How Town

by Michael Nava

  “Morality doesn’t have much to do with it. I choose not to add to the popular delusion that all gay men are pedophiles by defending them.”

  “You don’t want to be tarred with the same brush, is that it?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Elena. I don’t give a damn what you think of me or how I live, or what my principles are.”

  “I never thought you did.”

  We stared at each other, puffed up and ready to strike.

  “And what about Sara?” she demanded. “Are you going to tar her with the same brush?”

  “That’s touching considering that you haven’t spoken to her for years.”

  “What would you say to Mark Windsor if he walked into the room and asked you for help, Henry?” she asked quietly. “There are some old friends one does not refuse.”

  I was disarmed. Elena had never before acknowledged that she understood what I’d felt for Mark. Even more astounding was the implication of what she’d felt for Sara. I searched her face to see whether the implication was intended but her expression revealed nothing.

  “All right, Elena. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Thank you.”

  She got up and went over to a small desk where she consulted an address book and wrote something on a slip of paper. She handed it to me and I glanced down at the name and number.

  “I’ve never asked you for anything before,” she said, evidently bothered by incurring the debt.

  I reassured her. “It’s not a big deal.” I extracted myself from the chair. “It was nice to see you, Elena.”

  “I’ll walk you out to your car.”

  The heat had become a bit denser and the light a little dustier as the fragrant morning waned. Birds called from the surrounding trees and the low burble of water sounded from the stream that ran through Elena’s property. Against this blurred and languid landscape, she seemed too sharp, too definite to belong.

  “This is heaven,” I said, opening the car door.

  She smiled, deepening the lines around her mouth. “Have you ever read Primo Levi?”

  “No.”

  “He has a passage in his book about concentration camp survivors—to the effect that those who have once been tortured go on being tortured. Heaven’s not possible for people like that.”

  I was startled by the vehemence of the analogy—if that’s what it was—to our childhood and said, “You have a long memory.”

  “I’m older than you,” she replied. “I have more to remember. Good-bye, Henry.”

  “Good-bye,” I said, from my car, and rolled out of the driveway.

  She waved, briefly, folded her arms in front of her and watched me go.

  2

  JOSH WASN’T IN THE room when I got back into the city though there were telltale signs of his recent occupancy—clothes scattered on the floor, the bathroom faucet left dripping, an open book left facedown on the bed. The book was called Healing AIDS Through Visualization and I picked it up and read a paragraph. The author urged his readers to imagine their bloodstreams were filled with anti-HIV commandos on search-and-destroy missions. It was the kind of thing that, privately, I felt he read far too much of. I preferred to place my trust in science. But given the shameful record of the medical establishment on AIDS I had to admit sometimes that my trust was perhaps as misplaced there as was his in New Age naturopathy. I upbraided myself for my negative thinking. Josh wasn’t sick, after all, though the previous summer his T-cell count had fallen to the point that he’d been put on a combination of drugs, including AZT.

  His health had precipitated our move back to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, to allow him to be close to his parents. The move had not been easy for either one of us. I had given up a going law practice and roots that went far back in a town that had been my home since I’d left my parents’ house at seventeen. What Josh had surrendered was not as tangible but equally important. To him the move back had represented a step back from the adult independence which, at 25, meant so much to him. It had also awakened the nightmare of mortality for both of us. He wouldn’t have done it except that his parents were old and the bond between them and their only son powerful. For their sake, we had moved, and yet I knew we both wondered if it had been the right thing to do.

  As always when he was gone I felt a tiny tremor of apprehension, like a second, fainter heartbeat that never seemed to stop.

  I forced myself to think about Elena. Having told her I would call Sara, I now felt reluctant to do so. Although Los Robles, Sara, even Elena, were in the past, the past was a thin layer of ash over embers that could still burn. Overcoming my resistance, I sat in the rocking chair by the bay window, pulled the phone into my lap and dialed Sara Windsor’s number. After a moment of long-distance static, the phone rang and was answered, and a woman’s voice ventured a tentative “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Windsor?”

  The voice was cautious, remote. “Yes.”

  “This is Henry Rios. I’ve just been to see my sister. She said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Hello, Henry. Thank you for calling. I didn’t know how long it would take Elena to talk to you.” She paused. “Did she explain the situation?”

  Fencing with Elena had used up all my verbal delicacy. Abruptly, I replied, “Your husband’s in jail for murder and you want to hire me to defend him.”

  When she spoke again, she matched my abruptness. “Yes, that’s right.”

  I put my feet up on the bed and glanced out the window toward Alamo Square, the small park that gave the inn its name. A couple of joggers came to a slow stop. One of them was Josh and the other was Kevin Reilly, the bridegroom-to-be. Josh stripped off his blue singlet and even from here I could see how thin he was.

  “Henry?”

  “I’m sorry Mrs. Windsor, I didn’t hear you.”

  “I was asking whether you were available.”

  “I practice in Los Angeles now,” I said, looking away from the window. “Unless there’s some special reason you want to hire me it would be inconvenient for all of us.”

  “There isn’t a lawyer in town who’ll touch the case.”

  “Why not? The Windsors aren’t exactly sharecroppers.”

  “It’s not a matter of money,” she replied contemptuously. “They don’t have the guts to stand up to the publicity.”

  “Has there been that much? I’d think that the family could contain it.”

  “You have a very exaggerated idea of the family’s influence,” she said tartly. “And you don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Then you’d better explain it,” I said, impatient with her peremptory tone.

  “I don’t know exactly where to start,” she said more softly. “Paul’s been arrested before, did Elena tell you that?”

  “Yes, on child molesting charges.”

  “That’s right,” she said quickly. “The charges were dropped because the—girl wouldn’t testify. Everyone thought we pressured her but that isn’t true. Anyway, the whole thing was a scandal. When Paul was arrested this time, all that came up again. But it’s even more complicated than that.”

  “What else?” I asked, hearing Kevin and Josh’s voices in the hall.

  “Paul’s father owned a construction company.”

  “Yes, I remember,” I replied. Windsor Construction was big business in our little town.

  “Mark took it over and expanded it into development. You wouldn’t believe how much the town has grown,” she added. “A lot of it’s Mark’s doing. There’s always been talk about whether he was going about it in a strictly legal way.”

  “Mark?” I was incredulous.

  “You’ve been away a long time,” she replied dryly. “People here are beginning to debate whether all this growth is good. Mark’s a major developer and that makes him the enemy to quite a few people, including the editor of the Sentinel.”

  The door was thrown open and Josh bounded into the room, saw that I was on the phone and froze for a second, then tiptoe
d toward me and kissed my forehead, dripping sweat on my shirt. He moved away but I reached out and gripped his arm. He looked back, smiled and pointed toward the bathroom. I let him go. A moment later I heard him run the shower.

  “What does this have to do with Paul?”

  “As I said, the editor of the paper is antidevelopment,” she replied. “He led a campaign to put a no-growth proposition on the ballot in November. I guess he sees his best way of winning is to turn it into a vote against the Windsors, but first they have to make us out to be monsters. You’d think,” she said scornfully, “we were the Marcoses or the Duvaliers.”

  “And Paul is caught in the cross fire.”

  “Yes. The funny thing is that Mark and Paul have their own problems. Or did you already know they hate each other?”

  “What I know about the Windsors is twenty years out of date.”

  “We need your help, Henry. Can you see that?”

  I could hear the fatigue in her voice, and what I saw was the makings of a first-class mess. “He’s already been arraigned, hasn’t he? Who was his lawyer for that?”

  “A man named Robert Clayton,” she said. “He’s the company’s lawyer.”

  “I don’t remember anyone named Robert Clayton.”

  “He’s not a native,” Sara explained. “He’s already told Paul that he won’t be his lawyer if there’s a trial, not that Paul wants him. Bob says he doesn’t know enough about criminal law.”

  “You don’t believe him.”

  “I’ve become an expert in excuses,” she said bitterly. “Like your excuse, that it’s too far to travel.”

  As we’d spoken, my recollection of Sara had become clearer. She was one of the bright, sharp-tongued girls that Elena seemed to surround herself with in high school. She’d carried herself as if she were coiled up and ready to strike. An unlikely match for Paul Windsor, who had to be several years younger than she. But then, if Paul was a pedophile, any match would have been unlikely. I wanted to hear more.

  “I’m in San Francisco for a couple of days,” I said. “Can you come down here to talk to me?”

  “Tell me when.”

  “Day after tomorrow, for lunch. Do you know the city?”

  “We have a place in Pacific Heights,” she said, dryly.

  “Meet me in front of the St. Francis at twelve-thirty,” I said.

  “Yes, all right. Thank you.”

  “I’m not agreeing to anything, Sara.”

  “So you do remember my first name,” she said sardonically. “Good-bye, Henry. I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Who was that?” Josh asked, stepping out of the bathroom wrapping a towel around his waist.

  “A friend of my sister’s. You went running with Kevin?”

  “Ouch,” he said, standing at the wardrobe in front of the mirror, untangling his curly hair with a three-pronged metal Afro pick.

  From where I sat I could see him in profile and, simultaneously, full-faced in the mirror, and the two views told different stories. The face in the mirror was the face he was born with, roundish, unlined, with a child’s softness to it, but in profile his fine bones asserted themselves just beneath the skin and I could see the man he was becoming, handsome, stubborn, fearless. I loved both the boy and man, but I didn’t always know which one I was dealing with. This made for complications I was unused to, and having lived alone until I met him, I sometimes wanted to run from the complexities. Sometimes I tried, but he had entered the bone and marrow of my life, making all such efforts futile.

  “You’re just getting over a cold, Josh. Don’t push yourself.”

  His back stiffened. “I feel fine, Henry.”

  “You took your medicines?”

  “Shit,” he snapped, ostensibly at the long lock of hair he was extricating from a mass of others. “I need a haircut.”

  “How far did you run?” I asked, getting up from my chair. I picked up his levis, underwear and shirt from the floor, folded them, put them on the bed, and lay down, watching him.

  “To the wharf,” he replied. “I was going to pick those clothes up. What did your sister want?”

  I told him about my visit with Elena. He finished with his hair, shucked the towel and put on a pair of gray corduroys. He rummaged through his suitcase, retrieving a pink Oxford cloth shirt that I recognized as one of mine.

  “Are you going to take the case?”

  “I don’t know. It would probably mean being away from LA for long periods at a time.”

  Josh flopped onto the bed beside me and stuffed pillows beneath his head. “Why not, Henry? You don’t seem all that busy.”

  This was true. I had limited the number of cases I was taking so I could spend as much time as possible with Josh. In fact, I’d been exploring teaching at a local law school and shutting down my practice altogether.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re afraid to leave me by myself.”

  I turned to him. “That has something to do with it.”

  “There’s a really neat invention called the telephone,” Josh said. “You pick it up and you push some buttons and then you can talk to the person at the other end of the line.”

  I laid my hand on his pink shoulder. “Sarcasm is not your strong point.”

  “The more we give into it, the more it’s going to take over.” It. AIDS. “We already moved to LA because of it. Now all I want is a normal life.”

  “I understand that.”

  Briskly he asked, “Then why are you afraid to leave me by myself?”

  The question cornered me. There was nothing to do but tell the truth. “Because I worry.”

  “Well, then, stop.” He shook off my hand. “Just stop. I know what I have to do to take care of myself.” He folded his arms across his chest. “How do you think it makes me feel having you treat me like I was already dead.”

  “That’s a cruel thing to say, Joshua.”

  “But I’m right,” he insisted. “I’m alive right now, Henry. Right now.” He put out his hand. “See?”

  I closed my hand around his. “There’s a difference between living with a disease and denying it.”

  He pulled his hand away again. “Well, you’re the expert on that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know.”

  And I did. Six months earlier, having been sober for four years, I’d gone on a binge following an especially bad fight with him and had spent a month at an alcohol rehab clinic. Now, whenever I raised the subject of his health, he had a ready answer. I didn’t like it.

  “Are you saying that because I made a stupid decision about my health, you should be able to make stupid decisions about yours? The consequences in your case are a lot more serious.”

  “Bullshit,” he snapped, hopping off the bed. “You’d be just as dead from drinking yourself to death as I’d be from AIDS. And who the hell are you to assume that the only decisions I can make about my health are stupid ones? Why don’t you give me a fucking chance.”

  “And why don’t you give me a break? Are you going to hold this over my head for the rest of my life? Look, I’m sorry that you had to discover I’m human, Josh.” I climbed off the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk.”

  “Can we just stop this, now?”

  “You tell me.” I opened the door.

  “Wait, Henry—”

  I slammed the door on him and immediately regretted it but, too ashamed to apologize, I couldn’t bring myself to go back.

  I leaned against the hallway wall and breathed. Inside my head familiar voices assailed me, telling me what a shit I was for fighting with him. Immediately, another voice attacked me for my guilt, saying that I felt it only because he was right, that I treated him as if he might die at any second. Beyond these voices was the silence of fear. Fear that he would die and I would be left alone. Until I’d met him I had never felt this fear because I had never expected to be anything other than alone.
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  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I said, aloud.

  Well if you don’t, who will? I heard myself answer silently. Who else cares enough?

  He does.

  Well that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? The first time you’ve ever loved anyone and he’s not only thirteen years younger than you are but—

  But, what?

  Dying.

  I heard a noise at the end of the hall and looked up. Terry Ormes, the bride-to-be, was standing there, the door to her room open behind her. She carried a brush in her hand, and her red hair spilled, half-combed, around her angular, intelligent face. Cool gray eyes regarded me and she raised a questioning eyebrow.

  I’d first met Terry five years earlier, when she was a homicide detective in the small town on the peninsula where I was then in practice. Now she was a captain in the San Francisco Police Department, assistant to the chief and, in general, a big deal. I’d introduced her to Kevin Reilly, a fellow criminal defense lawyer, at a Christmas party a couple of years earlier, and now they were marrying. As a yenta, I was batting a thousand.

  “I thought it was bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony.” I said, shutting up the voices as I approached her.

  “That only applies to the bridegroom,” she replied, subduing her hair with three quick strokes. “I heard a commotion in your room. Are you all right?”

  “Josh and I were having a fight.”

  “Come in and have a cup of coffee with me and tell me all about it. I need some diversion or I’ll hyperventilate.”

  I followed her into her room, a bigger and more ornately furnished version of mine. A brass peacock spread its tail feathers in front of the fireplace. The mantle was green marble. Near the four-poster bed, a silver coffee service and a plate of sweet rolls were laid out on a linen-covered tray. I helped myself to a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee and we sat on the two wing chairs in front of the fireplace.

  Inclining her red-haired head toward me, she said, “I thought I’d have to break down the door and make an arrest.”