The Great Believers

by Rebecca Makkai

  Yale was free now to lust after Asher, free to fantasize not just a dream scenario but an actual possibility. He could stay late, help clean up, put his hand on Asher’s shoulder . . . But Yale had never been one to make a first move. Not in his life, not even drunk. And he doubted Asher would ever notice he was interested unless he grabbed him by the actual cock.

  Besides which, his life didn’t need more drama right now. He needed a nice boring stretch, a few months when someone could ask what was new and he’d be able to say, “Not much, just plugging along.” He couldn’t sacrifice his job and risk rejection on the same night.

  But no, everything would be fine at the gallery in the morning. The transfer of property was airtight, Herbert Snow had reassured him. It had to be okay.

  Rafael, Charlie’s Editor in Chief, kept scooting closer to Yale on the floor until he was right beside him. He whispered, “Bummer of a party.”

  Yale had nervously checked the crowd when he’d come in, even though Asher had guaranteed, when he invited Yale, that Charlie wouldn’t be there. It wasn’t going to be easy to avoid the most ubiquitous gay man in Chicago, but he could manage it till things had cooled, crusted over. Teddy leaned on the windowsill next to his friend Katsu. Yale hadn’t talked to Teddy tonight, probably wouldn’t. Teddy and Katsu were exactly the same size, and Yale squinted till they were identical silhouettes. Katsu raised his hand, and when Asher shouted over the din to call on him, Katsu said, “For those of us living with it—” and Yale only barely heard the question, something about tenant rights. He could have guessed, but he hadn’t known.

  Someone asked a question about anonymity, and Rafael whispered, “I heard you’re living large! When you gonna have us plebes down for a party?” Rafael wore a Palestinian scarf around his neck, and he hid his chin in it like a turtle.

  “I’m just crashing there,” Yale said, although it felt more and more like that was where he lived, in a little capsule above the city, while down here everyone else’s suffering and drama continued.

  A minute later, Rafael whispered again: “Charlie’s totally unhinged. Everyone at the office is like, Oh my God, bring back Yale. Was he always this nuts? And you were just, like, absorbing it all for us?”

  Yale said, “He’s going through a lot.”

  “I mean, he’s a disaster. Did you used to force-feed him? We started leaving snacks on his desk just so he’ll eat.”

  All the heads in the room turned at once toward the door, and when Yale turned he fully expected to see Charlie standing there. A nightmare, a relief, an avenging angel. But it was Gloria from Out Loud, carrying a stack of pizza boxes, telling everyone to calm down and stay put till she’d put out the paper plates, the napkins.

  Yale let the sounds around him blend to a dull buzz. He watched Asher talk, gesture, whap his hand against the TV antenna. He watched Katsu and Teddy lean on each other.

  Rafael said, “Nobody’s even listening. Everyone’s so tired of listening.”

  * * *

  —

  There were flowers on his desk in the morning, a bunch of yellow dahlias from Cecily. A note that said, I can never repay you.

  But before he’d even sat down, Bill was there. He’d brought Yale a coffee, even though Yale already had one. He said, “It seems our friend is on a power trip.” He paused, waiting for Yale to ask what he meant, but Yale didn’t feel like playing along, and eventually Bill cleared his throat and continued. “He’s been to the president, which—I don’t know how everything’s going to play out. I don’t. He’s calling around the board. Not our board, the board. And meanwhile, Frank, Nora’s son, is taking some kind of legal action. I don’t know if he’s fully suing or what, but you have a message from Snow.”

  “That’s a major waste of his time,” Yale said.

  “Yes. Yes.” Bill looked past Yale and out the window. “But it’s not great for the gallery. You were so noble, giving him your card and everything, and I wish you hadn’t been. You know I was willing to take the blame.”

  “I’m the one who messed up,” Yale said.

  Actually, he’d lain awake last night wondering why the hell he’d done it. For Cecily, of course. But also maybe it was some kind of self-flagellation, a way to punish himself, for—what? Well, everything. Messing around with Roman. Taking the art from Debra and maybe even Fiona. Walking away from Charlie. Evading this disease. It wouldn’t take a genius shrink. How easily he’d brushed off Dr. Cheng’s offer of counseling, his warnings to be careful out there, and here he was. A different kind of reckless behavior.

  Bill said, “I think if there’s anything you want to finish up with Nora—I mean, personally, since you were the one—I think maybe the next few weeks might be the time to do it. I’m just thinking of timing, in a general way.”

  “You think I should wrap up my business with Nora.” Yale tried to read his face.

  “Well, just that you might want to.”

  “In the next few weeks.”

  Bill’s thumb worried his chin cleft. “I don’t have a crystal ball. One thought is if I could tell Donovan you’re off the case on this one, so to speak—that I was handling it personally, right? We take you off Nora and see how the rest plays out. And you were done there anyway! But I’d take you off any grant writing related to the show as well. The publicity and so on.”

  Yale said, “Bill, if I should be tying up loose ends with other situations, it would be in your best interest to tell me.”

  “Oh! That’s not what I meant! Yale, we can’t lose you! I won’t let that happen!”

  * * *

  —

  But by the end of the week Bill was meeting privately with Herbert Snow, and when he emerged from his office, his eyes were more rheumy than usual, his face grayer.

  Allen Sharp called up. “There are rumors afloat among the board of advisers,” he said, and Yale had to explain the whole thing. Allen seemed placated, but he was worried about everyone else. “This is the kind of thing people will want to distance themselves from,” he said. “Anything unethical . . . I’ve seen how these stories can blow up.”

  Yale could picture it too clearly: the piece in the Times’ Arts section, the gleeful art world gossip. Which Chuck Donovan would personally see to, if he could. Chuck didn’t care about the art; he probably didn’t even care about his business relationship with Frank Lerner. He cared about looking like he had clout.

  Yale leaned his forehead onto his typewriter’s space bar.

  * * *

  —

  At lunchtime he walked down to the lake, stood on one of the mounds of ice right by the water. It had been winter for so long that the air didn’t hurt anymore.

  The frozen lake edge was the surface of another planet, rippled and fractured and gray. Yale couldn’t feel his fingers, but he waited till he couldn’t feel his head either.

  He walked back and into Bill’s office. He felt like he needed the bathroom, but it was just nerves. He said, “Call Chuck Donovan and tell him you’re going to fire me. Ask if that would make things better, if he can call off Frank then. Make it like you’re striking a business deal. He’ll like that.”

  “I’m not firing you!” Bill said.

  “I’ll quit before you can fire me.”

  It was like vomiting everything bad out of his body, like somehow this would set not just the gallery right but the universe.

  He said, “Even if this lawsuit is ridiculous, you won’t get funding while it’s dragging on. You can’t ask the board—”

  Bill said, “Yale.” But already he looked brighter.

  “Just call him and see if it’ll work.”

  Bill’s shoulders dropped. He looked at the ceiling, covered his mouth with his hand. He said, “You know that if it comes down to it, I’ll write you a hell of a letter of recommendation.”

  Even though Yale had asked for this, Bi
ll’s acceptance of the idea was a bullet to the gut. “Call right now,” he said. “I’ll wait in my office.”

  * * *

  —

  Yale opened his top drawer. There were at least fifty ballpoint pens, most inherited with the desk. He took one and squiggled a line on his legal pad. It didn’t work at first, but then it did. He put it in the empty mug by his left hand, and then he forgot what he was doing and sat there blinking. Then he remembered and grabbed the next pen and tried it, and it was dead, and he dropped it into the trash can, where it landed too loudly. The next two were dry, the next clotted, the next fine. He went through all the pens. Twelve good ones. Two with Northwestern logos, a few plain Bics, a couple of fancy erasable ones, a few cheap ones advertising insurance companies. At least Yale guessed that was the writing on the sides; he couldn’t focus his eyes.

  When Bill walked in ten minutes later, Yale already knew from his face—the pained, hesitant look that didn’t quite cover his relief—that it had worked.

  “I think it’s going to pan out,” he said. “I mean your—your idea. What I said to him. It’s all about ego for him.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re a genius, Yale. You realize that? And now the problem is I’ve lost my genius. That’s a fine kettle of fish, isn’t it. He said he felt listened to, and then he started going on about something with the music school. We’ll see how things play out. Maybe we can—maybe he’ll move on to other things, and we can reverse this all.”

  “No.” Yale could hear his own flat voice with remarkable clarity, as if on tape, some message he’d recorded years ago. “If it works, let’s not mess with it.”

  “I want you to finish your projects first. We can’t have the office empty. Yale, I want to say that—”

  Yale said, “If you can spare me next week, I’ll go to Wisconsin.”

  “Yes! Fantastic! And take Roman!” Bill said it as if Roman were a consolation prize. When he left, he made a great show of closing the door quietly.

  Yale considered both his stapler and his Rolodex, and decided on the latter. He picked it up and hurled it, with all his strength, at the wall.

  * * *

  —

  That next Tuesday, Yale rented the most expensive car he could, a red Saab 900, and he charged the snacks he bought to his university credit card as well. He picked up Roman outside his apartment on Hinman—he’d made sure to give Roman an out, but Roman had wanted to go—and they drove down Lake Shore Drive to scoop up Fiona.

  Fiona was along to appease Debra. They weren’t close, but Fiona was the one who’d called up there, told Debra how Yale had been fired, made her feel as guilty about it as she could. She’d told Debra that Yale wanted to say goodbye to Nora and that she wanted to see Nora, too, and Debra could call her father or even the police for all she cared, but they’d be there. “The last part probably wasn’t necessary,” Fiona said, “but I’d practiced it, so I said it.”

  Yale figured Fiona’s presence would reassure Roman too; it would be a nice buffer. And Fiona hadn’t seen Nora since the wedding where she’d first told her about Yale and the gallery. Yale didn’t feel the least bit guilty about charging a third hotel room to Northwestern; he considered it a personal gift from Chuck Donovan.

  Yale had spent yesterday calling donors, starting to tie up loose ends. In part he was doing his actual job, but he was also reinforcing his relationships. If he landed at another museum three months from now, he’d want to be able to call them up again.

  That weekend, he’d gone over his CV and put in some tentative calls to old colleagues from the Art Institute. One was at the MCA now. And there were other cities besides Chicago. For the first time in ages, he was free to live wherever a job might take him. New York, Montreal, Paris, Rome. He tried to see it this way, tried to look at the gifts he’d just been handed: his life, his health, the freedom to move across the globe.

  During the drive, between bites of Fritos, Roman told Fiona every detail of the Ranko story. It was the main reason they were going, aside from Yale’s desire to say goodbye to Nora. If Yale had just quit over some Modigliani drawings, he was an idiot. But if he’d quit to save this collection, and if this collection remained complete, the way Nora wanted it to, then he’d have done a good thing, one great good thing, in his life. And getting Ranko’s story nailed down, making sure it was told—wasn’t this the whole reason Nora wanted the collection to go to the gallery? Hadn’t Nora chosen Yale precisely because she thought he’d understand?

  They stopped at a rest area near Kenosha, one of the woodsy ones, and as Fiona and Yale waited outside for Roman, she said, “You should call Asher. This is what he does, wrongful termination stuff.”

  “I wasn’t wrongfully terminated. I messed up and I quit. And Asher has bigger fish to fry.” The thought was tempting, though—a reason to spend time with Asher, a tangible reason to cry on someone’s shoulder, a substantial shoulder to cry on.

  “I don’t understand why you did it,” she said. “You can’t sacrifice your career just to be noble!”

  He imitated her voice. “Just like you can’t sacrifice your college education just to be noble!”

  Fiona decided she wanted a soda, and so as Roman came out, she went in. Roman looked comically out of place next to the scattered Wisconsinite families with their puffy coats. He wore a black bomber jacket over his black T-shirt, and of course his jeans and shoes and glasses were black as well. Like a terribly chic undertaker. He came and stood next to Yale, who pretended to read a historical sign about Marquette and Joliet. He was still thinking about Bill, about Asher, and now here was Roman, reading the sign too, close enough that Yale could hear him breathe. Their arms, after a minute, were touching. Their shoulders, their hips. Roman moved his hand behind Yale as if he were going to touch it to his back, but Yale never felt any pressure. He seemed to be just hovering his hand there, daring himself.

  Roman said, “I didn’t know Marquette was a priest.”

  “Wasn’t everyone a priest back then?”

  “Well.”

  The sidewalk exploded under them.

  Or rather, it shattered, glass fragments all around, the concrete still in place, their shoes and feet still there.

  Yale spun to see a large woman with teased-out hair and a jean jacket—looking back at them, but walking toward the rest-stop doors. Another woman walked quickly ahead of her, laughing. Her friend, maybe, embarrassed by the scene. It was a bottle that had broken at their feet, a root beer bottle, the remnants of the drink foaming up around the glass shards.

  “You make me ill!” the large woman shouted, and then she ran to catch up to her friend. “Fucking pedophile perverts!” They disappeared inside.

  Roman took a step back, into the mess. He made his mouth into a small O and blew out slowly.

  Yale said, “I guess she’s not a fan of historical signs.” He was shaking, but he wanted to make everything okay. He felt responsible, as if by giving Roman that hand job he’d made this all happen, turned Roman noticeably gay. It was ridiculous, he knew.

  Roman got off the sidewalk and rubbed his shoes on the hardened snow. “She couldn’t even see our faces. All she saw was our backs.”

  Yale said, “Are you okay? I’m sorry. That—”

  “It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.”

  “I mean, it’s Wisconsin.”

  “Don’t pretend that happened because we crossed the Wisconsin border.”

  Yale said, “Look, let’s not tell Fiona.”

  And here she came.

  * * *

  —

  They found Nora looking better than last time, her wheelchair pulled up to the dining table, where she had her shoebox letters laid out in stacks. She stood precariously to hug Fiona, to tell Yale he looked tired. Debra had seen them in, pecked Fiona coldly on the cheek, avoided Yale entirely, and the
n left to go grocery shopping. Yale hoped she was doing more than that, was seeing friends, rolling in the dirt, pawning her jewelry, something.

  Yale told Nora they were aiming to put the show up next October, but he didn’t say he was losing his job. If she’d heard it from Debra, she didn’t let on.

  “We’ll kidnap you and drive you down!” Fiona said. “We’ll wheel you around and make everyone get out of your way!”

  Nora laughed. “People do make room for a wheelchair.”

  Yale told her this was a more social visit than the previous ones. “And believe it or not, we aren’t here to pin you down on dates. We want to hear about Ranko, for one thing. You kind of left us hanging.”

  Nora was thrilled to fill them in, but she insisted they make themselves sandwiches first. She’d prepare them herself, if it weren’t for the chair. The three of them found Wonder Bread and cheese and sandwich spread. Wilted iceberg lettuce, too, which Yale wanted nothing to do with. Roman put a piece on his sandwich, arranged it so the green showed around the edges.

  Yale and Fiona headed back to the living room ahead of him. “He is cute,” Fiona whispered. “Can you give me one reason you shouldn’t seduce him again?”

  Yale could think of a couple, but they were already back at Nora’s side, and Roman was coming up behind them.

  “You’re lucky I have my wits,” Nora said, “because I do remember what I already told you. We were in 1919, weren’t we.”

  Fiona sat next to Yale at the table, and she took Yale’s notepad and pen, wrote in block print: DO IT. He suppressed a laugh, an eleven-year-old-in-synagogue laugh, as she drew a lewd stick-figure coupling.