Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  Briskly and efficiently, Steven would toss the bills into a cardboard carton, where they would wait till Margaret flustered in and paid them. This did not keep things from being turned off sometimes—the gas, the cable, the phone. But that was all right, since Steven didn’t expect connections to be made anymore, and besides, it was an adventure to see what one could go without.

  The junk mail went in the trash, of course, but not before Steven had rifled through it, bracing himself for the sight of Victor’s name. For still the realty circulars and brokerage come-ons would arrive, the computer lists incapable of accepting death. Today a flier from a wine shop, promising a special gift for Mr. and Mrs. Victor Diamond, the Mrs. being Steven. Actually he liked this part, the persistence of Victor’s name, even as he flung it into the barrel.

  Two letters today, one from Montana and one from New York. The Billings address he couldn’t place, a woman’s hand, some cousin of Victor’s or a high-school pal, two sides of a flower-bordered page full of stiff and formal sentiments. Not that Steven opened it to see. He tossed it into a shoebox where half a hundred other well-meaning thoughts lay sealed. The New York letter, Tiffany-crisp, was from an old friend of Steven’s, an opera queen who’d had a crush on him fifteen years ago. Into the shoebox.

  As he came around into the kitchen proper, he found Sonny Cevathas leaning into the fridge, in white sweatpants and nothing else. He turned around holding a carton of milk and poured it over a bowl of cereal. He grunted pleasantly to acknowledge Steven’s presence, but no more than that, so skillful was he at not intruding. Steven watched him balance the bowl, a glass of milk, and two sweet rolls on his arm, his waiter’s skills acute as he headed out the back door.

  He’d been there four days now. The guest room beyond the garage had its own door, so they only met by chance, passing like ships. Steven had taken Sonny’s plea at face value—“I need a place for a while”—and he didn’t feel used. If people had asked him any number of things, he probably would have said yes. He was accustomed by Victor’s illness to being overrun and invaded. In those last months the guest room had been filled with a stream of friends and family, coming to say good-bye. Compared to that, Sonny’s being there hardly registered at all.

  In addition to which, however charged his presence was to the men of The Body Works, Sonny didn’t do anything for Steven. Steven watched him through the kitchen window, laying out his breakfast on the wooden bench under the bougainvillea, squinting up into the late-October sun to make sure he was getting its optimum light. No tanning rays available mid-autumn at four o’clock, but the burnish of the sun was perhaps its own reward. He scooped up a spoonful of Wheaties and thrust it in his mouth, eyes closed as he rhythmically stretched his neck.

  The phone rang by Steven’s shoulder, and he plucked the receiver, speaking without preamble. “This boy thinks he lives in a movie.”

  “I’m picking you up in forty-five minutes,” Mark announced. They always began mid-sentence now. “Don’t ask.”

  “He had a date last night. I heard them come in around one, and I watched the guy leave this morning. I feel like the housemother.”

  “Steven, it’s your own damn fault. If he feels so fuckin’ homeless, let him go stay at the Y.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “If I tell you, you won’t come. Just be ready.”

  “But how will I know what to wear?”

  “Full leather.”

  As Mark hung up in his ear, he saw Sonny turn his head expectantly. The grisly dog came loping out of the bushes on the hill, his matted head slung low in that peculiar mix of cowering and threat. Steven felt a prickle of anticipation, waiting for Sonny to flinch and back away, breaking free of the self-possession. Instead he hunkered forward and held out his arms, and the mangy creature trotted up. Just to see its moth-eaten tail wagging—almost a spasm that twitched its hindquarters, as if the will to happiness was rusty—jarred Steven and made him feel curiously alone.

  Sonny hugged the dog about the neck, pressing his own bare flesh to the racked fur. How did they have the time to become an item in just four days? Steven felt betrayed—worse, jealous. The last thing he needed right now was Huck Finn and Lassie in his backyard, friendship truer than true. By the time he flung open the kitchen door, the dog was already lapping the mush at the bottom of the cereal bowl, tenderly held in Sonny’s hands. The bang of the door broke the spell. The dog skittered a few feet away and shot Steven a hooded look.

  “That’s not mine,” Steven announced, pointing a finger at the mutt.

  Sonny laughed, the sun crinkling his eyes. “Hey, he’s not anybody’s. He’s just out there.”

  “Well, I don’t want to encourage him.”

  Sonny nodded, studying the beast, who hadn’t wavered his eyes from Steven. “Yeah, well, he don’t look too encouraged. I was thinkin’ I’d give him a flea bath.”

  “Look, you can have him if you want him. When you leave, I mean. I just don’t want him domesticated here.”

  “Got it,” Sonny replied curtly, not mentioning the bag of veal bones he’d brought home from the restaurant last night, or watching Steven himself hurling dog biscuits and epithets from the terrace in equal measure.

  Steven ducked back into the house to get ready, but wore no leather at all. He assumed they were going to something highly gay, some cheery fundraiser for the dying, where the young would be ruthlessly casual and the middle-aged overdressed. Steven, who was finally losing weight on a sort of popcorn and melon diet, stuck to a colorless, shapeless look. The worst that could be said of the way he dressed—Mark said this—was that he didn’t look queer at all. Which was why Mark teased him about wearing leather chaps and harness, or a beaded gown for Halloween, just a week away. Steven was the only gay man in the Hollywood Hills without hair products, Mark would tell him disapprovingly.

  In any event it didn’t matter where they were going. Now that they were best buddies, they hung out together some part of every day. They would have played catch if they’d had the right gloves. Mostly they ate, lunches in diners and takeout suppers, Steven eschewing fats with Lenten rigor. Nobody loved too much. The incident of the mismatched blow job was almost two weeks behind them. They even laughed about it sometimes, but carefully. Meanwhile they cruised the world they wandered through together, exchanging indecencies about waiters and cops, confining themselves to what was fuckable in the abstract.

  Steven heard the Jeep honk, jumped in his Reeboks, and hurried out. Mark had pulled up behind the Mercedes, which Sonny was washing, still in his white sweatpants. The two men were teasing back and forth as Steven slung himself into the Jeep. “Yeah, make me dirty and hose me down,” called Mark to Sonny, who held the hose in one hand, his body slick from the backspray.

  “Listen, dude,” retorted Sonny, “you meet me up by the gas pumps later, I’ll grease you up real good.” They laughed; Steven smiled. As Mark swung out and passed the Mercedes, Sonny touched his earlobe and nodded. “Very hot.”

  They swung away down the hill, and Steven looked over at Mark. “What’s very hot?”

  Mark didn’t answer till they reached the red light on Sunset, by which time Steven had ceased to bristle. It was part of the theater of gay life to which he held no ticket: talking dirty. He could talk very sweet, sometimes even blunt and tough, but he couldn’t get his tongue around these fantasies of dudedom. The common dream pool—locker rooms and barracks and heavy-metal shops—went right by him. He felt vaguely inadequate that his own erotic stomping ground was men in tuxes, very Cole Porter, or tumbling naked in the surf. No hosing required.

  At the light Mark craned his head around to show Steven his left profile. “This,” he said, a finger fluttering his earlobe, in which there was a single silver stud.

  “When did you get that?”

  “Yesterday. I ordered a diamond, but you have to wear this for a week. It’s like a training bra.”

  “But what if it gets infected?”

  “I
t won’t.”

  “Did the person who did it wear gloves?”

  “Steven Shaw, headmistress.”

  They turned right at the Beverly Hills Hotel and headed up Cold-water Canyon. The boxwood hedges on either side were as claustrophobic as the Brothers Grimm. Steven didn’t know if he was annoyed at Mark for the post-punk affectation or pissed at himself for daring nothing of his own. His hair had hung exactly the same on his forehead forever. Weren’t widows supposed to kick free and go blond overnight and plunge their necklines?

  Well, not him. But even so, he wasn’t sad or even really grumpy. There was a charge in him whenever he and Mark went out on a jaunt, as if they were teenage boys who would make something happen or else. About two miles up the long hill, Mark turned in at a blind driveway flanked by rows of cypresses shivering at the sky. About fifty feet down the cypress alley, they came to gates like at Blenheim, with a turreted Norman gate house looming to one side. Steven looked questioningly at Mark, who announced himself into a brass trumpet device affixed to the gatepost.

  “Mark Inman and guest, to see Lou.”

  The Norman tower stood mute for a moment, fixing invisible eyes. Startled as he was, Steven didn’t move a muscle, knowing from Mark that Lou Ciotta was bodyguarded like a drug lord. Without a word of acknowledgment, the gates swept open, and they headed in. Around the next bend the cypresses stopped at a stretch of lawn so green it made Steven’s teeth ache. The Norman mini chateau crested the hill with buttresses and vast expanses of diamond-paned windows.

  “I thought they lived in Malibu.”

  “Just weekends. This is the winter palace.”

  The drive swept into an oval cobblestoned court. A couple of wolfhounds loped across the grass to greet them. Steven didn’t ask why, after a month of avoiding all contact, Mark had decided to enter the lion’s den. Lou Ciotta’s name was never mentioned between them, though Steven had finally looked him up in TV Guide and watched an episode. A few times late at night he’d peered at the autumn sky through the telescope, but otherwise he thought of Mark’s past as past for good, like his own. He couldn’t imagine what Mark was thinking in bringing him here, but he felt a spurt of adolescent anarchy to think they were going in.

  They parked beside three black cars—a Bentley, a Porsche, and a Ferrari, like three stallions grazing the edge of the wide electric lawn. Mark smiled at Steven once, to ask if he was ready. Yup. Together they walked up the wide stone stairs to a balustraded terrace. An oak door fierce as a moat yawned open, and a butler from Central Casting, tailcoat and gloves, looked down his nose and murmured, “Mr. Inman.”

  He led them across a domed foyer hung with tapestries and heraldic banners. They had left California far behind, but not Beverly Hills. The butler glided open a pair of paneled doors and stood aside to let them enter. Steven knew right away from the circle of faces that someone from the gate house had called ahead, though they were only a hair less stunned than total surprise.

  Lou and Angela sat on a Louis XIV settee, in bilious matching sweatsuits. The manager and the lawyer, Sid Rawls and Eric Beemer, huddled on either side of them like donors, briefcases open on their laps.

  “Marco,” Lou said simply, shrugging his palms like a three-card monte dealer. “So. How’s it goin’?”

  He flashed his 34-share smile. The others all seemed to be waiting till the moment was complete between him and Mark. Steven’s first thought on looking closely at the star was that he and Sonny were the same age and the same type, street-smart and slightly pugnacious, but painfully eager to be liked. Angela curled up beside Lou’s shoulder in a kittenish way, her teeth bulging slightly behind her lips like a pit bull’s, her red hair teased into a foaming frenzy.

  Mark put an arm around Steven’s shoulder. “Every Thursday at four o’clock,” he said, “we meet up here to strategize. See, we like to get away from the studio. Feels more like a family. Right, Lou?”

  “Yeah. And it ain’t the same widdout you, pal.” Lou Ciotta brimmed with sincerity, his heart going out to the prodigal CEO, but he also couldn’t stop shifting his eyes to Steven. “So who’s this? Your lawyer?”

  Now it was Mark’s turn to look bruised. “Lou, would I do that? This is Steven—my boyfriend.” He squeezed Steven’s shoulder, and Steven flashed a gelatinous smile.

  “Well, hey, it’s about time.” Though the other two men looked as if they had swallowed turds, Lou Ciotta was bright and victorious. He stood and thrust a meaty hand at Steven. His eyes were slightly bulged, glazed as if he looked at the world through a film of Vaseline. Coked to the tits. “This one, he keeps his life in a box,” said Lou, cocking his head at Mark. “Now that we got you here, you’ll see how Lou Ciotta works. What’s his is yours. Angela, meet Steve.”

  “Pleasure,” she said, gathering herself from the sofa, shaking her hair like a tambourine.

  “Lou,” interjected Sid Rawls, “we gotta finish this deal.”

  “Fuck the deal,” sneered the star, his bedroom eyes still riveted on Steven. “We got company.”

  He slipped an arm through Steven’s and led him across the gleaming parquet, past gilded tables cluttered with Meissen shepherdesses. The former Miss Arizona followed with Mark, and the squirming courtiers, Sid and Eric, brought up the rear. Through French doors they passed out onto a terrace, where a table was laid for tea, the baroque sterling service heavy enough to ballast a ship. A starched maid poured, her Irish as thick as the butler’s English. She pointed the way to the scones, plates pyramided with sandwiches, trifle, pies. It was all so BBC, one half-expected a voiceover from Alistair Cooke at any moment.

  “I don’t even know what we were fightin’ about,” sighed Lou as he and Steven took their cups and plates to wrought-iron chairs at the end of the terrace, looking down on a rose garden dotted with marble nymphs and satyrs. “Bury the past, right? So how long you two been together?”

  “Uh, not long,” said Steven mildly, swallowing a petit four. He wasn’t sure what tack he was supposed to take. Since he was so unaccustomed to watching sitcoms, he was extremely unprepared to be appearing in one.

  “Me and Angela, it’s been four years, and I still get a bone whenever I see her. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, well, this is my second marriage,” Steven replied demurely.

  Then Angela appeared beside them, cozying next to Lou on his chair. She smiled at Steven. “Did he tell you this house belonged to Cary Grant?”

  “Gary Cooper,” Mark corrected, taking the chair beside Steven.

  “Oh yeah,” replied Angela, unfazed.

  “This man is a genius,” Lou declared, reaching forward to squeeze Mark’s knee. “Lou Ciotta wouldn’t even be here widdout this man’s vision. He’ll be runnin’ the network someday. You better treat him right.” This to Steven, accompanied by a playful slap to the shoulder, knocking a dollop of tea into Steven’s saucer. “Or else you gotta answer to Lou.”

  “Oh, he treats me real good,” Mark put in, turning a fatuous gaze on Steven. “He fucks me and everything.”

  Steven choked slightly on a bite of scone. Lou Ciotta nodded gravely. “We don’t have no problem with that. Do we, Angela?”

  “Uh-uh. Hey, live and let live, right?”

  She grinned at Steven, who smiled peakedly, licking the Devon shire cream from his finger. Then everyone drank his tea for a moment, surveying the manicured acreage below. The sun had set behind the ridge, taking with it the Indian-summer glow that had suffused the roses all afternoon. An Asian gardener, reed-thin and stooped, moved among the rose beds, clipping blooms and laying them in a basket. From the terrace they could hear each clip of the shears, mournful but unsentimental.

  The flow of servants in Lou Ciotta’s house was as entrenched as the staff of a landed duke. Yet Lou and Angela themselves seemed strangely removed from it all, like a couple of orphan children. It looked to be as unreal to them as it was to Steven and Mark. They’d come into this life with the suddenness and speed of a lottery win,
and deep down they probably believed they could lose it just as quick.

  Sid and Eric had meanwhile disappeared, deciding it was simpler to take their tea in private. Presumably neither one would’ve been quite so forthcoming or openminded on the sodomy question. Indeed, there didn’t appear to be much more to say, even among the foursome. Angela stroked the back of Lou’s neck, where tufts of gorilla hair sprouted from the sweatshirt.

  Steven wondered if he was meant to reach out and play with Mark, but his hands stayed gripped around his Wedgwood, not quite ready to fondle in public, even for the charade’s sake. He’d never touched Victor in public, except surreptitiously, and tended to freeze when Victor, younger and easier, nuzzled against him. This was not the same as being in the closet, but there it was: a reservoir of uncertainty, a fear of being marked.

  Lou Ciotta set his tea plate down on the glass-topped table before him, all his cakes untouched. “Me and Mark need to have a little talk,” he observed mildly, and Angela dutifully rose to her feet. Leaning forward to Steven, with the full saccharine smile that had brought her to third runner-up in the Pageant, she intoned softly, “Why don’t I show you the house?”

  So they’d finally gotten down to it: the wives and the husbands. Purring with anticipation, Steven got up to follow her. He glanced over his shoulder for a parting dirty look at Mark—half dirty really, no hosing required. And was startled by the tenderness in Mark’s face, thanking him but more than that, promising how they would laugh at this.

  Yet she wasn’t half as appalling as she’d seemed. As they drifted through the music room and the library, then through an awesome banquet hall chilly as a meat locker, she didn’t act grand in the least. There was disbelief in every gesture, pointing out the musicians’ gallery, the Regency silver, the phases of the moon on the grandfather clock. She seemed to have an instinct that Steven would like the details. She was generous and enthusiastic, leaving nothing out, sharing the secrets of her mansion girl to girl.