consciousness of their haircuts was gay.

“Hmmm,” went James. “The younger generation. Killer twinkies.”

“Isn’t that Lucian Whatzits over there?” said Arnie.

“Lucian Brock?” said James. “It can’t be. I heard he’s real sick.”

“I know. But I’m sure that’s him. Over there in the Armani jacket and gray sweatshirt.”

Michael looked with them and saw a lean man wearing an elegant jacket over a sweatshirt and jeans, a haircut like peachfuzz and hollow cheeks. He knew the name only as that of someone in the art scene, a painter or dealer or something.

“Why does he have to be here?” said James. “I mean, shouldn’t he be at home in bed?”

“Maybe he’s in, what’s it called when you feel better for a while?” asked Arnie.

“Remission,” Michael said. He closed his eyes and turned away. “What’s upstairs?” he asked, pointing at the balcony.

“Another bar. More people standing around looking cool,” said James.

“Let’s go up there. I want to check it out.” Michael wanted to get away from the man they said was sick. He wasn’t afraid of the man; he just didn’t want to look at him. He stole another look at the man as he led James and Arnie toward the stairs.

The balcony was narrow and the rose-colored light made the people who stood up there look like waxworks. Around the corner was a large dark room with another bar and a woman bartender, the woman’s face and glassy bottles behind her all lit from below against blackness. Michael finished his drink so he could order another.

“And two Heinekens for my boys here,” he told the woman.

James set his half-full bottle down so he could take a new beer, but Arnie held up the bottle already in his hand and said, “None for me. I’m fine.”

“
Two
,” Michael repeated and paid for the beers and his gin and tonic with a twenty. “Keep the change.”

“Go ahead and take it,” James whispered to Arnie.

But the new bottle sat on the bar, Arnie pretending not to see it, yet ashamed to know it was there. Trying to hide his shame, he swept his hand over his receding hairline and blandly smiled toward the music outside.

“What’s wrong?” said Michael. “You all of a sudden don’t
like
my money?”

“What?” went Arnie. “Oh no, I’m fine, Michael.” He showed the half-finished beer in his hand again. “I just—You don’t need to spend any more money on me.”

Michael suddenly hated him. He wanted to obliterate him and James with money, buy them a thousand drinks and see them passed out in their own puke. “You and your fag sweaters,” he sneered. “You been sucking off my money all night. Two little whores.”

Arnie gazed dumbly at him, then looked at James, needing James to let him know what to say or feel.

“Uh oh, Uncle Mike’s on the rag,” teased James, shifting his eyes uncertainly inside his glasses.

“You fags make me sick,” Michael spat. “I’ve been wasting my money on two silly fags.” He turned and sailed out of the room.

He felt wonderful for telling them off, as if he’d been wanting to tell them off all night. Tricks, he thought contemptuously. Hiding their nothingness in attitude.

He stood on the balcony and waited for them to trail after him, the way they had trailed after him and his money before. When they didn’t, when he found himself alone on the balcony with his back to the barroom, his wonderful feeling began to fall. He lifted the full glass in his hand and swallowed, gripping the low balcony parapet with his free hand while he gulped a coldness that tasted like pine, something that should lift him above his emotions and turn feelings into mere thoughts. When ice began to knock his teeth and burn his upper lip, he lowered the glass and looked down and saw a few people below, dancing.

A dozen guys danced down there, almost in pairs, with enormous spaces around each person. Most of them were the “killer twinkies” James had pointed out, but there was one boy dressed almost like Michael: the white shirt buttoned at the collar, the lightweight jacket from a dark suit, and then, a sweetly young touch, a pair of baggy gray shorts that hung over his knees, like knickers. Michael was so eager to join the dancing he wanted to vault over the parapet to get down there. He knew it was further down than it felt, knew he was as drunk as a ghost. He balanced his empty glass on the lip of the balcony and hurried downstairs to find someone to dance with.

Down below, it felt less simple and more intimidating than it had appeared from above. Michael scuttled around the edges of the dance floor, looking for someone who stood alone and moved slightly to the music, as desperate to dance as Michael was. He saw Lloyd again, a white T-shirt slumped against a shadowy wall, a lazy look of boredom on his face that seemed intended as a challenge, or invitation. Michael was through with those jerks for tonight, Lloyd too, and he walked by that white shadow without even looking at him. Instead, Michael found himself looking at Lucian Block or Brock, whatever his name was, the man they said was sick.

He stood on the risers in front of the downstairs bar, talking to another man as Michael approached him. He seemed more gaunt than ill, but the idea of his illness made him more real than anyone else here, unnervingly real. The other man was thin and balding, with an anemic mustache that also suggested illness. Once the idea of illness appeared, everyone seemed suspect, the way seeing an amputee on the street can make you feel for the next few minutes that any arm or hand that isn’t in plain sight might not be there. Everyone
was
suspect, but being told this man actually had it concentrated the reality on him. As Michael walked past, he heard Lucian say,”… a little ice chest for my medication.”

He had intended to get as far from them as possible, but he suddenly stopped, just twelve feet beyond them. He remembered he had cigarettes and decided he had stopped here to smoke one. Lighting a cigarette, he could watch the two men, Lucian in particular, who was turned toward him.

He did not know what he was watching for. He did not know why he was afraid of the man. He was not afraid of the disease, not really, not after what he’d been through. Not anymore. But he was afraid of the man and fascinated by his fear, which seemed to be why he stood here and looked. Despite the last drink, his thoughts had turned back into emotions, but he was too drunk to find or invent plausible causes for what he was feeling.

A cheer ran through the entire room. The lights had dimmed, except over the stage at the other end where two smooth young men in white underpants now stood and danced. Michael noticed them, then returned his full attention to Lucian.

The guy with the anemic mustache laughed and leered over the boys on stage. Lucian remained calm and perfect. He had a genuine cool, nothing like that of James or the others when their masks were in place, but a genuine cold wisdom that put him beyond pleasure. Michael felt it must be the death sitting just beneath the man’s skin that made him so silent, handsome, and terrifying.

Lucian nodded at his friend and walked away. He walked by Michael—so close Michael could’ve touched him if he’d been ready—and went to the bar.

Michael followed. He stood just behind him, studying his long thin neck and the freckled scalp visible through his short downy hair. The wrist that stretched from the sleeve of the elegant jacket when he paid for his club soda was like a bundle of wires sheathed in skin. He turned around, settled his back against the bar, and calmly sipped, without seeing Michael.

Michael stepped up to the bar and stood beside him. Not looking at the man, he felt his presence more strongly than ever, like a center of gravity. He turned around, too, glimpsing an enormous speckled ear, settled his own back against the bar, and faced the dance floor, which was so crowded now you couldn’t tell who danced with whom. Because he was drunk, everyone here seemed drunk tonight, drunk and weightless, everyone but the man beside him.

Bodies jostled on Michael’s right as somebody forced his way up to the bar. Michael was pushed against Lucian. He was knocked against the man and imagined he felt bones covered with clothes and virus. He knew that wasn’t so, knew touch was only touch and his terror groundless, but the terror excited him and left him as breathless as the first time he deliberately touched another guy, when he was too frightened to feel anything sexual.

“S-s-s-sorry,” Michael stammered and pushed against the body on the other side of him to give the man room.

“No problem,” said Lucian, his voice deep and whispery, without looking at Michael.

But he had spoken to him and Michael wanted to keep him speaking, so he said the only thought he found in his head, “Would you like to dance?”

Lucian turned a calm smile on Michael. “Thanks. But I’m not much of a dancer these days.”

“Then will you fuck me?”

Calm and smile broke. “What?”

“Fuck me. I want you to fuck me,” Michael pleaded.

Lucian shot frightened looks around the bar. “You know who I am? You mocking me, asshole?”

Breathless and grinning, Michael leaned in closer. “I want you to fuck me, Lucian. I want you to shoot inside me with everything you’ve got!”

“You little psycho!” He pushed Michael away with both hands. “Get away from me you drunk little creep!”

“But I want you to fuck me! Please fuck me!”

“Who put you up to this? Whose sick joke is this?”

And Michael finally realized what he’d been saying. He was horrified. Then he burst out laughing, letting himself know it was only a joke, a disgusting failed joke that now had him laughing hysterically as he backed away from the man. There were people dancing around him, and Michael began to lift his elbows and stamp his feet even as he continued laughing.

The man glared at him, appalled and confused, and turned to the bar, folding his arms across his chest. The man with the anemic mustache hurried over to see what was wrong with his friend.

Michael stopped laughing and slipped between dancers. He moved deeper into the crowd, wanting to lose himself in them, needing to hide from the man he had insulted for being sick. It had been a vile, heartless joke. He couldn’t understand why he had said such a thing, except he was drunk.

There was a small clearing in the dancing crowd. Michael began to dance, hoping to lose himself in that. He felt foolish dancing alone, so he tried to dance with some of the bodies sawing and swaying around him. Nobody looked at Michael. He tried to dance with the two boys in jockey shorts swaying on the bright stage. Their eyes were wide open but they kept their gazes locked above the crowd, like they were dancing alone in their own private rooms without even a mirror for company. Michael closed his eyes and danced in the dark room of his own head. He wanted it to be like running cross-country in high school, when he could disappear inside himself for miles on end, without thought or feeling, just a soothing dreamless sleep carried along by the beat of his track shoes.

He was rocking his hips, moving them in a way he never moved them except when he was dancing or fucking.

“Oh, but I love being fucked by you,” Clarence said again and again.

“You shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” he said later. “I only did it to you once or twice and never without a rubber, right?”

And later still: “I’m not asking you to have sex or even kiss me. Won’t you just let me
hold
you for a few minutes?”

Michael opened his eyes, but nothing outside seemed as real to him as what he was thinking.

Won’t you just let me hold you?

It felt dreamed or imagined, only it came to him with live emotions attached, not just remembered but reborn emotions, feelings that seemed to have been perfectly preserved while frozen in forgetting. Just outside his remembering seemed to stand a mass of forgotten incidents and moments, but all Michael experienced now were the emotions: fear and guilt and more fear. Of Clarence.

He had been too frightened to share his bed, too terrified to touch him. He had hated being in the same room with the illness.

Michael was barely dancing now, just shifting his knees and absently flipping his hands to the music. He did not want to remember this yet. He would remember it later, when there would be a sober calm where he could look at it straight and defend himself against what he’d felt and how he’d behaved. He danced harder, trying to shake away the memory his dancing had shaken loose.

“Watch it, prick!”

He had lost the beat of the music. He moved more wildly, trying to catch up with it again. He spun around and his flying hand hit something.

“You dumb shit!”

Hands pushed him away. An elbow hit his jaw. The crowd suddenly capsized and Michael was on the floor.

He deserved to be on the floor. He wanted to be stepped on and kicked. He had not loved Clarence sick. He had been too selfish and afraid to love a dying man. He looked around and saw a forest of writhing legs. It was like he was inside Clarence’s movie. He had remembered the movie without remembering his fear of the man who made it. It was like he’d been drunk his entire life, to have behaved the way he had and then forgotten it.

He threw himself flat on his back and waited to be trampled into the floor. When nothing happened, when the bodies towering overhead stepped around him, Michael began to bang his head against the floor, wanting to knock himself out.