Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  “It’ll wait,” she said with a gloat of irony, and ducked back into the dining room.

  Steven gave Mark his fiercest look. “We’re going back in there,” he declared, not for nothing commander of this operation.

  “Fine with me,” said Mark, grinning as if he’d never stopped, all through the kiss.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what? I’m finally acting normal. What’s the problem? You’ve been in love with me for months.”

  “Was,” growled Steven, withering with contempt. “I’m totally over you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Thus giving Steven the opening to exit in a defiant huff. He batted the swing door wide and strode back into his banquet hall, only to discover that everything had fallen apart in the interim. They’d all erupted out of their places. At the foot of the table Margaret and Heather hovered over Ray. For an instant Steven thought he’d died, but then saw the women were struggling to pull off the Korean’s shirt, drenched with the lightning sweat that broke his fever. Otherwise the table was virtually empty. Only Linda Espinoza still sat at her place, eating her dinner with exquisite delicacy, smiling up at Steven as if she hoped he wouldn’t notice that everyone else had run away.

  “Steven,” Margaret asked him briskly, “you think we can borrow a shirt?”

  “Sure,” he replied in a frazzle, darting away.

  “And a towel,” Margaret called after him.

  As he cut through the living room, he saw Dell hunched on the sofa watching the tube. Mother Evangeline was offering a prayer on her holiday telethon, surrounded by a melting pot of fresh-scrubbed kids. Dell licked nervously at his upper lip. He seemed about to talk back to the screen. Steven hustled across the vestibule and through the study, where Angela sat at the desk speaking earnestly into the phone. Sonny was cross-legged on the floor in front of her, hanging on every word.

  “He’s a Gemini,” Angela said, “and he’s had an excellent regression back to Egypt.”

  Steven didn’t wait to hear, but guessed she was talking with her channeler. He stopped and pulled a big white towel from the linen closet, then headed for the far door in the bedroom—Victor’s closet. As he flipped through the clothes, he was only thinking Victor was closer to the Korean’s size than he was. He took a cream-colored dress shirt off a hanger and a yellow cardigan sweater, the latter bought on an achingly clear November day in Pisa. As Steven shut the closet door, he could practically smell the fallen leaves of the chestnut trees along the Tuscan street.

  Crossing the study again, he saw that Sonny had taken the phone, though he was still sitting on the floor Indian-style. “All the dominion below the Second Cataract,” he was saying, while Angela zapped the base of his skull with acupressure. Neither one even looked at Steven.

  Dell was still all alone in the living room, his eyes fixed on the TV screen. Mother Evangeline, in tight close-up, spoke with a low thrill, not a foot from Dell Espinoza’s face: “To the homosexuals we say, thank God for AIDS, because it is bringing you home to Him.”

  “Why don’t you turn that off?” said Steven, passing through. Dell turned and stared at him, uncomprehending, eyes on fire, as if he’d taken a dose of radiated light from the Sony. Steven didn’t repeat his injunction but kept on walking, suddenly realizing that the crisis of Ray was simpler.

  Mark had joined the women in the dining room as they ministered to the Korean, but he stood slightly apart by the sideboard. Hands behind his back and lifting slightly off his toes, looking out at the night with an abstract smile. Steven went right to Margaret. With one end of the towel, he wiped Ray’s bony chest, every rib fearfully distinct, the strings of a human harp. Margaret vigorously rubbed Ray’s head, his blue-black hair still full and sleek despite the waste of the rest of him. Ray moaned in a dreamy way, enjoying the massage.

  Tenderly Heather slipped the shirt over his arm, and Steven crouched and pulled Ray forward so she could bring it around his back. The other arm was a bit of a struggle, but at last the shirt was on. Steven buttoned it up the front while Heather adjusted the sleeves. The memory of dressing Victor was very intense, but Steven didn’t cry. For all his own tender ministrations here, he realized he had consciously chosen not to bring a shirt of his own. He didn’t want to see any threads of his on a dying man.

  “I think it’s time we got you home,” said Margaret, combing back Ray’s hair.

  “No,” he retorted with startling force, the emperor again. “I have dessert.”

  The group around him burst out laughing, relieved to be restored so quick from hospital to holiday. Forget the seconds. Now they were galvanized by Ray Lee’s spunk, and the women moved to clear the sideboard. Steven looked over and caught Mark’s eye. Mark smiled at him serenely and spoke it again, quiet but firm: “Bullshit.”

  “Coffee,” Steven barked in return, jerking a thumb toward the kitchen.

  Mark followed him dutifully back through the swing door. Fast on his feet, Steven whipped open the freezer and pulled out a pound of decaf French. He turned and handed it off to Mark like a football, then barreled across to the island. From the cupboard underneath he yanked out the Krups grinder and the clunky aluminum coffee-maker, big enough for a church supper. These he set on the counter next to the stove, then crooked a finger to call Mark over. He crossed and set to work immediately.

  Steven leaned very close to his ear: “And even if I still was—which would be staggeringly self-destructive of me, not to mention the stress which I don’t need—it wouldn’t get us anywhere. Because you don’t want it.”

  “You act like I’m accusing you of something,” Mark protested, and Steven slapped the counter to keep him focused on the coffee. Mark poured the beans into the grinder. “You stuck it out through all my bullshit. I was scared. I wanted to have it without giving anything back.”

  “And you’re not scared anymore, is that it? Ha!” Steven was banging around in the china cabinet, lifting out dessert plates. Mark drew a breath to answer, and Steven hissed like a diamondback.

  For the swing door had opened again, admitting the women in procession. Heather, Linda, Margaret, each bearing a plundered tureen or platter. Heather ventured to say there was enough food left for everyone to have a big doggie bag for take-home. Margaret measured out nine pills for Ray’s 7 P.M. dose of last-ditch medicine. Linda poured the lemon sauce for the guava pudding into a small pan and put it on the stove to simmer.

  Heather and Margaret disappeared back to the dining room, and Mark said, “Sure I’m scared.” He was standing beside Linda as she stirred, measuring spoons of coffee into the pot, and Linda smiled at him blandly, just as she did when the women she worked for said things that didn’t quite translate. Steven was silent, loading cups and saucers onto a tray. “We managed to go a couple of months,” continued Mark, half to himself, “not calling it anything at all.”

  Steven’s teeth gritted. “Please—don’t romanticize our dysfunction.” Linda made herself as small as a mouse now, turning the gas up high and stirring fast.

  “I know, I was awful,” Mark declared, steeling himself for his own hard judgment. “I just left you hanging there all the time. I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was I didn’t want you to go away.”

  “Do you want bowls or plates for the pudding?” Steven asked Linda, who could barely choke out an answer.

  Then Heather and Margaret appeared with one last teetering load, declaring the dining room clear. Steven strode through the house, calling his wayward flock together. Once more they congregated by the sideboard. All the desserts were lined up in a row, anchored at one end by a bowl of fruit and at the other by a tray of Godiva mints.

  Quite properly everyone insisted on a taste of all the homemade goods, so Steven and Margaret and Andy together fashioned samplers, a sliver of mince and a spoon of trifle and one of pudding, with Linda ladling the lemon sauce very carefully so as not to run into the rest. Mark declared with chivalrous good humor that he didn’t expect
any loyalty to his pumpkin pies from Gelson’s. Heather poured the coffee. She was sitting beside Ray Lee, who had recovered his equilibrium dramatically since his sweat, so he was able to dispense the cream and sugar.

  “One lump or two?” he said to each, not a trace of Korean in his voice, wielding the tongs with infinite precision.

  They all took cream and sugar today, even the ones who took it black, for Ray’s sake. Then they proceeded at Steven’s command into the living room, laden with cups and plates. The television was silenced, and they clustered round the fire. Heather wheeled Ray in, brilliant in the yellow sweater, and the feasting began again, punctuated by murmurs of delight and lavish praise for the mince. Not that anyone meant to slight the excellent pudding of Linda’s or Andy Lakin’s terribly serious trifle, which had necessitated five separate cookbooks, as if he’d been doing a term paper. But the pie garnered most of the compliments, flung like handfuls of rose petals at the proud Korean. A mince pie better than Wisconsin, Heather swore, its lattice lighter than air. A blue-ribbon pie, dark with citron and raisins and laced with Courvoisier.

  “Margaret helped,” protested Ray Lee modestly, but beaming all the while.

  They had nothing else to give him but this, and they made him promise to make another for Christmas. The flush of good fellowship rosied his cheeks. His eyes were bright and dancing. And they all ate their pie in little feral bites to make it last as long as they could, for Ray’s sake.

  Mark sat next to Angela on the sofa and was exquisitely charming, making it clear that his bitterness toward her husband didn’t extend to her. That said, the two of them launched into an orgy of slurs against the person of Lou Ciotta. Across the way Heather negotiated an intricate discussion between Linda and Ray about household customs in Mexico and Korea, like a Berlitz class gone slightly haywire.

  Sitting on the floor and eating off the coffee table, Andy told Sonny and Dell the tale of his coming out, blow by blow. He didn’t seem to care that both his listeners were utterly preoccupied and lost in thought. Sonny cast blushing glances at Angela, smitten like a teenager. All the red and soreness of his flesh had vanished. He was pure spirit. Beside him Dell still seemed to be watching the blank screen of the Sony, as if he could see in the dusk there the shape of his next reprisal.

  Margaret sidled up to Steven where he stood with an elbow on the mantel, as placid as a pipe-smoking duke, and said: “Well?”

  “It’s not what you think,” he whispered.

  “What do I think?”

  “Happily ever after. That’s what you always think.” It was very hard in a whisper to get the proper disdain across.

  “He’s in love with you, don’t deny it,” she purred.

  “He likes boys,” retorted Steven, spitting the noun like venom, as if he was talking nine-year-olds. Then turned his back on the room and stared at the fire. “He’s had about three hundred boyfriends. He doesn’t know how to commit.”

  Margaret watched his flickering face for a moment. “So? Dying makes people grow up sometimes.”

  “Yeah, the big D. See how fucked it is? Who wants to even get started if everyone’s just gonna die?”

  Margaret plumped the shawl at her shoulders, running the fabric through her fingers, studying the fringe. “I’d take a year in love,” she said.

  Steven gave a vague toss of the head at the room behind. “Oh, really? Even if that was the second year?” he asked dryly, and she knew he meant Ray.

  “Maybe I’d just be selfish and take the first year first. Then see about later later.”

  “Margaret, don’t be so wise. Does Richard know he’s dating Bette Davis?”

  She winced, very slightly. “Richard hasn’t a clue,” she said. “About anything. He thinks I look for this shit.” She nodded over his shoulder, as vaguely as he had, putting Ray in the third-person neuter. “Like I’m some kind of tragedy junkie. At least that one lives”—and she nodded over his other shoulder at Mark—“on the same planet you do. Even if he is no good at it, you are. That’s what he’s probably drawn to.”

  “Not my ravishing body?”

  “Bodies are very overrated, dear. They last about fifteen minutes. He knows that.”

  “Look, why don’t you go out with him, Margaret?”

  They laughed at that like old conspirators, for Victor always used to sigh, whenever one of his buddies got summarily dumped by a bad man, “You should go out with Margaret.” Steven pulled her close into a hug, tasting the shivering fringe of the shawl, grateful for the sisterly advice. Which he might toss out without a second thought, but that was to be expected. What had really happened here was Margaret’s giving her blessing. It hadn’t been required for Andy Lakin, who was by definition nothing from the moment Steven invited him home. Something much more ancient was needed for this, especially in the absence of everybody’s family. The force of a dowager empress, with ties to the old kingdom of Steven and Victor. Someone to say it was time.

  They unclenched from the hug to find Heather an inch away, smiling anxiously, rubbing her hands together as if she’d taken a chill. “He’s had a little accident,” she said.

  Even as they turned to look, Steven was thinking that accidents used to mean crashing and screaming; now they were all silent. Ray looked at them sheepishly. “I peed,” he said. Margaret bustled over, a nurse coming off her break. “I laughed too hard,” Ray continued, his cheer not really dampened even now. There was nothing so grim as a puddle below the chair, perhaps because he was wearing a pair of billowing parachute pants. But Margaret tucked a hand under him, patting like a mother checking Pampers, and nodded crisply to Steven.

  “I think we’ll call it a day.”

  Immediately they all sprang into action. Linda and Heather hurried into the kitchen to make up a bag of leftovers. Andy went to get Margaret’s purse, and Dell and Mark gathered dirty plates while Sonny stoked the fire. They needed to be busy so as to cover the uncomfortableness of the moment, a small pang of shame each had carried from his childhood—as if they’d all just wet their pants. No one could quite look anyone else in the eye.

  Except Steven, who raised a bushy eyebrow to Margaret, asking what it meant. Her lips crinkled, and she shrugged, as if to say this was a new one. So they at least acknowledged the somber milestone, that at seven-twenty on Thursday night the twenty-sixth Ray Lee had slipped into a new phase. Steven recalled the exact moment when Victor first wet the bed, startled and embarrassed even in his swooning state. Linda had the same recall of Marcus, when she’d assured him it wasn’t any different from a sweat. And kept it from Dell.

  With Margaret pushing the chair, they crowded round in a group, wishing Ray well and squeezing his hand and praising the pie some more as they waved him out the front door. Heather set the bag of leftovers on his lap and bent and kissed him gently on the lips. Sonny and Dell, being the strongest, pushed forward to pick up the chair. But Steven and Mark had the same thought at the same moment, traded a look and got there first, assuring the younger men they knew the angles better.

  Not that Steven didn’t feel the knife in his back when he lifted up, but he could take it. For even more than the journey up, the journey down—step by shaky step, their faces bulging red—had the feel of a great ceremony. Ray Lee was more the emperor than ever, regal in the yellow sweater and waving grandly to the guests on the landing above. There was something wonderful too, the kind of thing that couldn’t be taken away, about carrying a man when he was still alive. There were coffins enough to come. And the straining together, all their strength required, had a certain exalted symmetry for Mark and Steven both. Bearing him lightly, no false step.

  They reached the curb and set him down and grinned at each other and panted. “Gentamen, you are the top drawer,” said Ray Lee, reaching to clutch their hands. Margaret opened the door, and he stood up to totter in. Only now did Steven see the great wet stain on his backside, and he looked away for modesty’s sake, as if the emperor mustn’t be witnessed in disgrace.
Margaret settled him into the passenger’s seat, and as she closed the door, a last roar of goodbye came from the group at the top of the stairs. Ray Lee flung a bony hand out the car window.

  Margaret went around to the driver’s side. She winked at Steven as she slung herself in. “H.E.A.,” she declared wryly by way of farewell. The Celica moved off, Ray Lee’s hand waving above the roof, indomitable, and they whistled and shouted from up above.

  Mark turned puzzled to Steven and repeated the code: “H.E.A.?”

  “Happily ever after,” Steven replied, no irony at all.

  And then they moved to go upstairs shoulder to shoulder, a pair of stevedores who’d put in a brute day’s work. The guests remained in a cluster on the landing, looking off down the mountain in various meditative poses, some of them simply glad to be alive, some wondering just how long. About halfway up the stairs Steven nudged Mark, and they turned face to face, inches apart. “Okay, so we love each other,” he said, softly so no one would hear. “Now what?”

  Mark shook his head with a mischievous smile. “You got me, pal. I was thinkin’ maybe I wouldn’t go home tonight.”

  Steven blanched. “At all?”

  “Well, I could always leave at four A.M. in hysterics.”

  “Oh, good,” said Steven, reassured, and they headed up to the top, herding the guests back in.

  But the chain was broken. Now was the time when it might have been useful to have a straight man around, to help them segue into a football game. Otherwise they’d run out of reasons to keep this gang together. Linda and Heather went promptly to the kitchen, insisting over Steven’s protests on doing the cleanup detail. Angela called a cab. She had to be up at the crack of dawn to be driven to the treatment center, and besides, her Valium was wearing off and she didn’t have another one on her.

  Sonny waited with her on the landing. She held his hand in both of hers, but they didn’t really need to speak, so tuned were they to the same deep chord. On the strength of Egypt alone, she had managed to get him a private session with Salou for the following morning, though the master was booked through March. She had written down the address at Betty Ford so Sonny could write. But they made no further plans with each other because they both knew he was on the cusp of a great divide, just as she was. They had both been burning bridges now for days, and there was something wonderfully exhilarating about meeting a fellow traveler. In fact they made a beautiful couple, standing there in the moonlight, as sleek as a pair of second leads.