Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "A book? Magazines?"

  "You sure about that?"

  "Of course I'm sure!" I protested, then I saw what Matt was talking about. I'd not noticed that my king was cornered. Good thing I'd kept one rook in the back row. I "castled" the king and tried to concentrate. "But I am sure. They're all dying to have me out of the theater while they rehearse." I immediately regretted using the word, but Matt seemed not to notice.

  Even with my concentration, in a few more moves Matt had me in check and, after some desperate moves, checkmated.

  "I'll call before I come tomorrow, to see if you need anything." I moved the bed table aside and kissed Matt's forehead. It was warmer now and a little moister. Was that normal?

  Walking across town, I caught my image in a shop window. I looked as though... something wonderful had happened.

  What precisely had my horoscope said? Someone from my past will be more wonderful than I thought possible. It hadn't mentioned that it would be someone I had never gotten over. Someone I had never stopped missing. Wouldn't it be terrific if when Matt got out of the hospital, this all continued? As friends. Who knew, maybe even again as lovers? It would be different, of course. We'd have to be very careful to safeguard Matt's health. But with no great claims on Matt's attention from other admirers, with me myself now finally adult enough to know when and where and how to compromise, it could be terrific.

  No wonder I look happy, I thought. I am. To hell with the play. Matt is back!

  Spring finally arrived in Manhattan. The cold that had held the city in an unrelenting grasp to the last bleak, snowless yet sunless day of March was broken by gentle rain the first of April. Every tree seemed to bud simultaneously, hell for those with allergies, but picture-card loveliness to everyone else. Crocus and magnolia blossoms pinkly and yellowly threaded every breeze that now wafted, softly, from across the Hudson through the streets of Chelsea.

  Inside the little theater, rehearsals were no longer accompanied by the incessant racket of the house furnace. Actors no longer had to shout themselves hoarse to be heard over stage heaters. Nor upon arriving and before warming up did they have to unwrap themselves from Isadora Duncan-length scarves, dig their way out of Siberian anoraks and floor-length coats. The take-out food in the lobby and dressing rooms—based around the constellation of hot coffee, hot tea, and hot soup—became tepid: apple juice and yogurt prevailed. Cigarette breaks were no longer half in and half out the front lobby, a door braced open an inch. Smokers could go outside, and if the wind were down and the sun hot enough, they could sit on a brownstone stoop dotting the long block, thespians begging Sol for the flattery of an early tan.

  The play had reached that point in rehearsal where all major areas were completely limned, only minor points of character delineation or refinements of action still needed to be gone over—often again and again. David J. couldn't for the life of him say a particular line as I'd written it. He'd get it wrong every time, despite the fact that it consisted of ordinary phrases and no long words. Blaise finally turned to me. "He'll go up on it when we open. Better rewrite it."

  I did. Without complaint. In fact, now that I'd more or less accepted that the show would quietly die, I found a few scenes weren't so bad, were even—was it possible?—okay. For example, the day I'd finally met with Alistair for lunch at nearby Claire restaurant, after putting it off several days: On Alistair's insistence, we'd returned to the theater and walked in on the Casement Trial scene. Unexpectedly, almost embarrassingly, I had found myself riveted: the acting, the staging, the drama itself—it all came together. A fluke, I told myself. Or worse, the writer's ego, hypnotized by something it had written it couldn't get enough of—for a day, a week at most. It happened all the time!

  No, no, Alistair insisted, with a tiny hint of awe in his voice. The scene was good. Alistair remained in his seat the rest of the afternoon, as Blaise and the cast moved on to two more scenes from the second act. When he'd gotten up to leave, Alistair hadn't been his usual effervescent self, but low-key. Before I could comment, he'd quickly said, "What I've seen so far has really left me thinking, Cuz. You know how much I pooh-pooh all these gay politicos and all. Yet, what I've seen today, even though it may not be refined yet, was really moving. Thought-provoking. What if Hay and those folks hadn't forced the court to overthrow the ban on One? What if Stonewall hadn't happened? Would we all be zipping around and hiding like those poor fifties queens? Daring our jobs, our lives, to be ourselves, to even protest? Yes, definitely thought-provoking," he declared, walking out of the theater.

  Cynthia agreed. She'd worked on many shows, and when they reached the crucial weeks before opening any real flaws, any deeply ingrained problems became all too evident. Here, all the problems were being solved as they arose; all the disparate elements were coming together, knitting into a whole.

  I would have liked to believe her. Everyone else believed anything and everything Cynthia said. Unfortunately for me, she had something even more difficult for me to believe: a mission, and that mission's main point was Sydelle Auslander.

  Following that first surprising reencounter outside the control room,

  I'd often seen Sydelle at the theater. Almost every day. No problem. We'd sometimes sit outside together, Sydelle stealing puffs of forbidden cigarette smoke (she was still trying to quit) and, in a desultory fashion, talking. So we too had more or less caught up with each other's lives. Sydelle hadn't remained at the magazine after I left as editor. She hadn't stayed anywhere very long until she'd met Second Why (i.e., Cynthia), she admitted. Furthermore, she admitted she'd often left magazines and newspapers after having made trouble and either forced someone else out—as she had with me—or left such a shambles the publication had collapsed. I was forced to admire her honesty if nothing else as she told me point-blank that she herself was incapable of being editor or even assistant editor at most of these places. She knew that. She also knew she didn't do any of it consciously. Well, not most of it. She half blamed astrology for it: "I'm a triple Scorpio," she once said. "Sun, moon, rising sign all square Pluto. I renovate wherever I go. Can't help it."

  If Sydelle presented herself as being the unwilling instrument of extraterrestrial forces, Cynthia, in her long discussions with me about her lover, presented Sydelle as the twisted result of a typical patriarchal upbringing in a hypocritical society. She laid out Sydelle's past like a quilt for the two of us to inspect, critique, deconstruct. Her food binging, her anorexia, her smoking and drinking, her failures in relationships (until now), her sick and guilt-ridden relationships with her father, her mother, her brother, her excessive sensitivity and vulnerability, her... Didn't I think Sydelle should try acting? Cynthia did. Sydelle, of course, had so very little self-esteem, Cynthia told me, it had taken weeks to get her even to enroll in HB Studio, where, of course, she'd been brilliant, had Sydelle told me about that? No, Cynthia guessed she wouldn't. But Sydelle was good. In fact, if it weren't for her and my past difficulties, Blaise would have let her be an understudy in the show. They only had one understudy. That was news to me, who was unaware we had any. As was the news that Bernard Dixon was that one understudy, although that explained somewhat why he was often found in a lower row of the theater, eating sandwiches and doing the crossword puzzle various afternoons. They really could use a second understudy, Cynthia insisted. Especially a non-Equity one. What did I think? If I approached Blaise about Second Why, wouldn't that be proof I'd buried the hatchet?

  It would, I agreed. So I said sure, okay, why not? I could afford to be philosophical: my life no longer centered around the play; it was wider now, beyond the shabby little theater.

  Walking across town every afternoon to the hospital, I found myself stopping to sit a few minutes at whatever part of Union Square wasn't at that hour being ripped up by jackhammers or steam shovels in its endless ongoing redesign. The shops of the upper teens at Fifth Avenue and Broadway also seemed to beckon more. I could always tell myself that if I did spend hours at Barnes &
Noble or China Books or the big discount mart, it was to pick up a book or cassette or sundry Matt would like.

  Every day, I found myself leaving the theater earlier, spending time in the open air, and arriving at the hospital earlier. One time I'd arrived so early, lunch trays still hadn't been collected and Matt was in the bathroom, audibly brushing his teeth and gargling. I left without being noticed, and walked around Gramercy Park before coming back as though I'd not been there already, afraid, although I couldn't quite explain it, of seeming too eager, like some young suitor. Another time I'd arrived just as lunch trays were being collected, only to find Matt already asleep. I wondered whether I ought to leave, but Matt awoke slightly and, seeing me, smiled wanly, took my hand, and said, "Today's not a good day." But when I said, "I'll come back later," Matt quickly replied, "Don't go!" Then explained, "I like knowing you're here," before slipping back into slumber for another hour. What had he meant? That this way he would know where I was? That he felt protected with me there?

  Following the early afternoon bustle serving lunch, was a quiet time in the hospital. Trays were removed by orderlies. Nurses came to check temperature and blood pressure. Patients read or slept.

  Increasingly, I couldn't help but notice, Matt too slept. He slept after lunch, and sometimes again after our daily game of chess before dinner and night visitor hours. At first, our chess games had been true tiny battles, tests of skill, plots and counterplots, long sallies and retreats, reveilles and sudden defeats, that had taken up most of my afternoon visit, interrupted though they might be by nurses or the arrival of an unexpected snack, accompanied as they often were by conversation and phone calls. But more often now, our chess games were brief, enigmatic: an unconventional opening, a few skirmishes, pounce, I'd be checkmated!

  The shorter the games became, the more concentrated and arcane was Matt's technique shown to be, as though decades of play and thought about the game were being explosively revealed. Traps and mysteries abounded. I would make four moves and discover myself completely enclosed, way out of my league, unable to mount anything approximating a challenge, at times unable even to understand Matt's explanations of how he'd done it. The game would be over, or Matt would charitably say, "to be continued," though they seldom were continued, and I would try to figure out what had happened.

  Equally brief, concentrated, and arcane was the poem of Matt's I'd stumbled across, carefully written on a hospital pad and dated a few days earlier, found under the bed while I was hunting one of Matt's slippers. When Matt sleepily acknowledged the poem to be his, I asked if I could copy it. "If you want," Matt said, unconcerned. But when I asked if he'd written any more, and were they too on hospital pads somewhere around the room, behind the curtains, in the shower stall, under the bed, Matt put a sweating palm up to my mouth, stopping my questions, saying, "Don't worry about it." Then he turned over in bed and went to sleep.

  The poem was titled "nightcall":

  the whirr of leather

  over the river of your voice

  the pause & clatter the

  telephone brings i am skating again

  as fast as i go

  you flow beneath me white

  white our lives coming down

  to these two small blades

  What was it about? I felt, I couldn't say how or why, that it was about us. Matt and me. Years ago. At the Pines. And now.

  As my question about the poem went unanswered, as our chess games shortened, our reading sessions got longer, with Matt farther back on the bed, looking out the window at the afternoon light (looking for his future, it sometimes seemed) while I read aloud from gossip columns, news items, and reviews in the Times or Post or one of the magazines left by a visitor the previous night. Yet if I should stop reading for a minute, Matt would invariably, gently protest, "I love the sound of your voice! It's so soothing!" And I would go on reading, soothing with my voice, until Matt would fall asleep, and I would get up and check that the little oxygen tube Matt now kept close by or right in his lips was loose enough and wouldn't inadvertently shut off. I'd brush Matt's forehead with my lips for fever, button or unbutton his pajama tops, lightly sponge him with alcohol if he seemed too hot. If Matt happened to be attached that day to a metal hat rack of IV tubes inserted into his wrist, giving anti-virals or nutriments, I would make sure they were all open and dripping. Then I'd sit and do my own reading. I sat close, as Matt had taken to reaching out suddenly in his sleep to grasp my thigh or hand, sometimes gripping so hard, during a dream or while mumbling in his sleep, that I would wince in pained surprise.

  That was rare. Less rare, if equally inexplicable, were those times Matt would suddenly wake up while I was reading—in the salons or streets of Paris, in the grand hotel dining rooms and on the beach at Balbec in 1885—and suddenly say, "There's a favor I have to ask of you." To which I would reply, "Sure. What?" To which Matt would enigmatically respond, "In time. All in good time. But it's very important. No one else can do it." And I would—even the fifth or sixth time this occurred—say, "Anything! Anything at all."

  Seconds later Matt would be snoring, and I would be utterly at sea, unable to discern whether Matt had been truly awake or just seeming to be awake but really talking in his sleep, his question not real, the favor he expected of me not so much a real one, but some kind of reassurance he required, that would allow him to more comfortably sleep.

  If those sudden events of reaching out or asking for a totally mysterious favor were strange adjuncts, they were worth having to put up with, worth the equally inexplicable contentment I seemed to experience—and which I'd never dare admit—sitting and reading the new translation of Proust on a spring afternoon that smelled of fresh flowers, while Matt slept so close by.

  Not only was Matt sleeping more, but so was his roommate, one Joe Veselka, a man barely thirty, who'd been very ill indeed, suffering a variety of minor ills and irritations beyond the Pneumocystis that had kept him in intensive care a week. Joe's sessions with a nurse, overheard through closed curtains, to help alleviate some awful skin condition, could get so loud and disturbing I usually managed to get Matt out of the room, over to the little lobby near the elevator.

  Out in the hospital's twelfth-floor lobby, Matt and I would play chess or read, and in a small way hold court among visitors and other patients, occasionally even an intern or two. All the staff adored Matt, naturally, and would come by, stop to ask how he was. And I never failed to remark how gracious Matt was to them all, how distinctively beautiful with his single lock of white hair, his posture so erect, even though he was undoubtedly thinner now, his attitude modest despite his regal looks.

  How proud I was that Matt wanted me near him, how proud he would tell anyone who would bother to ask that, yes, we'd been lovers, still were, really, in another, higher sense. Matt's courtesy was so easy. He'd never deflect questions, no matter how pointed. Not even when another patient on the floor—a middle-aged harridan with a Dutch-boy haircut of obviously dyed yellow—said to him, "Donch'a feel weird going around with a hole in your chest?" She was referring to the infusolator surgically embedded in Matt's upper left pectoral, a medical device called a Hickman catheter, through which he was receiving far more directly than was otherwise possible a potent new drug to fight off the cytomegalovirus that had begun to cloud his eyesight and infect his throat. "It's not open all the time," Matt replied, opening his pajama top to bare himself—an alabaster torso from a Gothic crucifix—to her. "See! It's got a lid!" At other times, he'd tell visitors, "I'm the lucky one. Poor Joe and poor Raimundo in the next room. They're suffering so much. I'm just a little tired."

  And afterward, when I, leaving for the day, stopped at the nurse's station, one of the staff there would invariably say hello, stop me, ask if Matt needed anything, and if, as increasingly happened lately, I asked them to bring Matt a sleeping pill (he complained of awakening in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep), they'd say, "Oh, sure! Right away!" Then they'd confide
, "He's no trouble. Never complains. Never asks for anything. If his room light goes on here, it's always for his roommate." And I would feel even prouder of Matt, more certain of him, and I'd make sure that even with a full night's schedule, say concert and dinner, I'd find time to phone Matt before lights out.

  Once, I was at dinner with Alistair and a woman named Toni Kauffer, whom Alistair had somehow talked into doing free publicity for the show, when I excused myself to go make that phone call to Matt. When I returned to the table, Alistair took Toni's bare arm and mewed, "Look at him, Toni! L'amour! L'amour! As Mary Boland said! Don't deny it, Cuz! You're, as they say of the newly engaged and the freshly pregnant, 'simply radiant.'"

  From the minute I arrived at the theater that morning, I sensed something wasn't as it ought to be, but I couldn't put my finger on what.

  Up onstage, all seemed usual enough: Blaise was working with virtually the entire cast, trying to put together more smoothly the complex series of spoken lines and carefully choreographed action that would constitute the "fight" for the Stonewall Inn. They mostly seemed to be working on details, and they seemed awfully intent, so I paid more attention to the newspapers I'd bought that morning: Times, Post, and the New York Native with its scary "11,234 and Still Counting" headline. Meanwhile, around one end of the stage momentarily cleared of actors, Henry and Bernard Dixon were up on ladders, moving ceiling stage lights, replacing bulbs, etc., to Cynthia's direction from the control booth.

  Sipping coffee, I moved on to the Times crossword puzzle.

  "That your Post?"

  David J. Temporarily not needed onstage. He didn't even wait for me to say yes, but immediately turned to the middle of the paper, found the Horoscope section, and read. His shoulders slumped a little more, and a sound like "hummmph" emerged from somewhere deep inside him.

  "Bad news?"