Scott Sherman - First You Fall

Cause I’d really like to see him.”

“Can’t imagine why. But if you wanna deliver his shit, be my guest. Just be sure to send my disregards.”

“Thanks. I’l pick it up when I’m done.” I kissed Vicki on the cheek. “Tel your Mom I said ‘hi.’”

“Hey, tel her yourself when your mother brings her home for Christmas. As her date.”

“Ewwwww.”

My talk with Vicki had taken longer than I expected. I had to hurry to the kitchen to get today’s volunteers started on the meal preparation. I was racing down the hal way, not real y looking where I was going, when I ran smack into a wal. “Oomph!”

“Sorry,” the wal mumbled.

“It’s OK,” I said, realizing that the wal, in fact, was a woman. Not a heavy woman, but large and solidly built, with the muscles of a high-school footbal player.

Our eyes met with a flash of recognition. The Wal blushed and looked down at her feet.

“Lori,” a voice cal ed from down the hal way, catching up to us, “I got the papers we need and…”

The tal er, thinner woman recognized me immediately. “Oh!” she said. “Hel o. Connor, right?”

“Kevin,” I corrected her. “I met you two…”

“At the reading of Al en’s wil,” she finished my sentence. “I’m May. And this,” she said gesturing towards to her companion, “is Lori. My partner at the Association for the Acceptance of Lesbian and Gay Youth, as wel as in life.”

They were the women from the group Al en funded in his wil.

Lori shifted uncomfortably. “Huh,” she said by way of greeting.

May put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I could tel you and Al en were close. The way he spoke about you in that video-it was obvious he cared. You must have been very special to him.”

Had anyone talked to me with compassion about Al en’s death, I wondered? I found myself tearing up.

“Thanks,” I said. “He was a very good man.”

“He was obviously a big fan of yours,” I said. “Of your work.”

“Yes,” May said. “I think the plight of queer youth real y touched him. After al he had been through.

And his son of course.”

This was new. “His son?”

“Wel, you know he didn’t have much contact with either of his children, right?”

“None,” I said.

“Right. Stil, he kept track of them. Tried to be involved. He told me that he thought one of them might be gay, but that he had gotten married anyway.

It made him so sad to think that his son might be making the same mistake he had.”

The only one of the sons who was married was Paul. “Did he say what made him think that?”

Lori, or as I would always think of her, The Wal, cleared her throat. “We r-r-real y have to go, May.”

For such a big girl, her voice was soft and breathless. You could see how shy she was, too, as she continued to regard her shoes as if they were the most interesting things on Earth. I always wondered what quiet people like her did with al their feelings.

“One minute,” May responded. She gave Lori a reassuring pat on the back. I wondered if Lori wasn’t a bit impaired. May turned back to me.

“No, he never said.”

Freddy thought Paul seemed a little light in the loafers, too. Although I wasn’t sure what difference it made.

We stood awkwardly for a moment. “So, do you work here?” May asked me.

I explained that I was a volunteer.

“That’s wonderful,” May enthused. “Good for you.”

“Hey,” I said, “maybe I could do some work with you guys,” I offered. “Kind of a way to honor Al en’s memory.”

Lori and May looked at each other. “We’re not real y set up for that,” May said.

“Wel, let me know if I can help. Do you have a card or something?”

“Not yet,” May smiled. “That’s what Al en was helping us with. Infrastructure costs. We’re kind of a start-up. Al en had been looking to build an organization that catered specifical y to the needs of sexual minority youth, and he was very impressed by some of the work Lori and I had been doing with homeless teens. But maybe I could take one of yours?”

Not surprisingly, I didn’t have any business cards.

What would they say: “Kevin Connor, Male Prostitute?” I wrote my number on the back of a safer-sex flyer hanging in the hal way.

I wanted to talk to them some more, just in case they might have known something about Al en that would have helped me understand what had happened to him, but I real y didn’t know what to ask.

I also had to go run my lunch shift. But there was one last thing I wanted to ask them.

“Listen, everyone tel s me I’m crazy,” I said, “but I just don’t believe Al en would have kil ed himself. Do you?”

May shook her head. “I’ve been saying the same thing to Lori since it happened. He was very involved with us in the formation of the Association. We spoke every day. He went over our books, he helped us develop grant applications, he even introduced us to other potential major donors. Al en lived passionately. I think it must have been some terrible kind of accident. I just can’t believe he’d take his own life.”

For the first time since I’d bumped into her, Lori looked up. I was struck by just how pretty her features were. “You d-d-don’t know,” she said quietly. I recal ed that she stuttered at the reading of the wil, too. Maybe it was embarrassment that kept her so quiet.

“Don’t know what,” I asked.

She turned to me with tears in her eyes. “You don’t know what someone could d-d-do. What they’re c-c-capable of. Until they do it.” Her shoulders started to shake.

May put an arm around her. “In our line of work, we see things that are very hard to believe, Kevin.

Parents who beat their own children half to death, who throw them into the streets, just because they find out that they’re gay.

“If you saw these parents in the market, or at church or school, they’d probably look like any other loving parent in the world. But when they find out the truth about their kids, when the reality doesn’t fit perfectly with their expectations, wel, you find out just how disposable some children in this society are.”

You could hear May’s passion in her words and you could see Lori’s empathy on her pained and tear-streaked face. I saw why Al en believed in their vision.

“Kevin!” A cal came from the kitchen. “We’ve got to get started! We need you!”

I put out my hand. “Sorry, but it sounds like I real y have to go. But I’m glad I ran into you. Give me a cal.”

May took my hand in both of hers and pul ed me in for a kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, dear.”

I extended my hand to Lori, too. She shook it limply. Even though she wasn’t squeezing, I could feel the strength in her fingers. She real y was a gentle giant.

Which made me remember how she was crying at the reading of Al en’s wil.

What happens to the feelings of quiet people like her?

Maybe they come out as tears.

After finishing my shift at The Stuff of Life, I cal ed Roger Folds and got his machine. I left a message that I was a volunteer with the agency and that I had his things. I asked him to cal me with a convenient time to drop them off. I took the box home with me.

It would be wrong for me to go through Roger’s things, I thought, as I went through his things.

Unfortunately, there was nothing interesting. Some pens, a desk blotter, a few framed certificates, and a n American Idol Season One Greatest Hits CD.

Not exactly an admission of murder, although possession of an American Idol CD must violate some law somewhere.

I checked my answering machine. No messages.

My iPhone chimed the love theme from A Star Is Born, reminding me that I had a client appointment in an hour. I made a quick lunch of leftover liver and onion, brushed my teeth three times, used mouthwash, and grabbed a quick shower before running out the door.