“No, no, wait,” she called in her high-pitched voice. She reached out and stroked my arm. “Let’s sit,” she said.
She moved her wraps off the empty chair to make room for me. I told her I didn’t have a lot of time, but she acted like she didn’t hear me. When all of her accoutrements were resituated, she closed her eyes and extended her arms across the table, like a cat stretching out its front paws. She reached a little farther and lightly held my wrists, taking my pulse or assessing my chi. When the mantra she was reciting in her head was complete, she released my hands and opened her eyes. “I have some difficult news to tell you,” she said.
She stirred her latte with a wooden stick. She pulled it out and licked it. “Cortland is coming back,” she said. “He’s teaching here next semester. So, that’s great. But he said he’s had some problems with the landlord nosing around the apartment. And it’s making him”—she scrunched her face, raised her hands, and seesawed her body side to side—“nervous.”
She slurped the foam off her coffee and wiped her top lip with her bottom one. “Obviously he felt anxious about telling you this, which is why he’s getting me to do his dirty business.” She widened her eyes as she leaned back in her chair and pulled down her sweater. She picked at pieces of her bangs that felt out of place and fluffed up her long hair by gently massaging her scalp. Then she realized she was fidgeting and stretched her arms across the table again.
“Cortland’s coming back. Well, I said that.” She rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness. “But he’s going to take over the apartment again. He’s going to use it as a writing studio. Until things blow over. Then maybe you can move back.”
I was still. When I sat down with her it was only perfunctory, on the edge of the chair, my legs crossed, my body angled away from her, ready to get up and leave. I never took off my coat or let go of my paper cup. I opened my mouth slightly but didn’t say anything. I uncrossed my legs and turned to face her.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry if this is difficult for you.”
“He’s kicking me out?” I asked, purposefully filling the situation with drama.
“No,” she said, crossing her hands at her wrists in front of her and overusing her lips to form words, a gesture she learned from her brief stint with Occupy Wall Street. “No. Not at all. He’s just following your agreement.”
“What?” I was half laughing, wondering if I could talk her out of this decision. Make her forget about us meeting and following Cortland’s instructions for delivery of information. Buy her another latte and a chocolate croissant.
“You agreed that it would be open-ended, but that either of you could end it with a month’s notice. So he asked me to give you a month’s notice.” For the last part she smiled with difficulty, exposing her teeth and looking at me with concern, the way a student gives an answer in a classroom when unsure of the response, worried that she is saying something upsetting, but still wanting credit for giving the correct answer.
All I could say was “Fuck.”
“I know,” she said, looking at me, communicating that she was sad to make me sad, and that she did not enjoy being the deliverer of sad news one bit. I had moved into Cortland’s place when I broke up with my girlfriend, Noreen. Cortland had been happy to help me out. “I know what it’s like,” he said. “I’ve been there.” When he split up with his second wife he had nowhere to go and a friend in the building had gotten him the apartment where I now lived, or used to live until Cortland revoked my tenancy by girlfriend proxy. The girlfriend reached for my wrists again, inhaled, and let them go. She looked at me for the cue that our tension was abating and she could talk about something else fascinating that was going on in her life.
“Fuck,” I said again. I had gotten myself into this situation. It was my own fucking fault. It was probably because of the mail that had accumulated while I was away. I should’ve had a friend pick it up for me. I should’ve gotten a PO box when I moved in. There was a place on First Avenue that would accept packages for you, which would’ve saved me from having to haggle with the shoe-repair guy downstairs for performing that service. Then I could’ve avoided this whole thing. Or not. Cortland must have known he was coming back: you don’t pick up a teaching gig that quickly. He must’ve been thinking about this for a while, and then the snoopy landlord was a convenient fault-free excuse to ask me to leave.
“So, February first?” she asked with an uptick in her voice.
I shrugged my surrender. She took a celebratory gulp of her latte and quickly checked her phone. She was glad that was over.
I tried to force myself to drink my coffee, but my mind was already racing through my soon-to-be-homeless predicament, which couldn’t have come at a worse time financially. Plus, trudging around in the cold waiting for no-show brokers was not going to be fun. Not that I could afford a broker. Not that I could afford anything. What I really needed was someone’s cat to feed and a free place to stay for a month. That could get me back on my feet. Since I had just paid everything for January, my bank account was reset to zero and I had no money for a security deposit on a new place. I hated myself for being this age and still in this situation.
The girlfriend asked me if I would watch her stuff while she went to the bathroom. She got up and shook out her hair and walked to the back of the café in a way that made sure everyone would notice her. She was young and beautiful, with tight jeans and great hair. She wore a giant shapeless sweater but she telegraphed what was underneath. I laughed at myself as my eyes trailed her path. When she shut the door to the bathroom, I remembered the envelope of cash. It was still sitting there, half slid under her journal. I should take it back, I thought. What if I find a cat-sitting gig and move right away? Why should I pay for the whole month? Taking the money would be the immature and irresponsible thing to do. I chastised myself for considering it. Then I tried to rationalize things. I’ll take it, and when I move out, I’ll pay for however long I’ve stayed. If I stay the whole month, I’ll give it all back. If I stay half the month, I’ll pay half.
I slowly pulled the envelope free, folded it, and shoved it in my coat pocket. When the girlfriend came back to the table, I stood up before she had the chance to sit down. I said I had to go. She insisted on hugging me. I worried she would feel the bulk of the envelope in my pocket, but she threw her arms around my neck, letting her breasts press against my coat, anchoring herself by reaching her ass in the opposite direction. It was a bizarre pose. A gesture I wasn’t used to.
“My only Hope!” I looked up from the hug with the girlfriend. My friend Jamie was standing over us with his coat on. He looked flushed, his fair cheeks stained pink from the cold. I hadn’t seen Jamie in almost a year. Maybe more. “How are you?” he asked. He wasn’t going to find his own table. He wanted an invitation to sit down. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since you and Noreen came to my show at Performa. And that must have been over two years ago.”
“Noreen and I broke up,” I told him in case he hadn’t heard through the grapevine.
“Yes, I know,” he said.
The girlfriend smiled and glanced back at me. She felt out of place. “I should let you two catch up,” she said. She gathered her journal and wrapped herself in several layers of hand-knit wool. She hefted her bag over her shoulder and didn’t notice the envelope was missing. She gave me one last quick hug, sealing my guilt.
Jamie moved over to her seat, opposite me, and sloughed off his coat. He looked glum in contrast to his excitement at seeing me two minutes earlier. He didn’t meet my eyes, and took a long time arranging his bag over the back of his chair. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and went up to the counter to order. When he came back to the table, I asked him what was wrong.
Jamie leaned forward, his hands cradling his freshly filled water glass. He tilted his head from side to side, eyes cast down, as if he was having a discussion with himself about how to divulge what was on his mind. When he came to a resolution, he looked up at
me.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Hope,” he said with an air of seriousness. “It’s not the type of thing you want to tell someone you haven’t seen in some time. And I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in some time. I am. You’re my dear friend and I don’t see you enough.” He rotated his glass of water a few times, then stopped. “Maybe you heard this from someone else already. I’m HIV positive.”
I had heard this from someone else. But I didn’t tell him that. As soon as he said, “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I knew what he was going to tell me. I waited until he looked up from his glass of water and I said, “I’m so sorry.”
Jamie took a deep yogic inhale, filling his chest completely. He closed his eyes for a second and then slowly released his breath. He smiled ever so slightly and gave a faint nod.
“I’ve known for a few months,” he said, reaching for a napkin and wiping his nose. “I just haven’t seen you.” The person at the counter called out Jamie’s name, and Jamie stood up to fetch his order. He came back with a large coffee and said, “I come here all the time. It’s near my gym.” He sat down and took another deep inhalation. “Anyway”—he gave me a brief rundown on his health. He was doing a lot of holistic treatments. “I’m on meds,” he said. “Even though I don’t trust Big Pharma. They’re the ones getting rich off the epidemic, and it’s still an epidemic, by the way, even though it’s not media-sexy anymore. Why do you think they never developed a cure or a vaccine? What’s in it for them if we don’t need to buy their drugs anymore? Gay is a market now. They’re not about to give it up.”
He took a sip of water. Something about Jamie was more off than usual. He seemed more manic, more twitchy. His eyes were searching me all over and couldn’t stay put on any one point. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked. Jamie closed his eyes and slightly shuddered his shoulders. “I know,” he said, opening his eyes and restlessly scanning the room. “I’m an idiot for getting infected in this millennium, so late in the game.”
“You’ve got to let that go,” I said.
Jamie exhaled. “I don’t want to trouble you, Hope. But I’m full of trouble these days. I don’t even know where to begin. My health is the least of my short-term worries.”
He took a sip of his coffee and blotted his lips with a napkin. “I made a foolish mistake that I’m really too old to be making. I hooked up with this young guy. You know, fresh off the boat from Nowheresville, USA. Just a hookup with a morning after. Or two or three. It was lovely. It was fun. I sent him on his way and didn’t give it an ounce of thought. Then a week later the kid shows up on my doorstep. He’s packed his bags and moved here from the backwaters of upper Michigan and has no place to go. What can I say? I have a heart. I was that kid once.”
“We all were,” I said.
“Some of us still are,” Jamie said, and I didn’t know if he meant himself or me. “The kid offered to pay rent,” Jamie said, “which I needed. I was really strapped after my last show. So, okay. I made my deal with it. I made the bed, so to speak, and I slept in it, too.
“This was all around the same time I found out I was positive. And as soon as I found out, I told him. I said, You should get tested. Then he flips out and accuses me of knowingly infecting him. Now, in a normal person, I can understand that sentiment. You’re angry. You lash out. You’re looking for someone to blame. And of course I feel guilty. I feel terribly guilty.” He paused, let go of his cup. “But I don’t know if he did a test or not, so who knows?” he said. “Maybe I didn’t infect him. But he just completely flipped out. He beat me up. Then I realized, this person is incredibly unstable. And how could I have not seen it? And now he’s in my apartment. He has the keys.”
Jamie sipped his coffee. “But I sort of decided to just tough it out since we had an understanding that he was only staying with me a month, until he found something else. On the flip side, I’m working with this new manager-fundraiser person and she’s very well connected and she put together a benefit cocktail party for me. She thinks it’s very important to build on the momentum from my Times review. ‘This is how things happen,’ she said. ‘It’s just one thing that tips it over and suddenly everyone loves you and everyone absolutely has to have you.’”
I knew the woman Jamie was talking about. I had emailed her once about getting on her roster. She wrote back a one-line message that said, “Oh, right, I know your work,” and I never heard from her again. My friend Zara looked at her client list and said, “She only likes gay men and European women, of course she didn’t take you.”
Jamie went on: “She hooks me up with Julianne Moore. Julianne Moore. The Oscar winner. My manager puts together an evening and there’s drinks and hors d’oeuvres and we do a short excerpt from last year’s show—we restage it so we’re dancing around the tables, in the aisles. It wasn’t easy. And toward the end Julianne Moore breezes in and gives a short speech about the necessity of art in our lives. She probably gives the same speech for a zillion other little arts organizations she helps out, and she probably didn’t write it, someone probably wrote it for her, because it’s a gem, really, but it felt special to me. The whole thing was a great success. And I really believed that this could be something. This could be the thing that takes my work to the next level. I didn’t have a thing to drink, but I am high that night. High on my own potential.” Jamie glowed when he said that.
“When I got home, late, because I was doing everything at the benefit including the cleaning, I find my little friend waiting up for me. And he’s been smoking. My entire body tensed and I said, ‘I asked you not to smoke in the apartment. Please put it out and take the filthy dish you’ve been using as an ashtray, take it down the hall, throw out the ashes, and then come back and wash it. Twice. It’s a dish. It’s something you eat food off of. Don’t be a disgusting piece of trash.’” Jamie said that as if it was a perfectly reasonable request given in a perfectly reasonable demeanor.
“He completely freaks out. Starts screaming at me. Saying if I infected him, he’s going to sue me, and he has a lawyer, and just rambling on.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“Ridiculous, I know, but that energy was in my apartment and I was so exhausted. I said, ‘Christopher, do you know where I’ve been? I’ve been at my dance company’s benefit with Julianne Moore. Julianne fucking Moore. I really can’t deal with your imbecilic bullshit right now.’ Does he stop? No. Does that get through to him? No. He screams bloody murder. Loud. Eardrum-piercing screams. So I slapped him. I wasn’t thinking. Maybe I was. I don’t know. I’m not a violent person, but I slapped him right across the face and said, ‘Christopher, you’re hysterical. Calm down.’ Then he hits me, full-on punches me, and pushes me against the wall, and my arm catches on something and I cut myself all the way from here”—he indicated his wrist—“to here”—his elbow. “The sight of blood sent him over the edge and he starts screaming, ‘Stay away from me! Stay away from me with your infected blood! Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!’ Somehow, in all of that, I don’t even know how, I managed to shove him out of the apartment and into the hallway, and I locked the door and put the chain latch on. But he kept screaming and my neighbors called the police and the cops arrive and Christopher is going on about how I hit him. I beat him up and threw him out and he lives here and he pays rent. The cop asks me, ‘Did you hit him?’ I said, ‘Officer, he has hit me many times, violently, as you can see.’” Jamie indicated the scar on his arm. “But the cop asked again, ‘Did you hit him?’ I said, ‘Officer, he was hysterical, he was screaming, he was out of control, and I slapped him. I didn’t hit him. I didn’t punch him. I slapped him across the face with an open palm because he was hysterical. I was just trying to snap him out of it.’
“The cop was actually sympathetic. He looked at Christopher and said to me, ‘We’ve gotten complaints about this one before.’ So I’m just one person in a long line of suckers, I guess. The cop said, ‘Look, if I take him in, I’m going to hav
e to take both of you in, since you admit you assaulted him.’ I said, ‘What about me? He assaulted me.’ But apparently, since I admitted it, I’m on the hook. ‘Or,’ the cop said, ‘you can promise there won’t be any more disturbances tonight and I’ll walk away.’ I said, ‘I promise you, Officer, there won’t be any more disturbances from us tonight.’ So the cop said okay. And he tried to do his civil-servant duty and told me to take a long hard look at the reality of my relationship.”
I told Jamie to get rid of him.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t get rid of him. He paid me rent for the month and that money is gone now. I don’t have it.”
I asked if Christopher was still there.
“Yes,” Jamie said. “He’s there right now.”
I was relieved that I had my own apartment dilemma to deal with. I didn’t want to be the friend who helped Jamie change the locks on his apartment and sit vigil until the roomie came home. I didn’t want to be the one to back him up as he knocked on the super’s door and told him that it would be necessary to change the downstairs lock as well, and I didn’t want to be the one to lend him the three hundred or so dollars the super would say it would cost to put in a new lock and make new keys for everyone in the building. The super would want more than three hundred bucks. That just covers the lock and the locksmith. What about me? My time? It would cost five hundred altogether. At least. Jamie didn’t have it, and I didn’t have that much to lend him and get back eight months later. Jamie always paid me back, but it always took him eons to do so. It was always long after I had forgotten about the money and no longer cared. Jamie had a habit of announcing repayment in front of other people, when we were out with a group of friends or at a dinner party. “It’s important to me,” he would say. It’s what he said when he paid me back for stiffing me sixty dollars on the electric bill when we lived together one summer after college. He wrote me a check when my first play was produced and gave it to me at the cast party.
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