—
Yale spent Saturday feeling awkward around Julian, finding excuses to leave the apartment. He’d catch himself thinking about how he’d been spared—and if he’d been spared, what did that make Julian? Chosen? Then he’d sit there beating himself up, and Julian would ask what was wrong, and Yale would say nothing was wrong. Then he’d realize how dumb that sounded, when really everything was wrong—just not as wrong as it might have been.
It was still dark when Yale woke to what sounded like the apartment being robbed, but it was just Julian shoving things into his backpack. Yale stood in the doorway and watched Julian by lamplight, bent at the waist, a white strip of skin above his khakis. Roscoe stood on the bed, kneading the comforter.
“What time is your flight?” Yale said, and Julian dropped the whole bag on the floor, zipper side down.
Julian said, “Shit, shit, shit.” Yale picked up the bottle of eye drops that rolled to his foot, scooped up some of the shirts and socks too.
“Hey, take a deep breath, okay?”
Julian sat on the floor, the backpack between his legs.
“You’re not missing your flight. What time is it?”
“I just need to get out of here.”
Yale said, “Okay. Are you on something?”
Julian didn’t answer and Yale took it for a yes. He handed Julian the eye drops, and Julian looked at them like he’d never seen them before. “Listen, you have your ticket? All you need is ticket, ID, cash. Show me your ticket.” Julian removed it from the backpack’s outer pocket. A United flight that wasn’t till 9:14 a.m. Yale checked the clock on the nightstand. “You’ve got more than an hour before you need to leave. Let’s—look, let’s sort your stuff out.”
Yale sank down beside him. It was like helping a small child, one too winded by his last tantrum to make decisions. They folded the three T-shirts into a stack, laid the toiletries in a row, found the wallet—held together with frayed duct tape, thick with coupons and video store cards and gym passes. Julian pulled them all out one by one and laid them in front of Yale. “This one’s for a free fries. Give this to Asher.”
Yale knew that one of the warning signs of suicide was the divestment of belongings, the careful bestowal of objects—but there was that ticket on the floor by Julian’s knee. He’d be getting on the plane. He’d make it that far, at least.
Julian picked up a white trapezoidal dental floss container and held it in his palm. He said, “Why do I have this?”
“To—I mean, it’s important, right? The whole plaque thing?” He was hoping Julian would smile.
“No, Yale, really, why did I pack this? I’m never flossing again.”
“Sure you are.”
“I’m telling you that I have decided not to. Like, right now. I’ve hated it my whole life, and what’s gonna happen to my gums in the next six months?”
“You’ve got much longer than that.”
“You think any dentist is even treating me again? I’ve got no dentist to yell at me! I’m never going in for another cleaning! I could eat s’mores for dinner every night and not brush my teeth.” He dropped the dental floss on Yale’s lap and grabbed his shoulders. “Ten-year-old me would love this.” And then he collapsed in frantic laughter that Yale couldn’t manage to join.
Yale said, “Do you know when you even got infected? Listen, what if you got it like a month before you took the test? You could have years before you’re even symptomatic. And lots more time after that. By which point—didn’t you always believe they’d find the cure? You’re gonna want to floss, Julian.”
“First of all.” Julian sat up, serious. He wiped his face; he’d been laughing out tears. “I do know when I got infected. Summer of ’82. There was this director I’d been following like a puppy for months, and he finally gave in, pity-fucked me. He died maybe a year later of, you know, ear cancer or something. And I went to his funeral and I was like, Wow, mortality, how sad, you just never know. And it was already in me. I was in denial so long, Yale. I was in denial till the nurse was looking me in the face, telling me I had the virus. She had to tell me three times.
“So yeah, let’s say it takes a few years. That’s now. I’m at the top of the slide. I’m hoping it starts with herpes and thrush at the same time, so I look like some kind of white-tongued dragon when I open my mouth. What’s the thing where you bleed from your gums? I want that too. But then just for you, Yale, when I open my scabbed-up lips to show my bloody gums and the yeast farm I’m growing in my throat, I’m gonna look in the mirror, and just for you I’ll floss. Because I wouldn’t want any plaque in there messing things up.”
Yale held the floss container between his thumb and finger. He said, “Did you sleep at all?”
“I can sleep on the plane.”
“When you’re gone, when it’s been a few days, can I tell people where you went?”
“You can say you saw me, and I looked like a handsome fucking devil, and I said I’m sorry. Feel free to tell them Puerto Rico, because by the time Teddy could fly his ass down there to find me, I’ll be gone.”
“What about your family?”
“I’ll send a postcard.”
Yale found a pen and wrote his office number and the Sharps’ number inside the back copy of Pet Sematary, the one book in Julian’s backpack.
He said, “Let me call you a cab.”
* * *
—
That night, Yale tore off a bit of Julian’s dental floss and threw it away, and then he tore himself some to use. The next night, he used it again. He only did this before bed; he used his own each morning. It was a way of making Julian’s last longer, but it was also a way of reflecting back on his day. One day since Julian had left, two days since Julian had left, and what was different? What had he done?
Not that Julian’s absence should be such a great hole, but about an hour after Julian had taken off, as Yale worked the Sharps’ elaborate coffee machine, he’d been hit by the fact that this was another friend gone from his life. Nico was gone, Terrence was gone, Charlie was on another planet as far as he was concerned, Teddy judged him, and now Julian had gone off to curl up under a palm tree and die. Asher was left, but he was so busy. Fiona was left. There were people he knew a bit who weren’t fully associated with Charlie—Katsu, for instance—but everyone seemed lately to be hunkering down with their oldest, closest friends, not clamoring for new ones. There was Roman. He talked more to Roman than to anyone else, which wasn’t saying much. Roman had gone to the Alphaville show, and told Yale about someone stomping on his foot. Roman was wearing a Pisces T-shirt, and they talked about astrology. Yale tried to drop details that modeled self-acceptance into the conversation: “I haven’t been to Mexico since ’72; that was the year I came out, at least to myself.” Once, when they talked about food, he said, “My ex-partner only knew how to cook three things, but one of them was paella.” Roman never asked more.
He flossed his teeth the night he found a bright purple bruise on his ankle and freaked out all over again.
He flossed his teeth the night of the day the bruise started to fade, turn yellow at the edges.
The night after Bill Lindsey excitedly told him the Soutine experts were on board, Yale weighed the floss container in his hand and tried to guess how much was left. Surely there was some fairy tale like this: a story of a king whose reign would end when the magic ball of twine ran out. That sounded right. He wasn’t going to floss with a two-inch string just to make it last, but he also wasn’t going to waste it the way Charlie always did, an arm’s length every night.
On Valentine’s Day, he looked in the mirror and worked the string between his molars and told himself he’d made it through the week, at least. He’d made it through the test and through the awkwardness with Roman, and he hadn’t broken down and called Charlie, and he hadn’t jumped off the balcony, and he hadn’t gone ou
t and had suicidal sex in some video booth, and he hadn’t cried. He’d done his job. He’d kept Roscoe alive. If he could get through another week like this, then another—if he could stand here at the end of the month and congratulate himself again on getting through in one piece, then he could keep doing it forever.
* * *
—
That Monday, Roman came bounding into the office early. Roman had four weeks left on his internship. Yale had told him he’d be happy to keep him on for the spring quarter, but Roman had shaken his head and said something vague about other plans. Yale couldn’t blame him. He said, “I found some Ranko Novak stuff!” and he dug from his backpack a thick library book with the kind of rough canvas cover Yale couldn’t stand to touch. “He’s a footnote. A literal footnote.” Roman came around Yale’s desk—the closest he’d gotten since Wisconsin—and opened the book to where he’d stuck a circulation slip. The footnote took up half the page, and Yale had to lean close to see the part Roman had marked with pencil. “It’s basically everything she said about the prize,” Roman said before Yale could read for himself. “I mean, it’s not very complimentary. Like, he really shouldn’t have won. Wouldn’t that be the worst, knowing no one thought you deserved it?” Yale saw the dates, the names of the winners, the information about three slots being open that year, the fact that the award was delayed. Despujols and Poughéon eventually traveled to Rome after the war, the book stated, while Novak’s injuries and eventual death (1920) prevented his ever accepting the prize.
“Show Bill,” Yale said. “Wait, don’t tell him it’s a footnote, though. Can you Xerox just that part, so it looks like it’s the main text?” He cared more and more about Ranko’s inclusion. It felt like a matter of principle now—that poor Ranko, locked-in-the-castle-with-no-reward Ranko, should finally get his showing alongside his betters.
Bill was now talking about the show going up next fall. Such a cruelly long time to wait. Yale wished they could rush things just so Nora could die knowing it had happened, but according to Bill, fall of ’87 was already a rush. It would be his last show—he’d made that clear—and he’d be out of there in time to spend the winter in Madrid.
Roman stayed close to Yale for longer than he needed. Yale found himself indulging in the fantasy that later this spring, when the internship was over, he might call Roman and invite him for a drink. He wouldn’t actually do it, but he was allowed to think about it.
The phone rang, and Roman jumped and backed away, headed toward his desk and then, remembering the book, walked out the door with it toward Bill’s office.
The voice on the other end was impossibly loud. “Mister Yale Tishman!” A man’s voice; it sounded like an accusation. If Terrence were still alive, Yale might have imagined it was him, doing some impersonation, a prank. “Chuck Donovan here. Trustee, Wildcat class of 1952. I’m calling from the office of Miss Pearce, on her phone. Miss Pearce tells me you’ve been responsible for dealing with the Nora Lerner estate.”
Yale stood, looked around. Poor Cecily—the guy had actually commandeered her phone. He imagined her sitting there, eyes closed, fingertips at her temples.
“That’s correct,” he said. “I’ve been coordinating a—”
“Because there seems to be a miscommunication. Those paintings actually belong to a friend of mine.”
Yale picked up the phone base, tried to stretch the cord into the hall. He could only get about a foot out the door. Bill’s office stood ajar. He said, “Could you hold—” but Donovan was still talking.
“Now, Miss Pearce and I had a very specific understanding, and what I want to know, I want to know two things. First, who is responsible for this miscommunication, and second, how are we going to make things right?”
Yale took off his left shoe and hurled it down the hall at Bill’s door. Roman emerged, followed by Bill. They looked at the shoe, the floor, and Yale beckoned them frantically. He said, for their benefit, “Mr. Donovan, are you in Ms. Pearce’s office right now? You’re on campus?”
Bill hit his forehead with his palm.
Yale said, “I’d like to invite you over to the gallery, and we’re going to get our general counsel here too.”
“Great,” he said. “Great. That’s what I like to hear.”
* * *
—
It was 5:30 before they could assemble everyone. Roman had gone home, but Bill, Yale, Cecily, Herbert Snow, and Chuck Donovan—Yale had imagined someone paunchy and red-faced, and was surprised at Donovan’s lankiness, his neat white mustache—gathered in Bill’s office, where Bill’s intern brought them coffee that Yale was too nervous to drink. He had told Bill, in the meantime, about his slipup in Wisconsin. He steered clear of his hangover, his other distractions that morning.
Donovan said, “I’m glad for the chance to address you all.”
Before he could begin his speech, Yale said, “The bequest is a done deal. There’s no undoing it.”
Herbert Snow jumped in with some legal language, and Yale was able, as Snow talked, to make eye contact with Cecily. She looked like a woman about to meet the firing squad. Yale had dropped by her office right after his negative test to give her the news, and she’d hugged him, clapped him warmly on the back. “Now you just need to stay that way,” she’d said.
Donovan said, “I’ve been made a fool. I give money to this university, and I sit on this board, with very little thanks. One of the only rewards I’m promised in exchange for my significant time and work is a bit of leverage. Now I’m not the type to poke my nose into the curriculum. I’m not, for instance, going to complain if you put up some nudes in your gallery. But I ought to be able, as a man of my word, to make a promise to a friend with the understanding that I can follow through on that promise. That my requests won’t be ignored. I’m looking foolish now in front of my friend, my business associate, and frankly this makes me question my relationship with the university as a whole.”
Yale wondered if Cecily might speak, but she sat deflated. He imagined she’d already said everything she could, back in her own office.
“I speak with Miss Pearce, and I assume it’s taken care of. Then I learn from my friend Frank that a deal has been struck, he’s very upset, but he says You’ve done enough, it’s over, we’ll let it go. And then. Then! This weekend I get a call from Frank, who has learned, via his daughter, that you’re valuing the art at millions of dollars.”
Bill said, “Mr. Donovan, I understand your concern. But that’s three million dollars that is now an asset of Northwestern.”
Yale coughed, tried to stop coughing, tried, with his eyes, to stop Bill from saying the thing he’d already said. Yale hadn’t heard anything about three million. It must have had to do with the Soutine expert. Sure enough, Donovan’s eyebrows rose to where his hairline would have been.
He whipped his head toward Cecily. “You didn’t share that figure with me.”
“I did not have that figure,” she said.
“That’s three million dollars that rightly belongs to my friend Frank Lerner.”
Yale said, “Emotions are running high, but listen, we’re excited about this collection. We’re about to go public in the next week or two, and you’re getting the inside scoop.”
Donovan ignored him and talked to Cecily. “If these people aren’t in a position to do anything, I don’t know why you dragged me over here.”
Had this really been Cecily’s idea? Had she handed Donovan the phone and said to call Yale? Yale said, “This has absolutely nothing to do with her. Nora Lerner contacted me, and I was the one who handled the acquisition. To be honest, we did not fill Ms. Pearce in on the proceedings from that point on. She was an advocate for you and your concerns at every step.”
Cecily put her hands to her cheeks, looked at him, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to warn him or thank him. Yale hoped Bill would say something now to back him u
p, but Bill was staring at his own knees. Herbert Snow was taking notes. Yale realized, with a chill, that he was writing down what Yale had just said about circumventing Cecily.
Yale said, “Because you’ve been so understanding—perhaps we could arrange a private showing of the works, for you and a select group of friends. It could be soon, or it could be after the show is fully curated. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres in the gallery. What do you think?”
Donovan stood. “I’m paying a visit to the president. And I think people are going to be very interested in this story. I have a few journalist friends, in fact.”
Yale stood, too, a moment before everyone else. He reached into his pocket, extracted a business card. “Please understand that the acquisition was my undertaking, and that we acted against the direction of Ms. Pearce.”
Bill said, “That we includes me. If you’re going to complain about someone, please complain about me personally. Yale was only acting—”
Yale held up a hand to stop him. He said, “This was my project. We did nothing unethical or illegal, but any anger should be directed at me.” It would be dishonest, Bill taking the fall. Especially when Yale was the one who’d messed up, the one who’d been too distracted by his own life to do his job properly in Wisconsin.
Cecily adjusted her shoulder pads and followed Donovan most of the way out the door. She stopped and looked at Yale before she left the room, a look you’d throw a drowning man as you took the last life preserver.
* * *
—
Yale sat numbly that night on Asher Glass’s floor, along with everyone else who didn’t fit into the chairs or along the walls. Half of Asher’s living room was his office, with desks and phones and file cabinets, and the other half held a ratty couch, a small TV. Yale’s tailbone pressed into the wood, and down here you could see every dust clot, of which there were many.
Asher promised them the pizza was on its way, stood in front of the TV to talk about a community housing fund, slush money for people who couldn’t make rent because they were sick. Someone asked if Asher could guarantee the money would stay in the gay community, and Asher said, “Hell no, are you kidding? We don’t own this disease,” and then there was loud debate. Whenever Asher was exasperated, the parallel creases between his eyes would grow so deep they looked etched.
The Great Believers Page 36