Tim Murphy - Christodora

The room was uncomfortably silent. This was the problem with the queen, many said, as beloved as she was. Sometimes the queen spoke beyond the limits of her knowledge and got the science a little bit off. Certainly, here, she was overreaching, Hector knew — everyone knew. Their group hadn’t been the first to know or to insist that new drugs had to be tested in combination rather than one at a time; they’d just played a huge role promoting that information to other activists and to patients, then proposing to the feds a trial that allowed for different combinations without being too burdened with qualifying criteria, so that as many patients as possible could participate. And they’d also demanded more safety data on certain drugs before they were released. (In that regard, they were only half successful.)

But the queen was right about one thing: patients’ virus levels hadn’t plunged and T cells hadn’t skyrocketed until the new drugs — including the protease drugs, those slightly villainous-sounding names that had dominated the past half year, like ritonavir, saquinavir, nevirapine — were administered together. Hector felt his heart rate rise and the blood pound in his temples when he thought how, for eight years— eight whole years, how stupid they all had been! — they’d been giving people one perfectly good drug at a time, letting the virus develop resistance to it, killing a perfectly good drug option for the future. So many people now were already failing in their new regimens because they were taking drugs they’d already spoiled for themselves. Who’d still be alive by the end of the year? It was all the more bitter for those who were failing, having to watch others flourish. He thought about the years—1987, ’88, ’89, ’90, ’91, ’92—when he watched so many friends make themselves sick on AZT and ddI, and all they were doing was spoiling their chances for the future! In retrospect, he grudgingly tipped his hat to Ricky, who — granted, like many — knew in his gut that AZT was toxic and not worth taking alone. Those who’d waited were benefiting now. The ones who’d made it this far, that is. Ricky not among them.

He’d gone off on a tangent in his head. He trained his attention back on the queen.

“—much more work to be done,” she was saying. “We have winners and losers right now. We must, must ”—she pounded a jeweled fist into the palm of her other hand—“work to make sure that everyone around the world who needs these drugs gets them. Because we know the cost of these drugs is exorbitant. But in the meantime”—she raised her glass—“I want you all to toast yourselves, you wonderful people. This is a good year.”

Chris turned to Hector, his glass raised. “Did you know it’s a good year?” he asked.

Hector smirked. “I’ve heard that.”

The amfAR functionary led the queen around the room, introducing her. When he brought her before Hector, Chris, and Maira, her amazing eyebrows flew upward.

“Good for you ,” she said with a conspiratorial satisfaction. “Good for you for disrupting their little game !” She cackled, full of mirth. Then her eyes fixed on Hector. She brought a jeweled hand to his cheek.

“This one looks like Fernando Lamas,” she decreed, looking him tenderly in the eyes. “Thank you for your work.”

She sailed on. Hector, Chris, and Maira suppressed flabbergasted titters.

“Was that the guy on Falcon Crest ?” Chris whispered.

“I think it was his dad,” Maira said.

“Oh, yes, he was hot ,” Hector conceded, putting the name and face together in his head. “You think they fucked?”

Chris tipped his head in the queen’s direction. “I think that was your invitation to visit her hotel suite tonight.” But even as he said it, his face flushed and new beads of sweat broke out over his upper lip. “And now I’m hitting the toilet,” he said, slipping away.

“You want me to follow just in case?” Maira asked. Hector knew why she was asking. She was thinking about the incident last week in their tiny office in SoHo, when Chris had not made it all the way to the bathroom and she’d found him in the hallway, crying, before running back inside for a roll of paper towels. The new medications had power far beyond their intended purpose, alas.

Chris shook his head curtly and stepped away.

“Wait a minute,” Maira said to Hector, tracing Chris’s steps and peering out the door a few seconds. Shortly, she returned. “He made it,” she reported. “I just wanted to make sure.”

Hector nodded. “So, dinner?”

“Where?”

They found the local activist and made a plan to meet up at eight for Thai food in Davie Village. Chris and Maira stayed behind at the reception but Hector was beat; he wanted a nap before dinner. More to the point, he wanted to cocoon himself in solitude in his hotel room for an hour or two; he couldn’t understand the dull itch of rage he was feeling just underneath every conversation he’d had that day, as though a deeply immersed part of himself wanted to suddenly sigh aloud and say, Oh please, shut the fuck up. He’d managed to quell that inner bitch all day, but he felt that if he didn’t get an hour or two alone, she’d surface and he’d regret it.

He wended his way through the vast conference center toward the exit, ducking his head down to avoid encounters with anyone he knew.

“Hector!” he heard a voice behind him. He turned to find David, a fellow Boricua, from the Chicago chapter of the movement, hustling toward him, his lanyard swinging from his neck. David caught up with him and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Fucking crazy day, huh?” he asked. “Can you believe Liz?”

“We were just at a little reception with her,” Hector said. “She’s fucking amazing.” But he felt suddenly hollow saying it, by rote, as though he were following the standard worshipful script about the queen.

David beamed. “She fucking slammed Chrétien!”

“She did.”

“You got dinner plans?”

“Thai in Davie Village. You guys wanna come?”

David nodded. The two walked along in silence for a moment. Hector felt burdened to make conversation but couldn’t bring himself to it.

“You think you’ll be in Chicago for our conference next month?” David asked him. “We’d love to have you guys.”

“I think I’m getting out of the AIDS biz,” Hector said, surprising himself. Had he just said that? And then he added: “Before this whole circus falls apart.”

David stopped. “What do you mean?”

Hector released a contemptuous snort. “This whole circus! There’s no cure coming. Look at the resistance data so far. Look at the failure rates. All these meds are gonna fall apart in about four months and then we’ll be looking back on today embarrassed at ourselves for partying.”

David stared at him, then laughed awkwardly. “Are you doing a Larry Kramer to entertain me?”

“No.”

“But that’s not what the data is showing. We get the fundamental concept now. We have other agents coming down the pike. Merck’s got a compound. Yeah, sure, cure, maybe not. But suppression.”

Hector felt himself soften. What had just happened to him? He put an arm around David’s shoulders, continued walking. “Now you know why I gotta get out.”

“You’re burned out!” David offered. He seemed relieved at Hector’s turnabout. Here was something he could understand. “Everyone’s burned out. It’s been, like, eight fucking years of this. Take some time off, go somewhere warm. Go see your family. But you know you can’t leave.”

Hector laughed. “Is that, like, you reading my mind or some kind of a threat?”