Sure of You (11 page)

“You knew him?” asked Thack, reading over Michael’s shoulder.

“Not exactly. He bought some things at the nursery once or twice. Jon knew him. He was one of the big A-Gays.”

“Figures.”

“What do you mean?”

“Liver cancer,” explained his lover, scowling. “How tired is that?”

For the past few years Thack had made a parlor game out of spotting the secret AIDS deaths in the obituary columns. Given the age of the deceased, the absence of a spouse, and certain telltale occupational data, he would draw his own conclusions and fly into a towering rage.

“Notice how they called him flamboyant? How’s that for a code word?”

Michael was tired of this.

“Fuck him,” Thack continued. “How dare he act ashamed? Who does he think he’s fooling, anyway? He can sell his pissy houses in hell!”

“C’mon.”

“What do you mean, c’mon?”

“The guy is dead, Thack.”

“So what? He was a worm in life, and he’s a worm in death. This is why people don’t give a shit about AIDS! Because cowardly pricks like this make it seem like it’s not really happening!”

Michael paused, then said: “We’ve gotta move it, sweetie. We’re gonna be late as it is.”

Thack shot daggers at him and left the room.

“Wear the green sweater,” Michael yelled after him. “You look great in that.”

Mary Ann and Brian’s condo-in-the-sky was not Michael’s idea of a dream house. From twenty-three stories the city looked like a plaster-of-Paris model of itself, hardly the real thing at all. Lately Mary Ann had made an effort at jazzing up the chilly modern interiors with a lot of Southwestern stuff—painted furniture, steer skulls, and the like—but the effect was not so much Santa Fe as Santa Fe Savings and Loan. Maybe it just wasn’t fixable.

The Vietnamese maid took their coats and led them into the living room, a place of too little texture and too much teal. Brian was ensconced behind the wet bar, looking unnaturally cheerful in a pink button-down. Mary Ann and Burke were at opposite ends of the big crescent-shaped couch.

“Michael,” said Burke, smiling as he rose.

“Hey, Burke.” Michael wondered if a hug was appropriate. It had been eleven years, after all, and the guy was straight.

He played it safe and stuck out his hand.

Burke shook it warmly, using both his hands in the process, suggesting that a hug might have been in order, after all. “You look great,” said Burke.

“Thanks. You too.” Mary Ann’s old flame seemed lean as ever in a blazer and gray flannel slacks. His fine, pale hair—very much the same color as Thack’s—had receded significantly, but Michael thought it suited his air of quiet intelligence. True, the yup-yellow tie was a little off-putting, but you had to make allowances for New Yorkers.

Thack stepped forward, touching the small of Michael’s back. “Burke,” said Michael, “this is my lover, Thack.”

Burke pumped Thack’s arm energetically. “Good to meet you.”

“Same here,” said Thack.

Mary Ann hugged Michael and pecked him chastely on the cheek. “We were just talking about you,” she said. He was almost positive her scent was Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion. When on earth had she started doing that?

He returned the peck. “You want me to go out again, so you can finish?”

She giggled. “No. Hi, Thack.” She hugged Thack, who made a passable show of hugging back. You would have thought they did it all the time. “You guys both look
wonderful!
”

It was a little too gushy. Michael hated it when she over-compensated like this. What state of deterioration had she expected to find him in, anyway?

“What’ll it be?” Brian asked from behind the bar. “A couple of Calistogas?”

“Great,” said Michael.

“I’ll take a bourbon, actually,” said Thack.

Michael shot his lover a glance. Thack rarely touched the hard stuff. Was he that uncomfortable about the evening ahead?

“Awriight,” crowed Brian. “A serious drink.”

Burke grinned at this interchange, then addressed Brian: “You used to be a real bartender, didn’t you? Down at Benny’s.”

“Perry’s,” said Brian.

“That’s right.”

“I was a waiter, though.”

“Oh.”

“He was a lawyer before that,” Mary Ann put in, “but he took on so many liberal causes that he sort of burned out.”

Michael saw Brian’s expression and knew what he was thinking: Why does she always have to say that? Wouldn’t a waiter have been enough?

Brian locked eyes with his wife, plastered a sickly smile on his face, and returned his attention to Thack’s bourbon.

“And now you guys are nurserymen.” Still a little over-jovial, Burke looked first at Michael, then at Brian.

“Right,” Michael answered.

“You need water…soda?” Brian was talking to Thack now.

“On the rocks is fine.”

“You got it,” said Brian.

“We’ve been partners for three years,” Michael told Burke.

“That’s great.”

“Here you go, sport.” Brian handed Michael a Calistoga on the rocks. Michael and Thack went to the big curving couch and sat down in the space between Mary Ann and Burke.

Mary Ann reached over and gave Michael’s knee a shake. “I can’t get over how good you look.”

Michael smiled and nodded and said: “I feel good.”

“Hey,” said Burke. “You know who I was thinking about today?”

“Who?” Mary Ann turned, letting go of Michael’s knee.

“Our old landlady. Mrs. Thingamabob.”

“Madrigal,” said Michael. “Shit!”

Mary Ann frowned. “What?”

Flooded with guilt, Michael looked at Thack. “We were gonna call her. You were gonna remind me.”

“Oh, hell,” said his lover.

Brian settled into the big white leather chair across from the sofa. “You can use the phone in the bedroom if…”

“No,” said Michael. “It’s too late.”

“She went to Lesbos,” Thack explained.

Burke laughed. “Sounds like her.”

“
Damn
it,” muttered Michael.

Mary Ann looked lost. “Why on earth did she go to Lesbos?”

“Because it’s there,” said Burke, laughing.

“She’s meeting Mona there,” said Michael. “Her daughter.”

“Damn,” said Burke. “I remember her. Frizzy red hair, right?”

“That’s her,” said Michael.

“Didn’t you use to go out with her?” Burke was addressing Brian now.

“Once or twice,” said Brian.

“She became a lesbian,” said Mary Ann.

There was an awkward silence before Brian told Burke: “The two events were not related.”

This got an awkward chuckle.

Michael felt compelled to speak up on Mona’s behalf. “She was a lesbian long before she met Brian.”

“Thank you,” said Brian.

Mary Ann looked at her husband. “I wasn’t impugning your prowess, for God’s sake.”

“Sorry.” Burke laughed, obviously thinking he had opened a touchy subject.

“No,” said Mary Ann, laughing to reassure him. “Really.”

“Where is she now?” asked Burke.

“In England,” said Mary Ann. “She married a lord and lives in this huge house in the Cotswolds.”

“Does the lord know she’s a lesbian?”

“Oh, sure,” Michael told him. “He’s gay himself. They don’t live together. He lives here. He drives a cab for Veterans.”

“Well,” said Burke. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

As everyone laughed, Michael marveled at the apparent ease with which the four old housemates had reunited. Then, in a fleeting moment of self-torment, he pictured poor Mrs. Madrigal sitting alone amid her carpetbags in some fly-specked Grecian airport without benefit of his bon voyage.

They were seated at the big green glass dining table when Michael realized who was missing.

“Hey, where’s Shawna?”

“In her room,” said Mary Ann.

Brian glanced at his wife, then spoke to Michael: “She’s playing with her new Nintendo game.”

“Ah.” Michael nodded.

“She’s not very good around new grownups,” said Mary Ann.

“She was fine,” said Burke. “Really.”

Brian looked faintly apologetic. “Sometimes it takes her a while,” he told Burke.

“No problem,” said Burke. “Really.”

Michael and Thack communicated briefly with their eyes. Had Shawna been antisocial? Had she thrown a tantrum and been banished to her room?

When the maid appeared with a tray of mint-wrapped fish, Mary Ann jumped at the chance to change the subject. “Nguyet,” she said, beaming up at the girl, “those spring rolls were absolutely your best ever.”

Burke murmured in agreement, his mouth still full of the food under discussion.

The maid giggled. “You like?”

“Very much,” said Thack, joining in the praise. “Absolutely delicious.”

Nguyet ducked her eyes, then set down the tray and fled the room.

“She’s shy,” said Mary Ann.

“But sweet,” said Burke.

“Isn’t she?” Mary Ann waited until the girl was out of earshot. “Her family had a horrible time getting out of Saigon.”

“She was a baby. She doesn’t even remember that,” said Brian.

“Well, I know, but…you can’t help but feel for her.”

Burke nodded, eyes fixed on the door to the kitchen.

“They live in some awful tenement in the Tenderloin, but they’re the nicest, most industrious people.” Mary Ann handed the tray of fish to Burke. “They’re also incredibly clean. They’re much cleaner than…almost anybody.”

Than who? thought Michael. Cleaner than who? Across the table he saw a homicidal glint come into Thack’s eyes. Please, he telegraphed, just leave it alone.

There was one of those moments of total silence—a “mind fart,” as Mona used to say—before Thack turned to Burke and announced: “I just realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“I saw you on CNN last month.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It was some sort of panel discussion about television.”

“Oh, right.”

“You’re producing something, aren’t you? Some new show?”

“Well…” Burke looked vaguely uncomfortable. Or maybe it was modesty. “There’s a new project in the works, but it’s not very far along yet.”

Mary Ann jumped in. “Burke did that special on Martin Luther King last year.”

“I saw that,” said Michael. “It was wonderful.”

“Thanks,” said Burke.

“I actually went to Selma,” said Brian. “I mean, I participated.”

“Really?” Burke’s response seemed a little patronizing, though he undoubtedly hadn’t intended it that way. Michael found it touching that Brian had offered up this ancient credential for his guest’s approval.

“What’s this new show about?” asked Thack.

“Oh…just a general magazine format.” Looking distracted, Burke turned back to Brian. “You were part of the civil disobedience and all that?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“That’s when he was a lawyer,” said Mary Ann.

“No,” said Brian. “That was earlier. I didn’t pass the bar until 1969.”

“Right,” said Mary Ann. “Of course.”

“I wish I’d been there,” said Burke.

“You were too young,” said Mary Ann.

Burke shrugged. “Not by much, really. Anyway, it was a great time. Things happened. People cared enough to make them happen. I mean, look at the seventies. What a great big blank that was.”

Michael saw the cloud pass over his lover’s face and realized with certainty what was about to happen. “I don’t know about that,” Thack said.

Burke offered him a sporting smile. “O.K. What happened?”

“Well,” said Thack, “gay liberation for one thing.”

“How so?”

“What do you mean—how so?”

“In what form? Discos and bathhouses?”

“Yeah,” answered Thack, clearly beginning to bristle. “Among other things.”

Burke, thankfully, was still smiling. “For instance?”

“For instance…marches and political action, a new literature, marching bands, choruses…a whole new culture. You guys didn’t cover it, of course, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“We guys?”

“The press,” said Thack. “The people who decided that black pride was heroic but gay pride was just hedonism.”

“Hey, sport,” said Brian. “I don’t think he said that.”

“He means the press in general,” said Michael.

“Well, then don’t blame me for…”

“I’m not,” said Thack, more pleasantly than before. “I just think you should know that something happened in the seventies. It may not have been part of your experience, but something happened.”

Burke nodded. “Fair enough.”

“The seventies were our sixties, so to speak.” Michael contributed this inanity and regretted it as soon as it tumbled out of his mouth. “This decade talk is ridiculous. Everybody’s experience is different.”

“Maybe so,” said Thack, still addressing Burke, “but you should know something about the gay movement if you’re doing a story on AIDS.”

Burke looked confused.

“Did I get that wrong?” Thack turned to Brian. “Didn’t you say he was…?”

Brian shrugged and gestured toward his wife. “That’s what she said.”

“Oh.” Mary Ann looked flustered for a moment, then addressed Burke. “I explained that that’s why you’re here. To do a story on AIDS.”

“Oh,” said Burke. “Right. Of course. I drifted there for a moment.”

Mary Ann seized a bottle of wine and held it out. “Who needs a little freshener?”

Almost everyone did.

After dinner, while the group was resettling in the living room, Michael headed off to take a leak. On his way back he passed Shawna’s room and found the little girl wielding a crayon at her child-sized drafting table.

He spoke to her from the doorway. “Hi, Shawna.”

She looked over her shoulder for a moment, then continued drawing. “Hi, Michael.”

“Whatcha drawing?”

No answer.

“Just…art, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I come in?”

“May I,” said Shawna.

He grinned. “May I?”

“Yes.”

He stood behind her and studied her work, a jumble of brown rectangles scribbled over with green. In the corner, inscribed on a much smaller rectangle, was the number 28.

“I know what that is,” he said.

The child shook her head. “Huh-uh. It’s a secret.”

“Well, it looks to me like Anna’s house.”