by Alex Witchel
I nodded. “That’s perfect,” I said. She glowed.
He looked at me.
“Yeah, go right ahead,” I said. “Tell me what my name would be.”
“Sandra, I have no energy for this,” he said.
“Okay, let me help you. Relentless Bitch?”
He looked at me seriously. “No,” he said finally. “I think it would be Wish List. Or Three Wishes.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
He sighed. “Well, I think you tend to look at the people you love and see them the way you want them to be, rather than the way they are. So, Wish List. Or you think that when something bad happens, it can be solved by magic, or should be, because you said so—instead of opening your eyes and seeing that, sometimes, what’s in front of you just can’t be fixed. So, Three Wishes.” He took a breath. “Or if you don’t like those, there’s always Rose-Colored Glasses.”
I felt stung. What provoked that? I saw Paul flush, as if he had said too much. “Well, thanks for the character sketch,” I said as Sally got up and went into the kitchen with an armful of dishes. Smart move, I thought, turning back to the television. Because if I was Rose-Colored Glasses, she must be Rose-Colored Cataracts.
When it was time for the church service, Sally insisted on driving us in her car. Paul was beautifully dressed, in pleated black wool pants and a crisp white shirt, but I could see that though his belt was pulled to its last notch, the pants were still loose around his waist.
The church was ultramodern, and the crowd was large. Paul sat between us, and as we settled ourselves into the pew, he turned to me and smiled, really smiled, for the first time all weekend. I loved his smile, genuinely sunny, with its tang of impishness.
The service began, and as I usually do when services begin, I stopped listening and looked around at the congregation, none of whom seemed to be obviously sick. Soon, though, I couldn’t help but notice that Paul had become agitated. He was crossing and uncrossing his arms and legs, and his skin had gone that greenish shade again. Sally reached for his hand, but he pulled away. She was distraught, too, I saw.
“We must work together,” the priest was intoning. “For the sick among us need our help as their days grow shorter and their journey to God reaches its end. When that day comes, they will be blessed with release from their greatest suffering.”
Paul jerked to his feet, tears in his eyes, and started pushing his way blindly down the row. Sally threw me an imploring look, and I got up and followed them out. The priest raised his voice even louder as we left, until I felt it booming through the microphone. “And God, who loves His children, will welcome them—”
As we tumbled out the front door, Sally managed to grab hold of Paul’s arm. “Paul, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she was saying in a pleading tone.
“Fuck this, get away from me!” he shouted, lurching toward the parking lot.
“Wait a minute, what’s going on?” I asked.
Sally turned. “It was a substitute priest,” she said. “We thought it would be our regular priest, the one we like so much. This one only talked about death.” She looked at me, confused. “Didn’t you hear him?”
Before I could answer, Paul started slamming his fist against the locked car door. “I want to get out of here!” he yelled. I climbed quickly into the backseat while Paul got in front with Sally. “I want to go home!” he chanted. “I want to go home!”
Sally looked at me in the rearview mirror. “I guess we’re not going out to dinner, Sandy, is that okay?” she asked calmly.
“Yes, it’s fine,” I said.
Paul was rocking in his seat and moaning now. “I want to go home.”
“We’re almost there, Paul, we’re almost there,” I said consolingly, but he didn’t seem to hear me. We made it back to the apartment in record time. Sally put her arm around his waist and helped him up the stairs. Once inside, she eased him onto the living room couch.
“I’m cold,” he began to repeat, just as obsessively as before. “I’m cold.”
Sally was already on her way into the bedroom, and returned with a pile of blankets. “Paul, you know the best thing for this is a hot shower,” she reminded him, starting to wrap the blankets around him one at a time.
“No,” he muttered. “I can’t take my clothes off, I’m cold, too cold.” And then his body started to convulse. I stood, rooted, watching him jerk wildly, and for the briefest moment he saw me staring at him and threw up his arms and covered himself with one of the blankets. Moaning and sobbing, he shot back and forth while Sally tried in vain to put her arms around him and quiet him. It went on like that for a while, until he ran out of energy and she managed to encircle him in her embrace. He wept brokenheartedly while she made low, soothing noises and rubbed his arms and his back to warm him, his face and body hidden, until, finally, he was still.
Sally got up. “I’m going to get the shower going,” she said to Paul. “And we’ll take you inside with all the blankets on so you won’t get cold, and you can get right into the hot water and you’ll feel so much better, okay?” From underneath the blanket he whimpered his assent.
I followed Sally into the bathroom. “Does he need to go to the hospital?” I asked.
“They’ll only send him home,” she said wearily. “Sometimes he becomes frightened and then hysterical, and then he gets freezing cold and can’t stop shivering, but there’s nothing they can do about it.”
The room was filling with steam. She smiled unconvincingly. “He’ll be okay.”
I turned and went back to the living room. Paul was still under the blanket. I reached out my hand to touch what I could see was his arm. He growled and pulled away.
Sally came back in. “Sandy, he’s embarrassed,” she whispered. “He didn’t want you to see him this way.”
I didn’t want to see him this way, either. I thought I knew about AIDS. I knew it made people die. But I knew nothing until I saw this happening in front of me. Not just the convulsion—a violent cry from his crashing immune system—but his complete and ongoing absence of hunger. Failure to thrive, they called that in infants. That’s what he had. He wasn’t looking forward. He was stalled, frozen with panic and illness and shame. How had this happened? And why? He was twenty-eight years old.
“I’m going inside to change now,” I said loudly. “Since we’re not going out to dinner and we get to stay home, I’m just going to put on my nightgown.”
I could hear thumping and shuffling behind me as Sally got Paul to stand and start moving toward the bathroom. When she returned, she gathered up the sweat-drenched blankets and loaded them into the wash.
“How about a drink?” I offered, following her, and Sally grinned good-naturedly. “Absolutely,” she said. Between the two of us, a bottle of white wine disappeared while Paul was still in the shower. The way I looked at this girl had changed significantly during the last hour. She was, I now realized, some fearsome combination of nurse and girlfriend, sister and pal, who put every ounce of energy into sustaining Paul. But as much as I loved him, I wondered what he had done to inspire such devotion. From the little I knew of their relationship, it was years of broken dates, broken promises, endless procrastination. And still, here she was, giving it her all. Did she know about Paul? Could she, really, and keep doing this?
“I think I’ll make some dinner,” she said, draining her glass of wine.
“Forget dinner, we can order in,” I suggested, but she was already taking out a pot to boil water for pasta. I watched her busy herself, not knowing what else to say. Nothing mattered to her but the life of the moment, in which she was living her marriage to Paul Romano. Because this was it. The dinner she was cooking, the church services and the car rides, this was the marriage, the time she would look back on later and say “I remember.”
My marriage to Bucky, blessed with vitality and hope, had been Green Hills and Amherst. This girl had to pay a terrible price for her fantasy, because she hadn’t signed on for the promise of three
kids and a chafing dish. It was this: the aborted walks, the multiple showers, the priest beckoning from behind the lectern.
Her time was now.
My time with Paul Romano had passed, I realized. I belonged to another era, another part of his life, when he was younger and healthy and had the world by the balls and wanted a pal with whom to exult in it. He loved me, and I loved him, but the person huddled under that blanket was no longer mine. I would have taken him in the same way Sally had, tried to nurse him, tried to heal him, but I knew he would never let me. That, to him, would be a defeat. I sat at the table, watching Sally make pasta, and drank.
“Sally?” I spoke her name almost without knowing it. She turned and looked at me. “Sally, do you, I mean, in terms of Paul …” I stopped.
Her face darkened slightly, and she put down her bowl. “Yes,” she said, locking her eyes with mine across the room. “I know.”
And then I dropped my gaze, because for her to admit this, to say she knew that Paul was gay, was incredibly difficult. Almost every woman falls in love with a gay man at some point; I’m not sure I’ve known one who hasn’t. But the ugly part of that particular love affair is that the man does not desire you and never will. Nothing is worse for a woman, living in the culture that Jolie! magazine and all the others perpetrate. She knows she’s too fat. She knows she’s too soft. She knows that her clothes are knockoffs and that her hair will never obey. And her worst fears are realized when the man she chooses, the one who looks into her soul and loves what he sees, never wants her physically.
The awful paradox is that for as many assholes as a woman can sleep with in a lifetime—an infinite amount, apparently—the ones who want to sleep with you, who grab you and hold you as a woman, who respond to you without thinking—even if they’re not capable of thinking—well, that’s also the way women need to be loved. The soul touch over coffee is swell, bursting with promise. The wardrobe advice is even better. But when it gets down to basics, it’s a man’s hands on you, in all his clumsy grasping, wanting you—that is the part of being a woman that can’t be satisfied otherwise. And to look another woman in the eye and acknowledge that you have agreed to live without that is an empty moment.
“Okay,” I muttered, embarrassed, looking away.
Paul reappeared, wearing a robe and his baseball cap. He was pale and drawn, and his hands trembled while he tightened the sash around his waist.
“Well, you look bright and shiny,” I said gamely. “You smell good, too.”
“Thanks,” he said. “That was more showers in a day than I ever intended. But I guess God will love me better clean.”
“Sure He will. And He’ll love you even more if you take Him shopping. I’ll bet He’s never had anyone who could truly explain the benefits of an Armani cut.”
Paul smiled. “Especially being surrounded by nuns.”
I laughed. Paul had always hated the nuns who had punished him, seemingly constantly, as he grew up.
“Here we go,” Sally said, bringing the pasta to the table. We sat down and ate. Paul finished a whole plate.
“That’s so good,” I said. “Do you want some more?”
“No, I’ve had enough.” He headed into the living room. “Let’s watch some TV.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said, turning to Sally, who was clearing the plates. “Let me help you,” I offered, opening the dishwasher. She set the dishes on the counter. “Sally.” I took her arm. “Are you all right?”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “It’s just so scary when it happens.”
“I know,” I said, hugging her awkwardly. Here was someone whom I hadn’t liked on principle because I thought she couldn’t face the truth in her life, and I hadn’t liked her double because I couldn’t face the truth in mine, and now she and I seemed to be sharing every intimate secret in the world and we had only met each other yesterday.
“Why don’t you let me clean up?” I said. “Just sit down and watch some TV.”
“Actually, I think I’m ready for bed,” she said. “Thank you, Sandy. I … I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
When I was done, I joined Paul on the couch. Sally came in dressed for bed, kissed him on the cheek, and said good night. He put his feet up on the coffee table.
“Are you warm enough?” I asked.
“Well, maybe,” he said.
I got a puffy down comforter from a pile of bedding in the hallway and folded it around him like a sleeping bag, covering his legs.
“That’s good,” he said gratefully. He had a crossword puzzle on his lap. I sat down next to him and snuggled under part of the covers. “Share?” I asked.
He smiled. “Of course.”
He flipped on the TV with the remote. It was almost time for Saturday Night Live.
I reached for his hand, the part that wasn’t holding the pen.
“Hey, Romano,” I said softly. “Good to see you.”
He put the pen down and smiled his sweet smile. “Hey, Sandra,” he said.
The show started, and the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Bruce Willis!”
We watched as Willis walked through the door and took his place center stage. Paul turned to me questioningly.
“Who is that?” he asked.
I started to laugh, then stopped. “What?” I pulled my head back and looked at him. His expression was blank.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“Well, I think he’s an actor,” I said, linking my arm through his and pulling him closer to me. “But we’ll find out.”
12
It had been two hours, I realized, that we were sitting there, watching Susie Schein and Miss Belladonna pace The Wall and shoot questions at each other. One would stop to pull off a fashion layout, switching its place with another. Every so often, they would turn and aim themselves at the editors skulking behind the conference table, demanding to know whether this or that story had to run right now. The sales department hadn’t sold enough ads, it seemed, which Susie and Miss Belladonna took as a criticism of the editorial content (it probably was), so some of this month’s pieces would have to go.
Finally, Miss Belladonna, mouth set in a crimson line, ordered all the pieces pulled down and laid out “the old-fashioned way,” on the floor. The assistants scurried to reassemble the layouts, starting at one end of the hallway, in front of Miss Belladonna’s cream-colored enclave, and stretching them all the way down to the other end, home to Susie’s book-infested hovel. Then they walked, Miss Belladonna leading the way in her stiletto heels, Susie plodding behind in her glove-leather loafers that gapped with every step. The rest of us stayed fixed in the doorway, watching.
Somehow, gazing down upon the magazine seemed to energize Miss Belladonna. She pointed a snakeskin toe, approvingly, at one layout, scraping the next aside like gum.
“Does it really matter whether the bathing suits come first or the evening dresses do?” I asked under my breath.
Buffy Parks glared at me. “Of course it does,” she said in her lockjaw sneer. Ever since Mimi Dawson was fired and I’d had to surrender my borrowed Cartier watch to Buffy, she and I had avoided each other. The previous week, though, we’d been thrown together at a cocktail party the magazine had given for Gloria Gaspard, the socialite wife of Scott Gaspard, the movie star. It was one of those pointless parties—someone had interviewed her in the current issue for all of four paragraphs—but the promotions department went at it full throttle, calling all the gossip columns, and the promotions director met with all kinds of caterers in search of “substantial hors d’oeuvres.” Even Miss Belladonna laughed at that one.
Anyway, at the Gaspard apartment—Mr. Gaspard, notorious for falling in love whenever he was working, was nowhere in sight—I found myself face-to-face with Buffy in the middle of the crowded library. We had no choice but to speak.
How were things?, I asked politely. Oh, she began, launching into what sounded like a well-r
ehearsed bit, she was looking to leave Darien and move into Manhattan, but she just couldn’t decide which neighborhood would “send the right message” to the fashion industry.
“What’s the message?” I asked, trying to keep the contempt out of my voice.
“You know: stylish, hip, now. The Upper East Side is out because it’s too establishment. The Upper West Side is too, you know, intellectual. Chelsea is a possibility, I guess. Where do you live?” she asked, pointedly.
“West Village,” I said tentatively.
“Yes, that’s good for features,” she decreed. “Lots of poets and writers.”
I smiled brightly. “Absolutely. Right before he died, Dylan Thomas collapsed in front of the White Horse Tavern, just a few blocks from my apartment.”
I could see her trying to remember if she had read about that on Page Six—but that was the moment when the bookshelves upstaged her. I had noticed, as Buffy spoke, that the great classics of literature that filled this library were all beautifully bound, in maroon and navy leather, with identical gold lettering. I wondered if they were first editions, and marveled that they were the same size and shape. But upon closer inspection, I saw that they weren’t books at all. Each shelf was filled with leather-bound carvings of books, and at either end of the shelves, if you looked very closely, you could see where they hooked into the bookcase. Upon even closer inspection, on top of the “books” was finely grooved wood, made to look like pages.
“What’s wrong?” Buffy asked, sensing that she had somehow lost my attention.
“Oh, nothing, I just got distracted, thinking about Dylan Thomas,” I said. “A tragedy, don’t you think?” I started moving away, having spotted Pascal. I threw him an exuberant wave that confused him mightily, because I saw Pascal every day and was never happy to see him. But when I clued him into the bookshelves, our bond was sealed. We were both people who sought salvation in books, and he was as horrified as I was.
It was justice of a sort to forever associate Buffy with that event, I thought now, as she tossed her limp hair in dismissal of my foolish question about the layouts. We continued to huddle in the conference room doorway, watching Miss Belladonna examine the same six pictures over and over. I was irritated and exhausted and sighed loudly to prove it.