The Great Believers

by Rebecca Makkai

  He might vomit. He wanted to vomit.

  If Charlie were out here, saying all this himself, he could think about Charlie, about what this meant for him. But all he had was a closed door and this message, this messenger.

  What the hell had happened? He looked at the ceiling, which was still, improbably, just a plain white ceiling.

  He said, “When did he call you? When did you come?”

  “He got the results yesterday. I flew in this morning.”

  Today was the sixteenth. So Charlie would have gotten tested what, the very beginning of the month? The very end of December?

  And Yale was on his feet, hurtling toward the bedroom. “Charlie, did you fucking sleep with Julian? With Julian? What the hell did you do, Charlie? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  He kicked the door, and he kicked it again.

  It hurt his foot, but not enough.

  Those were the dominoes that had fallen: Julian, and then Charlie. And maybe Yale.

  Charlie going pale at lunch. Charlie at the pay phone. Charlie walking around the city on New Year’s Eve while Yale visited the hospital alone.

  When Yale took too much of his inhaler, his hands would buzz and tingle. They did this now, and they were hot.

  Teresa pulled him back by the waist, and he heard sobbing through the locked door. She said, “We need to get you out of here, Yale. You don’t have to get tested right now. We can just go to a—a pub. A friend’s flat.”

  Julian skipping out on Thanksgiving. Charlie not wanting to see Hamlet. Charlie grilling Yale (What did Julian say? What did Julian do?) every time he mentioned seeing him.

  He wheeled on her. “It would do me zero good to get tested right now. Do you understand?” He was shouting, so Charlie would hear. “It takes three months to be sure. You have to wait three months from the last time you were exposed.”

  “But you might feel better,” she said weakly.

  When was the last time they’d had sex? There was the blowjob on Saturday, but when was the last time Charlie had so much as removed his own pants, let Yale unbuckle his belt? God, not since New Year’s. Yale had to give him that much credit. He’d pushed him away again and again. But before that, yes. Christmas, etcetera. And Lord knew when he’d slept with Julian, how many times, over how many weeks or years.

  He shouted, close enough to the door that he could feel his own breath bounce back and hit him in the face. “How long were you doing this, Charlie? Is this why you were so paranoid? Because you were looking in the goddamned mirror?”

  “Honey, stop,” Teresa said. He shouldn’t have said any of this in front of her, but he didn’t care.

  “You at least could’ve let Teddy fuck you!” Yale shouted. “He’s not sick!”

  Something crashed into the door. Teresa said, “Yale, stop.” And he had to listen to her. Her son was dying. Charlie was dying. He sank to the floor again and put his head between his knees again. He thought about getting up again and kicking furniture, but no, he was going to stay here and breathe.

  This wasn’t about Yale, at least not yet.

  When they got tested together in the spring, Yale had imagined that if they were infected, they’d hold each other and sob and then they’d go out for a good meal and make jokes about fattening up, and they’d order the most expensive bottle of wine, and it would be a terrible night, but they’d be heading into this together. Dr. Vincent had counseled them, together, before their tests. “Let’s discuss what a positive diagnosis would mean for you,” he’d said, and he’d explained that these things went better if you thought through your reaction, your options, ahead of time and with a clear mind. He said, “Who would you turn to for support?” They’d pointed to each other. Charlie had said, “And we have a tight circle of friends. And my mother.” Yale felt all those people falling away right now like dust. If he didn’t have Charlie, he didn’t have Teresa. And he didn’t have their friends, who’d all been Charlie’s friends first. He was fairly sure he didn’t have Charlie. Apparently, Charlie had Julian instead. And who knew what else Charlie had been up to.

  He picked up his overnight bag and stuck in a bottle of scotch from the cupboard. He kissed Teresa—missing her face, grazing her ear—and he said, “I’m so sorry.” He said, “I didn’t do this to him.”

  “I know,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  And then he was out on the street with no idea which way to walk. He wandered to Little Jim’s and sat there staring at the bottles behind the bar and drank vodka tonics because they were on special. He might have been pounding them down, if he’d felt like moving his arms, which he didn’t. Despite his heart rate, despite the unhelpful primal signals telling him to scramble up a tree for safety. Porn was showing on the big TV: A guy watched, tentatively, from behind a shower wall as two other men went at it. The camera kept panning back to the voyeur’s face. He was never going to join in. It wasn’t that kind of movie. Yale felt nothing, watching. Or, nothing besides what he already felt: nausea, paralysis. He’d torn a little plastic straw to shreds.

  No one bothered him. Surely they could tell something was wrong.

  It wasn’t the cheating that bothered him most. He articulated this, mentally, down into his glass, thought it at the melting ice cubes. And it wasn’t only the disease, the exposure, although that was most of it. But the thing screwing itself into his heart right now was that he’d let himself be so cowed by Charlie’s demands. He’d been walking on eggshells for this man, and meanwhile Charlie, behind Yale’s back, had just been throwing the eggs straight at the wall. He felt, more than anything else, stupid.

  By the time he walked out the door it was late, past dinner, although the clinic would still be open. But why do that to himself right now? He should wait three months. No, three months minus—today was the sixteenth. Three months from New Year’s. So, the end of March? He couldn’t manage the math. The antibodies might show up faster, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring. He’d be walking into either a meaningless negative and more purgatory, or a death sentence. He thought about going to the gallery, sleeping on his office floor. But the security guard would freak out. He thought of Terrence, who was home from the hospital. Someone ought to be at Terrence’s anyway. He could be the person at Terrence’s, the person taking care of Terrence.

  He walked to Melrose and buzzed. Then he felt awful at the thought of Terrence having to get up to answer. They weren’t best friends or anything. He’d been closer to Nico. He had no right to Terrence’s energy reserves. He was about to walk away when Terrence said hello. He said, “You can come up, Yale, but I’ll be honest. It smells like shit.”

  It did. Terrence’s face had hollowed, his skin was shiny and taut, but in the hospital he’d grown a patchy beard, and he hadn’t shaved it since. How had his body found the energy to produce hair? Why was it growing a beard instead of T cells?

  Roscoe, Nico’s old gray cat, rubbed against Yale’s leg. “Does he need food?” Yale asked.

  “No,” Terrence said, “but you’re welcome to clean his litter.” He wasn’t joking. “I’m not supposed to do it without rubber gloves, and I ran out. Not supposed to have him here at all, really.” The box in the kitchen was disgusting. Yale knelt on the kitchen floor and got to work, with Roscoe head-butting his thigh. Doing this felt right. Yale could spend the rest of the night scooping out dung and islands of dried piss, and it would feel like he was in exactly the correct place. “You know his doctor doesn’t want you here,” he whispered to Roscoe. “And he’s allergic to you too.”

  Once he was on Terrence’s couch, a glass of his own scotch in his hand, he found that he couldn’t tell him anything true. He couldn’t say, “Charlie’s sick,” and he couldn’t say, “Charlie cheated on me.” It was humiliating, and the first part wasn’t his news to tell. He couldn’t go spreading word that Charlie, who had advocated safe sex in
Out Loud before anyone else, was a hypocrite. Not that most people would see it that way; they’d more likely take Charlie’s side, interpret anything Yale said as blame, as vindictiveness.

  Terrence was in his big green armchair, his cane beside him. He said, “Yale, you okay?”

  He didn’t feel sick, hadn’t noticed anything strange. He knew that before he slept tonight he’d check himself in the mirror for spots, check his lymph nodes, check his throat for thrush. It had been a compulsive nightly ritual before the tests came out, one he’d been free of for less than a year. Now it would be back. But Terrence wasn’t asking if he was sick, only if he was about to burst into tears, which in fact he might be. He said, “Charlie just kicked me out. I think we’re done.”

  Terrence puffed air through his lips, but he didn’t look surprised. He tucked his ratty quilt around his legs.

  Yale said, “Wait, Terrence, do you know something about this?”

  “About what?” Terrence was a bad liar, or maybe he just didn’t have the energy.

  He shouldn’t have said it, but he said, “The—Charlie and Julian.”

  Terrence grimaced and then nodded, slowly.

  “Does everyone know?”

  “No. No. It’s just that after—okay, after the memorial?”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “After the memorial, when we went to Nico’s, he couldn’t find you and he was pissed about something, and he got drunk. Like, really drunk. Julian was in the bathroom with him, taking care of him. I figured he was puking. But they were in there a long time. I went in to see what was up, and they were—you know, they were at it. And a little later they left together. No one else noticed. I called Julian the next day, and he was torn up. Seriously, it was a one-time deal. Julian wouldn’t want to hurt you. Neither would Charlie. I know that. You know that.”

  “No way it was one time,” Yale said. “No way. Things don’t work that way.” That was the plot of some educational filmstrip, not real life. One time is all it takes. Don’t even hold hands, you might get syphilis. But could it have been true? Was the universe that horribly vengeful? That precise?

  Yale was suddenly reeling back to the night of the Howard Brown fundraiser. Dear God, this was what Julian had been trying to convey, standing there by the sinks and staring into Yale’s eyes. Julian wasn’t in love with him. He was sorry. Maybe he thought Yale knew, or figured he’d find out soon, or maybe he was trying to salve his own conscience. Like an idiot, Yale had felt flattered.

  And right on the heels of those thoughts, Yale was blaming himself, ridiculously, for having gone upstairs at Richard’s after the memorial. If he hadn’t done that, if he hadn’t scared Charlie, maybe none of this would have happened. If it had truly been an isolated thing, then the moment he climbed those stairs, he’d killed Charlie. And maybe himself.

  Yale let out a shudder that might have been half a sob, and he said, “He’s got the virus, Terrence. But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “Fuck. Oh, Yale.” Terrence looked like he wanted to get out of his chair, like if he had the energy he’d come sit next to him so Yale wouldn’t feel so small and alone on the big couch. “I knew about Julian, but I didn’t know about Charlie. It—somehow it didn’t even cross my mind. I don’t know. Maybe it was all Charlie’s stuff about rubbers, all his safety stuff. Yale, if I’d thought of it, you have to believe me that I’d—”

  “Okay,” Yale said. “Okay.”

  “God.”

  “Look, no one knows, and you can’t tell. It was just that stupid test. If it weren’t for the test, we wouldn’t even know. We’d be out to dinner right now.”

  “Fuck. Yeah, but we need that test, right? You might not get sick. Because of the test.”

  “I’ll know that in three months.”

  “Listen, you get the Fuck Flu? You been sick? Stomach flu, fever, like you got steamrolled but the steamroller was full of wolves, and the wolves were made of salmonella?”

  “Not everyone gets that. And, like, I was probably sick in the summer, I just can’t remember. Maybe I was sick in the spring.”

  Charlie had been under the weather in December. So maybe the whole thing was true; maybe it had been a one-time lapse. Or maybe the Julian thing had started that night, and kept going. Yale’s head spun.

  He said, “It’s like the world’s worst logic puzzle.”

  “I’m sorry, Yale.”

  “Stop it. You’re not allowed to feel sorry for me.”

  “I think I am.”

  Yale poured himself more scotch. He still hadn’t eaten dinner, but he wasn’t about to ask Terrence for food. Roscoe jumped up on the couch beside him and fell promptly asleep.

  Terrence said, “You can stay here tonight if you want, but believe me, you don’t want to stay longer. I’m gonna wake you up with my morning sickness.” He rubbed his concave belly and said, “This baby must be a girl. She’s such a drama queen.”

  Yale said, “Until about one o’clock, this was the best day of my life.” And although Terrence might well have been hinting that he was ready for bed, he couldn’t stop himself from talking. He told Terrence about Nora’s artwork, or at least the bare details. Modigliani, etcetera. It felt now like a tremendously hollow victory. He’d lost his lover and possibly his health, his life, but he’d brought some old drawings from Wisconsin to Illinois. Pieces of paper.

  He said, “The whole time we were up there, I kept thinking, This is too good to be true. There’s something I’m missing. I’m being tricked. Maybe it was my subconscious. You know? I knew inside something was off, something wasn’t right. Red flags. Only I got it all mixed up.”

  Terrence was quiet and then he said, “This is a weird question, but are those Nico’s shoes?”

  He’d forgotten. “Oh, God. Yes. I’m sorry. Do you mind?”

  “No, it’s fine. I mean, maybe you could leave them by the door, actually. I just don’t want germs tracked in.”

  Yale slipped them off, put them on the welcome mat, and then he washed his hands, even though he’d already done it after changing Roscoe’s litter. He said, “Tomorrow before I leave I’ll run errands for you, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Yale lay on the couch that night, listening as Terrence tossed in his sheets, as he whimpered through his night sweats. Yale closed his eyes and watched himself, the night of the memorial, from high up in Richard’s house near the skylight. He watched himself talk to Fiona, talk to Julian, sip his Cuba libre.

  Again and again he watched himself take in the beginning of the slide show, then turn and put his foot on the first step. He watched himself climb the stairs.

  2015

  Fiona woke up late, not with a hangover but with a raw throat that was already spreading its ache into her chest and sinus. Her hand flashed with pain every time her heart beat.

  Serge took her to his doctor in a cab, no appointment required (no insurance either), and the doctor swabbed her with iodine and bandaged her up sleekly and gave her pain pills and a prescription for an antibiotic. The bill was twenty-three euros, which Serge insisted on paying.

  “You take the day off,” he said. “Promise, okay? You feel like going out, maybe you come to Richard’s studio and he give you a tour. He can show you the videos on his computer, so you see before the show!”

  But Fiona couldn’t do that, not yet. Watching this footage was a great thing to do tomorrow, but not today. Never today. She could take a few hours off, though, as defeating as the notion was. She could wait for Arnaud to call, see how sleepy these pills were going to make her. If Claire wasn’t even in Paris, it made more sense to search online for “Kurt Pearce + arrest + Paris” (fruitless) and “how to move to France American citizen” (semi-informative) and “Hosanna Collective Paris” (also fruitless) than to wander the streets.

  When Serge took off for the studio, she told him she was too
tired. It was chilly out, but she opened the balcony doors, dragged a chair over, and listened to the sounds of the film crew. If she angled herself right, she could see the crowd, the lighting fixtures, the crane. She’d need to learn the movie’s name before she left town, so she could see this thing when it came out.

  But she had no idea how long she’d be staying, or what her next step even was.

  She held on her lap the book of Paris history she’d bought. She was too distracted to read, but the photos were lovely, evocative: women with fur stoles, men crossing a flood by stepping across café chairs, a nightclub entrance made to look like a monster’s gaping mouth.

  She remembered what Nora had said once: “For us, Paris wasn’t even Paris. It was all a projection. It was whatever we needed it to be.”

  This conversation had happened at the wedding where she’d told Nora to get in touch with Yale, where she’d written down Yale Tishman, Northwestern, Brigg on a cocktail napkin. It was her cousin Melanie’s wedding, north of Milwaukee, and Melanie had specifically invited Nico and Fiona but not their parents. She didn’t include Terrence—it would’ve been a step too far, maybe, for 1985 Wisconsin—but her loyalty was to her own generation. Fiona and her brother had walked in together, like dates.

  Nico had lost weight, but Fiona thought nothing of it. He danced with Fiona, and he danced with the bride, and with their terrible cousin Debra, and he sat and entertained Nora. In his car on the way home, he rolled up the side of his shirt to show her a stripe of vicious red bumps, ones that made Fiona’s eyes water. “It’s shingles,” he said.

  And when she freaked out, he said, “It itches like hell, but it’s the same thing as chicken pox. Anyone who ever had chicken pox can get it. The virus lives under your skin forever.”