Хлоя Бенджамин - The Immortalists

Richie wakes up with a red dot on the white of his left eye. Simon covers his shift so Richie can go to the doctor; he wants to make sure it’s gone by Christmas Eve, the night of Purp’s annual Jingle Bell Cock. Few of Purp’s patrons visit family over the holidays, so the dancers paint themselves red and green, hang bells from the waists of their G-strings. The doctor sends Richie home with an antibiotic. ‘They’re like, “Maybe it’s pink eye,” ’ Richie says the next day, spraying Adrian’s backside purple. ‘This sweet little lab tech, she’s probably nineteen, she goes, “Any chance you came into contact with fecal matter?” I’m like’ – hand to heart – ‘ “Oh no, honey, I wouldn’t touch the stuff,” ’ and the men are laughing, and Simon will remember Richie like this later, his guffaw, his military buzz cut with the slightest hint of gray, because by the twentieth of December, Richie is dead.

How to describe the shock? The splotches appear on the flower seller in Dolores Park and on the beautiful feet of Beau, who once spun eight times without stopping and is now taken to San Francisco General in Eduardo’s car, seizing. These are Simon’s earliest memories of Ward 86, though it will not be named for another year: the squeak of meal carts; the nurses at the phone desk, their remarkable calm ( No, we don’t know how it’s transmitted. Is your lover with you now? Does he know you’re coming to the hospital? ); and the men, men in their twenties and thirties sitting wide-eyed on cots and in wheelchairs as if hallucinating. Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals , says the Chronicle , but nobody knows how you get it. Still, when the lymph nodes in Lance’s armpits begin to swell, he finishes his shift at Purp and cabs to the hospital with the article in his backpack. Ten days later, the lumps are large as oranges.

Robert paces the apartment. ‘We need to stay here,’ he says. They have enough food for two weeks. Neither of them has slept in days.

But Simon is panicked by the thought of quarantine. He already feels cut off from the world, and he refuses to hide, refuses to believe this is the end. He’s not dead yet. And yet he knows, of course he knows, or at least he fears – the thin line between fear and intuition; how one so easily masquerades as the other – that the woman is right, and that by June 21st, the first day of summer, he’ll be gone, too.

Robert doesn’t want him working at Purp. ‘It isn’t safe,’ he says.

‘Nothing is safe.’ Simon takes his bag of makeup and walks to the door. ‘I need the money.’

‘Bullshit. Corps pays you.’ Robert follows him and grabs his arm, hard. ‘Admit it, Simon. You like what you get there. You need it.’

‘Come on, Rob.’ Simon forces a laugh. ‘Don’t be such a drag.’

‘Me? I’m a drag?’

There is a blaze in Robert’s eyes that makes Simon feel both intimidated and turned on. He reaches for Robert’s cock.

Robert yanks back. ‘Don’t play me like that. Don’t touch me.’

‘Come with me,’ Simon slurs. He’s been drinking, which Robert dislikes almost as much as his work at Purp. ‘Why don’t you ever come anywhere?’

‘I don’t fit anywhere, Simon. Not with you white guys. Not with the black guys. Not in ballet or in football. Not back home, and not here.’ Robert speaks slowly, as though to a child. ‘So I stay home. I keep myself small. Except when I’m dancing. And even then – every time I get onstage, I know there’s people in that audience who have never seen somebody like me dance like I dance. I know that some of them won’t like it. I’m scared, Simon. Every day. And now you know what that’s like. ’Cause you’re scared, too.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Simon, hoarse.

‘I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. This is the first time you’ve felt like me – like there’s nowhere that’s safe. And you don’t like it.’

Simon feels his pulse in his skull. He is staked by the truth of what Robert has said like an insect to a board, his wings flapping.

‘You’re jealous,’ he hisses. ‘That’s all. You could try harder, Rob, but you don’t. And you’re jealous – you’re jealous – that I do.’

Robert holds his ground but swings his face, abruptly, to one side. When he looks at Simon again, the whites of his eyes are pink.

‘You’re just like the rest of them,’ he says, ‘all the twinks and the art fags and the motherfucking bears. You guys, you go on about your rights and your freedoms, you cheer at all the parades, but all you really want’s the right to fuck some leatherman in a den on Folsom or spew your shit all over a bathhouse. You want the right to be as careless as any other white guy – any straight one. But you’re not any other white guy. And that’s why this place is so dangerous: because it lets you forget that.’

Simon burns with humiliation. Fuck you , he thinks. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you . But Robert’s speech has stricken him silent, in anger and in shame – why is it that those feelings are so inextricable? He turns and pushes out of the door, toward the dark blur of Castro Street, the lights and the men that always seem to be waiting for him.

Purp’s new hires are terrible – they’re sixteen and freaked, they can’t even dance – and the audience is thin, a couple of guys huddled in the corners and a few more grinding feverishly near the platforms. After their shift, Adrian is jumpy. ‘I need to get the fuck out of here,’ he mutters, toweling off. So does Simon. He gets in Adrian’s car to cruise the Castro, but the owner of Alfie’s is sick, and the scene at the QT’s as depressing as it is at Purp, so Adrian takes a sharp turn and heads downtown.

Cornholes and Liberty Baths aren’t open. They stop in Folsom Gulch Books – Committed to Pleasure , the tagline reads – but the movie booths are occupied and nobody’s in the arcade. Boot Camp Baths on Bryant is empty. They wind up at Animals, a leather den, and neither Adrian nor Simon are wearing leather but thank God, at least there are people here, so they dump their clothes in the lockers before Adrian leads them through a dark maze of rooms. Men in chaps and dog collars ride each other in the shadows. Adrian disappears into a corner with a kid in a harness, but Simon can’t bring himself to touch anyone. He waits by the entrance for Adrian, who returns in an hour with wide pupils and a slick red mouth.

Adrian drives him home. Simon breathes. He hasn’t messed up, not irrevocably, not yet. They park a block away from Simon and Robert’s apartment and stare at each other for seconds before Simon reaches for Adrian, and this is how it begins.

Klara stands onstage beneath a pool of blue light. The stage is a small platform designed for musicians. A scattering of audience members sits at round tables or on stools at the bar, though Simon can’t tell how many of them are there to see her and how many are just regulars. Klara wears a men’s tuxedo jacket with her pinstriped pants and Doc Martens. Her tricks are skillful, but they aren’t big magic, they’re quippy and clever, and her script has an air of studied perfectionism, like a graduate student at a dissertation defense. Simon swirls his martini with a straw and wonders what he’ll tell her afterward. Over a year of planning and this is the result: scarf tricks in the only place that would take her, a jazz club on Fillmore whose patrons are already drifting into the cold spring night.

Only a handful are still there when Klara uncoils a rope from a nearby music stand and puts a small brown mouthpiece between her teeth. The rope hangs from a cable that hangs from a pipe on the ceiling, controlled by a pulley Klara rigged herself and which is now held, at her direction, by the bar manager.