The Great Believers

by Rebecca Makkai

  Their food had arrived, and Arnaud gestured with chopsticks. “I can—for a little extra money—I can gain entry to the flat. Maybe find some more information.”

  “Like, pick the lock?” There was avocado roll in front of her, and she was so hungry she went for it with her fingers.

  He laughed. “No, like bribe the landlord.”

  “Why not just approach Kurt?”

  “Because if he doesn’t cooperate—then we’re through. But if we look around first, then we know more, and we can still talk to him later. This neighborhood, I’m sure we can bribe our way in. It’s not kosher, you understand? This is why the extra money. I’m not trying to rip you off, but for something like this, a little extra. Just one hundred euro.”

  “I understand.”

  “Plus the cost of the bribe. So one-fifty.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  Arnaud looked exasperated. He stuck a tuna roll in his mouth.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I know, I know, but you don’t even know what to look for. If I’m there, and I see something that used to be Claire’s—I’d recognize it. You wouldn’t.”

  Arnaud exhaled slowly. Invisible smoke from the pipe he ought to have had. Or at least a cigarette. And a trench coat. Today he wore a bright yellow V-neck tee and jeans. “I might only have ten minutes to get in and out.”

  Fiona said, “Wouldn’t the landlord be more likely to let you in if I came too? If we explain that my daughter’s missing?”

  “No,” he said. “But look, yes, okay, if I can get in, I’ll bring you. You won’t meet the landlord, but you can come in the flat. Okay?”

  She promised she’d keep her phone on, be ready to fly across the city. But not yet, not yet. Arnaud had to learn Kurt’s schedule, find the landlord, etcetera, etcetera. It would take a couple of days.

  1986

  Yale had the place entirely to himself. Bill Lindsey and the gallery registrar had both called in sick; the art handler and the bookkeeper were both part time. Yale blasted some New Order and ate a sloppy turkey sandwich at his desk and worked. He scheduled dinners and researched grants and followed up with the Sharps. He called Nora’s lawyer again, got a message saying the office was closed for the holidays. God, it was January 7. He prepared to leave a message, but the tape let out a shrill beep that didn’t end. He wrote to both Nora and the lawyer saying they’d be driving up next week unless he heard back that they shouldn’t. He poured himself into reimagining the official gallery brochure.

  When he showed up the next day and the office was still empty, he decided to call people to invite them up to see the place. It would help keep his mind off Julian, how close he’d come to Julian’s apartment that night. Teddy and Asher were the two who were available, and they showed up in the afternoon. Yale was glad it wasn’t Asher alone; he wouldn’t have known how to act. And for totally different reasons, for Charlie reasons, he was glad it wasn’t just Teddy. Yale showed them the current exhibit—twelve Ed Paschke portraits that made him dizzy every time he walked through—and then they sat in Yale’s office and Teddy used Yale’s MoMA mug as an ashtray. He smoked alarmingly fast, a puff every couple of seconds.

  They talked about Julian, which was at least better than thinking about Julian.

  “He’s been out every night,” Asher said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Drinking,” Teddy said. “Finding other infected guys to fuck.”

  “He told you this?”

  “He was joking about Russian roulette.” Teddy might have sounded more concerned—this was a sometime lover he was talking about—but then Teddy’s love of gossip generally trumped all. He said, “Did Fiona tell you she found him on her couch last week with no shoes or coat? He traded them for like five quaaludes and a joint.”

  “And this is in the house where she nannies,” Asher added. Asher was playing with Yale’s four-color pen, clicking the colors down in rotation.

  Yale felt out of the loop. How had all this happened in a week? Well, it had been cold; he hadn’t gotten out much. Charlie had been throwing himself into the paper harder than ever since New Year’s, as if articles about housing laws and drag shows would magically generate a vaccine. If he wasn’t at the office or at meetings, he was working at home, his Macintosh humming like a life support machine. He’d joined Asher’s effort to bring the Human Rights Ordinance back up for a vote, something he’d formerly wanted to stall on. They knew it would fail, knew city council had zero interest in their rights, but it was a starting point; they’d get in the Trib and on the evening news. Charlie talked about it, suddenly, with the zeal of a religious convert.

  He’d been too tired for sex, or too stressed for sex, or too moody for sex. On Saturday night they’d gone to see The Color Purple, and when they came home Charlie couldn’t stop ranting about how Spielberg had watered down the lesbian plotline to a single kiss. “I have more contact with my dentist,” Charlie said. Yale had unbuttoned Charlie’s shirt, tried to lead him to the bedroom. Charlie buttoned his shirt back up and, pinning Yale to the wall, ran his lips along his collarbone and then knelt and gave him an efficient blowjob that would have felt disturbingly perfunctory if it hadn’t also felt good.

  Teddy lit another cigarette. He said Julian was planning to refuse any antibiotics, any vitamins, even the papaya enzymes Terrence was always talking about. “There’s the combo of the two drugs from Mexico, right? I know a guy who brings it up. And Julian doesn’t want it.”

  Yale said, “I thought he believed they were about to find a cure,” and Asher said, “Belief is a fragile thing.”

  Asher kept leaning his chair back on two legs, and Yale worried it would tip.

  Yale said to Teddy, “You look good. Your face. You can’t even tell.”

  Teddy raised his left fingers to the bridge of his nose.

  “I want him to sue the school,” Asher said. “He won’t listen.”

  “Well it doesn’t even make sense! Everyone wants me to be madder than I am. Charlie wants me to write a thing, a personal account. I just—it doesn’t feel like that big a deal.”

  Asher said, “Teddy, you were attacked. It’s nothing compared to people dying, but it’s something. And it’s related. It’s not like it isn’t related.”

  Teddy laughed and said, “Remember Charlie yelling at Nico? Outside Paradise?”

  It was before Nico was sick. Nico had said, “I think we’ll have to worry less about getting beaten up, you know? People are afraid of blood. I mean, they might throw something, but no one’s going to punch you in the mouth coming out of a bar now, right?” And Charlie had said, “Are you fucking kidding me? Attacks are up threefold. You should try reading the paper you draw for. Threefold, Nico.” They’d all imitated him the rest of the night. Threefold! I shall now consume threefold beers, forsooth!

  There was a knock, then, on Yale’s open door, and he jumped. It was Cecily; he’d left the gallery unlocked when he let his friends in.

  He hoped she’d take Teddy and Asher for donors or at least artists, but she might well have recognized them from the fundraiser, and Teddy, at least, in his duct-taped Docs and his stained white T-shirt, cigarette at his mouth, looked like he’d just blown in from the after-party of a Depeche Mode concert. She clearly thought nothing of interrupting them, because she walked right in and said, “I hope you had a lovely holiday.”

  “Several of them, in fact. And you?”

  “I want to check that we’re still in a good place.”

  Asher raised his eyebrows and pointed at the door. Yale shook his head.

  He said, carefully, “I mean, you tell me. Has Chuck Donovan complained anymore?”

  “Nothing recently.”

  Yale said, because it was technically true, “Nothing from Wisconsin lately either.” He could keep his voice steady when telling a technical lie in a way he couldn’t with
an outright one. It was one of the things that had always made Charlie’s paranoia so bizarre; Yale was a horrible liar.

  “Well, good,” she said. “Great.”

  * * *

  —

  Asher needed the bathroom before he left. He was going to give Teddy a ride back south in his Chevette, a car so loud you had to shout your conversations. Yale and Teddy waited for him in the hall.

  Teddy said, “Did you hear they’re discharging Terrence?”

  Yale hadn’t heard. “Is that even a good idea?” he asked, and Teddy shrugged. He said, “Look, Teddy, aren’t you gonna get tested now? I mean, I know how you feel about the test, but if there are things that can help—don’t you want to do those? Some clinical trial? Wouldn’t you take the Mexican pills?”

  Teddy said, quietly, “I did get tested. We went together. That was the deal—for his birthday, he wanted both of us to get tested. It was my present to him, that I agreed. I’m negative. I mean, I told you. I always told you.”

  Yale said, “Jesus Christ, Teddy. I’m happy for you, but Jesus Christ.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Bill finally returned, suspiciously tan, and there was at least more noise around the office. That following afternoon, Roman the intern started. He sat in the Northwestern crest chair across from Yale and held his black backpack in his lap. He twitched his foot.

  Yale said, “I know you probably thought you’d be doing more curatorial work. I hope this isn’t a disappointment.”

  “No, I mean—I’m up for anything. I don’t have experience talking to people about money, but I guess that’s good to learn, right?”

  There was no way Roman would be talking to donors—he’d be listening in, at most—but Yale didn’t point this out. If nothing else, he’d join them in Wisconsin next week.

  Yale said, “Listen, I’m an art lover myself. I wasn’t a money guy who fell into museums. I’m an art guy who’s good with numbers.”

  Roman brightened. “Did you do grad work?”

  Yale said, “Let me rephrase that. I’m an art lover who majored in finance.”

  “Got it.” Roman nodded. “I mean, it’s not too late.”

  Yale couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve gotten a pretty good education along the way.”

  “Cool,” Roman said. “Cool.” He took his glasses off and wiped them on his sweater.

  Yale set him to work on the Rolodex, which was still a mess. There was an extra table in the front corner of the office that made a decent desk, so long as no one opened the door. And, if Yale was honest, it improved his view. When he wanted to look at something nice, there was the window behind him, or there was Roman, hard at work, in front of him. In another life, Yale might have let himself fantasize about filling another kind of mentor role for Roman, teaching him things in and out of bed. But at the moment, the thought was almost revolting.

  * * *

  —

  Before he left for Wisconsin, Yale bought a big bag of stuff from the deli—egg salad, pasta salad, cold cuts—and put it all right at the front of the refrigerator for Charlie. He made him promise to sleep enough.

  Charlie said, “I don’t deserve you.” He was looking into the fridge like it held King Tut’s treasures.

  Yale said, “Remember that, next time I leave the window open and it rains.”

  * * *

  —

  The whole trip north, Bill told stories about former interns, at the Brigg and elsewhere—promising ones and shy ones and the one who’d had a mental breakdown. Yale got the distinct impression that many of these young men had been more than interns to Bill Lindsey, and that Bill wanted Roman to pick up on the fact. Bill wasn’t the kind of older man Yale had been imagining for Roman. For one thing, he was sixty. And a closet case wasn’t any kind of model for someone young and nervous.

  “So,” Roman said. He rode in the backseat, as if he were Yale and Bill’s child. “We’re just walking right up and knocking on the door?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Regardless of whatever ancillary motives Bill had for bringing Roman, the idea was basically a good one: Roman could talk about the student perspective, the benefit to the school. That he looked like an undergrad might remind Nora of her husband’s time at Northwestern. And Roman proved, on the way up, a handy navigator. He even pumped the gas.

  Yale said, “The one thing I’m going to ask is that we don’t bring up money. Not even if we’re alone with Nora. Not even words like value or worth, okay?”

  Roman said, “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but—why is she doing this? Like, why us?”

  “I guess her husband had a really good time at Northwestern,” Yale said. “And I know her grandniece.” He felt guilty, not mentioning Nico.

  They stopped first in Egg Harbor to check in and unpack at the bed and breakfast, where Yale strategically chose the middle of the three rooms, feeling he should protect Roman from the possibility of a late-night Bill Lindsey advance. They met back in the front hall, and the couple who ran the place—it was cherry-themed, with paintings of cherries and cherry trees, the promise of cherry cobbler for breakfast—loaded them with advice on what to see if they had “a little extra time.”

  Yale felt queasy as they pulled into Nora’s driveway. Even though this had been his idea, he deeply hated springing things on people. He’d often told Charlie that he’d never throw him a surprise party, because his heart couldn’t take the pressure.

  A yellow station wagon was parked beside the two Volkswagens this time. And before they were out of the car, a small boy ran around the corner of the house, looked at them, dashed back.

  “Shit,” Yale said.

  Bill said, “Hey. This could be good. This could be a good thing.”

  Yale didn’t see how that was possible. It crossed his mind that maybe Nora had died, that these people were here for some kind of visitation. That they were five days too late.

  Patches of snow dotted the lawn, reflecting sunlight. They were halfway up the walk when a young woman, not Debra—red-haired, bundled in a blue parka—rounded the corner holding the boy’s hand. She said, “Can I help you?”

  Yale said, “We’re from Northwestern University.”

  He was about to explain, to ask if Nora was home, but the woman asked them to wait on the screened porch. She and the boy vanished inside, and a few seconds later a stout, bald man appeared. He stepped out in a polo shirt with no coat, leaving one finger hooked around the knob of the cracked door.

  “This isn’t a great time,” he said.

  Yale extended a hand. “Yale Tishman,” he said. “Are you Nora’s son? Frank?” Best-case scenario, he could win the guy over. Have him call off his dogs.

  “You can’t come up here and harass her.”

  “I apologize. We didn’t have a phone number, and I knew she wanted to meet the gallery director. This is Bill Lindsey”—Bill nodded—“and we’ve brought one of our graduate students.” Yale was talking too fast. The man looked them up and down, and Yale couldn’t even imagine how they appeared to him: three fags of various ages, shivering in dressy coats and scarves.

  In the house, Nora was talking. Yale heard her say, “Then why didn’t I hear the doorbell?” He thought of calling to her, of ducking under Frank’s arm and through the door.

  Frank squinted down. He was up a step. He said, “You’re trespassing. This house belongs to me, not my mother. If you’re gone by the time the police get here, I might not have you arrested.” And he closed the door.

  Bill started laughing, a thin, helpless laugh. They walked back to the car.

  The air around Yale had taken on a migraine density, a pink, oppressive haze. Frank was surely on the horn already to his donor friend, who would call his lawyers and Cecily and the president of the entire university.

  They went t
o a café in Egg Harbor, the first place they found open, to regroup.

  “I’m sorry.” Yale directed this at Bill. “This was a phenomenal waste of time.”

  He suspected Bill felt otherwise, though, the way he’d been pointing things out to Roman like a tour guide, even as they’d fled the scene. Bill was ordering coffee now, wondering if he was hungry enough for a sandwich. He’d warned Yale: He himself had nothing to lose. And with Roman here, Bill didn’t seem to notice Yale circling the drain, didn’t notice the pallor Yale was sure had overtaken his face.

  Yale said, “What if—what if we drop in on the lawyer? If he’s back from his very long holiday. And have him call her. Or give us the number. We can’t just leave.” It was too late to give up; they were going to suffer the consequences now regardless.

  Roman slurped his coffee and said, “The mailbox was by the road, right?”

  “Yeah. With the house number.”

  “I mean—it’s two p.m., so maybe they’ve picked up the mail, maybe they haven’t. Probably the redhead got it when she was out with her kids. But what if we put a note there for Nora? We make it look like it came in the mail. Fake return address, whatever, just as long as Frank doesn’t see us. It could ask her to call us at the bed-and-breakfast. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve been watching too many spy movies, but I think it could work.”