People in Trouble

by Sarah Schulman

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘I tested positive.’

  ‘Now what?’ Molly slipped her arm around his shoulder and leaned her head there.

  ‘Well, I read in The New England Journal of Medicine that there are a couple of experimental protocols for drugs you can start taking when you’re only at the positive stage. But there aren’t many available spots in the program. So, I’m trying to switch to a more influential doctor who can get me into one of them. But I might have to move to another city and being lonely could get me sick faster, don’t you think?’

  Molly didn’t say anything. So the two of them just sat there with their heads together for a while.

  Then Fabian went off to get a Coke and one of the homeless guys came up to Molly with a note from the prisoner with the healed slit throat. It was written in pencil with that kind of handwriting people have when they don’t really know how to write. It said

  Hi There!

  My name is Frank Castillo No #241–86-1885. I have about four to five months to do in here. If you write me I will write you. I have been in jail for twenty-eight months and haven’t had no woman since. You are very pretty. I would also like to call you. I will pay for the call. Please think about it. I am really not a bad person.

  Molly stared at this note for a long time, except for every once in a while when she forgot and raised her eyes accidentally. Whenever that happened, Frank would be there with his handcuffed hands put together in prayer and him saying ‘Please, please, please,’ silently with his fat lips.

  I can’t take care of everybody, Molly said to herself. I just can’t. I can’t do it. This is one of those times that I have to say no.

  So she looked up at Frank and mouthed ‘No’ because even when the answer is no, people deserve a response. But he just sent her another note. It said

  I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I just want to talk to you. If you give me your phone number I can call you and we might become good friends. The officer said it would be all right for you to talk to me.

  Frank

  She looked up again accidentally and he was right there mouthing ‘Please, please, please’ again. So finally Molly took out another piece of paper and wrote the following note.

  Dear Frank,

  You seem to be a very open person. I just can’t pursue this relationship with you because I am a lesbian and I have learned from past experiences that whenever I make friends with a straight man they always want more. I hope you meet the woman who is right for you. I hope I do too.

  She didn’t sign it. She just sent it back to him by messenger and then changed her seat so she didn’t have to watch him read it with his handcuffs on.

  Then Fabian came back with his Coke and drank it and they were still waiting. Then James came out and Scott was dead. The three of them held one another very close and then looked at each other and there was already something missing. From then on, Scott would not be there.

  ‘He waited for me,’ James said as they walked down along the East River. There was some wealthy private school on the water, so wherever they walked there were packs of bilingual boys and girls in dark blue jackets and skirts. There was an expensive restaurant, some luxury housing and a heliport for businessmen from powerful companies. Fabian held James’s hand as he talked. The sun reflected off the water with great freshness and clarity. There was light everywhere. The promenade overflowed with human movement and warm pleasure.

  ‘He should have been gone by the time I got there but he was still hanging on. I saw death when I looked at him. His eyes were yellow. There was nothing left inside. I took his hand and brought my face right up to his, like we were kissing. Really close, like when we sleep and my nose is buried in his cheek. I breathed on him. My eyes were on his eyes. I know he felt me. I took his hand and squeezed it. I said, “Scott, can you see me? Can you see me?” until I knew he saw and then I said, “I love you. I love you, Scott. I love you.” And I watched him die, knowing he was a loved person in this world. That was the last thing he knew.’

  They left James at his front door and after Molly left a long composed letter in Kate’s mailbox, she and Fabian walked on a little way together over to the West Side and down Christopher Street. They were pretty quiet except when Fabian stopped to buy an ice cream cone. It was another gay summer and they were in it. There were all those sexy guys prancing around. Some of them were sweet young things wearing practically nothing. Some of them were big hunks wearing practically nothing. The usual fag teenagers were hanging out by the water playing radios and lots of guys in bicycle pants were cruising around, being cute. A few straight women were walking around with their gay friends talking things over and one voyeuristic straight couple clung to each other desperately.

  ‘This is where I first saw Scott,’ Molly said. ‘It was about a year ago. He and James were handing out flyers for Justice. Scott had long hair then and a big Pepsodent smile. I remember I was mad at Kate for not being around. A year has passed. Not much has changed.’

  ‘This is where I first met Scott too,’ Fabian said. ‘About six years ago at the Ramrod. He blew me on the pier.’

  ‘It’s been a long year,’ Molly said. ‘A huge one. But nothing much has changed.’

  46

  KATE

  Dear Kate,

  Scott died this morning. Life is very short. I can’t waste mine waiting for you to love me enough. There’s something missing in you. I don’t think you know how to love. You just know how to hold on to people. It’s not the same thing.

  She heard the door to James’s apartment start to open and she knew she didn’t want to see him. Still holding the letter Kate stepped back quietly under the staircase and waited until he was out the front door. He was walking with a black woman Kate had never seen before and she only heard snippets of their conversation. She heard two things: ‘Why me?’ and ‘I don’t want to die.’

  She was sweating. She walked outside and noticed everything. The buses had been painted a new color. There was a new song on the radio. All the kids were singing it. She passed two parks filled with street people drinking or sleeping or smoking Coke or cigarettes or crying or talking to themselves and to others or dying. She sat with them for a while, once in each park, and smelled their urine and sweat. Every garbage can on Second Avenue had been picked through. She saw the headline on a newsstand: AIDS VICTIMS RIOT.

  Three elderly women asked her for money. She gave them everything she had. Then she went to the bank machine and got out more. Four times young men tried to sell her drugs. In each case she bought what they offered without inspection and dropped three bags of marijuana and one crack vial on the sidewalk. There was trash everywhere. The streets were broken and filled with holes. There was a hooker on Twelfth Street who was clutching her vagina and crying. Kate unlocked the front door to her studio. Her skin was burning. It was bubbling up and blistering. It was dripping brown fat. Her arms were dislocated and skin became plaster, then a greasy foreign substance. Her clitoris was as big as her hand. No, bigger. It filled the universe between her ankles and her groin. It had no temperature and moved of its own accord. Then she felt nothing.

  Kate walked into her studio and Peter was there. He wore a clean cotton button-down shirt, freshly ironed.

  ‘What are you doing, Katie? I don’t understand you. You don’t care about anything unless it’s gay. You don’t think about anything unless it’s gay. I’m really surprised that you would become so narrow.’

  She took a step toward him.

  ‘I understand you feel a need to be politically active but I think that is something we can do together. Homosexuals don’t have a monopoly on morality, you know. We have always agreed that our artwork is our political work. We have always agreed that challenging form is more revolutionary than any political organization ever can be. But if you feel a need to be part of a group, we can do that together. I mean, I care more about Nicaragua than I do about a group of rich white gay men. Wouldn’t you like t
o work together on something less exclusive?’

  She pressed her face into his chest. His shoulders were like guard rails. She was surrounded by him. She had no air.

  ‘That girl means nothing to me,’ he said. ‘Nothing. You give up yours and I’ll give up mine. Then we can be exactly like we were before.’

  She placed her fingers flat against his chest. It was a wall. It moved. There was hair underneath his shirt. She wanted to dig her fingernails in and tear him apart.

  He spoke again. What did he say this time?

  47

  KATE

  The New York Times obituary said that Scott was ‘survived’ by two daughters, a wife, mother, father and sister in Kansas City. Then Kate found a privately placed notice at the bottom of the obituary page.

  Scott Yarrow died in the arms of his lover, James Carroll, with whom he shared a vision of freedom for lesbians and gay men.

  When she went to the site of the funeral, Kate discovered that it was the same church where she had watched Molly and Pearl months before. Now she too was a mourner. There were so many people it was impossible to even consider getting into the church. Once inside, what would they do there anyway? ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ had no place here. There was only fire. Kate looked closely at the crowd. There were some people she knew from Justice meetings. Fabian and Bob were there. So were Cardinal Spellman and Trudy and Daisy. But most of the faces were unknown to her. These people did not greet one another. There were no words. They did not touch. There were no embraces, only anger and a shared determination that passed between them.

  Six men emerged carrying Scott’s coffin. It seemed to be as light as air. They began passing the box over the heads of the crowd as each one reached out to touch the wood like it was the Torah. His encased body passed through the hands of his people on its way to burial. It was placed in the hearse without eulogy or speeches.

  As the car inched away the crowd parted and then, like one person, began walking silently to Fifth Avenue, turning up it toward the library. They walked in the street against traffic. Kate could feel the exhaust of idling cars against her calves. Her lungs were filled with it. She climbed over cars, disregarded them. When there are that many people the traffic can’t move. When that many people walk together the traffic has to stop. At first the drivers cursed, but soon rolled up their windows and sat still in disgust listening to their radios.

  The men and women arrived at the library and stopped there in front of the old granite lions. Everyone looked up at the huge stained-glass windows that once let in light on halls of free books and old wooden reading tables. They stood very, very quietly.

  Horne had already started speaking from a raised platform, where he sat on a pile of cushions dressed as a raja in accord with the India-themed decor of the renovated library. Now it would be a health club for businessmen working in midtown. The main reading room had become a large sauna and the rare book room, handball courts. Horne was speaking into the microphone, it didn’t matter what he was saying. The edges of the stage were guarded by some young white thugs in brownface with guns in their pantaloons and walkie-talkies under their turbans. But five guns couldn’t kill a thousand people. Kate saw plastic boa constrictors and college students hired to be dancing girls. Everyone on the stage was just working a job.

  Horne stopped for a moment to look out at the solid mass before him. He had an expression on his face that Kate recognized from television. It was a practiced glibness. He was searching for just the right throwaway comment to invalidate all the people in front of him and at the same time make great copy for the front page of the next day’s New York Post. But nothing very clever seemed to come to mind. He started sweating a bit, then, and took a drink of water.

  Kate saw James climbing up on Bob’s shoulders. The contrast of black skin and silver hair made a momentary impression on her. James turned toward the audience and spoke evenly, not trying to outshout anyone. The crowd was pretty antsy anyway and looking for some direction, so they kept still and listened carefully.

  ‘If you instigate chaos,’ he said, ‘make sure that it is to your advantage or that you have no other choice.’

  Then they roared. The black T-shirts with pink triangles swarmed over the equipment, smashing it. They trampled the press section, throwing the cameras into the street and stomping on them. There would be no observers this time. Everyone would participate or run. Kate climbed up on top of an overturned Cable News Network van and was surprised by the sight of her own artwork, spread out behind Horne’s platform. The private bodyguards were jumping off the stage, flying against the background of her collage, leaving Horne alone, retreating until he was wrapped by her images. Reinforcements started arriving from the police department and were beginning to surround the crowd. The cops were still on the outside but there was very little time left for someone to act in a large way. People were already at the edges of the platform, leaving Horne and her pictures trapped. Then he pulled out a gun. The men who had begun climbing up on the stage pulled back, quickly, and hovered on the wood, swinging their legs over the sides. Kate pushed harder than she had ever pushed and clawed her way to the front of the stage, catching and tearing her flesh on the splintered police sawhorses that lay mangled everywhere. Then she climbed under it, crawling on the dirt and garbage over wires, rags, cans of paint and turpentine. She watched her own hands turn black and her arms cake with dirt and blood surrounded by the moving spikes of pants legs bobbing around her. Dragging the cans and power lines to the base of the collage’s wooden frames, she looked back at the chaos behind her. Each gesture was too large and so unusual that the action passed before her like a high-speed silent film. Only there was no silence.

  48

  roland

  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Channel Z News. I’m Roland Johnson.

  susie

  And I’m Susie Fong.

  al

  Al Harber with sports.

  casper

  And Doctor Casper Griffin with the weather.

  roland

  All this and more when Channel Z continues after this message.

  [Commercial]

  roland

  Good evening. In the news tonight, Ronald Horne murdered in Forty-second Street melee. Congress approves new Contra aid plan. Mayor goes to bat for the peanut butter bagel and Masters and Johnson warn heterosexuals: new threat from AIDS. But first, Susie?

  susie

  Thank you, Roland. Real-estate mogul Ronald Horne met a fiery death today when a freak accident occurred during a riot by AIDS victims. An art installation designed for the inauguration of a new health club caught fire and enveloped the billionaire developer in a flaming collage. Police are still investigating the incident. We switch live to Sonny Harris on location in Bryant Park. Sonny?

  sonny

  Thank you, Susie. Little remains of today’s riot except for the scattered scraps of television equipment smashed by the angry mob. We are here with Chief of Command Ed Ramsey of Manhattan South. Chief, can you tell us what happened?

  ed ramsey

  At approximately two twelve this afternoon, a piece of art that had been placed in the park caught on fire. The artist has informed us that he was using polyurethane, a known flammable substance.

  sonny

  Thank you, Chief Ramsey. Back to you, Roland.

  roland

  Thanks, Sonny. Congress voted today to approve a multimillion-dollar aid package to rebel forces in Nicaragua. Frank Miller has details from Washington. Frank?

  49

  MOLLY

  As soon as Molly caught sight of Kate’s hair, she’d climbed up on a lamppost and kept her eyes pinned to that woman throughout the entire event. She’d seen Kate go under the stage and then come out again on the other side and watched her slip under the framing just as the first flames began to appear. Then Kate had come around to behind the police lines and watched the fire from across the street.

  For a few we
eks after the event Molly had vague thoughts of seeing Kate again but had never acted on it and eventually any desire toward her faded, naturally. She wasn’t even provoked by curiosity as Kate developed a high profile as a result of Horne’s death and could be read about in an essay by Gary Indiana in the Village Voice and one by Barbara Kruger in ArtForum. In fact, Kate began working extensively in burning installations and quickly got commissions from a number of Northern European countries to come start fires there. She had been in Amsterdam for six months working on a blazing sculpture in honor of the people of Cambodia when Peter came up to Molly in a coffee shop on Ninth Street.

  It had been a long winter for Molly. She spent a lot of it alone and was relatively quiet. Both Fabian and Daisy were dead by Thanksgiving. Fabian had wanted a drug called M-Reg One. But the FDA killed it in phase-three trials. Daisy ended up on AZT, which she couldn’t really tolerate and her legs went so numb that she could barely walk. They both died angry.

  ‘Hi, Molly, how are you?’ Peter said, being friendly. Then he sat down next to her at the counter and started talking about the new play he was working on. He also mentioned that he wasn’t getting the recognition he deserved and wasn’t getting paid what he was worth.

  Molly tried to ignore him. Then a pretty woman came into the coffee shop and kissed Peter on the mouth.

  ‘Pete, hold this for a minute, I have to make a phone call. I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Is that your new girlfriend?’ Molly asked.