Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "I'm going to strangle him."

  "What's wrong with him?" she asked.

  "If anyone should know, it's you. He's been impossible lately. He's acting like a complete jerk."

  "Why?" Her baby blues were very big and very azure tonight.

  "Why? Because of you! I never dreamed I'd be saying this about Alistair, but it seems that he's heartbroken."

  The baby blues grew larger; the eyelashes fluttered dangerously fast.

  "Heartbroken over you, Doriot. Because he can't marry you."

  "Marry me?" she gasped.

  "Of course! Something awful went down between Alistair and your parents over it and—"

  "He asked my parents for my hand in marriage?"

  "And they turned him down. Now he's a complete lunatic."

  "Of course they'd turn him down! They'd turn down God if He asked. But I didn't think he was that serious."

  "He's made my life impossible here."

  "Roger," she put a hand on my tux'ed arm. "You've known Alistair for years and years. Since you were little boys. What's he like? I mean really like? This is important."

  I knew I was supposed to lie to her for Alistair's sake, and... I couldn't bring myself to do it.

  "He's usually honest. And he's always smart. And he doesn't pull arms off babies, but he can be a real shit! He's arrogant and demanding and self-serving but seldom violent. Cross him and you're dead. But those he loves he protects and cares for like a lion with her cubs."

  She half snorted. "That's pretty much what I figured. Thanks!"

  "Then what your parents think isn't important?"

  "I've got to live with Alistair. They don't. Thanks again." She turned to leave.

  "Try the stockroom," I suggested. "Two down on the elevator. Or the coffee shop outside," pointing, "one level down."

  I watched her thread her way through the crowd, toward the elevator. Almost there, she stopped and spoke to a middle-aged couple who I immediately guessed from the woman's out-of-date-by-a-few-years gown and his well-worn tux must be Doriot's skillionaire parents. She turned them toward me, so we all glanced at one another. Even from this distance, I could tell that Doriot had won the genetic lottery, getting her mother's eyes, her father's cheeks, her mother's lips, her father's hair—i.e., all their best features. We all smiled politely. Alistair's future in-laws. I dawdled up to them, pushed the elevator button again for Doriot, and shook their hands.

  "We know nothing about art," Doriot's mother said in a voice with a slight wobble to it, as though she'd been singing Wagner all day. "Thad's uncle collected whatever we have around. That was when you had to go to Europe to get it."

  "And it didn't cost an arm and a leg," Doriot's father put in.

  I pictured Renoirs, Matisses, and the odd William Merritt Chase wrapped in heavy gilt frames, hung virtually out of view, high upon dark walls.

  "Your uncle's taste must skip a generation," I said to him. "Your daughter has a terrific eye. Really professional."

  "Like insanity," her father said. "That skips a generation too, although we've never openly acknowledged it in our family."

  "Or tone deafness," I softened it. I decided I liked these people's modesty and irony.

  "Thank God we're not tone-deaf," his wife quickly said. "In fact, we support the symphony and the opera."

  "Sometimes I think we support them single-handedly," her husband added. "But then, we go a lot too. So I guess we get our money's worth."

  I wondered whether to tell them I'd just been offered a job with the local opera magazine. One of them must read it. I was just formulating how to say it when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Justin from the record department.

  "Someone's looking for you."

  Uh-oh! I glanced around, not recognizing anyone who looked familiar, or too obviously like a process server, quickly excused myself from the Spearingtons, and moved in the direction opposite where Justin said I had someone waiting, still checking around myself for trouble.

  And right into Calvin's arms.

  Who said, "You missed him!"

  "Missed who?" I asked, blushing out of guilt that I'd even considered thinking about taking the job he'd just quit.

  "Your hunk of white boy. He was here and now..." Calvin grabbed my arm and pulled me away. "You'll never guess what?" He was no longer down in the mouth. He was wearing a mischievous grin. "Greg Herkimer is leaving."

  Who? What?

  "Greg Herkimer? Miss Thing at the Opera's assistant!" Calvin explained. "He's leaving next month. And... well... I've been offered the job."

  I'd been sipping. I nearly choked. "When?"

  "Ten minutes ago. Miss Thing found out I'd quit the rag and hired me on the spot."

  We held each other by the shoulders and screamed silently into each other's face with joy.

  "Now I can tell you!" I said. "Your boss offered me your job. Of course, I'm not taking it."

  Calvin gasped. "Take it! I'd have been stilettoed and dropped into a canal if I'd allowed him to cheapen and tart it up. But he's right. It's totally moribund and it really needs a thorough overhauling. You'll do wonders for it."

  "Calvin, I couldn't!"

  "You will. But just think of it, Gilda," he whispered fiercely into my ear. "I'll be helping choose the programs for the next... five... fuck... ing... years!"

  "And we'll have a bona fide reason to talk to each other on the phone all day," I said.

  Once again, we screamed silently at each other.

  "Meees-ter Sannnsss-arccc!" The Genoan Goose loomed behind Calvin, who looked at Pierluigi, made funny eyes at me, and scooted away.

  "I'd hoped, Mees-ter Sannns-arcc, that you would socialize with our guests in the manner of store manager a little more."

  "I'm doing what I can." "Hmmm! I suppose that includes insulting Mr. Faunce on a regular basis."

  "Faunce," I said, "is a total scumbag!"

  "No. No. I'm afraid this is not the right attitude," the Goose said.

  "I'd better go socialize." I began to move away. And felt grabbed at the shoulder. The Goose's large, square face pushed close to mine. He was not smiling. He was, however, pushing me into a corner, out of sight of the crowd.

  "I had hoped, Mees-ter Sanns-arrcc, that we wouldn't have to have this conversation."

  I looked not at him, but at his hand grasping the tux's fabric.

  "When I make far-reaching decisions for the store, I expect my staff to implement them. One such decision I made was about Mr. Faunce. Ever since, I've heard nothing but complaints about his mistreatment at your hands."

  "Faunce is a liar, a thief, a cheat, and probably beats his wife too!"

  "What Mr. Faunce may happen to be is none of your concern. I expect you to work with him with complete respect and regard."

  "I won't. My own self-respect won't allow it."

  He looked surprised at that. So surprised he pulled back momentarily.

  I pulled out of his grip and put some distance between us.

  He stared at me, calculating. In a less threatening tone of voice, he went on. "All very good, but as long as you are working here..."

  "Then I suppose I shouldn't be working here. I quit!"

  "I expect you to follow my orders," he went on, not even hearing me.

  So I repeated myself.

  He threw his head back and assumed full stature. "Oh, come now, Mees-ter Sannnnss-arcccc!"

  But having said it, I now felt strangely elated.

  "In fact, having quit, I think I'll go home now. I'm tired and I'm bored!"

  He blocked my way.

  "You can't quit."

  "Thank Faunce for me," I said, and slid under Cigna's arm and out into the gallery and the crowd, feeling slightly light-headed. Now, where was everyone?

  "Excuse me. You the store manager?"

  I looked at the guy: dark suit; about thirty-four; heavyset. He had "Process Server" written all over him.

  "I don't work here anymore. Maybe you'd like to see that
fellow. The tall one over there." I pushed him in the direction of my ex-boss.

  Budd Cherkin passed by, introduced me to his wife, and said, "We'll throw a party like this when we launch the new magazine."

  "Budd, I—"

  "Thirty-eight's my last offer," he said.

  "I'll call you in the morning."

  He and his wife introduced themselves to people who before this evening had never dreamed a person could be named Cherkin—or Cherkinovich, for that matter.

  "You did it!"

  Alistair, suddenly, was all over me.

  "I knew you'd come through. And to think, all these years, how stinting I've been in praising you."

  I put a hand over his mouth. I'd seen Alistair in a great many moods. Never quite so elated as this. I guess it was contagious.

  "I did nothing but tell the truth," I said. "Now, go be happy."

  He hugged me. Alistair actually hugged me in front of hundreds of people, including his future in-laws and the city's most important socialites.

  "I'll never forget you doing this for me," he said.

  I watched as he found Doriot and hand in hand they moved more deeply into the crowd. I wondered, naturally, how and when reality would reassert itself. Then I wondered if maybe it wouldn't. Hell, we all had our destinies. Look at Cal's changing jobs so fast tonight, or for that matter, my own changing jobs so unexpectedly tonight. Perhaps Alistair was right: his gay life had been the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps he could get back on that track he'd fallen off sometime after l'affaire Dario, and go on to be conventional and straight and rich and Republican and—

  "Roger. Someone's looking for you."

  Holly was saying it this time.

  "He found me." I pointed to where Pierluigi was staring down at the subpoena just handed to him.

  "Not him. Some dreamy big guy in a naval uniform."

  Matt!

  "Where?"

  "I left him downstairs about ten minutes ago. Make that fifteen. He said he wanted to look at books."

  I charged down the steps onto the main floor of the store, now dimmed yet not yet completely dark, lighted on one side by the bright streetlamps outside and on the other side by the general illumination of the hotel lobby.

  Even more eerie was how quiet it was down here, how chatter and music and laughter and the clink of glasses from the art gallery party above filtered down, trying to but still unable to utterly fill the space.

  Where was Matt?

  The children's section had a little leather sofa built into one corner, with a curved indirect lamp mounted above it. That's where Matt sat, reading Babar & Celeste.

  I checked his leg. Nothing special—no cast, no apparent bandages— showed through his trousers. He was wearing Navy dress blues. He looked very big filling up that little sofa.

  I wondered how long I might watch him before he noticed me, and in those minutes, I tried to gauge if I really loved him. I would have to love him a great deal, I guessed, enough to put up with a great deal from him, with him, because of him. It wasn't just that I thought him handsome as a god. It wasn't just that he was the best sex I'd ever had. Nor was it that he'd been wounded physically and psychically by the war and so was utterly vulnerable. Not even that he might need substantial help from me in the future. It wasn't that he'd opened up so completely about his Vietnam experiences to me. Or that he was a poet who'd decided not yet to open up his poetry to me.

  Yes, it was. It was all that.

  It was also that he could sit here quietly, while near chaos whirled above his head, sit here and unself-consciously read a children's book with total concentration, utter absorption in the present.

  He looked up. Saw me, began to put the book aside and stand up.

  I went to him and kept him from rising. I knelt at his feet and looked up at him. His face was a little drawn. He'd lost some weight. His eyes glowed like polished agates, like those marbles I'd owned and valued so much as a kid and which I'd lost without a jot of regret in a game where honor had been at stake.

  "Tell me a story," I begged.

  "This story?" He held the book.

  "No... this story." I touched his right leg.

  He wasn't lame. He was all right. And he was back. I was expecting him to be able to talk about it now. To tell me something good about it.

  "It began about six, seven months ago," he began.

  I let a beat go by, then asked, "Was that when you were wounded?"

  He looked at me suddenly with a momentary flare composed equally of fear and exposure. I thought for a second he would stand up, push past me, and walk out of my life.

  He remained where he was and took a deep breath.

  "I was bored. I volunteered. It's my own fault. I was tired of being so protected, in the middle of a tin can, firing missiles at people so far away only electronics could see them. I heard of this mission from a few Seals on board I used to smoke weed with. Just a search and recon on shore. It was supposed to be a really minor mission. I pushed for it. They let me go. But it was fucked from the second we pulled out of the water. Frag got me," he said. "Frag from a whirly mine. I was the lucky one. The two guys ahead of me blocked the blast. They ate it whole. There wasn't enough left of them to scoop back into the raft.... We all got decorated!

  "It wasn't too bad," Matt said in a curiously even tone. "You know, for me. The pain and all. Except for this one." He guided my hand back to the lightly bandaged deep scar. "The frag there cut my sciatic nerve. That's the nerve that goes up to the spine. They've tried reconnecting it two times now. That's why I was down in the VA in San Diego this time. But it didn't take. I don't have a whole lot of feeling in this foot. I've got to be careful, banging it around and all. No trouble walking because my muscles and bones aren't affected. Yet. But it can get infected easily and I might not know it. Get gangrene. Have to come off. That's what will probably happen to it. Sooner or later.

  "Don't do that," Matt said, his arms reaching down to surround me.

  "I don't mind it too much! Really I don't! I'm sort of happy not to be so... you know, perfect, anymore. Really I am. It's better this way if I'm going to be a poet. Come on, Rog, you shouldn't... Think of how it coulda been worse.... How it coulda been so much worse! Hey! I've got an idea. I wrote this poem at the hospital while I was on morphine. I'll show it to you. Right now. Okay?"

  "Guilty?" I couldn't believe my ears.

  "Bu'chy'are, Blanche! Y'are guilty!" Anatole said in the worst Bette Davis imitation I'd ever heard.

  "I know that. But it's the principle of the thing!"

  "Give the rhetoric a rest, if you don't mind," Therry Villagro, the ACT UP attorney, said.

  "We're on your side," Anatole agreed.

  Perhaps I was jumpy because we were sitting in one of the sleaziest offices I'd ever seen. It appeared to belong to some minor functionary connected to the public defender's office, and was reachable only by long, dim, badly painted corridors. Anatole assured me that it was attached to one of the numerous small night courts connected to the Tombs. Although, after the night's activities, I wasn't the cleanest person myself—I'd climbed the side of a building, slid across its filthy roof, been thrown to the ground and frisked—this place disgusted me with its years-old layer of untouched grime, its odor like that of old hamburgers and uncleaned cat boxes, its audible rustle in the wainscoting of what had to be hummingbird-sized roaches—or worse! Anatole sat on newspaper he'd carefully spread on the slatted wooden chair he'd selected. Therry had turned her chair and sat astride it, leaning over the back.

  She didn't seem to notice the sanitation problem at all. I wondered, not for the first time tonight, exactly how nearsighted she was.

  "Here's the deal," Therry spelled out. "You plead guilty to trespassing, which is a misdemeanor, and you pay the hundred-dollar bond as a fine. The judge drops criminal mischief and endangerment charges and lets you off with time served. Case closed. No one in the city can ever go after you again on this."

/>   "This judge a close personal friend of a sister's ex-boyfriend's mother?" I asked Anatole.

  "Better. He's queer."

  "And closeted!" Therry said.

  "So far!" Anatole said in the man's defense.

  "What about the kids?" I nodded toward somewhere within the building. "Junior and James?"

  "Same deal for all of you," Therry said.

  And when I still demurred, Anatole said, "You can't get better!"

  He suddenly sounded as his father must have sounded fifty years ago, selling bolts of material on Orchard Street. I loved him for that.

  "What's the problem?" Therry asked.

  "Wally! My lover." I explained further: "Lenin in denims."

  "It's okay with Wally. We discussed it with him."

  "It is?" I was surprised. "Where is he anyway?"

  "Sitting in the last row of night court soaking up atmosphere," Anatole said.

  "Soaking up years of future indignation is more like it," I said. Indignation that I knew would be expressed at me in weeks to come.

  But Wally wasn't in the courtroom when we entered fifteen minutes later. And the judge turned out to be not only queer and closeted but also someone I knew. In fact, over the past twenty years, I'd come across him sooner or later in most if not all the less savory gay male haunts the city had to offer. Not a bad-looking guy, though a little careless of his appearance, he had a face composed of two similar if slightly ill-fitted halves; I'd more than once speculated that his face had been frozen, cracked, and too hastily put back together when he was a boy. One late summer night in 1981, out of a combo of ennui and let's-get-it-over-with-itis, I'd let him suck me off. This had taken place alfresco, between two pizza delivery vans in that little V-shaped parking lot across Hudson Street from a trashy bar named J's, when it was closed and still known by its former appellation: Hell. Ever since that blow job, in those increasingly few times whenever our paths crossed, he and I would silently acknowledge each other, and since it had been a pretty good blow job, I would always wonder whether or not to approach him. Now, on the bench, he looked at me without any sign of recognition. I noted that with age and a general softening of his features, one side of his face had sagged a bit and at last looked even with the other. His fine, longish brown hair was photogenically tinged with gray. His blue eyes—his strongest feature—gazed impassively, judicially, at me. I wondered how much he remembered of me—and how fondly.