Teddy had golden waves cut close to his head. The fact that his skin was always golden-tan, even in the middle of winter, made him look like a bronze statue, or like some drawing of Hermes from a children’s book of myths. There was a scar in the middle of his upper lip from a cleft palate in infancy, a faint line that might have marred his face but instead made him irresistible to just about anyone in the market for a twink. Which Yale never had been. Teddy was built like an adolescent, five foot four at most.
Charlie busied himself serving the trifle he’d made, avoided looking at either Teddy or Yale. He seemed distracted; he miscounted the bowls, and then he left the serving spoon in the kitchen. Yale wanted to stop him, massage his neck, but he didn’t want to draw attention to Charlie’s discomfort. He didn’t even want to point it out to Charlie himself, who swore he understood now, one hundred percent, that nothing had happened at the memorial.
The trifle was one of Charlie’s only recipes, and he prided himself on supersaturating the thing with sherry. Yale had learned to count each serving as a drink.
“Feef,” Teddy said to Fiona when they’d dug in, “are you old enough for this stuff?”
She put on an affronted face. “I am fully twenty-one,” she said. “As of September third.”
“You didn’t invite me to your party!”
“It was only for nice people.”
Yale imagined she hadn’t celebrated at all, in the throes of that wretched summer. Her twentieth had been a dance party at Nico’s with strobe lights. This one she’d probably spent in a waiting room.
Teddy said, “I’ve only got ten minutes. I’m having a whole dinner at my thesis adviser’s.”
Asher said, “This is your appetizer?”
Teddy stuck the spoon in his mouth upside down, pulled it out dramatically by way of answer. He said, “It’s my palate cleanser! I already ate at my mom’s. So how’s everyone feeling about the Howard Brown thing?” And then, when there was awkward silence, “They’re doing testing.”
“I’m sure they know,” Terrence said.
“I mean, you know I’m still anti-test, but maybe these ones can really be anonymous. I mean, if I want real anonymity, I’m gonna get tested in Cleveland or something.”
Fiona said, “Teddy, it’s Thanksgiving. We shouldn’t—”
Asher said, “Sure, they’ll anonymously give everyone a false sense of security.”
Terrence was looking down at his trifle, smoothing the whipped cream flat.
Charlie said, “Asher wants everyone to walk around dying of ulcers instead. Drinking themselves to death over stress.” Yale kicked him under the table. But Charlie kept talking. “Does this mean you’ll get tested now?”
“Hell no. I don’t even think the tests work. How do we know they aren’t all part of the same government conspiracy that cooked up the whole virus to begin with? I’m just saying that—”
“Stop!” Fiona slammed her glass onto the table.
Teddy opened his mouth, decided better.
Terrence said, “So. Hey, what do you call a black guy who studies rocks?”
Fiona was the only one who made any noise, a startled giggle. Then she said, “I don’t know, what?”
“A geologist, you bunch of racists.”
After the laughter, the conversation, thank God, split into three frivolous directions.
Yale got up to put a new record on.
Teddy made his excuses and grabbed his jacket and was gone.
* * *
—
“Is it time for coffee?” Yale asked. He directed it at Asher, because he was really asking about the envelope. Asher nodded and stood and fetched it off the refrigerator, but no one moved toward the coffeepot.
“Let’s make this festive,” Asher said. “Let’s have a little ceremony.” He pulled out the papers, asked Charlie for a pen.
Terrence said to Fiona, “Shall I get down on one knee?”
Yale looked at Charlie to see if he knew what was going on. Charlie mouthed, “Power of attorney.”
It made sense. Nico’s parents had botched his medical care horribly—moved him to a hospital that didn’t even want him there—and then they’d claimed the funeral too. Terrence’s family, Yale understood, wasn’t one he’d want making his medical decisions. Terrence hadn’t seen his mother in years, hadn’t been back to his childhood home in Morgan Park, on the South Side, since he graduated high school. Still, it seemed a lot to put on Fiona. She was just a kid.
“We’ve got the limitations stuff filled in, but look that over. And you need to initial one of these three,” Asher said, pointing. He took the cap off a pen and handed it to Terrence.
“I want the first one, right? I do not want my life prolonged?”
Asher cleared his throat. “That’s what we’d talked about. But look them over.”
Terrence took a long time reading the page.
“Oh!” Fiona said. And then it seemed she had to think of something to say, a thing to fill the silence. “I have to tell you the sweetest story!” She told them how one of the little girls in the family she nannied for, the three-year-old, could hear the lions and wolves from the Lincoln Park Zoo at night through her bedroom window and so had assumed, till recently, that the creatures roamed the city at night. Fiona had gotten the mother’s permission to walk the girl over after bedtime, to see the animals secure in their enclosures.
“I used to cruise the zoo,” Charlie said.
Terrence found this hilarious. He put his pen down.
“It’s true! You remember Martin? That’s where I met him. Well, near the zoo.”
When Yale first met Charlie, he was seeing a huge, bearded guy named Martin who played the drums in a terrible New Wave band. How Charlie could go from someone like that to someone like Yale—small, cautious—Yale never could figure out. As Yale spent time with the two of them that summer, it became clear Martin was the one pursuing Charlie. He’d rest a hand on Charlie’s shoulder when Yale showed up, keep it there as long as possible. By the time Charlie, in the locker room of the Hull House pool, first asked Yale out for a drink, Yale knew Charlie was available. Emotionally, if not logistically.
It was funny: Yale swam at Hull House specifically because there wasn’t a scene there; the only friend he ever saw at the pool was Asher, who’d probably chosen it for similar reasons. The place was dank and completely unsexy. And then Charlie started showing up.
Yale and Charlie were both wet that day from swimming, and Yale was glad the flush coming over his body might be excused as post-workout blood flow. He learned later that Charlie hated to swim, had been choking down chlorine just so he could run into Yale on the pool deck. They were already friends, but there was something different—even in the most innocent ways—about the intimacy of the locker room. (Later, when people asked how they got together, they hated to admit it, to recite what might be the beginning of a porno flick.) They went from drinks back to Charlie’s place, and Martin quickly became a distant memory, except for the few times he’d pop up to storm past Yale at bars. But Yale had always, because of Martin’s size, felt smaller next to Charlie than he might have. Charlie had five inches on him—five inches and five years and five IQ points, was Yale’s joke—but it might as well have been two feet.
Asher asked Terrence if he had any questions, and Terrence finally shook his head, initialed the papers. He signed on the last page with a tremendous flourish, elbow in the air.
Asher said to Fiona, “We need you to be sure.”
“I am!”
“Anything that goes wrong,” he said, “anyone who challenges this, I’ll be there to set them straight. Okay? But listen, you have to consider what could happen if the family shows up.”
“We’ll deal with that if and when,” she said.
“Right.” Asher was being careful, speaking slowly. “But
the ‘we’ might not include Terrence, if he’s unconscious.”
Yale refilled Terrence’s wine glass. He wished Asher would stop talking. What Terrence feared most, Yale knew, was the variety of sickness that would make him a vegetable or—worse, to Terrence—make him walk around town in a fugue state. Everyone knew how Julian’s friend Dustin Gianopoulos, near the end, had walked into Unabridged Books in the middle of the day with diarrhea running out of his shorts and down his legs, how he’d stood there buying a stack of magazines, manic and oblivious. And how, because it was the fall of ’82 and no one had seen this yet, the story had gone around that he was coked out. Yale and Charlie, along with everyone else, had laughed about it until they heard, two weeks later, that Dustin had died of pneumonia.
Fiona said, “I’m an absolute veteran, Asher.” She signed both copies of the document, then pulled the papers up near her mouth like she was going to kiss them, leave a lipstick mark.
“Don’t,” Asher said.
“Kidding! Yeesh.” She laughed, tucked the pen behind her ear.
Asher asked if Yale and Charlie would sign as witnesses; yes, of course.
“Have you two thought about it?” he asked when they’d finished. He’d been badgering them about signing stuff for ages, but they hadn’t yet pulled the trigger when the test came out and made it less urgent.
“We really should,” Yale said. “Next time, okay?”
Terrence had fallen quiet. Fiona had opened another bottle of wine, and Yale had lost track of how many they’d already finished, but he was sure Fiona had drunk more than anyone. Her spoon slid from her fingers and crashed into her empty bowl. She laughed, and so did everyone but Yale.
He asked how she was getting home, and she pointed a finger at him, squinted.
She said, “Pixie dust.”
* * *
—
By December, Charlie was busier than ever, and he was drinking more coffee than Yale thought was healthy. He’d gotten roped into the planning committee for the pre-Christmas fundraiser that would benefit the new AIDS hotline at Howard Brown, and he was doing all the publicity for the event. They were organizing a silent auction and a raffle upstairs at Ann Sather on Belmont, the restaurant a step up from the pass-the-bucket lectures in someone’s apartment. Yale looked forward to it, really. He enjoyed Christmas, which he hadn’t celebrated until he took up with Charlie, and he looked forward to seeing everyone.
One night Yale and Charlie were out at a Vietnamese place in Uptown, huddled in sweaters in the back, and Yale said, “Why don’t you have Richard do a photo essay on the party? For the paper? Like, artsy and journalistic, not just normal party shots. Someone’s hand on a glass, that kind of thing.”
Charlie set his chopsticks in his rice noodles and looked up at Yale. “Oh my God,” he said. “Yes.” Yale felt relieved, as if he’d just evened the score, made up for something. Charlie bit his lip, a code: Wait till we get home.
When they did get home, though, Charlie was tired and wanted to crash. He’d had a fever before Thanksgiving, one that hit him hard at first and seemed to be sticking around in milder form. A year ago they’d have both worried this spelled doom. The fact that a fever could just be a fever now, a cough could just be a cough, a rash could just be a rash—it was a gift the test had given them. This was where Asher was wrong; knowledge was, in some cases, bliss. Yale brought Charlie herbal tea in bed, told him he should take the next day off.
Charlie said, “God, no. If they ever do a whole issue without me, they’ll get ideas.”
* * *
—
Late the next afternoon, Cecily Pearce called to request that Yale meet her for coffee at Clarke’s, a neon-laden place that always gave Yale a headache. There was something so agitated in her voice that, on his way there, Yale developed a paranoid theory: Cecily had blacked out some of that night in Door County nearly a month ago, and it had only this morning come back to her that she’d offered Yale cocaine, put her hand on his leg. Maybe she’d remembered that part but not the rest, not the confirmation of Yale’s sexuality, the fact that he’d dropped her off at her room.
When he arrived, five minutes early, Cecily was already waiting, had already ordered him a to-go cup. She said, “I’m not in a sitting mood.” Yale had been glad to get out of the cold, but she was buttoning her coat, heading out the door. He followed her onto the sidewalk and managed to steer them back toward campus before Cecily could turn toward the chill of the lake. She didn’t complain. Her gloves matched her hat and scarf: all a soft cream that made her look fragile.
She said, “We have a bit of an issue. Have you heard more from our friend Nora?”
“Not a word.”
“Okay. Just as well. I’m honestly hoping this whole thing disappears.” She stopped and looked blankly through a store window at some headless mannequins. “There’s a donor, a trustee actually, by the name of Chuck Donovan. Class of ’52. This is someone who gives ten thousand a year to the annual fund, but there’s a bequest in place for two million. Not our biggest donor of all time, but we need him. We can’t throw people like this away.”
“Of course.” Yale sensed he was being reprimanded, but he couldn’t imagine what for.
She said, “I have to set the stage for you here. This is a man who, and I’m not making this up, once donated a Steinway to the music school, and then when he had some beef with the dean over there, he came into the building himself and removed the little placard with his name on it. With a tiny screwdriver.”
Yale started laughing—he couldn’t help it—and Cecily joined. It surely hadn’t been funny when it happened, when she’d had to deal with the guy’s calls.
She started walking again, and Yale dodged students to keep up. “So. I got a call from Chuck Donovan yesterday, and he’s been talking to Frank Lerner. Frank is Nora’s son. He’s the one who owns the house.”
“Debra’s father,” Yale said.
“Right. They’re both in medical supplies, and I imagine it’s a golf-buddy situation.”
Yale said, “So Frank is mad at us and told him so?” His coffee was way too hot, and it scalded the middle of his tongue. He wouldn’t be able to taste his dinner.
“Ha. Yes. More than that. He had a little speech. He said, ‘You can have that woman’s art or you can have my bequest, but you can’t have both.’ Apparently he promised Frank—he said something about a ‘gentleman’s promise’—that he’d put an end to this. Maybe it’s a moot point, if we don’t hear back from her. And even if the art were real, there’s no way it’s worth two million, right?”
She meant it rhetorically, but Yale took in a long breath of frozen air. “I mean, it depends what she has. But with the Modiglianis, the Soutine—there’s a good chance, if they’re real, if there are full paintings in there, if everything’s in good condition, that it would be more than two million.”
Cecily was a foot ahead of him, so he couldn’t see her face, but he heard the noise she made. “That’s not what I want to hear,” she said.
“I’m not going to lie to you.”
“Here’s the thing, Yale. This goes now from us just taking a chance on the work, maybe getting another donor involved in the authenticity thing, to our paying two million dollars for the art. We’d essentially be buying it for two million dollars. When it’s not even a sure bet.”
“Right,” he said. “Right. He’s serious, this Chuck guy? You don’t think he’s bluffing? I don’t get it. He’s got no personal investment in this, right? He just wants to look important?”
“His whole life is one big ego trip,” she said. “He’s the most difficult donor I’ve ever worked with.”
Yale said, carefully, “Is it possible, though, that the reason he’s so keen on helping Nora’s son is that he knows the art is real? If these were fakes or quick scribbles, he’s not going to throw his weight around to hel
p his golf buddy.”
“Chuck Donovan is no art expert,” Cecily said. “I doubt Nora’s son is either. And listen, it would be one thing if we were looking at a verified Rembrandt. But I have people to answer to. You understand.”
“I do.” The sun had fully set, and Yale wished he had a hat.
“If it is real,” she said, “no offense, but why on earth would she want us to have it?”
“Good question.” It was. Why not set her family up? Why not go to the Art Institute? He said, “But let’s say we get a look at this art, and it’s really promising. Something worth maybe a lot more than two million—and remember that the thing about art is, it often goes up in value—then it would be worth it, right?”
He wasn’t making Cecily happy. She walked faster, watching her feet. She said, “Can’t we just wait till it’s all authenticated?”
“That could take years. We wait around, Nora dies, the son does lord knows what, and the whole thing falls apart.”
“I’m not your boss, Yale. And technically I can’t tell you what to do. But Chuck Donovan makes things difficult for a lot of people, and he might make them difficult for you.”
A woman with a golden retriever darted between them, and the dog sniffed Yale’s leg and managed to wipe its mouth there, leaving a streak of muddy drool on his khakis. The owner apologized, and Yale looked at his watch. He and Charlie had theater tickets, and now he’d have to change when he got home. It was already 5:05. He said, “I understand what you’re saying. And maybe this is a conversation you should have with Bill as well.”
“Oh, Bill,” she said. “All Bill does is ask questions. I always feel I’m being dealt with. I’m talking to you because this is about money. And I want to ask that you don’t screw me over. Okay? I have a kid to provide for, and my job is always on the line. This year more than most, for reasons I won’t even go into.”
Something had changed in her voice, and whether or not it was intentional, a careful manipulation, Yale felt that she was letting him in. That she was desperate, in fact.
The Great Believers Page 10