The Days of Anna Madrigal (21 page)

Chapter 25

A HISTORY OF BOYS

T
hey were seated at the common table at the Martin Hotel when Brian realized that Anna was weeping. Wren had noticed it too and caught Brian's eye with a look of pained concern. Mr. Sudden, however, was completely oblivious as he swabbed up the remains of his lamb gravy with a bread roll. Wren grabbed a paper napkin out of a plastic holder and handed it to Anna without comment.

“I'm so sorry,” said Anna, dabbing at her eyes. “This is tiresome of me.”

“Don't be silly,” said Wren.

“One should not cry over a piece of tin.”

Brian looked at the wall behind her. It was an archaeological hodgepodge of knotty pine, gloppy paint, and battered pressed tin from an earlier era. “Does that bring back memories or something?”

“Just all my baby fears and dreams. Do you see it?”

Brian moved to her side of the table and studied the tin, finding nothing of particular interest.

“Look at the pattern,” said Anna.

“Okay . . . flowers.”

“No. Look again.”

Brian finally saw it—or
them
, rather. “Jesus Christ.”

Mr. Sudden glanced up from his plate, suddenly taking an interest. “Our Lord is in the tin?”

“No,” said Brian. “These days he only shows up at Chick-fil-A.”

Wren gave him her don't-provoke-people look.

“It's more like—private parts,” he added.

“Pussies and peckers,” said Anna, turning to Mr. Sudden with a nostalgic smile. “That's what your father called them. He's the one who showed this to me.”

Now Mr. Sudden was out of his seat, checking out the pattern in the tin. Wren joined him immediately, peering over his shoulder.

“Well, damn if it isn't,” said Mr. Sudden, widening his eyes at Wren.

They had aroused the curiosity of other customers, who were straining their necks for a closer look. Anna urged her family to take their seats again. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I was being sentimental. I didn't mean to cause a fuss.”

“Why did he show you this?” asked Mr. Sudden.

“Oh—just something boys do. He used to work in the kitchen here. It was his naughty little secret. We were both sixteen.” She sighed. “So young.”

“And he killed himself.”

“Yes. That summer.”

“And . . . why do you think you had something to do with that?”

“I know I did. I told Lasko's father he was gay. It must have been the final straw. His father was a terrible, angry man, and . . . the shame was too great, I suppose. He took an overdose of sleeping pills.”

Mr. Sudden hesitated. “So . . .
was
he gay?”

Anna nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“But he was sleeping with my mother.”

“She was trying to turn him straight. His father had actually paid her to do that. People thought that would work. Back in the days of yore.”

“So his family already . . . suspected he was gay?”

“Yes . . . I think he had a history of boys. But I was the one who confirmed it.”

“And why would you do that?”

“I was jealous. Jealous of them both. So I wrote a letter, pretending it was from my mother, and told his father that Lasko had made a pass at me.”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart. You're losing me again. How would that make him gay?”

“Because . . . I was a boy back then.”

Mr. Sudden blinked at Anna for a moment, then turned to Brian.

“She was,” said Brian.

He wasn't sure if Mr. Sudden believed a word of this, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that Anna had finally unburdened herself.

A
fter dinner, while Wren drove Mr. Sudden home to Sandstone Drive, Brian and Anna waited in rocking chairs on the porch of the restaurant.

“So,” he said, as an Amtrak train thundered past them, “it wasn't an anagram at all. You named yourself after Lasko Madrigal.”

“Yes.”

“He didn't treat you very well.”

“No, he didn't, but . . . I saw his goodness for a while, and taking his name was a way of bringing him back to life. I always thought the name was lovely. It has its own music, doesn't it? Especially in Spanish.”

“M
A—DRI—GAL
,” intoned Brian by way of demonstration, drawing out the a's with basso seductiveness.

She winked at him to prolong the silliness but said nothing further. The two of them sat there in silence, meditating on the red and green lights along the tracks.

“How long did you stay here?” he asked.

“After he killed himself?”

“Yeah.”

“Not long. A few weeks. Long enough for the fuss to die down. His family wanted everything hushed up, and . . . I was a big part of the Everything. There would have been trouble if I had stayed.”

“Even though nothing happened between you and him?”

She nodded wistfully. “Even though.”

“But you were ready to leave, right?”

“Oh yes.” She gave him a crooked smile. “I just needed a little boot in the ass.”

He chuckled. “So your mother never knew where you went until Mona brought her back to Barbary Lane.”

Anna nodded. “I know it sounds cruel, but she would have tried to drag me back, and she would have expected some answers. I couldn't explain myself to someone who didn't know me. I couldn't explain myself to me back then.”

“I'm glad you ran away,” said Brian. “We wouldn't have had you otherwise.
I
wouldn't have had you. I would have totally . . . missed out on you.”

Anna gave him a tender smile. “You are the dearest man, Brian Hawkins.”

Embarrassed, he made light of the moment. “Oh, pshaw!”

“Pshaw?”

“Isn't that what you used to say?”

“Maybe
you
did. I'm much too young for
pshaw
.” She reached across the gap between the rockers and took his hand. Her long, slim fingers were cool and silky. “Do you know what I wish, Brian?”

“What?”

“I wish we were all back at Barbary Lane. Just for an hour or two. The whole family. Sitting in the garden and telling our stories.”

Brian chuckled. “That might be a little disconcerting to the stockbrokers who live there now.”

Anna smiled, still holding his hand. “We would invite them down for a toke.” She looked distracted for a moment. “Oh—I've been meaning to ask you.” She pulled an envelope from her blue velvet drawstring bag and handed it to him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just a note from Amos. And three tickets to something.”

“Who's Amos?”

“Jake's new beau. The one who gave us our bon voyage.”

Brian examined the contents of the envelope. The note read:

Anna,

We would love to have you with us, if you're feeling up to it. There's room for an RV in our camp. Brian will be able to explain.

Amos

The tickets were to Burning Man.

Anna's eyes were on him now. “So explain,” she said.

“It defies description,” he told her.

Nevertheless, he tried.

B
ack at the RV, he and Wren tucked Anna into bed. “I suppose,” she said, gazing up at them, “it's not a very practical idea. Going to this Burning thing.”

“Not really,” he said. “We'd have to go hundreds of miles south and then head north again. We're in the same state, but that's about it.”

“Ah—I see. Oh well.”

“I'm sure you'll get a full report from Jake—and Shawna for that matter.”

“She's going, too?”

“Yep,” said Wren. “With Michael and Ben.”

“Goodness. Everyone.”

Brian was starting to feel like a shit, but someone had to be the grown-up here. “They'll be back in a week,” he told her. “We'll have a dinner somewhere and get a full recap.”

“A week might be too long,” Anna replied vaguely.

He was about to tell her that a week would fly by in no time when Wren rose abruptly and left the room. Great, he thought. My wife is pissed at me now.

He turned back to Anna. “It's just that it's a harsh environment. We don't have enough food or water or anything. It takes serious preparation.”

“I understand, dear. I've just had this feeling, that's all.”

“What sort of feeling?”

“You know . . . spooky old me.”

He brushed a wayward strand of hair from her forehead. “Listen, lady. No premonitions until we get you home.”

“But they're not about me,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Pumpkin—” Wren was calling from the front of the RV. “May I have a word with you, please?”

“Go,” said Anna, releasing him from further discussion.

Wren was at the dining table, hunched over her laptop. “Take a look at this,” she said. It was a MapQuest map of the region with a road already highlighted. “We don't have to head that far south. There's a direct route between here and Burning Man. You just head out past the Blue Moon and keep driving. It's a straight shot.”

Brian studied the map for a moment.

“See?” said Wren triumphantly. “Looks like it's only a hundred miles or so.”

“Yeah, a hundred miles of totally bad-ass road. It's all dirt, baby. Probably rutted too. That's Jungo Road. Where those evil gold mines are.”

“So? What's a few cyanide pits between us and them?”

He shrugged. “Okay—fine. Just make sure our cell phones are charged.”

She turned and gaped at him. “Wow, that was easy.”

“I can't fight the two of you,” he said.

“She's up for it, then?”

“She's having one of her feelings again.”

“Feelings?”

“An intuition, apparently.”

“About what?”

“I'm afraid to ask.”

I
n the morning they didn't head directly to Jungo Road. At Anna's request they went to the twin-towered Catholic church in the heart of town. Anna had been christened at St. Paul's, she explained, wearing a long white gown that Margaret had made for the occasion. She remembered the church and wanted to see it again.

The building, however, was locked.

Anna's face briefly registered disappointment. Then, spotting an iron gate by the side of the church, she wobbled past a shabby grotto into a cemetery full of plastic flowers and tombstones old and new. It wasn't a dauntingly large space, but the sun was brutal, so Brian became concerned when Anna kept moving.

“You wait here in the shade,” he told her. “What are we looking for?”

“Madrigals,” she said.

Wren jumped at the challenge, scouring the inscriptions on the stones with such enthusiasm that she hit pay dirt in less than three minutes. “Here's someone named Hegazti Madrigal,” she hollered to Anna. “He died in nineteen ninety-three.”

“She,” said Anna.

“What?”

“Hegazti was a she.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Are there any others nearby?”

“Doesn't look like it.”

“Wait.” Brian had spotted a stone that was flush with the ground. It was no bigger than a shoe box and weatherworn, but its inscription was easily readable.

BELASKO MADRIGAL

1920–1936

Wren gasped at the discovery. Brian wasn't sure whether his tone should be celebratory or funereal, so he returned to the shade, where Anna was waiting, and escorted her back to the grave marker. She stood there for about a minute, smiling tenderly at the granite reality, before murmuring a word that made no sense to him.

“Abyssinia,” she said.

Chapter 26

WORLDS BEYOND

B
en and Michael were swapping sleepy grins, since the kid in the Pan outfit had conked out on Michael's chest in the big tent at Comfort and Joy. There was no way to move without waking him, so Michael was accommodating his weight to the point of numbness. “He's so peaceful,” he murmured. “I hate to disturb him.”

“There's no rush,” said Ben, realizing how blissful that simple fact made him. He could spend an eternity here in this cushioned puppy pile of lantern-lit men, watching his husband holding this goat-legged kid. The kid's hand was resting on Michael's Buddha belly, receiving its benediction even in sleep. The oceanic sounds of sex still ebbed and flowed in various corners of the tent, but the three of them were contentedly beached, for the moment at least, on a warm and golden shore.

The kid stirred and rubbed his eye with his fist.

“Hey,” he said, as if he had just discovered them.

“Hey,” said Michael, kissing his forehead beneath the horns.

The kid rolled over languidly and nestled between the two of them. His once-prancing penis was now a silky pink mouse napping in his faux fur loins. He seemed to be startled, briefly, by the jungle growl of an orgasm in a far corner of the tent, but his lips soon plumped into a smile of understanding.

“I have a feeling,” he said, “I'm not in Snowflake anymore.”

Michael chuckled. “I have a feeling you've said that before.”

“Maybe.”

“I used to say it about Orlando.”

“Where's Snowflake?” asked Ben.

“It rings a bell,” said Michael, “for some reason.”

“Arizona,” said the kid.

“Right.”

“How does that ring a bell?” asked Ben.

“Probably our alien abductions,” said the kid.

“I don't think that's it,” said Michael.

Ben laughed.

“They were for real,” said the kid. “They made a movie out of it.”

They were quiet for a while. The kid was holding Ben's cock—not in a particularly insistent way but idly, halfheartedly, as if it were a toy he might get around to playing with again. Michael noticed this and smiled benignly at Ben.

“Are you guys a couple?” asked the kid.

“You bet,” said Michael. “Husbands.”

Ben looked over at the man he'd been with for eight years, the man he'd married twice just to make it stick. Michael's generation—its history of fighting disease and bigotry—sometimes made him grumpier than Ben would like him to be, but he knew what he'd found in Michael: a gift for intimacy like none Ben had ever known. Michael, for all his messiness, knew how to connect with him completely.

“Don't you ever get jealous?” asked the kid.

“Oh, yeah,” said Michael. “Truly, madly, deeply jealous.”

“So?”

“So it's not as big an emotion as the one that holds us together.”

The kid rolled his head toward Ben. “Do
you
get jealous?”

Ben hesitated just long enough for Michael to laugh. “Hell, no,” said Michael. “He knows he's got me for life. I
try
to make him jealous, but I have no luck at all.”

The kid grabbed Michael's cock with his other hand. “Bet I could do it.”

Ben laughed. “How can I be jealous of someone who doesn't have a name?”

“Dustpuppy,” said the kid.

“Cute,” said Michael. “Kinda perfect, in fact.”

Ben agreed that it was. Everything about this man was suited to their molly moment. He seemed closer to a spirit than a human being, the uncomplicated embodiment of youthful lust and sweetness. Ben remembered the kid's reference to alien abductions in Arizona and amused himself with the thought that Dustpuppy had been sent to them on assignment from another planet, an escort for worlds beyond.

“I have to sit up,” said Michael. “You guys stay put.”

“What's the matter?” asked Dustpuppy.

“Your foot?” asked Ben. He was well acquainted with this scenario. Michael's lingering gout had a way of making his limbs go numb. “Here,” he said, grabbing a nearby bolster and propping it against a tent pole. Michael settled against it and issued a groan of relief as he extended his foot and shook it like a dust mop.

“Better,” said Michael. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

Dustpuppy looked distressed, so Ben tried to put him at ease. “It's his circulation,” he said, gathering pillows in his arms. “Here . . . we can all sit up.” He made a big pile against which the three of them reclined like drowsy pashas.

Ben found himself slipping in and out of sleep. The last time he awoke, Dustpuppy had gone (headed off, no doubt, for a mission on another planet), so Ben snuggled closer to Michael, who murmured his contentment unintelligibly.

Someone across the tent was playing a small stringed instrument. It had a medieval Anglo-Saxon sound.

“The music of our people,” Ben said with a smile.

Another murmur from Michael.

“What is that?” asked Ben. “A lyre or a lute. I've never known the difference.”

“What difference?”

“You know—between a lyre and a lute.”

There was no response from Michael, so Ben looked directly into his eyes. They were open but unblinking. “Are you okay, honey?”

“I'm fine.”

“No, you're not. Look at me, Michael . . . Michael?”

“I'm fine.” Michael's eyes rolled back, exposing the whites.

“Sweetheart . . . damn it!”

Michael's whole body was shaking now, a series of small convulsions that made him lurch forward off the pile of pillows.

Ben looked up and yelled to no one in particular, “Help us, please! Is there a doctor here? Somebody, please help us!”

The music ended abruptly. Several people sprang to their feet and rushed to offer aid, standing in a circle around them. Some of them were naked and still had semi-erections—a detail that Ben would remember and recount for years to come.

Michael was blue and unmoving. His breathing had stopped completely. His legs were wet with urine.

Ben held him in his arms and began to cry out of sheer helplessness.

He could not leave this man, so he could not run for help.

“Stretch out!” said someone behind him. “Get him flat!”

So Ben complied, lowering Michael to the dusty carpet, arranging his limbs with such care that he might have been preparing him for ritual anointment.

Do it right, he told himself. Assume he's alive.

“I'm here, babe,” he said. “Don't worry. We're taking this ride together.”

No response. Michael's hand was cold and stiff as Ben held it in a frantic pantomime of ordinary life.

“Get Hawkeye!” someone shouted.

“I'm on it!” said another. “Where is he?”

“Next door at Celestial Bodies. He's a ranger. He's got a walkie-talkie!”

Ben just kept talking quietly to his husband's inert face. “They're getting Hawkeye, sweetheart. He's a ranger.”

Nothing.

“He's got a walkie-talkie.”

Nothing.

“I love you, Michael. Do you hear me? I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. I promised you that, didn't I? I'm here, baby, right here, so listen to me, okay?”

But Michael was beyond listening.