by Michael Nava
Grant came over and said, “How are you doing, Henry? You all right?”
“I think so. I’m sorry to bother you but your card was the only thing they left me with.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’m glad you called me.” He scanned the room. “I always wondered what this place looked like on the inside.” He smiled. “I have to say, I’m a little disappointed. I was expecting something more dungeony.”
From over the vacuum cleaner, Dean said, “That would be the back room.”
Grant lifted an eyebrow. “Where can I take you? Home? Police?”
“An emergency room?”
His face filled with concern. “Are you hurt?”
“I was drugged,” I said. “I want to know with what.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay, let’s go.” Then he grinned awkwardly. “Actually, you mind if I take a leak first.”
“Toilet’s back there,” Dean said, indicating another leather curtain, this one black.
“Good luck,” I said.
“If I’m not back in five minutes,” he replied, “send a search party.”
After he departed, Dean came up and said, “Love the shoulders on that man. I can picture him in a harness.”
“I’ll let him know you said so,” I replied. “Listen, thanks for taking me in.”
“We take care of our own here,” he said.
The nearest ER was SF General, a seventy-year old pile of red brick buildings on Potrero Street that served the city’s poor. It was the same place where I had picked Hugh up after his overdose. An armed guard stood at the reception desk where we checked in. The nurse directed us up to the waiting room where we sat on metal folding chairs for two hours before a harried doctor pulled us into a curtained cubicle and asked what the problem was. I explained what had happened and what I wanted.
“Are you otherwise injured?”
“I don’t think so, but I would like to know what they put into my system. Could you draw some blood?”
“Yeah, fine,” he said, “but you’re gonna have to wait for the results. That could be awhile.”
I looked at Grant. “Why don’t you take off? I’ll be okay.”
“Nothing doing,” he said. He said to the doctor. “We’ll wait.”
“Suit yourselves,” he said, and insisted on examining me for injuries. After he left, we waited some more until a nurse came and drew my blood. She sent us back into the waiting room. Two men yelled angrily at each other in Cantonese. A frightened black child clung to his mother whose bloody hand was wrapped in a kitchen towel. In a corner, an ancient woman with Kabuki-type make-up sat in a wheelchair, silently weeping. A couple of cops bustled in dragging between them a black man in handcuffs bleeding from a head wound.
Grant said quietly, “There’s a lot of misery in the world.”
“You don’t have to stick around.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “You were attacked. Your wallet and your car keys were stolen. When we get the results from the blood work, you’ll come back to my place, get cleaned up, and we’ll see if your car’s still there. Do you have a spare key?”
“In my apartment,” I said. “In Linden.”
“I’ll drive you there and back.”
“What about your job?”
He shrugged. “The firm won’t go out of business if I don’t make my billables today.”
“You’re a decent guy to go out of his way for someone he just met,” I said.
He looked around the room. “It’s easy to be decent when everything’s been handed to you.”
“Meaning?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just let me help you, okay?” He stood up. “I saw a coffee machine back there. Want a cup?”
I smiled. “If you’re buying.”
When he returned, we sat and drank the worst coffee I had ever tasted.
“I read about you in Martindale,” I said. “We were at the university at the same time, but I was a senior when you were a freshman.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I looked you up in Martindale, too. Sorry we missed each other.”
“You’ve made interesting career choices,” I said, “going from Menzies to Rosenthal. Listing LIFE in your associations. Not what I would have expected from someone who looks like he captained the lacrosse team at his prep school.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he replied, sipping the coffee and making a sour face. “Like yours. When Hugh said he was involved with a criminal defense lawyer, I pictured sleazy, not movie star.”
OK, so we found each other attractive. That was out in the open and, given the circumstances, awkward verging on weird. He felt it too from the way his face colored.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I didn’t leave Menzies, I was canned.”
“What? Why?”
“I came out,” he said, crumpling his empty cup. “The partners were fine with me being gay as long I kept it to myself and brought women to firm functions, but when I told them I wouldn’t play the game anymore, I was fired.”
“What drove you out of the closet?”
“White Night,” he said. He looked at me. “Were you there?”
“I came up the next morning when the call went out for lawyers to represent the demonstrators,” I said. “I drove by City Hall. It looked like a bomb had gone off.”
The night the manslaughter verdict was announced for Dan White, who had murdered Harvey Milk and George Moscone, a riot broke out at Civic Center. Demonstrators set fire to police cars and smashed the doors of City Hall. Later, in retaliation, the police invaded Castro Street, pulling people out of bars and beating them bloody.
“It was a battlefield,” he said grimly.
“I don’t remember seeing you in lock-up the next morning.”
“I managed to avoid getting arrested,” he said. “But I was there. Do you remember where you were when the verdict was announced?”
“Like it was the day Kennedy was shot,” I said. “I was sitting outside a courtroom in San Jose about to head in to argue a suppression motion. You?”
“I was in my office working on interrogatories,” he said. “I heard some of the partners coming down the hall laughing and joking. I stuck my head out and asked what’s up. One of them said, they gave Dan White a slap on the wrist. I went back into my office, closed the door and turned on the radio. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A first-year law student could have told you that Dan White had committed premeditated murders and they convicted him of voluntary manslaughter!” His face darkened with remembered rage. “Meanwhile, it’s all a big fucking joke to the other lawyers at the firm. I had to get out of there before I punched one of them. I grabbed my coat and wandered over to Castro Street. Eventually, we marched down to Civic Center, thousands of us. I didn’t throw any rocks or set fire to the cop cars myself, but I didn’t try to stop it either. I wouldn’t have cared if they’d burned City Hall to the ground that night. I called in sick for the rest of the week and came out to everyone I knew. I told anyone who had a problem with it to fuck off. When I came back to work, I went to the senior partner, Menzies himself, and came out to him. He fired me on the spot.”
“You don’t do things halfway, do you?”
He gave me a sour look. “I’d done things halfway my whole life, Henry, and you know what that gave, half a life.”
“You told me earlier it was the thing with Hugh that kept you in the closet.”
He shrugged. “It was fear,” he said. “Hugh blackmailing me didn’t help. That just confirmed all the terrible things I’d heard about the ‘lifestyle.’ ” I heard the air quotation marks in his voice. “But in the end, the only person who kept me in the closet was me.” He stood up, took my empty cup and tossed it and his into the trash can. When he sat back down he said, “You know what I was doing when you called me?”
“Answering interrogatories? I hear you civil lawyers work round the clock.�
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He smiled. “No. I was in bed reading Hugh’s journal.”
“Tough reading,” I said.
“Yeah, especially the part about his grandfather raping him.” He shook his head. “When you told me he said that, I thought it was a load of crap, something he said to get your attention. But the journal was obviously private and the description of what the judge did to him, that wasn’t fake. You know, I always wondered why Hugh was so sexually experienced at fourteen. He really knew his way around a man’s body but when we had sex, it was like he wasn’t really there. Now I understand why. It’s horrible what that man did to him.”
“You clerked for the judge. What’s he like?”
“My dad arranged the clerkship. Thought he was doing me a favor. One of the worst years of my life. The judge was arrogant, demanding and belittling. Halfway through the year, one of my fellow clerks quit. Quitting a clerkship with a federal judge isn’t something you do but she’d had enough. I don’t blame her. The judge was especially hard on her. The only reason I didn’t get the full treatment from him is because he and my father are friends. Well, not friends exactly but peers.”
“There are lot of assholes in our line of work,” I observed.
“Judge Paris is special, believe me,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Hugh.”
“Did Hugh talk about his family when he was a kid?”
Grant shook his head. “No, but why would he? I knew his dad had been institutionalized and his mom was a drunk.”
“How did you know that?”
“Our folks moved in the same circle and it’s greased by gossip. As far as I know, though, no one said anything about what the judge did to him. If he’d told me any of this when I saw him, I might have been able to accept his apology.”
“Maybe he thought if he had told you, it would sound like he was making excuses. I think he was genuinely trying to take responsibility for what he did to you.”
“I didn’t know him at all,” he said, regretfully. “Now I never will.”
A nurse appeared and called my name. We went up to her.
“You wanted to know about the drug you took,” she said, flipping through a chart.
“I didn’t take it, someone injected me with it.”
She was not interested. “Sodium pentothal,” she said. “No long-term effects. You’ll be fine.”
Grant said, “Sodium pentothal? What’s that?”
“Truth serum,” I replied.
SEVEN
“Why would a mugger inject me with truth serum?” I asked as we drove from the hospital back to Hugh’s apartment.
He thought for a moment. “Do you have an ATM card?”
“A what?”
“Automated teller machine,” he explained. “You see them at banks. You put in a plastic card, punch in a code and it dispenses money from your account.”
“Uh, no, that technology hasn’t reached the great unwashed yet. And what if I did? How would that explain the sodium pentothal?”
“They could have been trying to get your code. Where did you say your car was?”
I directed him to where I had parked my car. It was gone.
“Fuck,” I said.
“You need to file a police report,” he said. “For your insurance company, if nothing else. You can call from my place.”
We drove into the underground garage beneath his building and took the elevator up to his condo. Outside, it was dawn and the view of the bay from his windows was spectacular. While I filed a report with the cops over the phone, Grant made scrambled eggs and bacon and a pot of coffee. We ate at a dining table that seated eight.
“You have a lot of furniture for one guy,” I observed.
“My mother’s an interior decorator,” he said. “I get the stuff her clients decided they didn’t like after all.”
“The Hancocks have to work for a living?”
“She doesn’t do it for the money, it’s how she expresses herself.” He gave me a quizzical look. “What do you have against rich people?”
“Hugh called them sharks,” I said.
“Maybe his family,” Grant said. “Not mine. What’s your story, Henry? You from the city?”
He said “the city” with a proprietary air. “No,” I said. “I was raised in the Central Valley. You’re San Francisco born and bred, right?”
“Fourth generation. But I asked about you.”
I told him a little bit about myself, got him to reveal a little bit more about himself, and soon we were chatting freely about this and that, as if we were on a first date that was going really well as opposed to two guys thrown together by a death. Some part of me wished it was a date. That seemed strange, but then, the whole night had been strange. And exhausting. I yawned.
“Sorry,” I said, covering my mouth.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “You must be wiped out. Why don’t you clean up? I’ll give you something to wear while I throw your clothes into the washing machine. We’re about the same size.” He grinned. “I didn’t want to say anything before but you have a little vomit on your pants.”
I glanced at the stain on my pants leg. “That’s attractive,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show where the bathroom is and get you some clean clothes.”
I took a long, hot shower. Grant had laid out a pair of levis and a rugby shirt on his bed. He’d also left a pair of boxers—pale blue, Brooks Brothers—and it felt a little strange putting them on, intimate and undeniably kind of sexy too. I heard him on the phone and from what I gathered from his side of the conversation, it was a work call. I slipped on the boxers and sat at the edge of his bed. The dizzying weight of exhaustion laid me out on the bed. Five minutes, I thought, and closed my eyes.
The room was dark when I woke up, covered with a soft blanket. Light seeped in from beneath the closed door. I switched on a lamp. The clothes that had been laid out on the bed hung over a chair. I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed and went out into the hallway. The television was on. When I entered the living room, Grant was sitting on the couch watching the evening news.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at me with a smile. “Hey, sleepyhead.”
“I am so sorry about that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied. “You had quite a night. You hungry? I’ve got a fridge full of take-out leftovers.”
“Sure, if you’re having anything.”
He hopped up and said, “Make yourself at home. I’ll rustle something up. You want a glass of wine?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
When he busied himself in the kitchen, I wandered around the apartment. On a bookshelf was the same small collection of gay novels that every gay man owned: City of Night, The City and the Pillar, A Single Man, Dancer from the Dance, Tales of the City. He also owned The Joy of Gay Sex which reminded me of going through Hugh’s books in the forlorn cottage where he had camped out. Grant’s apartment could not have been more different, a safe, warm place that radiated stability.
“Here’s your wine,” Grant said from behind me. He glanced at The Joy of Gay Sex in my hand. “I see you’ve discovered my porn.”
I flushed and slipped it back on the shelf. “Snooping. Bad habit.”
He handed me a glass of red. “Occupational hazard of being a lawyer. By the way, won’t your office be wondering what happened to you today?”
I faced him. “Actually, I’m not practicing at the moment.”
“Why?”
“The short answer is burnout. The long answer is—well I’m still working out the long answer.”
“I’d like to hear it when you do,” he said. “Come and check out the food options.”
A half dozen cuisines were represented in the collection of boxes and containers laid out on the kitchen counter. I ended up with tandoori chicken and a side of spaghetti with pesto.
“I can cook,” he said, grinning as he lifted a forkful of Thai peanut
noodles to his mouth. “My mother made sure all her boys could feed themselves, but take-out is easier than cooking for one person, especially with the hours I work.”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “You don’t have a boyfriend?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “For most guys, the city is a candy store or like that T-shirt that says, ‘so many men, so little time.’ I like sex as much as the next guy, but my folks have been married for forty-two years. That’s what I’m looking for.” He ate some more noodles, then asked, “Were you in love with Hugh?”
“What happened between us happened very fast and it didn’t last very long but while it did, I felt something for him I’d never felt for anyone.”
“Which was?”
I put my fork down. “Less alone,” I said. “Even when he wasn’t there. Is that love?”
“Sounds like it to me,” he said quietly. He sipped some wine, looked at me, and continued, “Is it really screwed up that I wish we had met under different circumstances?”
“No,” I said. “I like you, too, Grant, but there’s one last thing I have to do for Hugh.”
“What’s that, Henry?”
“Prove he didn’t kill himself,” I said, “and give him some dignity in death.”
“You really think the judge had someone kill him?”
“Unless there’s a better explanation. You still willing to give me a lift home?”
“Of course,” he said. He stood up and cleared our plates. “Let me wash up and we’ll go.”
We talked comfortably on the drive to my place about our time at the university and about the law. When we arrived at the apartment complex, I told him to pull into my parking spot but the stall was already occupied by a gray Honda Accord.
“That’s my car,” I said.
He pulled in behind it. “You sure?”
“I know the license plate number.”
We got out and walked around the car. It was undamaged and locked.
“They must have got my address off my driver’s license,” I said. “Let’s check the apartment.”