Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  The doctor point-blank refused to let her bring him into the hospital: “What for? There’s nothing we can fix.” But Ray was just fading and fading, Margaret protested, and no one was even trying to figure out what it was. Did it really matter anymore? the doctor sighed wearily. After all, at least he was home. “Isn’t that where you want to die, Miss Kirkham?”

  On his end Steven practically bit his tongue through, so much did it not feel right to be gushing over Mark. Margaret didn’t ask, not even when he brought over a turkey sandwich and helped her give Ray a sponge bath. Only on his way out did Steven manage to blurt the headline, that he and Mark had passed the night in each other’s arms—news that was spoken in sober tones appropriate to the stench of death seeping around the seals of Ray’s brief lock on life.

  Margaret smiled politely, as if she only understood Korean these days. “Nice,” she replied mildly, but Steven wasn’t at all sure as he walked away that she didn’t mean it ironically, as if to say, “Now you’ve done it.”

  They’d put in a wonderful sleepless night, replaying all the blind turns that had kept them apart so long. Each of them took full blame for the ridiculous delay, salaaming back and forth, but finally they agreed that Mark was the bigger jerk. And the love part went just fine, by the time they got around to it, hard as rocks. They groaned and roared when they got off, first one and then the other and then the other way around as the first streaks of morning combed the walls through the Levelor blinds. Mark whistled and applauded the first time Steven came, but that was because they were 1 and 0 from the previous round six weeks ago.

  They had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together on Friday, all of it left over from the feast. While Steven was checking in at Ray’s, Mark went over to Skyway Lane and picked up clothes for the weekend. For ten years boys had stayed over at Mark’s because the places they lived in were like dorm rooms, not the right style for entertaining a CEO. On paper Skyway Lane was in every way superior to Sunset Plaza for falling in love: no widower tenants or memories of Victor. But already there was a tacit agreement that Steven had to be close to Ray’s for the end run. And though he wouldn’t admit it, Steven didn’t dare leave his pair of delinquents entirely to their own devices. A house without a mother was not a home.

  Mark liked the sudden feel of being transient, with no possessions but what he could pack in his gym bag. He had no sentimental attachment to Skyway Lane. He was also not-so-secretly pleased to be throwing a monkey wrench into the boardinghouse arrangements of Sonny and Dell. Mark didn’t say it to Steven in so many words, but these two had to go.

  Steven arrived home shaken from Ray’s. “We’re down to the short strokes,” he told Mark, hugging him close in a way that was awfully melancholy for twenty-four hours in love.

  They made up the last of the turkey sandwiches, stripping the carcass bare, then holed up in the bedroom. They ate in front of the television, gaping at each other now and again as if they still didn’t quite believe it. They tried to recall the time when they couldn’t stand each other, awful West Hollywood parties before the war. Steven did a dead-on impression of Mark at his most arrogant—“That’s senior VP, and please have that boy delivered to my office for inspection.”

  “Oh, really?” Mark retorted with an arched brow. “I’m Steven Shaw and I’ve been everywhere. Pardon me while I drop some names.”

  “Actually, I’m a has-been actor,” Steven purred maliciously. “The last time I played a kid I was older than my mom.”

  “Victor and I would never stay in a place without a concierge,” said Mark, draining the last word of its full pomposity. “You must come over and see my pretentious collection of masks.”

  Steven flung a spiced crab apple at him, which he ducked, and it ricocheted off one of the masks in question, a lacquered red Balinese with its tongue out. They shrieked with laughter and wrestled each other to bed again, but it went no further than a sprawling kiss because they were dead from the night before. They definitely weren’t twenty-eight anymore. They fell asleep in their clothes, Steven first, Mark gently stroking his hair, trying to pat down the cowlick, then going under himself. They woke around midnight, pitched off their clothes, and crawled under the covers in their Jockey shorts.

  When the phone smashed him awake at seven, Steven felt the arm cradling around his belly and thought for a tilting moment it was Victor in the bed. He picked up the phone and knew it wasn’t good news. When was the last good news in the morning? Margaret: “I think it’s another stroke.”

  And as he listened to the appalling details—throwing up black all night and a nosebleed at dawn that sopped two facecloths, then rigid and twitching—Steven tucked himself deeper into the warmth of Mark’s body against his back, the curl of the arm around him, all its muscles intact. Margaret was beyond drowning. She spoke as if she’d had a stroke herself. She didn’t ask, but he said he’d be right over, anything to stop the litany of miseries.

  Groggy but gallant, Mark staggered up and groped for his clothes. Steven protested, but only a little. They were still half-asleep as they tumbled outside to the Jeep, and Mark dug a hand in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out Steven’s car keys. They’d put on each other’s pants by mistake. For some reason it struck them as incredibly funny. They whinnied their way downhill, slapping each other’s shoulder.

  “I’m Steven Shaw,” bellowed Mark.

  Steven pulled the wallet from his back pocket, whipped it open, and flashed a rainbow of credit cards. “My life is platinum,” he trumpeted. “Wednesday night is mine!”

  Near delirious by now, they swung by Winchell’s for a dozen glazed and coffee to go. Then they parked on Fountain by Arturo’s Flowers, the dumpsters along the sidewalk rotten with heaps of dead Thanksgiving arrangements. Mark rescued a stem of yellow Thai orchids, and they tramped together to Ray’s apartment, Mark’s pants as baggy as Chaplin’s, Steven poured into his like a hooker.

  As they came up the steps to Ray’s tiny porch, his white Siamese shrank back from them, unimpressed and vaguely offended. Steven rapped on the door, then leaned with a leering grin and kissed Mark wetly on the mouth. Mark made a hissing sound, commanding him to behave. They stood up straight and austere, wiping the grins like spittle as Margaret opened the door.

  Her puffy eyes went straight to Mark, instantly suspicious. He was still a stranger to her. She stood back and let them in, pulling her flannel robe closer. Nobody said a word. She stared at the bag from Winchell’s, which Steven guiltily passed to Mark, who in turn laid the sprig of orchids on a table, without any presentation.

  From the bedroom Ray Lee was screaming a blue streak of invective, furious at somebody. Since Steven had expected him to be mute and paralyzed, he looked questioningly at Margaret, but all she could do was shrug. Steven moved toward the bedroom, and Mark hung back so that Margaret would understand he knew his place. The etiquette of a death watch was as elaborate as Kabuki.

  Ray’s naked body thrashed back and forth on the bed, the covers awry. His hands were balled into fists, and he thumped the mattress, pounding a beat like a Kodo drummer. He was clearly wrestling demons. The noise he made was singsong, all in Korean, roller-coastering up and down from shriek to the barest whisper.

  “It started about ten minutes ago,” said Margaret during a momentary lull.

  He didn’t seem to be in any pain. It was all rage. Startling because the Korean’s demeanor had always been so placid. His rib cage was a pair of praying hands, every bone distinct. Steven couldn’t help but see his dick, long and uncut, the foreskin tapering generously like an anteater’s snout. Steven blushed at the violation of Ray’s privacy, then flinched with self-flagellation to find himself wondering if uncut was the general rule for Asians. Surely not. They were so fastidious. Shut up, he screamed in his head.

  Ray bucked and rolled on the bed, one arm slamming the bedside table, keeling over the lamp, which Steven snatched midair before it could hit the floor. “If it gets any worse,” said Margaret, “I g
uess I should tie him down.”

  But the snarling and shrieking sank once more to a murmur. The convulsive fury abated, and Ray crossed his hands chastely over his collarbones, pure as a maid. “He looks so clean,” said Steven, somewhat irrelevantly, but in his head he was still wrestling with the images of black puke and blood-soaked washcloths.

  “Mm,” she replied dreamily, asleep on her feet. “I wish I could just wrap him up right now in a white linen sheet and walk out of here.”

  Just then the snout end of Ray’s dick gave a small shiver, and a stream of piss came out, fanning along his inner thigh, pooling by his balls. With a soft moo of resignation, Margaret reached for another white hand towel on the dresser. Even before he had finished dribbling, Margaret was swabbing it up.

  “Honestly, I don’t know where it all comes from,” she said. “He hasn’t had a drop to drink since yesterday afternoon.” She spoke with a queer dispassion, as if it were nothing more than her own modest science project, like sprouting seeds on a windowsill. When she gently lifted Ray Lee’s dick to wipe it, Steven was stabbed with a memory of Victor at Cedars-Sinai, the nurse about to plug the catheter in. He turned with a gasp and lurched to the doorway.

  Mark sat quietly at the table in the living room, staring out the window at the preening cat. He had set the table with plates and mugs for three, the bag of doughnuts in the center. Sensing Steven’s presence, he turned with a sad smile. Steven worked his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He pointed at the table, where the little setup for breakfast suddenly seemed unbearably moving, for Mark could hardly boil water. Steven’s eyes filled and blurred. Mark half-rose from his chair.

  And then Margaret slipped by Steven briskly, holding the wet towel out in front of her, grimly matter-of-fact. For her sake the two men pulled back from too much feeling. She ducked into the kitchenette and tossed the towel in a bucket by the back door, where the washcloths floated in sudsy water pink with Ray Lee’s blood. When she came back in, they sat all three at the table, Steven dry-eyed now, and passed the doughnuts. Mark transferred the coffee from the Styrofoam to the mugs. They each scarfed the first doughnut as if there was a famine on.

  They waited for her to speak, halfway through the second glazed. “I don’t even know who I’m supposed to call,” she said, meaning about the body.

  Mark and Steven exchanged a helpless shrug. All their deaths had been in the hospital. “The police, I guess,” he said, not quite sure what the crime was.

  Silence again, and they each finished a second glazed, then passed the bag and took a third. It was such a relief that they weren’t assorted and nobody had to fight for jelly. They seemed content right now to focus all their energies on guilty pleasures, not making another move until the full dozen was polished off. The comfort of the sugar was like hiding under the covers.

  So when the first feeble cry bleated from the next room—“Hey”—they didn’t quite believe it. In some quite tangible way, Ray Lee was already gone, and this was the wake. Steven reached for the dough-nut bag to pass out the fourth and last, and the cry sounded again, no louder but more insistent: “Hey!”

  They all came out of the daze at once, rocking the table as they leapt up. They crowded through the doorway like a SWAT team, staring at the Korean in amazement, as if he’d just come back from the dead. Not very far back, but definitely struggling to raise up on one elbow, and with a certain determined grin on his ancient face. Margaret rushed to the bed, then knelt on the floor and cradled Ray’s shoulder. “Careful,” she said, but Ray succeeded in propping himself on the elbow, his grin widening as if he’d conquered Everest.

  His milky eyes looked from one to the other. “What I miss?” he asked.

  Margaret reached for a glass of water on the bedside table and held it to Ray Lee’s lips. Dutifully he took a sip, but barely a hummingbird’s worth. Then he made a face and pushed the glass away. And Steven was thinking: Did he have a stroke? And was he dying in fact, or was it the start of a hundred false alarms? He tried not to feel impatient.

  Ray Lee murmured something to Margaret and pointed to a wicker chest of drawers. Grunting to her feet, Margaret padded over and opened the middle drawer, neatly piled with laundered shirts the Korean would never wear again. “Unnaneath, unnaneath,” Ray prodded her. She slipped her hands beneath the shirts and pulled out a large envelope. From five feet away Steven could see the Shaw Travel return address printed in the corner. Across the front in a large hand, Ray had written, “Last Wishes.”

  Now he made an impatient gesture, a soundless snap of the fingers, indicating that Margaret should take out what was inside. She did so, drawing out two sheets of paper. Ray made a double jerking motion with his head, curt as a Samurai, calling Steven and Mark forward to look over Margaret’s shoulders.

  The first page was a receipt from Forest Lawn, neatly detailing with appropriate X’s instructions for cremation and interment. Steven had filled out one just like it, wild with grief the morning after Victor died. Actually Margaret had filled it out because Steven couldn’t hold a pen for shaking. By contrast this one seemed quite placid and undramatic, Ray Lee’s elegant penmanship unhurried. Dated in August, before all his problems began, or at least before he couldn’t hide them anymore. On the bottom line it said there was seven hundred and thirty dollars in an escrow account to cover expenses.

  “Okay,” said Margaret, mostly to break the silence.

  Ray Lee nodded for her to go on. She turned to the second sheet, lined yellow legal paper with a list numbered one to twenty-two. The first line said white china dog and jade cuff links to Tony Yi, with an address in San Diego following. Scanning down the list, Steven saw several addresses in Korea, the booty as minor as yellow scarf and Walkman.

  Exhausted by his labors, Ray fell back against the pillow, panting. He had drawn the sheet up to just under his nipples, so the waste of his body wasn’t so jarring as when he lay there naked. Margaret moved to his side again and said gently, “Will you have some more water?”

  Ray frowned and shook his head as if the question were absurd. He squinted at Mark, not quite sure he remembered him. Then smiled because he did remember, and looked at Steven. “This your boyfriend?”

  “I guess,” said Steven, flushing. “I mean, we just got started.”

  “’Bout time,” declared Ray Lee.

  The next moment he was asleep, breathing deeply, an odd, chilling pause at the end of every exhale. Steven leaned his shoulder against Mark’s, indicating the visit was over. Margaret followed them out. They all stood for a moment staring at the table where their half-eaten final doughnuts looked completely unappealing, like wads of suet.

  “I guess he came back ’cause he knew I had all these questions,” Margaret said.

  “Look, why don’t we get a nurse,” Steven declared. “This could go on for weeks.”

  “And who’s going to pay, Steven? You?” She made a shooing motion at both of them, and they headed onto the porch, Steven vowing to check in later. There was a soft indulgent look on Margaret’s face as she let them go. Her love for Steven—happy to see him happy—lifted its head briefly, as if Steven and Mark had made it onto the last train out of a war zone and she was blowing kisses from the platform.

  It only sank them deeper as they guiltily stole away, almost ashamed to touch each other, almost afraid. Each knew just what the other was thinking, that all the world in front of them was a minefield, that every kiss might have to be paid in suffering three times over, that one of them would be left behind. They piled into the Jeep like a couple of soldiers stripped of weapons, the dumpsters full of dead flowers mocking them like a mass grave.

  Back home in the bedroom, Steven flung himself down and buried his head beneath the pillow. Mark straddled him, kneading his shoulders and neck, feeling the muscles unclench. Steven fell asleep almost as quick as Ray, once he gave into the notion of being taken care of. Only because it wasn’t the real thing. Having spent the morning in the last room in the hosp
ice, they needed the vanilla version, a man massaging his friend to sleep.

  Even after Steven was softly snoring, Mark didn’t move right away, taking comfort from the peaceful rhythm of his breathing. When he got up, he drew the sheet lightly over Steven, loving his own tenderness, daring it the way he used to dare things carnal. He unplugged the phone and closed the door quietly behind him. He was still flushed with protectiveness as he went in the kitchen, where Sonny Cevathas was sucking up a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich.

  It seemed to Mark that Sonny was always eating, storing up food for the winter like a bear. Coolly he turned down Sonny’s offer of half the sandwich, contenting himself with a glass of water. As he sipped it, he described in grisly detail the scene in Ray Lee’s apartment. If he hoped to kill Sonny’s appetite, he failed. Sonny went on from the sandwich to the last of the pumpkin pie, eating it with his fingers right out of the box.

  “If he’s lucky, he’ll die today,” Mark declared bleakly. Then, as Sonny smacked his fingers, not missing a crumb: “So tell me, what’re your plans?” The slightest chill of emphasis on the possessive, as if he meant for Sonny to sketch the progress of his own demise.

  Sonny smiled, mouth full of pie, taking no offense. “No plans,” he said, “but I think I’m finished here.”

  Mark perked up. “You found a place?”

  “Oh, no. I’ve stayed too long in L.A. as it is.” He looked out the kitchen window, pondering a moment. He seemed to be gazing up the hill for dramatic effect. He really was an extraordinarily beautiful man, thought Mark, undamaged and somehow untouched, despite the hands that had mauled him. Would it be harder for him to shrivel and die, with so much beauty to lose? “And you know what’s funny,” Sonny said quietly. “The only one I’m really gonna miss is him.”

  Mark thought he meant Steven, but when Sonny’s eyes stayed fixed on the hill, Mark finally turned to look. The dog lay dozing in the shade of the sycamore, fatter than anything wild in the mountains, its mottled coat sleek and free of snags. Mark winced at the florid sincerity, vapid as anything he himself had ever okayed for Wednesday night.