by William Poe
“I came down here because I miss you.”
Thad scooted off the hood and came toward me. We stared at each other in silence.
“I love you, Thad.”
“I know you do.”
“Want to do a line?”
Thad grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Are you shooting up?”
“Look for yourself.” Thad held out his arms.
“Who was that boy I saw you with at Scott’s?”
“Just some kid I met on the beach. He had drugs. That’s all it was.”
“I got a new place today. It’s on a hill in Silverlake. I want us to live there.”
“I’m glad you came,” Thad said. “I was afraid when you pounded on the door, but I’m glad now. If I had stayed here another day, Jerry would’ve convinced me to shoot up.”
I wished that he wanted me more than he feared Jerry’s needle.
“Let me get a few things,” Thad said, rushing toward Scott’s.
While he was gone, I got in the car and snorted a couple of lines. Thad returned before the initial rush had worn off. He threw his bags into the backseat and then spooned some coke up his nose.
I had wished for a romantic homecoming. This would have to do.
CHAPTER 19
If Thad wasn’t a lover, at least I had a dope buddy. During the fleeting moments when we weren’t doing drugs, I tried to get some work done. But the effort would come to little value when Thad went to see Patricia to score drugs from Jesús. I had hoped Thad and Patricia wouldn’t get along, but they quickly became friends.
At first, I thought it was exhaustion from the drugs, but eventually, I didn’t even have the strength to get up in the mornings. Over a two-week period, I lost ten pounds. My face became a gaunt mask.
When I couldn’t muster the strength to lift myself off the toilet, and found that my stools were white and chalky, I really began to worry. My skin had a yellow sheen and felt clammy to the touch. I called out for Thad—who was passed out on the couch—but with such a weak voice that it didn’t rouse him.
“Take me to a clinic,” I said, shaking Thad, after finally managing to get out of the bathroom. “There’s one on La Brea.”
“Let me sleep,” Thad complained.
“Thad!” I cried, pulling up my shirt and rubbing my yellow skin.
That got his attention. He quickly showered and drove me to the doctor.
At the clinic, they were sure I had hepatitis but weren’t sure which type. A staff physician drew blood and told me I’d have to wait a week for the results. Meanwhile, all I could do was rest. The doctor warned that symptoms could get worse, but the worse the better; then, if I developed enough antibodies, my condition wouldn’t become chronic. The information was small comfort as I lay on a pallet in front of the television, too weak to lift the remote and change the channels.
Soup was all I could keep down, but the stove was downstairs. No matter how much I pleaded with Thad, he barely helped me. And the sicker I became, the more frequently he disappeared with the car, leaving me to fend for myself. He would say that he was going for drinks at the bar and would be back in a few hours, but sometimes days went by before he returned.
I became sure I was going to die and telephoned Vivian. I needed to hear the voice of someone who truly loved me. She became frantic with worry and began calling every few hours. Sometimes, I didn’t have the strength to answer, and the machine picked up. Vivian would cry, begging me to return her call.
Business clients left messages asking about shipments waiting for release by customs brokers and wondering if letters of credit had been executed. I couldn’t find the wherewithal to answer anyone. I wished that Thad would help me, but after a while, I nearly forgot that he had the car and had no idea how long he’d been gone.
About a month into the ordeal, Thad brought Patricia by the house. He hadn’t told her I was sick.
“Bebé!” Patricia exclaimed when she found me shivering on the couch under the blanket I had pulled around me. “Ju look like death. What’s the matter with ju?”
Before I could answer, she went into the bathroom and returned with a wet rag, wiping my brow and feeling for fever.
“What happened?” Patricia asked.
My voice was faint as I said, “I have hepatitis B.”
“Are you going to die?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Oh, baby,” Patricia took my hands and washed them with the rag. Then an idea occurred to her. “It is contagious?”
“Not unless I fuck you.”
“Oh-h-h,” Patricia giggled, “No, no, no. I don’t think ju fuck anyone right now. But who fucked ju?” Patricia leaned close to my ear, “Thad?”
“Some guy in Italy,” I managed to say. “A hustler named Yasha.”
Patricia crossed herself and prayed in Spanish.
Thad appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Ju don’t love this man!” Patricia said angrily. “Ju should take care of him.”
Thad went into the bedroom and shut the door.
“The other night, I did a line with Thad,” I said. “I thought it might keep him here. But I became delirious.”
“Ju don’t need drugs. Ju need rest. If Thad won’t take care of ju, I take care of you. Every day I come, even if I must take the bus.”
Patricia proved every bit as good as her word. She came by every chance she got. Each time, she fixed some soup and then spooned it into my mouth. She helped me to the toilet, too, supporting me as I hobbled to the seat.
Thad took advantage of the situation and disappeared for days with my car. It made me heartsick.
Weeks went by. I got worse. By the end of May, it felt as though my life had drained away. Then I began a slow process of physical recovery. I found the strength to get onto the couch instead of lying prostrate on the floor. A couple of weeks later, I managed to venture downstairs, though the trip back up nearly wore me out.
When he was around, Thad would become gruff with Patricia. She grew so angry that she told me she wouldn’t come back unless I broke up with him. I couldn’t do it.
The clinic doctor was pleased with my progress.
“You have to be careful not to get another strain of the virus,” he said, “and if you get HIV, it may progress faster because of this.”
The doctor went to a drawer and retrieved a pack of condoms. “Use these from now on,” he said.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I had been raped.
After regaining my health, I had little desire to use drugs, even when Thad snorted lines right in front of me. Common sense demanded that I break off our relationship. Instead, I became increasingly foolish, willing to do anything to keep him from leaving. Thad loved gold, so I bought him a bracelet. He wanted a ring. Before his twenty-first birthday arrived, I went to a jeweler and ordered rings to be engraved, Simon and Thad 6-15-88. My plan was to take Thad back to Petit Jean and present our rings at the waterfall.
Thad refused to go. “Your mother’s a dear,” he said, “but one visit to Arkansas is enough.”
I went to my desk drawer and got the rings. “I was going to give this to you in a more romantic setting, but here, take it.”
Thad opened the velvet-lined case and put on his ring. I could tell he was pleased, but he fought to keep from showing it. I put on my ring and saw Thad’s eyes dart between the two, making sure that his had a larger diamond. There was no point in mentioning the engraving. It would have meant nothing to him. I had to be satisfied with the knowledge that he would carry my name with him wherever he went.
I had promised Vivian that I would visit when my health improved. Before leaving, I got Thad a credit card and opened a bank account for him. The night before my flight, Thad was sitting upstairs watching television. I sat beside him and slipped the credit card into his shirt pocket.
“A credit card?” he said, reading his name. “Aren’t you le
aving me cash?”
“I opened a bank account,” I said, handing him a debit card and giving him the code to get cash. “I deposited a thousand dollars.”
Thad pocketed the card and then returned to his television show without another word. He had become little more than a kept boy, and I was merely fulfilling my obligations.
Sitting beside Thad, I felt as lonely as if I were actually alone in the house. I took his hand. “Can’t we at least hold each other?”
“Maybe, if you do a line with me,” Thad said, taking a mirror from the side table. It was prepared with four lines.
“I have to get up early,” I protested.
“You can sleep on the plane,” Thad said, taking the straw and snorting two of the lines. Then he gave me the mirror.
My hand trembled as I lifted the straw. I sensed that this was it—I would not be able to abstain again. Thad placed his hand on my knee. After two lines, all that mattered was getting more drugs into my system.
“Maybe you should call Patricia,” Thad suggested.
“Yeah. I guess she’s still talking to me.”
“Well, I know she’s talking to me,” Thad said. “The drugs we just did came from her.”
Thad called Patricia and set things up. I gave him money, and he took off with the car. It seemed as though he was gone for hours. When he finally returned, he was too high to talk.
“Good shit, man,” he finally managed to say as he handed me a Baggie.
“This looks like Peruvian flake,” I said, relishing the aroma.
The first line made me amorous, but Thad scurried into the bedroom and shut me out.
I sat naked on the couch and put in a video. Hours went by as I watched a platoon of army guys fucking each other silly.
Before catching the shuttle to the airport, I found the bedroom door unlocked and went in, placing my face close to Thad’s. He sensed my presence and covered his head with the sheet.
If I do this, if I go to Arkansas, I told myself, Thad might not be here when I return.
When the shuttle arrived, I stashed some drugs in my carry-on bag and rushed out the door.
CHAPTER 20
At roughly twenty-minute intervals, I slipped into the plane’s lavatory and snorted a line. By the time I changed planes in Dallas, I was frazzled. People on the concourse glared at me disdainfully, or so it seemed. I had just run out of drugs when we touched down in Little Rock. It occurred to me to turn around and head back to LA, but after a few shots of gin at the airport lounge, the craving for drugs temporarily subsided, and I wasn’t so bothered by the idea of seeing family.
When I met Vivian at baggage claim, she was unable to hide her alarm.
“Sorry,” I said, “I must look like a wreck. I didn’t have much time to sleep before getting on the plane.”
Vivian took my hand. “You are my son,” she said. “It’s good to have you home.”
The Arkansas humidity hit me hard as we walked through the parking lot toward Vivian’s Pontiac. My suitcase felt like a lead weight. When we finally arrived at the car and I opened the door, a blast of hot air bombarded me. I stumbled forward.
Vivian came around to my side of the car. “Bubby!” she shouted.
I struggled to remain conscious as Vivian helped me into the car.
Vivian started the engine. I cranked up the air conditioner. After an initial bombardment of what felt like steam, cooler air followed as the compressor kicked in. I put my face against the vent.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Once I get some sleep.”
By the time we arrived in Sibley, I was delirious. I barely made it to the front door.
Vivian pursed her lips the way she did when I was a little boy and she disapproved of something. “You should let me take you to the doctor,” she said firmly.
“It’s simply exhaustion, and this overbearing heat. I’m not used to it. I’ll be fine after I take a nap.”
“Your sister wants to see you,” Vivian said. “She and Derek are coming over for dinner.”
They were the last people I wanted to see. Connie would offer unwelcome judgment—with her eyes, if not her words. Derek would lie in wait for the right moment to offer up Christ as the solution to whatever troubled me.
I collapsed onto the bed in my old room but realized I was so dehydrated that I had to drink something. I went to the kitchen for a glass of iced tea, the Southern elixir for neutralizing the effects of summer. Vivian was on the phone.
“It’s Connie,” she said, handing me the receiver.
“Hi, Connie.” I tried to sound even weaker than I felt. “Vivian told you I’m not feeling well, right?”
“She did.”
“Let’s have dinner tomorrow, how about it?”
“Vivian told me that you almost passed out getting in the car. That sounds serious.”
“We don’t have humidity in Los Angeles. I forgot what it’s like in Arkansas this time of year.”
“You gave Vivian quite a scare,” Connie said.
Vivian asked for the phone. I told her I was going back to my room as I handed it to her. On the way upstairs, I could hear her retelling the airport story. In this version, I collapsed face down on the asphalt.
As the morning sun began to filter through the curtains, Vivian was rattling dishes in the kitchen. I must have gone back to sleep, because it seemed an instant later that a knock startled me.
“Simon, are you awake?” It was Vivian’s voice. “Your sister’s here. Can you come out?”
“Yeah! Give me a minute,” I said.
Connie was at the door. “Hi, Simon,” she said, attempting to sound chipper. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Dinner?” I called out. “What time is it?”
“Six in the evening,” Connie responded. “Are you going to sleep through the whole visit?”
“Let me take a shower. I’ll be down in a little bit.”
I opened the curtains, hoping the daylight would get me going. I made out features of the familiar landscape. There was Ernie’s house, and the pool, now derelict, with shrubs hanging over the edges. “Poor Ernie,” I said aloud, but without emotion. I felt hollow inside, as though I’d only read about Ernie and didn’t really remember the smell of his body as we fooled around during our sleepovers.
I drew the curtains and sat on the bed, wondering how I could possibly join the others for dinner. My entire body ached. I took a long shower, hoping that cold water might help wake me up. It didn’t.
Connie hugged me as I entered the kitchen, a pretext for examining my bony shoulders.
“That illness really wore you down,” Connie observed. “There’s no meat on those bones.”
“I was very ill,” I said flatly. I wondered if she’d have been happier if I’d come home in a casket with an AIDS quarantine label on it. That way, she could start another career, condemning the sins of her wayward brother who chose to be homosexual—and see where it got him.
We sat down and filled our plates with roast beef, carrots, peas, and heaps of red-skinned mashed potatoes.
Before anyone touched their food, Vivian offered a prayer. I acquiesced and bowed my head, not wanting to worry her about the fate of my soul when she was so concerned about my body. The moment she said amen, she looked in my direction, her face a roadmap of pain, each line etched by the sharp point of Lenny’s belittling remarks and the endless condemnations of his mother, Mandy, who never failed to catch an opportunity to tell Vivian how lucky she was to be married to her son. Hearing Mandy talk, one would think Vivian grew up in abject poverty, picking tomatoes for market as soon as she could stand on two feet. I’d seen the ruins of the house where Vivian was raised; it was as large as the Sibley mansion. At least Vivian’s family knew when to give up the past. They left that old house during the Depression and moved closer to town. The Powells never left sight of the family cemetery.
“It’s been difficult,” Vivian said, looking in my direction. “If Lenny had just put
something away, but he made sure I wouldn’t have much to live on.”
“I had hoped Lenny was just being mean when he said that,” I consoled her. “I didn’t think he really meant it.”
“Oh, he meant it, all right,” Vivian said, pursing her lips.
Connie took my hand. “Our mother’s had a rough time these last few years. She just didn’t want you to know about it.”
“I could have sent money,” I said. “I didn’t know you were hurting.”
“You don’t need to be thinking about me,” Vivian said, shooting Connie a look of disapproval. Connie was almost visibly biting her tongue. “You have your own life to live.”
I wondered what Vivian imagined my life to be like.
“Let me at least pay the property taxes,” I offered. “How much is it?”
“Two thousand dollars. We’ve still got a lot of acreage back there.” Vivian waved her hand toward the window.
“From now on, the taxes are my responsibility, okay?”
Vivian was about to protest that she’d be all right, but Connie spoke up. “That will be a big help, Simon. Vivian doesn’t want you to know how hard it’s been keeping up the property. After all, you’ll be the one to inherit it someday.”
It must have galled Connie to acknowledge that, since according to the historical papers still governing the estate, the first son always inherited. The property could only be sold if every descendant of the Arkansas patriarch agreed.
After dinner, I went upstairs and wrote a check. Everyone was still sitting around the table drinking coffee when I set it down. Connie looked it over. Her eyes widened as she realized that I had made it out for twice the amount.
“What kind of money are you making out there in California?” Connie wondered. “How can you afford this?”
“My boy’s always done well,” Vivian said, “smart as he is.”
“It’s not that much,” I said, taking the check from Connie’s hand and placing it in Vivian’s. “I’ll do what I can from now on.”