Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  “He’s been having pains in his joints for months—some kind of arthritis. He’s been on a cane for a couple of weeks. Then last night he had this stroke. His left arm’s paralyzed, and he slurs when he talks. He’s all upset, but you know how proud he is.”

  Steven continued to stare at the hand-painted birds on the linen, tracing a parrot’s wing with a finger. “But he’s too young to have arthritis,” he said with a certain sullenness. Ray Lee was barely thirty.

  “Steven, it’s AIDS.” Only now could he hear the irritation and weariness in her voice.

  “But he’s not—” Steven stopped abruptly. Not what—not gay? Of course he was gay, the impish Korean who could do simultaneous impersonations of Linda Evans and Joan Collins, Ray who would love this shawl. What Steven meant was that Ray Lee wasn’t sexual. He seemed somehow above all that, androgynous and rarefied. He had even been some kind of monk for a while, or at least he’d gone to monk school. Steven had always considered him rather lucky, to be so removed from mantalk and the purely carnal.

  “We’ll have to close the office for a couple of weeks,” said Margaret, sad but firm. “I can’t do the hospital and Shaw Travel. Unless you want to go in, but you don’t.” No accusation there, just a statement of fact.

  “What about Heather?” asked Steven automatically, amazed to have remembered the name.

  “Heather quit yesterday. She’s been acting weird ever since Ray got the cane. She’s scared. I can’t deal with it.”

  Steven felt a vast protective urge, for Margaret more than Ray. She’d brought him into the office a year ago and trained him. She loved orphans, and Ray had no one, not even a wizened mother to write home to in Seoul. Margaret had even admitted he’d become a sort of replacement for Victor, at least for her. Now Steven offered all of himself, without any qualification, just as Margaret had done for him. He would spell her at County General; bring in meals when Ray got home. More than anything, he would be there as now, for the last phone call of the day. No problem about the office at all. Shaw Travel would take a collective vacation for the next two weeks, per order of Steven Shaw himself. Done.

  “You won’t be so glad at the end of the month,” observed Margaret, ever the rueful manager. “We’ve already got no business. We’re riding on the hubcaps as it is.”

  Steven wouldn’t hear another word. All she was to think about was getting Ray Lee on his feet. He promised to join her at the hospital tomorrow afternoon for the conference with the neurologist. Skillfully he got her to finish up the thousand details of the hospitalization—Ray Lee’s cat, his towed car, his unpaid rent, all of life that ground to a halt at the hospital door. Then he managed to turn the talk to Angela Ciotta, and before they were through Margaret was laughing, gasping really, demanding to know the worst.

  For Margaret’s sake he dished poor Angela mightily, even going so far as to trash the green-ink sheath. “She looked like a hooker,” he lied, just for the laugh.

  By the end of the story, Margaret was punchy, a laugh that could just as easily have been tears. But the feeling of being strung like piano wire had broken, and she was ready to go to sleep. With a promise to meet her at the coffee shop across from the emergency room, Steven purred a final good night and hung up feeling satisfied. Doubtless he would be feeling a good deal less plucky tomorrow, when he had to actually sit at the counter where he’d been eating pie while Victor died; but one day at a time.

  He trailed back through the darkened living room to where the front door stood open. The moon was practically staring him in the face in the western sky, three-quarters full. He stepped outside on the landing to gaze at it, thinking idly that he ought to go in and grab the telescope. His eye fell to the street below, and there was the black Jeep, just beyond the driveway, across from Mrs. Tulare’s house. Not exactly hidden, but Steven wouldn’t have seen it if he’d stayed in the house.

  Oh, how he wished he’d stayed in the house. He could actually feel a dull throbbing ache behind his breastbone, as if Novocaine had worn off. He slipped back in and shut the door, leaning his forehead against it a moment, trying not to think. Then he turned and floated through the dark of his own house, gliding open the glass door in the dining room and emerging onto the back terrace.

  It was utterly still, the moon cold on the stripped white trunk of the eucalyptus. Steven turned left past the garage, trying now to stop himself, loathing every footfall. The guest room was pie-shaped, tucked into the fold of the hill beyond the garage, a kind of afterthought. The bathroom was in the wedge end of the pie, its small square window flinging light on the chaparral as Steven came around. He flattened against the wall, ridiculous as a spy, and peered one eye in.

  Nobody there, the shower dripping. But just the sight of Sonny’s gym clothes tangled on the floor, the jock in a sweaty ball as if he’d just peeled out of it, tilted Steven’s stomach like a roller coaster. And Sonny did nothing for him.

  He couldn’t see into the bedroom, since the bathroom door was nearly shut. Nor hear any voices, though there was music playing. Still he had room to snap out of it. The point of no return was the corner. He groped through the sagebrush like an Indian scout. Then the point of no return was the side window, its banded light filtering through the blinds. Steven had a sudden panic, even as he held his breath and inched forward, that the blinds would be drawn enough to baffle his line of vision. He lost his last scruple as he hunkered down and came up to the sill like a periscope.

  Mark and Sonny were at either end of the sofa watching the television, the backs of their heads about four feet away from Steven. Shockingly, they were simply sitting there, dressed and everything. They might have been watching a football game. Except on the screen were two men fucking.

  The blond was on his elbows and knees in the bed, presenting his ass to a hairy overmuscled thug who stood by the bed dicking him—long, deep thrusts accompanied by a rhythmic slapping of the blond boy’s cheeks. An indifferent disco beat thunked along in the background, not quite drowning out the slaps and moans, the grunted obscenities of the thug.

  Otherwise there were no production values, and the set was like a motel room in hell. Not that the sleaze and bluntness weren’t intentional, but leave it to Steven to feel the emptiness at the heart of it—the Pauline Kael of porno. Far from feeling left out, he was relieved not to be watching it with the guys. It might have engaged him if the scene had been two men kissing. But this—did people still go this far? It seemed like a loop from ancient history. And why was the thug not wearing a rubber?

  Steven was far too literal for fantasies. Indeed, he might have tiptoed quietly away and left it at that. A little burned not to be invited to the party, but let it go. It was only a movie. Then suddenly Sonny stood up, and his ass was bare, his jeans around his knees.

  He turned toward Mark, a surly pout on his face as he hawked spit in his hand. Then he reached to stroke his swollen dick, which was wrapped with a length of rawhide that also bound his balls, the ends of the string trailing between his legs. He was standing now so he blocked Steven’s view of the video, but the moans and the guttural dirty talk still punctuated the disco beat.

  “Yeah,” grunted Sonny, cheering on the thug. He mauled at his knob, squeezing out pre-cum, seeming to present himself to Mark for inspection. “We should get us a kid,” murmured Sonny, half to himself, “and work him over good. Get him real down and dirty. Right, dude?”

  For a moment Mark didn’t move, sitting on the sofa watching Sonny instead of the video. Steven had a weird and sudden thought, a hope almost, that Mark wasn’t really involved in any of this, but just waiting for a break to excuse himself. Then Mark reached out and gripped Sonny’s balls, pulling him toward the sofa, the pressure so intense that Sonny’s head lolled back and he let out a fierce, abandoned groan, drowning out the video at last. Steven’s chin was on the windowsill, his jaws clenched, wincing that Mark might be hurting the boy. He felt hopelessly naive and out of his depth, scared even, but worst of all he c
ould feel the blip of arousal in his groin.

  It all happened very fast now, as if there were a script at work. Mark rose up off the sofa—him with his pants down too. One hand still gripping the ball sack, he yanked up Sonny’s T-shirt, baring his rippled abdomen and chest. Still Sonny’s head lolled back, his big hands swaying at his sides, not touching his dick at all now, letting Mark set the carnal agenda. Mark leaned forward and took one of Sonny’s nipples in his mouth, biting it softly, or maybe not so softly if the growl in Sonny’s throat meant anything.

  At last Steven could see Mark’s face in profile, the single-minded hunger as he worked his mouth, the dull glint of the stud in his ear. Several steps behind, Steven wondered irrelevantly why they didn’t take their clothes off. They both looked faintly ludicrous with their pants at half-mast, held back somehow from a full embrace. Then it occurred to him that this was how they wanted it, immediate and anonymous, the stolen moment and the dirty little secret.

  Mark stood up straight, eye to eye with Sonny, and they traded a humorless smile of dazzling coarseness. Cocking his head, Mark motioned Sonny over to the bed. Sonny obliged, crawling onto the mattress and holding the pose, elbows and knees, of the blond on the video screen. Except in the interim the blond had vanished, and the thug was now being sucked off by a crewcut lad beside a pool. Mark paused on his way to the bed to watch for a moment, as if he didn’t want to miss anything.

  Even by inching all the way to the corner of the window, Steven found that the bed was mostly out of his range and in the dark to boot. He had to flatten a fish eye against the glass, but even so he could only half see Mark reach out and stroke Sonny’s butt. Words were passing between them, slinky with innuendo, but Steven couldn’t quite hear.

  He had a second of being absolutely crazed, wanting to tear the casement window open. He couldn’t bear the shadows and the whispers. They had no right to withdraw from him now. He felt entitled, as if his peeping had made it a threesome. And when he heard the grinding of his own teeth, felt his hands gripping the front of his shirt as if he would rend his garment, he finally recoiled in a kind of horror, pulling his head from the sill. Now he wanted out of there fast, as if the slightest further glimpse would take the last shred of his dignity.

  He turned to the right and began to burrow through the lantana toward the driveway. His hands were getting cut up pretty bad as he pushed the web of branches out of the way, but then, he deserved it for being such a sneak. He was at pains to make no rustle or crack a branch, and gritted his teeth as a twig snapped back in his face, drawing a line of blood like a dueling scar along the cheekbone. He was almost out of the woods. He could see the pavement ahead, lit by the streetlight at the bottom of the drive. Then his foot came down on the serpent.

  Hard to say who hollered the loudest. The dog let out a yelp as he sprang from his lair, and the shock made Steven scream. But the worst of it was being cornered, the two of them grappling and colliding as they scrambled to kick free of each other. The dog growled and bayed in panic. Steven wanted to strangle it, bellowing at the beast to shut up, unaware of the irony of his own roar. The dog got away first, barreling through the last of the thicket, clearing the path for Steven, who crawled out panting onto the driveway.

  The guest-room door swung open, and Mark was there on the threshold, buttoning up his jeans. Tentatively he asked, “Are you all right?”

  Steven was still on all fours, scuffed and rumpled and grimy. He peered up at Mark. “Yeah, sure,” he replied, coolly enough given the situation. “This is part of my wilderness training.”

  Mark stooped beside him as he sat back on his haunches, brushing the shmutz from his clothes. “Steven,” Mark said quietly, and though there was reproach in it, still more was there an indescribable tenderness. He knew exactly what had been going on, and Steven avoided looking at him, examining a tear in his sweater, trying to think of an exit line. Mark repeated his name, even more quietly, and reached and brushed the hair off Steven’s forehead. “Come on, we’ll go make some coffee.”

  Steven’s eyes flashed at him now. “No. You’re busy,” he hissed, writhing at the thought of being patronized.

  Mark shook his head plaintively, pointing a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of Sonny. “This doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with you and me.”

  “Uh-huh. Will you just go back in there?”

  “I don’t want to make you crazy. I love you.”

  “Then do it in your own house.”

  At last he made Mark flinch, if that’s what he wanted to do. An awkward silence fell, but neither moved to leave. Steven wondered if Sonny was still waiting spread-eagle on the bed. Probably this little crisis was just another kink to him, and Mark would come back even hotter. Steven, distanced from all of it, couldn’t have said just then what turned him on. Given carte blanche—any man he fancied, whatever he wanted to do—he still would have been out the window looking in.

  Yet most surprising was that he actually didn’t feel so ridiculous right now, sprawled in his own driveway. If anyone had to see him like this, it might as well be Mark. At least it was who he was for real, no pretense left. He certainly didn’t feel embarrassed. There was a certain giddy freedom that went with losing face, and a curious sense of release as well, almost as if he’d gotten off.

  He turned his head with a crinkled grin. “Hey, go for it, buddy,” he said to Mark, the adolescent balance all restored. “Somebody might as well get laid around here.” Then he put a hand on Mark’s knee to brace himself and stood up, groaning involuntarily at a sudden twinge in his hip. At the first grapple with the dog, he’d bashed the side of the house. He was going to be very sore tomorrow.

  They were standing side by side now, looking off down the canyon as if they’d done no more than come out to watch the moon. “I don’t think you realize,” said Mark, “I’m as whacked out as you are.” He was speaking rather carefully, formally even, not quite trusting the sudden breeziness in Steven’s tone. “The man I used to be,” he said—groping for it—“I mean, that’s over. It’s like that video.” Again he gestured vaguely toward Sonny’s room. Steven didn’t ask if it was the thug or the blond Mark used to be. Even in his addled state he understood it was some of each. “Fuck, nobody’s even touched it since … uh, that time with you.”

  Mark frowned. His declaration of solidarity hadn’t come out quite as solid as he hoped. But Steven didn’t bat an eyelash. “All the more reason,” he retorted briskly. “Take it when it comes.”

  He nudged Mark’s shoulder with his own, furthering their conspiracy but also clearly pushing him back to Sonny’s arms, full permission granted. If there was anything shy or unresolved here, it was in Mark. He couldn’t seem to match Steven’s antic mood. He would go back in there, all right, knowing an easy way out when he saw one. But it felt as if he was doing it more for Steven’s sake than his own. And Sonny didn’t seem part of it at all, which was probably par for the course. Assuming they picked it up more or less where they left off, it would be over in ten minutes. Fifteen if Mark took a shower after.

  He stepped to the threshold again, hand on the doorknob, and turned for a parting shot. “This is the kind I’m used to,” he declared with a shrug, bleakly ironic, nothing if not self-critical. “I don’t know how to do the other kind.”

  Steven smiled indulgently, not planning to say a thing. “I love you too,” he replied.

  Mark was half in and half out, so the playful smile could have been for Sonny as much as Steven. A second later the door clicked closed behind him. Steven limped across the driveway, making for the front door. The dog was lying low in the bushes below the steps, shrinking at Steven’s approach but somehow standing his ground too. Steven stopped on the bottom step and peered at him over the rail, making a low sound in his throat, somewhere between a moan and a growl.

  After a moment the dog responded in kind, a purring grumble from deep in its lupine past. Then Steven raised the pitch
and volume, his lip curling back in a snarl. The beast followed suit and rumbled even louder, though still not raising its head from its paws. The tail Steven had stepped on looked as if it ached to wag, but it stuck to the rules and played dead. The standoff lasted about a minute.

  Then Steven started to laugh and tottered up the steps. He wasn’t thinking about Mark and Sonny. Who crossed his mind as he headed inside was Angela. He wondered how she was doing at the A event, and his mind flipped back and forth, imagining her in the tiara and the green-ink sheath, then naked except for the panties.

  He went into the kitchen, past the counter where Margaret’s shawl lay open, and into Victor’s alcove. Angela would have a lot to say about the scene in the guest room, proof of her contention that Mark was at war with himself. Steven, she would have insisted, was still the only man in his life. Steven chuckled to think about it, what sort of man he looked like, peeping in the bushes and dumped in the driveway. He was going through drawers of madeleine pans and plant food, balls of elastic bands, Christmas ornament hangers, the ephemera of a life that used to work. He didn’t know what he was looking for, only that he was looking.

  The last time he said he loved somebody was to Victor, of course, but not like this. When Victor was dying the words were different—a kind of protest, a kind of clinging, the final declaration at the border. This was something else, more glancing and provisional, with a small L. He wasn’t sure he believed it even so. There ought to be some other word for in between, less charged, easier on the backswing. He opened the second drawer from the bottom, string and twine and packing tape. There, snaking its way among the scissors and church keys, was a length of rawhide.

  A-ha, he thought, drawing it out. It coiled and shivered around his hand. He turned and headed for his bedroom, limping a little still. After all this time he was finally going to come out and play. All by himself. But a new man had to start somewhere.