Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  Jack took two highball glasses from the breakfront, mixed a vodka tonic for Stuart, and a vodka martini for himself.

  “Any more people in this room and we’re going to need a lubricant,” a voice beside him said.

  Jack turned. The man looked vaguely familiar. “It’s quite a spread.” Jack took a bite of the salmon. “This tastes like Scottish Spey,” he said.

  “It most certainly is. At forty dollars a pound.”

  “Jesus!” Jack said. “This is all so extravagant.”

  “You said it. Mr. Spare-no-Expense, Mr. Opulent, Mr. Dickhead.”

  “Oh, yeah? So he’s your ex, I take it?”

  “Darling, he’s the X-files. There’s a history to fill volumes. I’m Gary,” he said.

  “Jack.” He offered his hand.

  “So, Jack, are you involved?”

  Jack smiled. “Sorry, yes.” Gary was cute; a little too blond for Jack’s taste, a little short, but he had a solid athletic build and a flat stomach. Stuart’s stomach remained disappointingly poochy regardless of how much he worked out. “Excuse me a second.”

  Jack walked back into the living room and found Stuart deep in conversation with a woman. “Hi, darling,” Jack said. “Vodka tonic, and a sampler plate.”

  “Thank you,” Stuart said. “This is Pamela. She’s a grad student in art history. We’re discussing the Incans.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. I’ll be circulating.”

  Jack wandered in and out of conversations, circled through every room, finally ending up in the kitchen where there was a lesbian couple clearly in the middle of an argument. Jack pretended to look for something in the refrigerator. The women were silent behind him. He grabbed a handful of Greek olives, then went back into the dining room to make himself another martini. The stool where Gary had been sitting was empty. Jack went back through the kitchen—the women were now in an embrace—then outside to the backyard. Votive candles burned on low tables. He squinted at the shadowy outlines, looked for Hector’s shape among the figures grouped in twos and threes. People were speaking in soft voices, almost whispers—but perhaps it only seemed that way after the screeching music inside. There was something a little spooky out here, an odor of compost and closed-up rooms. No, that wasn’t it: it was a kind of graveyard smell. When Jack was eight, he and his brother, Ben, found an open crypt in a cemetery, and this was the smell he remembered, damp stones with the humid musk of decay.

  A voice behind him spoke. “Hello, Jack.”

  He squinted. Gary. Just Gary, goddamnit. Where was that arrogant cocksucker Hispanic? “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “Just inhaling the luscious smells,” Gary said.

  Jack startled. So he noticed the strange scent, too. “What the hell is that?” He walked over, sat beside Gary on the chaise.

  “I believe the technical name is Balm of Gilead.” He swigged from a fifth of something.

  “It’s what? What’s that?” Jack thought of embalming fluid.

  “It’s the scent of cottonwood trees. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Oh. That’s not what I smell.” He finished off the last of his drink, took the bottle from Gary and took a long swig. Tequila.

  “Ho there, tiger!” Gary said. “What’s troubling your Eden, sweetheart? What’s bunching your Bradys?”

  “What?” Jack said. “What’s bunching my Bradys?”

  “Who’s the nasty Marsha making you feel like Jan?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. Whatever you say. You just let Uncle Gary make you feel better. We’ll get you launched on tequila for a start, how’s that?”

  Jack laughed. “And then what?”

  Gary leaned forward, nibbled Jack’s earlobe.

  Between them, they finished off the bottle. Jack took the last swallow and got the worm, a nasty thing textured like a half stale potato chip. He bit it, swallowed. He’d heard somewhere that the tequila worm gave you visions. Probably of the inside of a toilet bowl.

  Gary’s hand moved up Jack’s leg, stopped just short of his crotch.

  “Where can we be alone?” Jack whispered.

  “Follow me.”

  Jack ducked around Stuart in the living room, followed Gary up the stairs.

  The hallway up here was dark, with four or five doors, all closed. Gary took Jack’s hand and led him inside a tiny room not much bigger than a closet. Inside, to their surprise, a man who looked to be in his fifties was lying on the narrow bed. The portable television blared “Baywatch,” Pamela Anderson running around in that dental floss she called a bikini. On the bed were two or three magazines, and two James Michener novels.

  “Oh,” Gary said. “Sorry.” He looked confused a moment, then said, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Walt Eisenberg. I sell insurance,” he said, in such a way that Jack thought for a moment that he wanted to write up a policy right then and there. “I’m Craig’s uncle. Uncle Walt. I’m with Mutual Life of Omaha.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  “I’m in town for an insurance convention. How’s the party?”

  “Swinging. How’s the Baywatching?”

  “Don’t I love it,” he said, and turned back to the set.

  Gary closed the door, pointed to the staircase leading to the third floor.

  The entire third floor was one open space that functioned as a library and study. Jack sat beside Gary on the leather sofa in the greenish light cast from Craig’s computer. Jack looked down at Stuart in the living room. He was talking to a man Jack didn’t recognize.

  “Can they see us up here?” Jack asked, feeling like he was eight years old and ambushing girls from a tree house.

  “Only if they look up.”

  “Maybe it’s not such a good idea,” Jack said. His head was pulsing from the tequila, his crotch with its colony of fire ants burning and painful. He’d have to see somebody about this rash. Except for cursory glances when he was soaping up in the shower, he hadn’t really looked at it, but he thought it might be spreading.

  “What is this?” Gary said, touching the inflamed area, which Jack, now partly undressed, felt on his belly.

  “An allergy to a soap. Just a little contact dermatitis,” Jack said.

  “Is it contagious?”

  “Are you an idiot? Can you catch an allergy?”

  “Well, now, such an outburst,” Gary said.

  He was in no mood for this. All he wanted right now was to be home. He stood up, rearranged his clothing.

  “Where are you going?” Gary said, petulant.

  “Home.”

  “You bitch. You’re not that good-looking, anyway.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “You old fags are all the same. Can’t keep the promise in promiscuity.”

  By the time he and Stuart got home, Jack felt miserable. He was sure he had a fever. He was chilled and overheated, shivering then sweating. His throat felt thick. Stuart looked worried, though Jack didn’t tell him the extent of how lousy he felt.

  He took a long shower, first hot, then cold, then hot again—he couldn’t seem to regulate his body temperature. The rash was spreading, and there were places where it had become infected—a sore on his inner thigh that he’d scratched open. He stood in front of the mirror, and was shocked. No wonder that boy called him old—he looked positively haggard, at least ten years older than he was. The scabs and bumps appeared much worse in the glass than they had when he’d looked down the length of his body. And when had he lost weight? His skin was the color of old ivory, looser somehow, a thin covering over the sprung trap of his ribs.

  He toweled off, wrapped himself in a thick chenille robe and slipped into bed beside Stuart, who was still awake. Jack could almost feel him thinking.

  “I’m fine,” Jack said. “It’s just a touch of flu. It’s strange. I felt fine this morning. I felt okay as recently as a few hours ago.”

  “I want you to go to the doctor tomorrow,” Stuart said.
“Call first thing in the morning.”

  “I will.” Jack kissed him. “I promise.”

  All night long he woke and dozed, never falling into a deep sleep. At one point, he got up and took his temperature. It was 103, but in the morning he would remember it as being 99. His dreams were strange: railroad stations, train tracks. The whistle of steam engines in the distance. A feeling of absolute grief and despair.

  When he awoke Stuart was gone. In the kitchen, there was a note taped to a pan of freshly baked bran muffins. Sweetie, I called in sick for you. Also, here’s Dr. Mosites’s number so you don’t have to look it up. Call him! Stay in and lounge today. I’ll call at noon to see if I need to stop at the pharmacy for any Rx. Love, S.

  Jack called the doctor’s office and the receptionist took his name and number for the doctor to get back to him. He thought of just going in, but the idea of sitting around the waiting room with a bunch of prissy suburban mothers in their Benetton knit ensembles and their coughing, baby-Gap-clad toddlers filled him with anxiety and fury.

  He turned on the TV, waited for the phone to ring. His fever felt as if it had broken. He watched a series of talk shows—white-trash tubbies who shot their husbands; cross-dressing men and the women who loved them. All better than any sitcom. That fake Hispanic, Geraldo, was the worst: he had a barely disguised sadistic streak, a way of ferreting out the truth to make all parties involved look foolish.

  Jack changed the channel to Oprah, the bomb, the real wood to the veneers and cheap varnishes that tried to be her. The goddess and wise old woman. She needed to gain a little weight back, though; she was a better interviewer as a size twelve than she was as a six or an eight.

  By the time the doctor called, at eleven, he was feeling much better. Exhilarated, even, as though he had won something.

  “How are we doing, Jack?” Dr. Mosites said over the phone. Jack liked him, a middle-aged Greek man who was at once both no-nonsense and warm.

  “I’m fine, actually. Stuart insisted that I call. I think it’s just a touch of flu.”

  “Fever?”

  “Last night, yeah. But I think it’s broken now.”

  “How high?”

  “Ninety-nine.”

  “Okay. Any nausea or vomiting? Diarrhea?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else out of the ordinary?”

  “I had an allergic reaction to Qwell, that medicine for lice. And I think I may have gotten an infection from scratching.”

  “On your scalp?”

  “No. The pubic area.”

  “You said your fever was 99?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. It sounds like a low-grade infection. But I want you to come in before I prescribe anything. How about three-thirty. All right?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Nick. Anyway, have you seen this kind of thing before? Allergic reactions that get out of control?”

  “Sure. Look, Jack, it sounds as if there’s nothing to be alarmed about. But all the same, we need to be sure.”

  “Okay. See you this afternoon.”

  Stuart called at noon, as promised.

  “I’m feeling much better. Mosites seems to think it’s a low-grade infection from the Qwell reaction. But I’m going in later for him to look.”

  “Oh, good. Good. I’ll go with you. I can ditch my Anthro class.”

  “No, don’t. It’s nothing. I’ll just see you tonight. Maybe if my appetite holds we can go get some dinner.”

  In the waiting room, Jack thumbed through old issues of the New Yorker, but his attention was clipped; he couldn’t concentrate on anything much beyond the cartoons. His heart was racing, palms sweaty.

  Finally, after an endless half an hour, the receptionist took him back to an examining room. Jack knew the second he saw the look on the doctor’s face. Mosites untied the gown, swept a flat hand slowly and lightly along Jack’s arms and trunk, legs and back, knees and toes. Jack felt the rash everywhere Mosites touched, the raised bumps like a Braille text, the body writing its illness on the parchment of skin. Mosites’s expression changed from friendly casual pleasantness to professional alarm. Jack wanted to laugh it was so obvious, Mosites’s face with its wide, plump planes drawing into knots. He took Jack’s vital signs.

  “Your temperature is a hundred and two.”

  “It is?”

  Mosites wouldn’t meet Jack’s eyes. “I want to take a white count. Fortunately for us, I have a friend who is gifted at reading differentials. White blood cells, that is. We won’t have to send it off to a lab. I’ll draw your blood, and then Anna can take a peek. Her lab is just a few blocks from me. Shouldn’t be any trouble to ask her. Okay?”

  Jack looked away when the needle went in. He felt his heartbeat thrumming against his eardrum.

  “All done. Come into my office when you’re dressed.”

  On the other side of the door, Jack could hear Mosites on the phone. “Anna, it’s Nick. Is this your cell number?” He paused. “Are you anywhere in my vicinity?” Another pause. “Right. Right, I know. But I need to ask a favor. I have a patient in my office and I need a CBC and an HIV test. Probably should do a mono spot, too.”

  Everything went black before Jack’s eyes when he bent to tie his shoes. He sat. Waited for his vision to clear. Stood, shaky and weak-kneed, and walked into Nick’s office.

  “Have a seat, Jack. Anna will be here in just a few minutes. She was nearby when I talked to her.”

  “You’re bothering the poor woman for my little allergic reaction and fever?” He tried for levity, angled around to get back to the breezy, casual side of Mosites, but it didn’t work.

  “Try to relax,” Nick said.

  Jack took a deep breath. Nick’s office was cool and shadowy, the blinds drawn against the late sun. Jack sat on the leather sofa beside an antique sexton. The room smelled of lemon oil and buttery pastries, old books and humid soil from the English ivies hanging at the windows. Mosites looked at him with his great black eyes, beautiful soft eyes that seemed to caress everything they fell on.

  “You don’t think this is just a skin allergy, do you?” Jack asked.

  “Jack, I’m not going to do a duck and cover here. I’m concerned. This looks to me like a systemic bacterial infection. Probably staph.”

  Jack sat back in his chair, let out his breath. Thank God! Just a stupid skin infection. He probably needed to be more vigilant about changing out of his exercise clothes after a workout, use some real soap instead of that goat’s milk organic crap he couldn’t resist buying at the health food store. “Thank God,” Jack said. “From the look on your face I was beginning to think I was about to die.”

  Mosites’s look didn’t change. “When was the last time you had an HIV test?”

  “About a year ago, I guess. I was negative.”

  “And since that time, have you or Stuart engaged in any high-risk behavior?”

  Adrenaline flooded through him. His vision started to tunnel. Not this. Anything but this. “What are you implying?”

  “That I think this looks like an immune-deficiency-related problem. A staph bacterium doesn’t rage this out of control except in rare cases. The elderly, those with compromised immune systems.” He picked up Jack’s chart. “Also, are you aware you’ve lost fifteen pounds since you were in here six months ago?”

  “Are you saying you think I’m positive?”

  “What I’m seeing is not inconsistent with HIV patients. I’d like to test you for the virus. Anna can check your status when she does your white count.”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Pardon?”

  “No. I don’t want an AIDS test. There’s no reason to think I’m at risk.”

  “Okay. You might be sure of that from your end, but are you a hundred per cent sure about Stuart?”

  “Stuart would never cheat on me.”

  “I can’t insist, but you should do the right thing and get tested,” Mosites said.

  Jack nodded, his eyes filling. Anyway, it
was too late. The seed of possibility had been planted. If he didn’t learn his status now, every little head cold or sniffle would have a question mark after it.

  By the time Mosites came back with his results, Jack had worked himself into a state where he no longer cared. He had prepared himself for the worst—or thought he had until Mosites came back in after an eternity with the news on his face. He sat down next to Jack on the sofa, took him in his arms. Mosites started in about his T-cell count and viral loads, about protease inhibitors and AZT cocktails.

  “Don’t. Don’t talk to me yet.” He buried his face in the snowy shoulder of Mosites’s lab coat, breathed in the clean smell of laundry soap and aftershave. He wanted his father here, but not as a son wanted a father, exactly. He didn’t want to be anyone’s son at the moment, anyone’s lover or boyfriend or brother. What he wanted was the tenderness distilled out of all these relationships, the pure unconditional love of a father, a child, a priest.

  “The new drugs are good, Jack. More and more this disease is becoming a chronic, long-term illness the way diabetes is. You need to take care of yourself, and there’s no reason not to hope you can’t live fifteen or more years with this.”

  He drove around for hours after leaving Mosites’s office, drove by Hector’s corner—he was there, but Jack didn’t stop—pounded three shots of tequila and two vodka tonics at two different bars, then drove down to the Charles River. It was dark now, getting late, the city lights silvered on the water. How was he going to tell Stuart? And what about Hector? Maybe it was possible that the test was wrong. Maybe a bacterial infection could look a lot like AIDS. And testing positive didn’t mean it would become full-blown.

  He lit a cigarette, shivered. He didn’t want to be awake. He wanted to be anywhere but inside his own skin. He toed the dirt beneath his feet. It was soft from a recent rain, smelled sharply of algae and brine. He put his hand down, pulled away clumps of dirt. It was pliable as potter’s clay. He dug deeper, as though looking for something, felt the panic he’d been wrestling with the past few weeks rise up again, this time with the force of certainty behind it: some part of him had known, of course. He sank to the ground, cleared away the dirt with the heel of his hand, scraped deeper down with a nearby beer bottle. He lay down in the space he made, out of the way of the dog walkers and runners. A calmness washed over him. He worked his hand down into the coolness of the clayey mud, starfished his fingers wide apart until he felt the wetness between them. If he could remake himself he would. Start anew and keep goodness intact. In a little while he would rise and go home to Stuart, would confess his indiscretions in San Francisco. He would leave off the sin of Hector for now. It would only be more for Stuart to deal with. It was highly improbable—or impossible?—that Hector had given it to him since he had never penetrated Jack’s body. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to dissolve the mystery. Finding out who and when and how would only make it more unbearable. Mysteries and miracles, miracles and destinations, weren’t that far apart, in his view. The stricken and the blessed both followed the same path, faith the common point of origin. In the end, there was no difference between Bethlehem and the bathhouses.