Goldenboy

by Michael Nava

  “You know that test isn’t completely accurate,” I said, to cover the sudden pounding in my ears. “And anyway it only means you’ve been exposed to the virus, not that you’ll get AIDS.” My heart slowed down. “Half the gay men in California test positive.”

  “Did you take the test?” Josh asked, glaring at me.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you test positive?”

  “No,” I said, but added, “There are false negatives, too, Josh.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he snapped.

  “I guess not.” I looked at him. “Look, Josh — “

  “That’s why I ran away,” he interrupted, “because I didn’t want to have to tell you. Because I didn’t tell you.” He paused. “Before we made love.”

  “We didn’t do anything risky,” I replied.

  “No,” he said scornfully, “it wasn’t worth it.”

  “Jesus, Josh, did you want to infect me?”

  He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry, Henry. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Then be quiet and listen to me,” I said.

  He reached for his cigarettes.

  “And don’t light another one of those.”

  He dropped his hand. “Sorry,” he said.

  “I’ve been driving all over L.A. looking for you,” I said, “and it wasn’t because I thought you killed Brian. Not really.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I’m thirty-six years old, Josh. You have no idea how old that sounds to me, especially when I wake up in the morning alone.” I paused. This was going to be harder than I thought. “I just have these feelings for you...” And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He looked at me. “I love you, too.”

  I nodded. “Then come here.” He rose from his chair and joined me on the couch.

  He sniffed. A trickle of snot glistened under his nose. I gave him my handkerchief. He blew his nose gravely.

  “I’m so scared,” he whispered, and began to cry.

  I pulled him close and held him until I could feel the heat of his body through his sweater. I thought of all the rational things I should say but heard myself tell him, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  He pulled away and looked at me, lifting his sleeve and wiping his nose. His eyes searched mine, slowly. I didn’t look away. We both knew that what I’d just said was, on one level, impossible and, therefore, untrue. And yet we both knew I meant it, which made it true on a different level, the one that mattered between us now.

  He brought his face forward and we kissed.

  Just then the door opened. I saw Mrs. Mandel out of the comer of my eye. Behind her came a man who I recognized from the picture at Josh’s apartment as Mr. Mandel.

  “Joshua,” Mr. Mandel said, “what is this?”

  We moved apart. Josh said, “Mom, Dad, you’d better sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  *****

  Over the next eight hours, Josh not only told his parents that he was gay but that we were lovers and about the result of the antibody test. Mr. Mandel ordered me out of the house, relented, and alternately screamed at and wept for his son. Mrs. Mandel seemed to have been rendered catatonic.

  Then, after the hysterics came the hard talk. Josh’s sisters were called, one in Sacramento and one in Denver, and consulted. They came out heavily pro-Josh. His father brought down the Bible and read to us the passage in Leviticus that condemns homosexuality. That led to a long, rambling discussion about biblical fundamentalism which ended, predictably, in a stalemate.

  Mrs. Mandel mourned for her unborn grandchildren. Josh said that he planned to have children. This silenced her. Silenced me, too. We talked for a long time about Jim Pears and how having to hide being gay had probably led him to kill someone. We talked about AIDS. This was the hardest part for all of us.

  I argued that AIDS wasn’t divine retribution on gay people any more than Tay-Sachs disease was God’s commentary on Jews. Mr. Mandel bristled at the analogy but his wife diffused the tension with a series of surprisingly well-informed questions about AIDS. It occurred to me then that she had known Josh was gay all along. Even so, they both remained worried and frightened. So was Josh. So was I.

  In the middle of all this, Mr. Mandel ordered pizza and we had an involved argument over the relative merits of anchovies. He and I wanted them. Josh and Mrs. Mandel resisted. The three of them went through a bottle of wine while I guzzled Perrier.

  And then it was three o’clock in the morning and Mr. Mandel was apologizing for being sixty-two and needing his sleep.

  Knees creaking and head throbbing, I got up to leave. “I need my coat,” I said to Josh who was sitting on it.

  “Wait,” he said, amazement in his eyes. “You’re not going to drive all the way back to Silver Lake now, are you?”

  A long complex silence ensued.

  “It’s not that far,” I said.

  “Come on, Henry. You’re exhausted.” Josh looked at his parents. “You can’t let him go out at this hour. The roads are full of drunks.”

  “Joshua,” his father began.

  “Dad,” he said in a whine he must have perfected as a child. “It’s just a matter of common courtesy. Let him sleep on the couch down here. Mom?”

  “Silver Lake is - far away,” she said, tentatively, looking at her husband. Then, more confidently she added, “The sofa folds out and there’s a bathroom down here.”

  “Well, I’m going to bed,” Mr. Mandel said “You want to stay Henry, stay.”

  “Thank you,” I said to his back.

  Mrs. Mandel opened a closet and pulled out some sheets and blankets. She put them on the couch.

  “It folds out,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  We looked at each other, then she looked at Josh. “Go to bed, Josh.”

  “In a minute, Mom,” he said. “I’ll just help Henry with the couch.”

  Defeated, she murmured her good-nights and slipped out of the room. We listened to her footsteps as she climbed the stairs.

  “What a little brat you are,” I said.

  “It isn’t over yet, you know,” Josh said.

  “I know. I know.”

  “It might go on forever.”

  “One day at a time,” I said and nuzzled him. “I’m really tired.”

  “Do you mind us not sleeping together?”

  “This is their house,” I said. “Let’s make it easy on them. They’re probably upstairs awake as it is.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, smiling.

  “Years of legal training,” I replied and kissed him. He kept his lips closed. “Josh, that’s not how to kiss.”

  “My saliva,” he said, biting his lower lip. “It might carry the virus.”

  “In negligible amounts, if at all,” I replied. “Let’s not let this thing run our lives.”

  We kissed again, properly.

  “Go to bed, Josh, and let your parents get some sleep.”

  He pulled himself up from the floor and said, “You know what’s really going to drive them crazy, is when it sinks in that you’re not Jewish.”

  I smiled, then, remembering, asked, “Josh, the night Jim tried to kill himself and you called me, you didn’t actually speak to me, did you?”

  He shook his head. “No, I hung up before you answered. Why?”

  “Because someone else called, too,” I said, “and I now know who it was.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Could be,” I replied. “Good night, Josh.”

  “I love you,” he said, and slipped quietly from the room. I watched the last embers spark and burn themselves out. When I finally arranged myself on the couch, my last conscious thought was not of Josh but of Jim Pears.

  20

  I heard someone rattling around in the next room and sat up on the couch. It was eight in the morning and I felt as close to hung- over as I had in two years. I put on my trousers and shirt and followed t
he noise into the kitchen where I found Mr. Mandel pouring himself a cup of coffee. He seemed startled to find me still there.

  “You want a cup?” he asked.

  “Thank you.” I studied him. Short and slender, he so resembled Josh that it was like looking forty years into the future.

  “You want some cake?” Mr. Mandel asked, unwrapping a crumb cake.

  “No thanks,” I replied. It made my teeth ache just to look at it.

  He caught my expression. “I have a sweet tooth,” he said. “So does Joshua.”

  “He likes chocolate,” I volunteered, remembering a box of chocolate cookies I’d seen at his apartment.

  “Anything chocolate,” Mr. Mandel agreed. “And marzipan. He likes that.”

  He brought two cups of coffee to the table and then went back to the counter for his piece of cake. We sat down. He blew over the top of his coffee before sipping it. I noticed the thin gold wedding band he wore. The kitchen was filled with light and papered in a light blue wallpaper with a pattern of daisies. Copper aspic molds decorated the walls. All the appliances — refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, Cuisinart — were spotlessly clean and new- looking. We were sitting at a little pine table.

  “Your house,” I said, tentatively, “is very nice.”

  “Selma,” he replied, referring to his wife, “puts a lot of work into it. She wallpapered this room by herself.”

  “It looks professional.”

  “You sure you’re not hungry? There’s cereal, eggs.”

  “No, I don’t eat much.”

  He looked at me appraisingly. “You are on the thin side. So, you live up in San Francisco.”

  “Not exactly. I live in a little town down the bay. It’s where Linden University is located.”

  “Yes, Linden University,” he said, impressed. “You go to school there?”

  “Law school.”

  “Good,” he said, taking a bite of his cake. “I wish I could get Joshie interested in something like law school.”

  “He’s still pretty young.”

  This was the wrong thing to say. Mr. Mandel glared at me and then pressed the bottom of his fork into the little crumbs of sugar that had fallen from the cake to the plate.

  “Mr. Mandel,” I began.

  “Listen,” he said wearily. “We talked enough last night. We’ll talk again. For now, let’s just enjoy our coffee.”

  “Sure.”

  We enjoyed our coffee for five tense minutes. At the end of that time Mrs. Mandel came in, wearing a padded floral bathrobe and black Chinese slippers. She said her good-mornings and offered me breakfast.

  “He doesn’t eat,” her husband informed her.

  “But you should,” she said. “You’re so thin.”

  Our discussion of my weight was cut short by Josh’s appearance. He was wearing a ratty plaid bathrobe, the original belt of which had apparently been lost and was replaced by a soiled necktie. His hair was completely disheveled, his glasses sat halfway down his nose and he cleared his throat loudly. Ignoring us, he poured himself a cup of coffee. He cut a piece of crumb cake which he ate at the counter, and then announced, “I’m starving.”

  The rest of us, who had been watching him, transfixed, came back to life.

  “Good morning, Josh,” his father said acerbically.

  “Good morning,” he replied crankily.

  “What do you want, Joshie?” his mother asked.

  “Scrambled eggs,” he said, “with cheese. And matzoh brei. And sausage.”

  “Sausage he wants with matzoh brei,” Mr. Mandel said, smiling at me. I smiled back, feeling like a complete intruder.

  Josh smiled at me, too. That smile packed a lot of meaning and it was lost on no one. “How did you sleep, Henry?”

  “Fine,” I replied.

  “Not me,” he said. “I missed you.”

  Mr. Mandel said, “You say this to hurt your mother.”

  “Shut up, Sam,” Mrs. Mandel snapped. “Get me the eggs out of the refrigerator, Josh.” She turned to me and said, in a quavering voice, “You eat, too, Henry. You’re too thin.”

  Mr. Mandel rose noisily from the table and left the room. Somewhere in the house a door slammed shut. Mrs. Mandel looked at us and said, “He’s - it’s going to take time.” Then she began to weep.

  *****

  I called Tony Good, got his answering machine, and left a message that I wanted to see him. Josh came into the room and sat on the ottoman at the foot of my chair.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Business,” I replied, not wanting to have to explain Tony Good to Josh. There were enough Tony’s in the world — Josh would encounter one of them eventually. “You’re full of little surprises,” I added.

  “You mean about not sleeping well.”

  I nodded.

  “They have to get used to the idea,” he replied, but his eyes were uncertain.

  “You’re right.” We looked at each other. “I have a confession to make “

  “What?”

  “I never told my parents.”

  He cocked his head and stared at me. “You didn’t? Why not?”

  “I guess the easy answer is that they died before I got around to it,” I replied. “But the honest answer is — I was afraid.”

  He scooted forward on the ottoman so that our knees touched and said, “I can’t believe you’re afraid of anything.”

  “No? Well, I try to stay outraged and that keeps me from being afraid. But—” I put my hand on his leg, “—I don’t think that’s going to work with how I feel about you.”

  He put his hand on mine. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  “Not of you,” I replied, “for you. I can’t stand the idea that anyone or anything might hurt you.”

  He smiled and seemed, suddenly, older, quite my equal. “Don’t think of me as a job, Henry. You don’t need a reason to love me.”

  *****

  Just as I got to the door of Larry’s house, it opened and I found myself face-to-face with a young woman carrying a clipboard.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped aside to let me pass. Larry was standing behind her with two mugs in his hand. “Goodbye, Larry,” she told him. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks Cindy.”

  “Goodbye,” she said to me in a pleasant tone.

  “Goodbye,” I answered, puzzled. When she left I asked Larry who she was.

  “My travel agent,” he said, heading into the kitchen. I followed him. “Where have you been?”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “My question gets priority,” he replied, rinsing the mugs in the sink and setting them in the dish rack. In his Levis and black turtleneck he looked spectrally thin.

  “It’s sort of a long story.”

  “Tell me while I fix myself something to eat. Do you want anything?”

  Mrs. Mandel’s ponderous breakfast was sitting in my stomach. “No.”

  I told Larry about the previous night’s proceedings while he constructed an omelet. He brought it to the table where I joined him. Before he ate, he swallowed a fistful of vitamins, washing them down with cranberry juice. He cut an edge of the egg and ate it, chewing slowly but without much apparent pleasure.

  “Josh sounds like a very smart boy,” he said when I related

  Josh’s parting comment to me.

  “Don’t say boy. It makes me feel like a child molester.”

  Larry smiled. “Twenty-two is several years past the age of consent,” he replied. “And you should stop thinking of yourself as an old man.’’

  “I suppose. Anyway, I’m relieved that Josh didn’t have anything to do with Brian Fox’s murder.’’

  Larry set down his fork. “You’re still thinking about that?’’

  “Do you remember the night Jim Pears tried to kill himself?” I asked.

  “How could I forget,” he replied, grimly.

  “The phone rang three times. The first time it was a dru
nk who told me that Jim was innocent. The second time it was the jail. The third time the caller hung up before I could answer.” I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table. “I thought that the first caller was Josh.’’

  “Why?” Larry asked, finishing his meal.

  “I’d talked to him earlier and it was clear he wasn’t telling the truth about where he’d been when Brian was killed. I just thought, I don’t know, that he was trying to relieve his guilty conscience, but — ‘‘ I sipped the coffee, “ — this guy flirted with me.”

  “Really?” Larry asked, amused.

  “It was strange in the context. But I still thought it was Josh. Well, Josh did call that night, but he was the third caller, the one who hung up before I could answer the phone.”

  Larry’s eyebrow arched above his eye. “Do you know who the first caller was?”

  “I think it was Tony Good,” I replied.

  Larry looked at me closely and said, “Why?”

  “Something he said at the Zanes’ party as you were leaving with him. Some words he used were the same words the first caller used,” I said, remembering that on both occasions Good had said, You’re kind of cute, Henry. You gotta lover! “And the way he insisted that I take his number. What I don’t understand, though, is why Tony Good would know anything about Brian Fox’s murder.”

  Larry lit a cigarette. He squinted slightly as the smoke rose into his eyes and said, “It was Tony.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He called again that night,” Larry replied, tapping an ash into his plate.

  “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t know he’d called before,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have had any reason to think he’d be calling you.”

  “But he would call you?” I asked.

  Larry nodded. “I’ve known Tony for a long time,” he said, smiling without humor. “And in many capacities. A drunken call in the middle of the night is about par for the course.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing,” Larry said. “I mean nothing about you or Jim Pears. We just talked.” He looked at me guiltily.