Like People in History (67 page)

"What did you do?" I asked Alistair.

"I stopped, looked abashed, said, 'Silly me. I forgot. Why not just send them to me via Federal Express!'"

"He should have," I said, when I was done laughing.

"You
would have," Alistair agreed, standing up suddenly. "Which reminds me, I have to call my friend in L.A. and tell him about Bernard Dixon."

"Everything good?" Demetrio stopped by the table to ask once I was alone. A nice touch, I thought, since he must know Alistair was tipping.

He'd no sooner gone than someone else hove into view: a rather large, all but bald man in a stylish linen suit, who'd entered the place not five minutes before in trio with two slender women, all of them obviously very "Design and Decoration."

"Jerry Barstow," he now said, approaching the table rather shyly yet intently. "I used to see you in the Pines."

He had seemed somewhat familiar. I wondered whether to stand up, invite him to sit, or what. His hesitation was understood.

"I've got to get back to my table," Barstow explained. "Clients." (So he
was
a decorator!) "I really just wanted to ask about his condition."

Complete confusion—for a second I thought Barstow meant Alistair—when Barstow said, "Matt Loguidice, I mean. Scott Rubin told me— Oh God! I've said something wrong, haven't I?"

I was aware that I'd automatically begun to stand up. Then all strength left my legs and I had to hold onto the table.

"I thought you knew," Barstow defended himself. "I thought if anyone knew..."

"We've been out of touch," my mouth said. "What hospital?"

Barstow named a local hospital. "Look, I'm sorry." He backed away. Was back at the table with his clients.

I tried to push out the single image that leapt into my mind: Matt's face pasted over Calvin's, in those last awful moments at the hospice.

Alistair was back at the table, sitting down, saying something. "...left a detailed message on his machine. You would have been proud of it. You okay, Cuz?"

Matt's dying and Alistair doesn't know, I thought. Matt's dying. I can't let Alistair find out. He can't already know or he'd have told me! Or would he, like Barstow, assume I already knew? It was all too complex.

I panicked.

"It must be the play and all...," I muttered. Standing up, I felt steadier. Alistair was staring at me.

"Why not wait a sec. I'll pay and see you ho—"

Alistair didn't know. Or he did know and was specifically not telling me. Perhaps the entire dinner had been designed to hide the single, awful fact.

"No!
No," I said. "I'll get a cab. I'll be okay."

"Why not wait a sec. I'll pay and step out with you."

Why? Did he now realize that I knew? Had he seen Barstow at the table? Did he suspect Barstow had told me? Would he deny knowing it or...? It was all too complex and difficult. And Alistair was complicating it more.

I just want out of here, I thought. Away from this!

"I'll be okay. Really."

As I reached the door, I wasn't so lost in thought that I didn't hear Alistair say, "I'll call you tomorrow."

"That's a pretty sick-looking boycott!" I moaned. Either this play was going to kill me or I was going to kill it.

Onstage, Eric, David M., Sherman, Big Janet, Sal, and David B. marched in a tight oval, necessarily even tighter because of the narrow stage. All of them wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and were carrying picket signs. Three of the men were clad in light-hued polyester suits, cut close at the chest and shoulders, with narrow lapels. Sal alone sported a pale purple turtleneck and a glen-plaid jacket. His olive slacks were more peg-legged than the others', aspiring to pedal-pushers. Socks were visible through his open-toed leather shoes. David B. and Big Janet had pale pastel kerchiefs wrapped around their heads with Helen Gurley Brown "working girl" A-line skirts and "sensible" shoes. All six carried protest signs with tame sentiments like "End Official Persecution of Homosexuals!" and "First Amendment Rights—No More Postal Discrimination!"

"I don't know, Blasé! It's so lame!"

"That's
exactly
how many protesters were photographed!" Blaise defended. "Cynthia! Do you have those shots of Mattachine at the Postal Service?"

Anthony and David J. entered stage left, David a cop, Anthony (anachronistically—it was the fifties) a black newspaper photographer. They said their lines. The picketers marched their oval.

"I hate this play!" I groaned. "Hate. Hate. Hate."

"Cyn-thee... Ah! Look, Rog. Six people in these photos. Five in this one."

"I knew you were right. Anyway we have no more cast."

"There's always Henry," Cynthia half joked.

Henry was her assistant, who when the play opened would already be onstage a good deal of the time, moving around those objects that constituted what little set they possessed.

"Hen-ry!" Cynthia and Blaise called.

The compact lad was pushed onstage as an "onlooker."

"Maybe he should carry an anti-gay sign?" Cynthia suggested.

"This was the first ever protest by a gay group! An onlooker would be more astonished than anything," I said.

"Look astonished, Henry!" Blaise directed. "Move closer to Anthony and David J. Frightened Hets snuggling together."

"I still think it's too scrawny!" I said.

"If you'd seen the original Battle of Bunker Hill, you would have thought
that
was too scrawny."

"Let me try something with the lights," Cynthia suggested. Back at her booth, she dimmed the stage and lighted an inner oval so that the demonstrators had no shadow, while the few others had towering shadows: more menacing.

"Fab-u-lous! I have an idea. Take five!" Blaise instructed the actors, who gratefully fell out. He ran up the aisle to confab with Cynthia. The actors shook themselves limber, lighted cigarettes, sat in front-row seats chatting, ate yogurt, went to take a leak. David B. and Eric faced off, pushed each other, kissed: love in bloom.

I couldn't
staaaaaand
another minute of it.

The problem wasn't the scene, which sucked. It wasn't even the play, which completely sucked. I'd realized that already. It would be a complete fiasco, and there was nothing but to see it through to the end. No matter that the producer, Ivan "Bob" Jeffries, was an alcoholic sleazebag and could care less about the production, despite having declared that the play must succeed or it was curtains for the entire company. No, I would see it through for Blaise and Cynthia, bless them, who still had creative ideas; or Sal, who thought his portrayals of Harry Hay and Roger Casement were worth an Obie; or for Big Janet and Henry and the three Davids.

A day-and-a-half had passed since Barstow's news about Matt, and in that day-and-a-half I'd been virtually paralyzed. Morally paralyzed, for sure. Once I was in the taxi fleeing Alistair, I'd broken down, wept, thought, I'd better get tested again! I realized with some internal Delphic certainty that I wasn't infected: it had swept like a raging fire over the plain, had taken light everywhere around me, on every branch and every twig and blade of grass, and for some unknown reason, not on me: I would never sicken like the others, never die of this. My doom was of another kind. Perhaps survival was to be my doom. With the knowledge that the dying alone seem to comprehend, of how things truly were, Calvin had all but said it. With his intuition, Matt would also know. Maybe that was why, after I saw the taxi shoot past K-Y Plaza into the hospital's neighborhood, I'd shouted for the driver to change destinations. Yet once the cab arrived at the hospital, I'd changed again and had the cabby drive me home, to Chelsea. Perhaps that was why, although I'd spent the better part of two nights awake thinking of nothing but Matt sick and hospitalized, I'd done nothing about it. Not one single thing.

"That your
Post
?" David J. stood in the aisle.

"It's Blaisé's. Go ahead, read it!"

"Just want to see my horoscope," the young actor riffled to page six to check gossip, then farther inside the paper. "Mnnmm... Umnh!... Ah!"

Was he flirting? Who could tell anymore? All the actors were respectful around me. Too respectful, really, for my taste.

"She seems on today!" David commented. "What's yours?"

I pointed to the appropriate sign.

David read: "'Constant improvement in beautifying...'"

"Too late for that!"

"'...important projects'!" David continued. "That sounds right. And... 'Someone from your past is more wonderful than you thought possible.'"

"You're kidding?"

David offered the paper. "I told you she was on today!"

Matt. This meant Matt. I couldn't put off visiting Matt any longer. Matt couldn't be as bad as I feared. He couldn't.

"Phone call for you, Mr. Sansarc," Sherman shouted from behind a panel that led backstage. He left the pay phone receiver hanging.

"Doesn't anyone answer the phone there? I've been ringing all morning," Alistair all but chirruped from the other end.

"We shut off the bell during rehearsal."

"I assumed that whatever it was that sent you fleeing from me the other night is
not
contagious and has quite passed?"

"How did you find me?" was all I could think to ask.

"I called an old pal at
Variety.
They know everything about every show in rehearsal. And lucky for the two of us, your little theater is only footsteps away from my favorite Chelsea restaurant. So mark in your penis-length
Day at a Glance
'Lunch. Tomorrow. Noon.'"

"I can't."

"Then tomorrow at one! Don't say no. You're not escaping, Cuz. I've found you and I'll haunt you until you buy lunch at Claire and let me sit in on a rehearsal."

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Alistair."

"Of course it's a good idea! If I know your young actors—and I must say I
have
known my share of young actors—they'll simply gloat on having an audience, no matter how small, if they think it's someone important. And you'll tell them I am. Well, you needn't even do that. They'll
see
I am. And don't tell me the show isn't ready to be seen. How can you expect me to go around trumpeting your play if I've not seen one rehearsal? Tomorrow. One."

"You done?" Big Janet pointed to the receiver dangling from my hand. "'Cause if you are, I need to use it."

"Check this!" Blaise enthused when I returned. "On your marks, kids! Lights!"

It was unclear at first what Cynthia and Blaise had concocted: the scene looked the same. But it did feel more alive. The protesters seemed more highlighted, more isolated; the three in the back seemed even more a crowd, even more menacing. Why?

"It's audiotape. A crowd scene. Car traffic? Is it subliminal?"

"Audible but low," Blaise confirmed. "Cynthia! From the top."

The scene seemed a smidgen less awful. The others seemed pleased. Blaise repeated it, then called a longer break.

The small theater emptied as actors rushed out to local delis and take-out stands to replenish their strength. Blaise hit the backstage phone to continue the ongoing argument with his boyfriend that was about all they still had left of a relationship. In back, Cynthia and a woman in the control booth had their arms wrapped around each other.

A silence developed.

"It's moments like these... that... I'd prefer... a Pall Mall!" I heard myself dopily utter the fifties commercial to no one.

I jumped out of the seat, up the aisle, and into the little lobby. I knew. I'd
phone
Matt! Phone and get an idea of how Matt sounded about whether I was welcome or not. What was the room number I'd gotten yesterday from Patient Information?

In the theater lobby, I waited as Matt's phone went unanswered.

"He may be out of the room," the hospital operator suggested.

I made her try once more. Cynthia was emerging from the control booth and with her the more spiffily dressed other woman. They turned in profile to me. I almost dropped the phone. Wasn't that...?

"Rog, meet Second Why," Cynthia said, proud as the young Liz Taylor with Pie in
National Velvet.

"Second Why?" But the silly nickname made instant, horrible sense. For the sportily dressed woman, lightly but securely gripping Cynthia

by her jumper strap, was none other than Sydelle Auslander. And she was beautiful. Well, as beautiful as Sydelle would ever be. Full, sleek, voluptuous. Not thin and haggard. But somehow the Emily Dickinson word "ample" came to mind. Her skin clear and creamy, her eyes dark and lazy, her posture regal, calm.

"We...," I stuttered.

"Roger and I worked together," Sydelle said smoothly, without a hint that she'd once spoken only with nail-biting anxiety. "Briefly."

"You look great!" I managed to get out without choking. "Being with Cyn seems to agree with you."

"Second Why is the Wonder Lesbian!" Sydelle gazed fondly at her. Without a hint of irony, she added, "Super Dyke."

It crossed my mind that Sydelle was from my past, and while not precisely "wonderful," then at least part of something miraculous. But then, so was Alistair. Why bother? When had a newspaper horoscope ever been right?

We kept talking, and Sydelle seemed so relaxed, so off the hook-and-ladder, so altered really, that I found myself not trusting her, not trusting any of it. It was a fabrication, yes, a veneer, and beneath it was the same creature, broken-clawed, hungrier than ever.

Wait! There was no reason to believe that. I was being paranoid. I'd been paranoid with Alistair, paranoid just now, distrusting the hospital phone operator, thinking she was ringing someone else's room. Why? I was losing my mind, that's why. It had finally happened. I'd snapped. I smiled and chatted and thought, What's next? Do I start hearing voices? I had to get out of here or they'd begin to notice, so I made a not too awkward parting, said the expected things to pass on to Blaise, and managed actually to get out of the theater and onto the street with only a bit of cold sweat. Then, although walking fast and not sure where I was headed, I knew at least I'd escaped before they'd seen what everyone coming at me must for certain notice. Thank goodness they were all strangers. Or were they?