Lay Your Sleeping Head

by Michael Nava

  “Did you always know you wanted to be a lawyer?”

  “I knew pretty early on I wanted to do something to help people,” I said. “Then it became a matter of figuring out the best way to do that. I thought I’d figured it out with the law. Now, I don’t know.”

  “So, you may also need to have a talk with yourself about the future,” he said.

  “Yeah, but not today. Today, all I want is to be with you.”

  He laughed. “God, you just say what’s on your mind, don’t you?”

  “It prevents misunderstandings.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Two can play this game. Let’s go back to bed and fuck.”

  “Bed?” I said, incredulously. “When I could bend you over this perfectly good kitchen counter?”

  We did eventually make it back to the bedroom where Hugh played me Billie Holiday records he pulled out of an orange crate filled with LPs on an expensive stereo system. No wallpaper here; the walls were painted white or what had been white a couple of decades ago. A brass Victorian lighting fixture with four arms, each holding a bare light bulb, hung above the mattress and box spring where we lay beneath an eiderdown comforter. A dresser, a floor lamp, an electric heater and a roll top desk and chair completed the décor. The desk was quite an object; in the center of the tambour was a medallion with a copper plate depicting Nike, the goddess of Victory. The sides and drawers were decorated with inlaid wood showing lyres and olive branch wreaths; the legs were Corinthian columns.

  “Where did you get that desk?” I asked, adjusting my arm beneath his neck.

  “Uncle John,” he said.

  “That his spare?”

  He smirked. “You think you’re joking but he collects antiques and he’s been at it so long, there’s no more room in his house so he keeps most of his collection in a warehouse down in South City.”

  “What does he do, go down and visit once a month so it won’t feel neglected?”

  “I doubt it,” Hugh said. “I think for him the thrill is in the hunt.”

  “Does he have kids?”

  “Uncle John never married. He—” Hugh stopped himself and massaged one of my feet with one of his. “I shouldn’t say anything. He belongs to a different generation that didn’t discuss private matters.”

  “Now you have to tell me.”

  “My great-uncle is an elderly bachelor who collects antiques. Draw your own conclusions.” He sat up. “I love this song,” he said and began to sing:

  I’ll be seeing you

  In all the old familiar places

  That this heart of mine embraces

  All day through

  I could tell he’d sung this song many times before and he had a nice voice but after a moment he stopped and let Billie Holiday take a solo.

  “I’m surprised you like this old mush,” I said. “You’re what, twenty-five? I’d have figured you for a David Bowie fan.”

  “Twenty-six,” he said, settling back into my arms. “Like I told you, Billie is the queen of the junkies. Seems like half the guys I got high with put Lady in Satin on the turntable as soon as we shot up. Does it bother you when I talk about using?”

  “No, a lot of my clients were addicts. I never went in for drugs myself. I never saw the attraction. Especially something as hardcore as heroin.”

  “I took to junk like a duck to water,” he said. “The first time I shot up, it was like one of those time-lapse movies where you go from seed to flower in five seconds. For the first time, the world made sense and nothing hurt.” He looked at me. “For the last five, six years, I’ve been high more than I’ve been clean. That’s my normal, not this. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to scare you, but that’s the truth.”

  “Could you get used to this?” I asked him. “To reality.”

  “I want to try. Yesterday was—”

  “Yesterday,” I said.

  After a moment, he said, “The little death.”

  “What?”

  “I knew another junkie who told me the rush was like coming without sex. He called it the little death. I found out later that’s what they call an orgasm in France. La petite mort. Not just for the way it feels but because they think each ejaculation takes a man one step closer to death.”

  “Those morbid Catholic countries,” I said, “really know how to take the joy out of sex.”

  He smiled but his eyes were serious. “Each fix takes a junkie closer to death.”

  I kissed his neck. “No one is dying anytime soon.”

  “Not me,” he said. “What time is it? Two-thirty? I’m starved. Let’s go get some lunch or whatever people eat this time of day.”

  It was a rare sunny summer day in the city. We soon peeled off the outer layers of clothing we were wearing—Hugh a cardigan, me a hooded Linden University sweatshirt from my undergrad days—as we made our way west on Grove Street. We passed a block of Victorians that were identical although this was not immediately obvious because they were in different states of rehabilitation or disrepair. All had slanted Bay windows and rounded cornices that extended above the roof line, giving the street the appearance of a movie set. Imposing columns framed the front doors and above the entrance were small, ornamental balconies. A few had been restored and were beautifully painted, but the others were falling apart; plywood covered windows where panes had been shattered, paint blistered and peeled to reveal the graying wood beneath, and marble steps leading to entrances that were cracked or broken and filthy.

  “Slanted Bay Italianates,” I said knowingly, pointing them out.

  “How did they survive the fire?”

  There was only one fire in San Francisco, the one that followed on the heels of the 1906 earthquake.

  “The fire line was at Van Ness,” I said. “Everything east of there burned.”

  “Why don’t you live in the city?” he asked, taking my hand.

  I was startled, and a little nervous—we weren’t in the Castro or on Polk Street—but then the fact I had to think twice about holding his hand made me angry.

  “Ouch,” Hugh said. “You trying to break my fingers?”

  “Sorry,” I said, loosening my grip. “I don’t live here because it’s not enough to be an ordinary person in San Francisco. You’re expected to turn yourself into a character. I’m not that interesting.”

  “Oh, but you are,” he said. “After New York, San Francisco feels like a toy town. I don’t plan to stay here long.”

  That hurt. “Back to New York?”

  “No,” he said. “Too many triggers.”

  It took me a moment to understand what he meant. Drug associations. “Then where?”

  “Maybe we can figure that out together,” he said softly. “Unless you want to stay on the Peninsula.”

  “At this point, living there is just force of habit. I can go anywhere.”

  There was relief in his smile but he said nothing. He didn’t have to. We both understood what we’d just said.

  We turned north on Divisadero, passing coffee houses, head shops, a yoga studio where Hugh ran in and grabbed a class schedule, a lamp repair shop, an antique store, a pet hospital. Above us the street was crisscrossed with wires, power lines and telephone lines and cables for the buses that made their loud and stately way up and down the street. We stopped at a Mideastern restaurant and shared plates of olives and feta and hummus, stuffed grape leaves and Baba Ganoush with warm pita bread. I watched him dip a piece of bread into a small bowl of olive oil and plop it into his mouth. I wondered how I had ever eaten alone.

  After lunch, we walked to Civic Center. We crossed Van Ness at Grove, between the sleek new symphony hall and the opera house and walked along the southern wall of City Hall toward the grassy plaza. Civic Center, with its gray Beaux Arts granite public buildings, could have been the capital of a small nineteenth century Balkan principality. Anchored by City Hall, a domed wedding cake of a building that occupied two square blocks, the Civic Auditorium, public library and the California Supreme Cour
t building enclosed a big plaza where we joined the sprawl of sunbathers, bums, buskers, drug dealers, roller skaters and government workers taking advantage of the unseasonable August warmth.

  We found a place beneath one of the plane trees that lined the walkway bisecting the plaza. I sat with my back against the trunk. Hugh lay his head in my lap and closed his eyes.

  “What’s a sealed document?” he asked lazily.

  “What?”

  “In a court case,” he said. “What does it means when someone says a document has been sealed?”

  “It means that, for one reason or another, the document can’t be examined by anyone without a court order, unlike most documents which are public. Why are you asking?”

  “Last night you asked me if what I told you about my grandfather being a murderer is true. I believe it is, Henry. I’ve been gathering evidence but some of it is sealed.”

  “What kind of evidence do you have?”

  “Whatever I could find.”

  “Have you shown it to a lawyer?”

  He blinked the sun out of his eyes. “No, I told Uncle John about it, but I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

  “What did your uncle say?”

  He frowned. “He told me the day his sister and nephew were killed was one of the worst days of his life, but that it was an accident and I should leave it alone.”

  “How did they die?”

  “In a car crash,” he said.

  “Was your grandfather in the car?”

  “No, he was at home. My Uncle Jeremy – my dad’s brother – was driving my grandmother. They were going to Reno where she was going to file for divorce.”

  “So how was this murder?”

  “A witness told the police that someone forced them off the road,” he said.

  “Did the police investigate his story?”

  He shook his head. “No. They said it was an accident.”

  I stroked his face. “Do you want me to look at your evidence and give you my opinion?”

  “I’m afraid to,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if you tell me there’s nothing to it, I’m not sure I could drop it and then you really would think I’m crazy.”

  “Let’s worry about that when we get there. Where is this evidence?”

  “The desk in my bedroom,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take a look at it sometime.” I yawned. “I have to go back to Linden.”

  “Why?” he asked drowsily.

  “This time I’m the one who needs a change of clothes.”

  “You should just keep some here,” he said. “I can keep some of mine at your place.”

  “Yeah, let’s start tonight. You want to drive down with me?”

  “Have to meet Grant for dinner,” he said.

  “Grant Hancock? The other boy in the photograph?”

  “He’s not a boy anymore,” Hugh said. “He’s a lawyer, like you. I arranged this a couple of weeks ago and I can’t cancel. It’s important that I talk to him but I could come down to Linden afterwards.”

  I couldn’t keep the nerves out of my silence. He noticed.

  “Henry, I promise.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Do you know about when?”

  “Meeting him at eight. I can be there by ten-thirty, eleven.” He dug into a pocket. “Here,” he said. “It’s a key to my place. I made if for you before I—” he shrugged. “Anyway, I want you to have it.”

  “We can get you a key to my place tomorrow.”

  “When were you thinking of leaving?”

  “Why? Did you have something in mind?”

  He got up, dusted off the seat of his pants and extended his hand. “Let’s go home,” he said.

  We ended up in bed again. Sex had been many things for me but never life-giving; that’s what this felt like. I fucked him slowly, deliberately, looking into his eyes. He pressed his hand against my chest, a gesture of supplication. Whatever you want, I whispered. Just you, he said. He came without touching himself, an arc of thick, warm liquid that beaded in his pubic hair like pearls. A moment later, when I came inside of him, a vein of sadness seeped through the pleasure and I thought about the little death.

  Later, it took me twenty minutes to get out the door because we could not let each other go for more than a moment before one of us pulled the other back into an embrace. I drove home confounded by happiness and yearning; I had never felt this for anyone. Was it too soon to call it love? What was love anyway? Could two men love each other? The world said anything we called love was a travesty of the real thing. That was a poison fed to us from the moment we became aware we were different and none of us was entirely immune. All of us wrestled with the fear that maybe the world was right, that two men could never be more than their parts and that together they still added up to nothing. What I felt for Hugh told a different story. When we were together, we made something that was more than either had ever been on his own.

  The first thing I did when I got home was rummage through my books. I found Leaves of Grass wedged between my constitutional law text and a Joseph Hansen mystery. I flipped to the Calamus poems—Whitman’s paeans to male love—and found what I was looking for.

  We two boys together clinging,

  One the other never leaving,

  Up and down the roads going—

  North and South excursions making,

  Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,

  Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,

  No law less than ourselves owning—

  sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,

  Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing,

  water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,

  Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking,

  feebleness chasing,

  Fulfilling our foray.

  The phone rang. I picked it up, hoping it was Hugh, but instead of his voice, a frantic Aaron Gold said, “Henry, where have you been?”

  “Hey, Gold,” I said, putting the Whitman face-down on the coffee table. “Hello to you, too.”

  “Where are you?” he demanded.

  “At home,” I said. “What crawled up your shorts?”

  “Have you been with that guy, Hugh Paris?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” I said, warily. “Why is that any of your business?”

  “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes.” He hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was standing in the living room, asking, “Got any booze?”

  “Sit down,” I said. I poured him a drink from the Jameson I kept around for him, and poured myself one too.

  “Okay,” I said, handing him the glass. “Here’s your drink. Now what the hell’s going on?”

  “How much do you know about Hugh Paris?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Do you know who his grandfather is?” he asked.

  “No idea,” I said.

  He downed half his drink. “He’s Robert Paris, retired federal judge.”

  “So what?” I said.

  “Do you know who his great-great-grandfather is?”

  “Stop playing games. We didn’t discuss Hugh’s family tree.”

  Aaron chugged the rest of the whiskey, “Grover Linden.”

  I fell back against the couch. “Are you serious?”

  “Serious as a heart attack, chum.”

  “Fuck,” I said. I chugged my drink. “So, that’s a surprise. But I still don’t see what business any of this is of yours.”

  “Judge Paris is a client of my firm. So it is my business when my best friend starts shacking up with his mentally deranged grandson.”

  “Watch your mouth, Gold,” I snapped.

  “Did he tell you his father’s been in a private nuthouse up in Napa for the last fifteen years?”

  “I know about his dad,” I said. “But Hugh’s not crazy.”
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br />   “No? Read these,” he said, tossing the accordion file he’d brought with him on the coffee table.

  “What is this?”

  “Copies of letters your boyfriend’s been writing to his grandfather. They’re filled with crazy threats and accusations. Go on, read one of them.”

  “You should go now,” I said.

  He got up. “Fine, throw me out, but read the fucking letters, will you? Hugh Paris is seriously bad news, Henry.”

  After he left, I picked up the file, glancing inside at a sheaf of xeroxed pages. Even the glance confirmed the writing on the top one was Hugh’s but I didn’t read it. I put the file in a desk drawer and called Hugh. There was no answer.

  Eleven. Midnight. One. No answer when I called him. I threw the empty Jameson bottle against the wall. I was drunk but not drunk enough because I was still awake, muttering, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” to no one in particular. Had there even been a dinner with Grant Hancock or was that an excuse for him to score? My guts were sour and twisted up. I finished the bottle. Somewhere in the apartment, I remembered, there was a Valium or two left over from a root canal. I poked around the kitchen cabinets, found the bottle, took the pills and crawled into bed. I dreamed of a Queen Anne cottage with broken floors and when I looked down through the boards I saw nothing but a void.

  Someone pounding on my door. A loud male voice. “Police! Is anyone home?”

  I pulled on my pants and stumbled across the living room. A sandy-haired young cop stood, fist raised in the air, about to strike another blow to the door. Behind him, a woman cop, smaller, dark-haired, Chicana.

  “What is it, officer?” I rasped, not even trying to be civil.

  He backed up, took stock of me and said, “Sir, have you been drinking?”

  “Yeah, and I’d like to get back to it if you don’t mind.”

  His face colored. Don’t bait the cop, I thought. His partner stepped between us and said. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but are you Henry Rios?”

  She was half a head shorter than me and reminded me of one my girl cousins. “Yes,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “We need you to come to the morgue with us to see if you can identify a body.”