Michael Nava - Goldenboy

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to die, Henry,” he said slowly. “Not just because of AIDS but also because the lives of queers are expendable. Highly expendable.” He stopped abruptly and stared down at his plate, then continued, more emphatically. “They hate us, Henry, and they’d just as soon we all died. I’m dying. Save Jim Pears’s life for me.”

“Don’t die,” I said, and the words sounded childlike even to my own ears.

“I won’t just yet,” he replied. “But when I do I want it to be my life for Jim’s. That would balance the accounts.”

“But it’s entirely different,” I said.

“It’s the same disease,” he insisted. “Bigotry. It doesn’t matter whether it shows itself in letting people die of AIDS or making it so difficult for them to come out that it’s easier to murder.”

“Then you do think he did it.”

“Yes,” he said. “Not that it makes any difference to me.”

“It will to a jury.”

“You’ll have to persuade them,” he said, “that Jim was justified.”

“Self-defense?”

Larry said, “There might be a problem there. Jim’s P.D. told me Jim doesn’t remember anything about what happened.”

“Doesn’t remember?” I echoed.

“She called it retrograde amnesia.”

The waiter came and took Larry’s salad plate. He cast a baleful glance at my plate from which I had eaten nothing and said, “Sir, shall I leave your salad?”

“Yes, please.”

We were served dinner. Looking at Larry I reflected how quickly we had retreated into talk of Jim Pears’s case as if the subject of Larry’s illness had never been raised.

“I want to talk some more about you,” I said.

Larry compressed his lips into a frown. “I’ve told you all there is to know.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“Henry, I’ve turned myself inside out examining my feelings. It was painful enough the first time without repeating the exercise for you.”

“Sorry.” I addressed myself to the food on my plate, some sort of chicken glistening with gravy. A wave of nausea rose from my stomach to my throat.

Larry was saying, “But I won’t go quietly. Depend on that.”

We got through dinner. Afterwards, we went upstairs to the bar. Sitting at the window seat with glasses of mineral water we watched men passing on the street below us in front of what had been the Jaguar Bookstore.

Abruptly, Larry said, “I wondered at first how I could have been infected. It really puzzled me because I thought AIDS was only transmitted during tawdry little episodes in the back rooms of places like that.” He gestured toward the Jaguar. “All my tawdry little episodes were twenty years in the past, and then there was Ned.” Ned was his lover who had died four years ago.

“Were you monogamous with Ned?”

He smiled grimly. “I was monogamous, yes.”

“But not Ned.”

“You don’t get this from doorknobs, Henry.” He frowned.

“Do you think he knew?”

“He killed himself didn’t he?” Larry snapped. “At least now I know why,” he added, quietly.

“Who have you told?”

“You.”

“That’s all?”

He nodded. “My clients are movie stars. Having a gay lawyer is considered amusing in that set but a leper is a different matter.”

“But — your appearance.”

“You haven’t seen me in, what? A year? And even you were willing to accept the way I look as the result of overwork. It’s not really noticeable from day to day.”

“But you must have been in the hospital?”

“With the flu,” he said. “A virulent, obscure Asian flu with complications brought on by fatigue.”

“People believed that?”

“People are remarkably incurious and besides… “ He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. I knew he was going to say that people preferred not to think about AIDS, much less believe that someone they knew had it. I was struggling with my own disbelief and, at some deeper level, my terror.

“How long can you keep it a secret?”

“Henry, you’re talking to a man who was in the closet for almost thirty-five years. I know from secrets.” He yawned. “I’d like to go for a walk down by the water, then we have to talk some more about Jim Pears.”

It had stopped raining by the time we reached Fisherman’s

Wharf but that loud, normally crowded, arcade of tourist traps and overpriced fish restaurants was deserted anyway. We walked around aimlessly, jostling against each other on the narrow walks, stopping to comment on some particularly egregious monstrosity in the shop front windows. We walked to the edge of the pier where the fishing boats were berthed, creaking in the water like old beds. A rift in the clouds above the Golden Gate revealed a black sky and three faint stars. Larry looked at them and then at me.

“Do you wish on stars, Henry?” he asked.

“Not since I was a kid.”

“I do,” Larry replied. “Wish on stars. Pray. Plead. It doesn’t do any good.” We stood there for a few more minutes until he complained of the cold.

I drove us to Washington Square and we found an espresso bar. Tony Bennett played on the jukebox. We each ordered a caffe latte. Larry brought out a bulky folder from his briefcase and put it on the table between us.

“What is it?” I asked.

“My file on Jim Pears. You’re taking the case, aren’t you?” I hesitated. “Yes. I’ll fly down on Monday morning. Will I have a chance to talk to Jim before the hearing?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask his P.D. A woman named Sharon Hart.” He paused and sipped his coffee. “She’s not a bad lawyer but something’s not working out between her and Jim.” “It happens. I’m always running up against the expectations of my clients. You learn to be tactful.”

Larry wasn’t listening. He was looking at his reflection in the window. When he looked back at me, he asked, “Do I seem hysterical to you?”

I shook my head.

“I do to myself sometimes.” He rattled his cup. “I’m so angry, Henry. When I wake up in the morning I think I’ll explode from rage.”

He tightened his jaw and clamped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you expect that?” I asked, awkwardly.

He lowered his hand, revealing a faintly hostile smile. “You’ve been reading too much Kubler-Ross,” he said. “There are only two stages to dying, Henry. Being alive and being dead. We treat death like a bad smell. I’m supposed to excuse myself and leave the room.”

His eyes were bright. It was the only time I had ever seen Larry even approach tears and it was frightening.

“Why should you care what other people think? You never have before.”

“Well, that’s not true,” he snapped. “I was the original closet queen, remember?” He expelled a noisy breath, then sipped from his coffee. “I don’t know why I’m taking it out on you.”

“Because I’m here?”

He shook his head. “Because I love you.” He tried to smile but his face wouldn’t cooperate. “I’ll miss you.”

He lowered his face toward the table and I watched the tears slide down his cheeks and splatter on the table top. I reached for his hand and held it. After a moment or two it was over. He looked up, drew a dazzlingly white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his face.

He glanced at his watch. “It’s the witching hour. You’d better get me back to the airport.”

I pulled up in front of the terminal and helped Larry gather his things. He put his hand on the door handle.

“Wait,” I said.

He looked over at me. I leaned across the seat and kissed him.

“I love you, too,” I said.

“I know.”

A moment later he was gone.