Our Young Man

5

Fred announced that he had Kaposi’s sarcoma, but it wasn’t always linked to AIDS, it was something older Jews and Italians got just naturally, older Mediterranean men, but it used to be very rare and it had been seen just in Jersey nursing homes or in Florida retirement villages. “We’re going to beat this thing,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ve got the best goddamn team of doctors on the globe, the real McCoy.” Then he thought about it for a day and he phoned: “But what if I infected you that one time I fucked you?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Guy said. “I haven’t had any other STDs, so my immune system hasn’t been compromised. And besides, you came on my stomach, not in my ass. I don’t think it’s in precum. Anyway, we only did it once — and you need multiple exposures, don’t you?”

“Hey, maybe you gave it to me,” Fred said. “That’s a possibility, isn’t it? Should I sue you? Can the top get it?”

“Not usually,” Guy said. “Anyway, don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You’re as strong as an ox.”

“Do you know if you’re clean?”

“Clean?”

“I guess I’m not clean now.”

“Don’t worry. Do you have any other symptoms?”

“A tubercular cough. Night sweats. Swollen lymph glands. Weight loss. I’m a goner, right?”

“I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“C’mon!” Fred shouted into the receiver. “You’re supposed to reassure me,” he said, disgusted.

“What do the doctors say, the real McCoys?”

“They don’t know shit. They don’t even know for sure what causes it, do they? Poppers? Mustaches? Pork?”

“How about sex?”

“Isn’t it ironic that I came out now? It’s like moving to London during the Great Plague.”

Guy wondered, could he have given GRID to Fred? Could Fred have given it to him?

Guy promised to shop for and microwave him dinner that very evening, something nourishing, chicken Parmigianino and broccoli, say.

Fred said, “The house is a mess. There is an inch of dust on the fuckin’ Buddhas.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It’ll be great to see you. Don’t be offended if I don’t eat much. And if I look like hell. Is Andrew coming?” That was what he called Andrés.

“No, no, I’ll come alone. You probably just have a bad case of flu. It’s the season.”

But Fred really did look frail and diminished when he opened the door, a little defeated old man. He was in a ratty old bathrobe over baggy boxer shorts and a torn T-shirt marked “Colorado State,” where he’d studied and wrestled a century ago. “Don’t touch me!” Fred warned. “Don’t kiss me. I may be contagious. Disinfect your hands when you leave here. You really should be wearing a mask.”

“I’ll do no such thing, let me hug you.”

“Guy, I’m not fooling around, stay away.”

But Guy did hug him and felt how skinny he was under the robe, his ribs as articulated as a washboard or a xylophone. He smelled bad, like dirt and old sweat.

Guy worked hard at being cheerful; it was December, and Fred was trembling slightly like an expensive dog, though the apartment was toasty and smelled like sandalwood for some reason, maybe joss sticks burned before the idol.

Once the food was twirled and warmed in the microwave, Guy watched Fred eat, or rather dabble his fork in the sticky contents of his plate.

“Don’t use so much salt,” Guy said.

“Fuck it! I’ll be dead long before a salt buildup in my arteries. Nothing has any taste.”

Guy was staring at the quarter-sized brown spot on Fred’s thigh where his robe had fallen open. Fred intercepted his glance and said, “Pretty bad, huh?”

Guy knew from his mother that you couldn’t discuss mortality simply, nobly, honestly with the dying or the mourners, that the visitor was obliged to be cheerful. He also knew that Fred worshipped him so much he’d believe anything Guy would say. “You’ll outlive us all,” Guy promised. “You’re an ox.”

“I feel more like a calf being led to slaughter.”

Guy could see the doomed look on Fred’s face, like the pallid, resigned look of a drowning friend only a few meters out to sea but caught in an inescapable undertow. Fred had already given up. “What are my kids going to say? ‘Daddy, we told you so.’ What did I have the face-lift and the tummy tuck for? The mortician?”

“Stop, Fred, you’ll feel fine in a week.”

“Really?”

“Really. Trust me. A week.”

“Carbolic acid,” Fred said. “Wash all the exposed surfaces of your skin with carbolic acid.”

“Shut up,” Guy said playfully, and then he courageously embraced the sick man again. “I’ll be back again tomorrow.”

“You will? When?”

“We’ll see.” Then he added spitefully, “You have a heavy schedule tomorrow?”

“I’ve got nothing planned but worry. I don’t even feel up to putting together this new movie deal.” He thought about it and said, “I should do the first AIDS movie — something very romantic, with two hot young macho studs dying.”

“How hot would they be,” Guy asked, “if they both had AIDS?”

“The lead would have to lose thirty pounds for the last three minutes. We’d cast a famous straight father of nine. Makeup would cover him with black spots — an Oscar, he’d get an Oscar for kissing a man. Boffo box office!”

Fred seemed cheered up by his new product. It was a way of mastering the disease. It was a way of turning tragedy to farce for profit.

It was a depressing winter and spring. Fred kept succumbing to one disease or another. One day he couldn’t write and he sat bemused in front of a few doodles. That turned out to be a parasite in the brain, toxoplasmosis, but they’d just discovered a way of routing it. Then he succumbed to PCP, the gay pneumonia, and he was put on a ventilator and an antibiotic drip. He lost sensation in his feet except for occasional stabbing pains: neuropathy. Guy was learning a new vocabulary. Fred would get better and would go on long walks with Guy, though he was a skeleton in baggy clothes. Everything his eyes landed on he wanted to buy. Soon the spare bedroom was full of ostrich eggs nesting on branching coral supports, storage ottomans, a signed first edition of Huckleberry Finn, a huge poster for the Italian version of Gone with the Wind, lots of bad paintings in gold frames. Everything went on his American Express card and Guy got a call from a hysterical Ceil; the kids had told her after a visit with Fred that Daddy was laying up treasures like a pharaoh furnishing his tomb. Guy, who wondered how she’d found his number, mumbled that he couldn’t intervene. He didn’t even know Fred that well. She started sobbing; “I don’t care if he’s gay. Gay, schmay. It’s the children’s inheritance I’m worried about.”

“Aren’t they already grown up and married, with children of their own?”

“You bastard, trying to rob my children, you filthy French harlot and … husband-stealer.”

Guy just hung up and shrugged. He didn’t pick up the ringing phone. It was sure to be the seal, the phoque. Two days later he received a letter in the mail poorly spelled and hastily written, calling him a Jezebel switching his little homo butt before the dazed eyes of a pathetic, dying old man. She knew all about the house on Fire Island and their drug-fueled orgies where gullible Fred had been deliberately infected with a fatal disease. She knew all about vicious fag home-breakers and gold diggers.

Guy just slapped the letter in front of Fred, who read it silently, intently, then looked up at Guy with a saturnine scowl. “The bitch will stop at nothing. We’ve got to transfer the ownership of the Pines house to you. I’ve heard stories of the family seconds after a death clearing out an apartment and changing the locks. The vultures! You can bet your bottom dollar Ceil will contest the will. We’ve got to put it in your name now and make it foolproof. I’ve heard of wills where if someone who’s getting a bequest contests the will, he gets nothing. That’s what I want.”

“In France you can’t disinherit your own children. Napoleonic law.”

“Well, lah-di-fuckin’-dah, it’s my money and I’ll leave it like I want to, to the great love of my life.”

As Guy walked home through the snow he felt bad he’d only put out that one time for Fred. If he’d only known Fred was going to die so soon, he’d have been less tight-assed about it. Coached by Pierre-Georges, Guy had been playing a deep game for long-term stakes, but there was going to be only the short term, as it turned out. Oh, well, he thought, maybe the great loves are always unreciprocated; did Beatrice put out for Dante, Eloisa for Abelard? Didn’t Abelard castrate himself or something extreme? If love worked out, it was just dull and normal — Guy had done Fred a favor by rejecting him, and Guy had avoided the disease.

Andrés was commuting out to Rutgers on a bus three days a week; he was in the last year of coursework for his Ph.D. The bus was cheaper than the train. He’d rented a studio nearby on Weehawken Street where he spent two or three days a week, just a room next door to a taxidermist storeroom: Everything smelled of naphthalene. He was away from home almost too much, though at first Guy had welcomed the time alone. What was he doing in his studio? Taking tricks there? Why did he need a studio?

And then Guy paid a surprise visit to him one day on the pretense that he was in the neighborhood and wanted to take him to lunch at a new restaurant on Greenwich Street. The room was very bleak, just a chair and a desk and a floor lamp. And everywhere prints by Dalí, or at least very faithful copies — horrible robot women and crucified Christs seen from a strange axonometric perspective, and vaporous, mounted Don Quixotes, melting watches and forks. All with pretentious, far-fetched surrealist names and big Dalí signatures.

“These must be worth a fortune,” Guy said. “Are they real?”

“They’re part of my research for my Ph.D.,” Andrés said, not looking Guy in the eye.

“Not every art history student can afford originals by his topic,” Guy said.

Andrés looked uncomfortable. “Let’s get out of here. These fumes are disgusting.”

“They smell like mothballs.”

“That’s what they are. Let’s go to that restaurant of yours — my treat. I’ve got an appointment at two-thirty.”

“Who with?”

“Uh, my professor.”

“I thought you said he was on leave in France.”

“Well, a dealer, if you must know. My treat today.”

Although Andrés had been poor or stingy when they first met, now he’d become a big spender — he covered Guy with expensive presents (seashells dipped in silver, a gold seal ring with an absurd coat of arms he’d invented, three parakeets on an apple, a white fox fur throw for the bed, first-class plane tickets for a weekend in San Juan, where he’d lodged them in El Convento, built around a courtyard, noisy all night with riotous birthday parties or business conventions). And he bought himself designer clothes which looked silly on him — skinny light blue Dolce & Gabbana trousers and an Hermès jacket of a beige canvas with big red darts, dozens of monogrammed shirts, old-fashioned lace-up shoes from Brooks and fur-lined black suede space boots, three good suits, and a Kenzo gray overcoat. Where was all the money coming from? His father had been laid off from his air-conditioning repair job, Andrés told him when Guy read an article about unemployment in Colombia. All this senseless spending made Guy uneasy, and whenever Andrés was about to purchase some new silly extravagance, Guy would say, “Do you really need it? Will you ever wear it? Why not save up and buy one really perfect blazer?” It was as if Andrés were buying as compulsively as Fred, as if he were embarrassed by all the cash stuffing his wallet. Mysterious people (a lady, a man) called and asked for Andrés; Guy overheard Andrés’s end of the conversation, which was all about delivery dates. “I can’t do it that fast,” Andrés said curtly. His hands were often stained with coffee; there’d been two hair dryers on his workshop desk — two? What for? Andrés never blow-dried his hair. Then he saw a scrap of paper on which Andrés had written the address of an art gallery in St. Louis — Drew Fine Arts. What was going on?

He knew what was going on but chose to ignore it. Andrés offered to pay Guy’s rent.

“Are you mad?” Guy said. “Maybe when I owe some real estate tax in March we can split it. It’s only a few hundred dollars. But you’re my husband.” And the word “husband,” which Guy pronounced with an ambiguous smile, so thrilled Andrés that he had to unbend his sudden erection that was folded uncomfortably in his pale-blue shorts under his jeans. He bullied Guy into the bedroom and then gently smoothed him out on the bed like a paper dolly. He tugged their trousers off without unbuttoning them — they were both that skinny. In his haste he spilled some of Guy’s pocket change on the floor. He didn’t even bother to unbutton their shirts, and reached up to pinch his nipple. Nothing excited Guy more — he joked that his tits were his primary sexual organ — but he’d forbidden Andrés to inflict that sweet torture on him for fear his nipples would become grotesquely enlarged and he’d no longer be fit for bathing suit modeling. No tit-pinching, no long, bruising kisses — the merchandise had to be respected.

Never had Andrés been more ardent. Something about the word “husband” had roused him to new heights of ecstasy. Guy felt for the first time that he was understanding the meaning of each kiss, each hug, each thrust; it was as if in a dream he’d suddenly mastered sign language and could read it effortlessly, fluently. After they both climaxed, first Guy, then Andrés, they lay side by side, panting. Andrés got up and staggered a second and went into the bathroom. His ass looked boyish and white and unimportant under his dark shirt. He wiped them down with a wet washcloth. He almost swooned beside Guy. They turned on their sides facing each other. Guy just hoped Andrés wouldn’t be caught by the police — it was a serious offense, wasn’t it. Jail time?

“I like it that we both look alike, thin and hairy and tall, except you have these cute little ears”—he touched them—“and that perfect skin.”

Guy laughed. “And I’m ten years older.”

Startled, Andrés propped himself up on an elbow and said, “You’re kidding.”

“I’m thirty-eight. Look. I’ll show you my passport.”

“I always assumed you were six years younger than me.”

“As Pierre-Georges would say, professionally I’m twenty-three. But chronologically I’m thirty-eight.”

“I’ve always seen you as a little brother, someone I had to protect.”

“Let’s go on pretending. I like that role.”

“It’s crazy, how do you do it?”

“Genes, I guess. My brother Robert is another Dorian Gray, though my mother looks her age. Maybe I’ll be struck by a coup de vieux.” He sang the Beatles’ line, “‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?’ and when I look it?”

“I’ll always love you,” Andrés blurted out. And Guy looked at him with a sad smile, as if doubting and believing at the same time this eternal pledge.

“Anyway, it’s all an illusion,” Guy said. “Here you can see crow’s feet.” He pointed to his eyes. “And here my chin line is giving way no matter how many isometrics I do or how many sticks of gum I chew in private. And my nose is getting bigger every year, though luckily I was born with little jug ears. But the secret of looking young is always darting about, never staring at a fixed point, being the first to leap up and fetch the milk.” He was very proud of the word “fetch,” which had no equivalent in French. Lately they’d begun to speak mostly English to each other. Guy had no Spanish and Andrés’s French was rusty. Besides, Americans resented foreign languages being spoken around them. Americans thought foreigners were like impertinent kids speaking pig latin to mock their elders.

“No,” Andrés said, “it’s your face! Nothing to do with being constantly in motion, though you do that, too, my little hummingbird. Your face is just so perfect and unlined and beautiful.”

“Autant que ça dure. As long as it lasts.”

“You’re just gloomy because your father died.”

“When a father dies, the son sees himself approaching the edge of the cliff: Next!”

“You always make everything into a general principle,” Andrés said, teasing him, looking at how the black hairs on Guy’s legs grew darker and denser as they approached his crotch and started to swirl as if being drawn into a vortex. They were such strong legs, strong like a bow strung with powerful muscles. Andrés could feel himself growing hard again and was afraid of annoying Guy with the persistence of desire — maybe Guy was too old to go at it multiple times! Andrés lay on his stomach to hide his erection but propped himself on his elbows so his bald spot wouldn’t be right under Guy’s nose.

“We Frenchies are just like that,” Guy said, smiling. Guy buried his face in his hands, then lowered them slowly, as if peeking at Andrés: “Are you shocked that I’m so old?”

Andrés just rolled over on his side, revealing his erection.

“Very eloquent,” Guy said. They made love again. The phone rang and rang. “Why doesn’t the service pick up?” They took turns fucking each other. To Guy they enjoyed an almost oneiric freedom with each other, something he’d never known, which had nothing to do with role-playing and everything to do with abandon.

When Guy phoned his service the operator said a Mr. Fred had called and was back in St. Vincent’s. Guy showered and dressed rapidly and walked over to the hospital. Guy faintly resented these constant emergencies, as if Fred had designed them to trap Guy into seeing him more frequently. He stopped by the front desk to ask which was Fred’s room and zigzagged down the polished marble corridors to the elevator in the far southeast corner. His irritation melted away and he realized that all along it had been anxiety about what he’d find in Fred’s room.

St. Vincent’s had more cases of AIDS than any hospital in America, Guy had heard. Now he was walking past so many rooms housing cadaverous men on drips, it was as if Auschwitz victims were being resuscitated. Some seemed unsalvageable. They were like those concentration camp prisoners whom other inmates called “Muselmanns” because they just rocked back and forth, their eyes vacant, waiting for the end.

Fred wasn’t one of those. He must have been given some sort of upper because he chattered incessantly and licked his dry lips. He winced under Guy’s light touch when Guy bent down toward the bed. He was squinting — could he see Guy? Surely he must recognize his distinctive cologne. There were two other visitors when Guy arrived, cronies, childhood friends from Brooklyn, two old, portly men with liver spots on their hands and wattles under their chins. Fred would probably look like them if he hadn’t had the spots blowtorched off his hands and a surgical lift of his chin. But how much more natural and comfortable these men seemed, with their hands folded over their bellies and their lived-in faces. Jews, Guy thought, and wondered why he’d never met any of Fred’s childhood friends before, out on Fire Island. He’d heard that Jews were good family men who didn’t drink or gamble or play with boys. Was Fred a tragic exception?

Fred made the introductions and the visitors gave him a limp handshake and tilted their faces in attitudes of suspicious inspection, as if Guy with his youth and startling good looks were the very embodiment of the Christian Gay Plague.

Guy said, “What’s wrong with you now? You don’t look sick.”

“I’m blind. CMV in the eyes.”

“How horrible. Are they curing it?”

“That’s why I have the drip,” Fred said wearily. “They’re going to implant a pellet directly into my eyes with Something-Acyclovir in it. But it’s irreversible.” He looked tired. Guy wondered how long his friends had been here.

“Is it permanent?”

“Yes, I’m blind,” Fred said bitterly. “Great for a film producer.”

One of the guests had brought Fred a murder mystery, not even a new copy, which he suggested might be a good property for Fred to develop. “You could get your friend to read it to you.”

“Just because you finally got around to reading a book, Marty, is no reason to turn it into a fuckin’ movie.”

“It’s a sort of a Cagney film,” Marty said defensively.

“Great. How long has he been dead? Nah, I probably won’t be making any more films. I certainly won’t spend my last days listening to Mickey Spillane. Keats, maybe, or Tolstoy. Or James Michener. Something classy.”

Guy was reeling from news of the diagnosis. “You’re really blind? You can’t see me?”

“I’m blind!” Fred shouted, then he paused and smiled. “But I can remember every detail of your face. Sit here,” he said, patting the bed, “so I can read your face like Braille.”

Guy was embarrassed in front of the other men; he was a fegala, wasn’t that what they were thinking, a gentile and a faggot and the angel of death. But he couldn’t deny poor Fred anything, so he perched on the edge of the bed and lifted Fred’s hands to his face, and Fred’s hands roamed ravenously over his perfect features and even thundered over his ears. It was too much of a display of affection for the visitors; they stood and bade farewell. “Thank God these nudniks are gone, real schnorrers, always wanting something. That Marty always was a putz.”

“Speak English,” Guy said, laughing.

Fred’s fingers, tasting of rubbing alcohol, traced his teeth and his lips, even caged his fluttering eyelids for a second. Guy thought of fireflies.

“My darling boy,” Fred said. “My beauty.”

“Since you’ve gotten sick,” Guy said to be nice, “you look thinner and twenty years younger.”

“I do?” Fred asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Guy said, wondering how far he could go, “you look like that A-list gay you’ve always wanted to be.” Tears sprang to Guy’s eyes; luckily Fred couldn’t see them.

“Perfect, and I can’t even look in the mirror.” He paused. “I don’t want you to think you gave it to me. I went out to the Meat Rack last summer and got fucked.”

“Without a rubber?”

“Yes, goddamn it, without a rubber.”

“Just one time?”

“You’re meshuga,” Fred said, “with your multiple exposures, just one time you can get infected. I’m the living proof; that’s the only time I ever bottomed.”

Guy suddenly wondered if Andrés was clean. Was he faithful? That’s why Guy thought he must always be available sexually for him — and passionate — or else he’d look elsewhere for that necessary fifth orgasm a day. Was he using his studio to trick?

Fred, as if reading Guy’s mind, asked, “How’s Andrew?”

Guy said, “He’s fine. Do you want to sleep? Should I leave, or should I sit over here and read a book while you nap? Tell me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Stay. Stay. Do you have a book?”

“I’ll step out and buy the paper and get a coffee and come back in half an hour. Do you want something from the outside world?”

“Nothing, some wintergreen gum. Promise you’ll come back?”

“I promise.”

“That Marty! You could read the fuckin’ Mickey Spillane.”

Guy felt exhausted when he left Fred and walked past all those somber, silent men in their identical rooms — young, he supposed, but looking ancient, with their gaunt faces and their open mouths. He wanted to flee — he wished he could shoot a commercial in Tahiti, someplace sunny and distant from all this.

The rooms were identical but filled with grief and disease, flowers and stuffed animals and ranks of get-well cards.

People kept saying, “AIDS is not a death sentence,” and they spoke of fighting it, but that was all nonsense; American puritans acted as if everything were just a matter of willpower. It did kill its victims, one after another, relentlessly. If Fred’s indiscretion was in the Meat Rack, then that must mean he was infected after he fucked Guy last spring; that was a relief — although all this effort to pin down the exact occasion was futile and silly. No one knew precisely how it was transmitted and it seemed everyone, men and women, straight and gay, was vulnerable.

Guy got a phone call from Andrés one morning in February at nine A.M. His studio had been raided by the cops and the FBI and he was being retained at a federal prison, and they’d confiscated all his forgeries and were holding them as evidence. Two of his dealers in New York had also been rounded up in the same sweep. Guy wondered if he himself was a person of interest. He called Pierre-Georges.

“I wonder why Andrés was taking such risks?” Guy asked.

“He thought he needed more money to keep up with you. He told me so. What a careless guy, getting caught like that. And he’s a risk queen — he used to have a motorcycle. These young men always get killed. The best source for organ transplants. Don’t they call them ‘donor cycles’?”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was worried about money?” Guy asked, annoyed with the callous chatter.

“As your manager I didn’t want to see you lavishing a fortune on that Andrés. I know you don’t care about money, but someday — someday soon — you’ll be grateful to me. And by the way, make sure your friend Fred transfers to you the title of ‘Petticoat Junction.’” (That was Pierre-Georges’s nickname for their Fire Island house.)

“Please don’t bring that up. I’ve got to help Andrés. That’s the thing.”

“He was caught red-handed,” Pierre-Georges said, interrupting. “He’ll be in prison and released in six or seven years and deported for good. In prison he’ll be raped, a pretty boy like him, and he’ll catch AIDS. And die. Be a realist.”

Guy said, “You’re insufferable,” and hung up on Pierre-Georges, who immediately called back and said, “I’ll find you the best lawyer.”

At last Guy muttered, “Thank you.”

True to his word, Pierre-Georges found a lawyer later in the day whom Guy rushed to Midtown to see, wearing a new blue silk suit. (Guy preferred the French word, costume, since it was explicit about clothes as playacting.)

The lawyer, an old Hungarian whose fingers were yellow from nicotine and who had four original Magrittes on the wall, explained that Dalí’s case was complicated, that nearly half the prints attributed to him were fake. “There are new prints that Dalí never made, then there are reprints that are adaptations of real Dalí paintings, then there are new fake prints added to authentic editions, then there facsimiles with forged signatures, and finally there are fake copies of real prints.” The man smiled and made Guy an espresso on a machine he had next to his desk. He was a chain smoker. His office was on Fifth Avenue and had big windows that looked out across the street to the Forty-second Street library. “It’s all a mess, especially because the master himself signed a hundred thousand blank sheets of paper. He was already gaga, but his greedy wife …” It was snowing, and Guy imagined the bronze library lions were shivering.

“Can we post bail for poor Andrés?”

“It might be very high because he’s a foreigner who could flee.”

“That’s okay.”

“Why would he do these forgeries?”

Guy thought the man was a sophisticated European and could deal with the truth. “Money. He’s my … boyfriend and felt he had to keep up. I earn a lot. I’m a model.” The man nodded his head in mock obeisance, which irritated Guy, who was quick to add, “It’s a very brief career.”

“Like a butterfly’s,” the man said politely. “All beauties have brief lives. Professional lives.”

Guy wasn’t sure if the man was flirting or just civilized. Guy had been in America too long, where real men were always gruff, might lunch but never dine with another man, and, seated even next to each other, conversed in loud voices as if they were miles apart. They didn’t want to be seen conversing softly, confidingly. Nor would real men sit in adjoining chairs at a table for four, but were always seen facing each other. But in Europe even heterosexuals were refined, at least the educated ones. He’d had a very refined friend, a curator at the Louvre called Titus, and he’d asked him point-blank if he was gay. “Non, je m’excuse, j’aime les filles,” he said after their twelfth intimate supper.

The lawyer, Lazlo, took down all Andrés’s details and promised he’d get him out on bail in a day or two. “Does he speak English?”

“Perfectly,” said Guy.

“I’ll have to meet with him to put together our defense. I know a lot about the surrealists — Magritte was my friend, as was the photographer Kertész, another Hungarian in New York like me.”

Guy nodded to show he recognized the names. He thanked Lazlo for taking on the case and the lawyer very politely accompanied him to the elevator. Guy handed him his card. “I’m just the right person for this job,” Lazlo said. “A foreigner, an art expert, somewhat experienced as a lawyer.” He smiled at his own modesty and patted Guy on the back. He was considerably shorter than Guy and his glasses, as Guy could see in the neon glare, were smudged. He was puffing away on his cigarette.

“What will happen to him?” Guy asked.

“He’ll probably spend a few years in prison.”

“Years?”

“Yes, it’s a serious crime, you know. He must love you a lot. We might get him out on parole with two hundred hours of community service.”

Guy shook his head and stared at his own lustrous lace-up shoes below the knife-sharp crease of his trousers. “Yes,” he said, “in love. Foolish boy.”

That evening as Guy was eating unbuttered popcorn with Lucie and filling her in on the whole horror story, Lazlo phoned. “He’ll be out tomorrow,” he said.

“Thank you, thank you,” Guy cried out. He never let himself show excitement (except in bed), but this time his gratitude burst forth. Lucie, puzzled by the astonishing enthusiasm, cocked her head and smiled quizzically, like a hard-of-hearing person listening to an explosion.

“And the … caution, the bail, was it very dear?”

“Not so bad, we’ll talk about all that in the morning.”

After Guy hung up he hugged Lucie and danced around the room with her in a sort of ecstasy-polka. Then he called Pierre-Georges with the good news.

Pierre-Georges said sourly, “That still doesn’t mean he won’t serve time.”

Guy didn’t want to think about that and said, “What are you watching? I can hear the TV.”

“An old movie — horrible color.”

“What movie?”

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

“Oh, I like that one.”

“It’s idiotic.” Then, after a pause, Pierre-Georges asked, “Do you think Andrés knew what kind of risk he was running?”

“Yes, I’m sure he did.”

“He must love you very much.” He was the second person to say that today.

Guy’s instinct was to pass that off as a gibe or a joke, but he caught himself and said softly, “Yes. He must. It’s crazy love, but it is love.”

When Andrés was released the next morning at nine, Guy was there to greet him. It was from the federal prison down on Park Row and office workers were swarming around him. Guy had put on a black cashmere turtleneck and black slacks and was wearing his black cashmere peacoat. He thought all the black would highlight his pale face, and the touch of cashmere would be comforting. And it might suggest, as bright colors would not, how grave the situation was and that he was … in mourning (en deuil).

Andrés walked into his arms, though normally he was self-conscious in public. All that was behind them; they had so little time together left, Guy felt he was in an opera, the last tragic act. Andrés held Guy’s head between his long hands and covered him with kisses. They were both crying.

“Wanna see my head shots?” Andrés asked with a grin, and showed him two mug shots the police had taken, one straight on and the other in profile. He was wearing a uniform in the pictures, though now he was back in yesterday’s clothes. “My first modeling job,” he said ruefully.

Guy said, “Good cheekbones, bad lighting.”

Andrés said, “They actually call it a booking photo. Isn’t that funny?”

Andrés smelled. They rushed home and went to bed. They made love twice in a row, and for once Guy didn’t keep Andrés from kissing his nipples or his mouth. Guy licked Andrés’s fluffy armpit, which smelled. Guy wanted to memorize his body, soon to be lost to him for years. Andrés had a few dark hairs between his nipples, but in the daylight Guy could see faint swirls of short, almost blond hair across his torso, the fuzz that would turn long and dark by the time he got out of prison. His uncircumcised penis tasted rank. Guy propped himself up and studied it. It was big and ugly, with such a long trunk and such a loose sack — it looked prehistoric but friendly, like some pet lizard relative known to the family alone. As Andrés bit into his nipple he looked up searchingly into Guy’s face. “I guess you’ll be doing this with other men now.”

Guy said, “Hush.” And then he added, “It depends on how many years … we’re apart.”

Andrés burst into tears and sobbed and sobbed on Guy’s chest. Guy kept stroking his hair and wished he’d been more reassuring. The phone rang but Guy let the service pick up. Then it rang again. But Guy was trapped under a sobbing young man. What if it was poor blind Fred? Or a booking agent? He didn’t want to crush this moment under the rolling juggernaut of his career, not now, when Andrés’s life was going up in flames.

“I haven’t even told my parents yet,” Andrés said in a spookily quiet, solemn voice. It sounded like a whisper in a cavern. “It will break their hearts. They were living through me.”

“Have you told Rutgers yet? Your adviser?” Guy asked.

“Of course not!” Andrés snapped. “When would I have told them?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“And now with Interpol, this will follow me around the rest of my life. And I’ll never get my degree. Who would hire a criminal anyway? In the past even a criminal could become a grade-school teacher in the Andes or Angola, but now everyplace is interconnected. Should I just kill myself?”

Guy was suddenly energized. “No, you should call this brilliant lawyer who’s an expert in art and immigration. He says maybe he’ll get you out on parole.”

“No, my contact at Drew Fine Arts got two years, and he’s an American citizen — two years and a fine of three thousand dollars, and he wasn’t forging fakes, just selling them.”

“But Lazlo told me the whole Dalí estate is a mess because the master—”

“Yes, but Dalí’s paper was watermarked with an infinity symbol and was from a particular factory that went belly-up in 1980. There are tons of Dalí products out there — shirts, cognac bottles, gilt oyster knives, ashtrays for Air India — but they’re all authorized.”

“How disgusting,” Guy murmured.

Andrés took offense: “He’s a great Catalan artist and I only worked on lithos of his best work. The Great Masturbator, the Bullfight series, Cosmic Warrior, Caesar in Dalivision …”

“Yes, of course,” Guy said, trying to soothe him.

They went together to Lazlo’s office the next morning at ten. And the lawyer seemed charmed by them both, two young men so handsome and appealingly happy, at least on a better day. Lazlo asked them lots of questions and both he and Andrés took copious notes. Guy looked out the window at the crowds surging down Fifth Avenue, and it seemed unreal to him that they were all free and soon Andrés would be behind bars. It seemed an utterly arbitrary thing, that society would care so much about its precious property that it would punish a young man in the flower of his youth for stealing some of it. “Stealing” was a big word, since he was only copying an inferior hack who endlessly plagiarized himself and invited everyone else to join in. Even the experts would trip all over themselves trying to pinpoint the exact crime Andrés had committed. Dalí himself was dead or dying, as waxy as his absurd mustaches, and there were no pockets in the shroud, but if the heirs and lawyers were all that greedy, then Guy could pay them off. Surely no one cared about the integrity of this artist who had made a career of selling himself out. Dalí would probably have even been flattered that such a clever, handsome guy had bothered to copy his images so industriously. A copy of a fake by a fraud was surely a negligible sort of offense.

Lazlo made them cups of espresso. The cups looked none too clean. He said something that suggested he, too, regarded Dalí as a charlatan, and Guy’s passionate young Colombian took offense, predictably. And of course it was immaterial the absolute quality of the work he’d plagiarized. “Victimless crime” were the words stuck in Guy’s head. The room smelled of coffee and Gitanes and Guy suspected the large panes of glass were slick with all these continental fumes.

They hurried home with a new urgency and fell on each other, famished and frightened. Guy could taste the coffee in Andrés’s mouth. He admired his lean, muscled white ass as if he’d never seen it before, the play of muscles across it like summer lightning, except it was something humble and familiar, not cosmic but a companion, a friend, at once familiar and exciting. They were desperate and it occurred to Guy that the police could never come to arrest Andrés if Guy refused to answer the door, if they nailed it shut and fed only on each other, as white as lab mice. They were two solid men, each 150 or 160 pounds, over six feet tall, big beasts; they could afford to fast for days, weeks. Guy wanted to buy them just a month or two; when the police broke down the door they’d find them locked in each other’s arms, forming a rotting crab on the beach of a bed rich in waves of linen. They might be dead.

“What if we just ran away?” Guy said. “There must be some drought-ridden farm near Cartagena where they’d never find us or some village in the Congo where the police would die of malaria. I don’t want to live long — just a while longer with you. And then when the police closed in on our African shack we could set it on fire and go up in flames.”

Andrés started to speak and then sobs overtook him and he cried for half an hour on Guy’s chest. Something about his disarray, his vulnerability, excited Guy. The idea that this lithe, sinewy man was so wracked by sobs turned Guy on as Andrés thrashed from side to side. They wouldn’t even have conjugal rights in prison.

Andrés couldn’t bear not to be lodged inside Guy, sheathed inside Guy’s body; it had nothing to do with being macho, it was just the need to hide, to merge, to infest.

Guy didn’t dare refuse him. He didn’t want to refuse him, but it was hard to get on with their ordinary lives with Andrés’s finger hovering constantly over the pause button. They had to pretend at least they were living a normal life, didn’t they, the unworried, unhurried rhythm of their average days, or else nothing was enjoyable. It was the dailiness of their existence that delighted them, especially when it was slashed through with passion, like burlap erupting into red velvet welts. They had to set the table, scramble the eggs, wash the dishes — they couldn’t just devour each other, could they?

Guy had to visit poor blind Fred in St. Vincent’s, the City of the Dead on the seventh floor of Spellman, small and dirty, all the single rooms converted into doubles. Surprisingly, it was a carnival atmosphere that afternoon — two drags were accompanying Rollerena, and she whizzed by, homely in her black glasses and dusty organdy, a fixed smile on her face, a wand in her hand. She looked like a nerdy high school girl with glasses and acne. Sister Patricia was silently patrolling the halls, her scrubbed face accented with her furry eyebrows, her white hands tucked into her full black sleeves. Fred was asleep. When Guy woke him, he smiled and said, “I wish you’d buy me a Walkman. It’s so fuckin’ boring being blind.”

“A what?”

“You can listen to music with it,” and he mimed earphones.

“Ah! Un Baladeur!”

“Do you people have your own names for everything? What’s a computer?”

“Ordinateur.”

“See — and a hamburger?”

“Merde.”

Fred laughed and sobered up enough to say, “Come tomorrow at one. My lawyer will be able to transfer the deed.”

“One? Is that within visiting hours? Most hospitals—”

“There are no hours up here. Sister Patricia accepts everything — hell, some of these guys even spend the night with their lovers. I’ve even heard they decorate their rooms with photos and blankets and balloons from home, not that that would do a blind man any good. No dogs so far, but that’ll come.”

Guy kissed Fred goodbye on his thin, sour-tasting lips. He worried that if he accepted the Fire Island house he’d get into a legal squabble with Fred’s family. But, merde, if the Anglo Saxons had these crazy laws that allowed you to disinherit your own children, then he, Guy, would have to profit from their cruel, unreasonable rules. Anyway, the “children” were two middle-aged men well launched in their own careers, or so Fred said. Wasn’t one of them a podiatrist? Sore feet surely must be lucrative. Anyway, they neglected Fred and had taken their mother’s side in the divorce.

It was tempting to take the house — that way Guy would never have to worry again about money. He could rent it out every summer. And who knew how much Andrés’s defense would set him back?

At twelve-thirty the next day when Guy was brushing his teeth and spraying his hair, Andrés seemed moody and childish about the prospect of even a half an hour’s separation.

“The poor man’s dying,” Guy said. “He’s already blind. You might as well be jealous of the parakeet.”

Andrés said sullenly, “We don’t have a parakeet.” Then he laughed charmingly in spite of himself, the laugh cracking the marble of his face, and said, “And if you did, I’d be jealous of it.”

Guy ruffled his hair and hurried out before Andrés could become desperate again. When Guy arrived on the seventh floor he could see Fred was propped up in bed. He looked shaved and washed for the occasion, his hair combed. That man Marty was sitting in the only chair, his little soft hands folded over his belly.

As he entered the room, Guy said hi. He didn’t want to startle Fred by surprising him with a touch — Guy was good at imagining things from another person’s point of view. Marty gave his hand to be shaken — he seemed to be unfamiliar with the custom of shaking hands. Guy felt Marty was disapproving — maybe he was friends with the seal. Or maybe it was Jewish tribal thing — why enrich the pretty goy? Or maybe Guy was just being paranoid.

“I brought you a Discman — and a dozen CDs. I’ll bring you some more tomorrow — just tell me what you want.”

“Bernard Herrmann. Dimitri Tiomkin. Classy music composers.”

“What about Michel Legrand?”

“Who?”

“He did ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.’”

“French, right? Forget it. Well, let’s get started.”

Marty had drawn up the papers and now he sat beside Fred on the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

“Just summarize it in ordinary language.”

“Well, it leaves the Bel Air house to Ceil and twenty thousand to each of the boys and the Fire Island house to Guy. If anyone contests the will their bequest will be canceled. It’s called the ‘in terrorem’ clause.”

“Do you think that will stick?”

“I guess they could claim you were demented.”

“I probably will be if the CMV goes into my head. That’s why I want to get this over now.”

“Only twenty thousand for each of the boys?” Guy asked, trying to sound fair.

“Fuck ’em! They stood by their mother. Anyway, that’s all I have if I pay off the Fire Island house. I’m not made of money; I told you I am a very minor millionaire, unless I get my AIDS movie going. I live from film to film.”

Marty had to guide Fred’s hand for the will but also for the transfer of the deed to Guy. A nurse was called in as a witness.

“Ceil and the boys are going to be spittin’ mad,” Fred said with a big grin.

“You’re right there,” Marty muttered. “I can hear the schreiing already. So long, Fred.”

“So long, Marty, don’t be a stranger. Come back and see me.”

“Will do. What about all your actors? They ever come to see you?”

“Those schwartzes? They’re mostly ashamed to have been in all those Super Fly movies. They want to forget about it. That was a different period, Marty. Do you have Guy’s address? For sending him the deed?”

“You wrote it down for me.”

The minute Marty and the nurse were gone, Fred said, “Are we alone? Good. Kiss me.”

Fred was chewing some of the gum Guy had brought him, so his lips were fresh and moist. But it all felt too much like a transaction to Guy — I’ll give you the house if you give me a kiss. Of course the house was worth millions of kisses. It was just Fred’s assumption he now had the right to a kiss that saddened Guy — everything in America was transactional!

Of course, Guy was the villain stealing the bread out of Fred’s sons’ well-fed jowls. There was more shrieking in the hallway — probably another surprise birthday complete with balloons and candles. But neither Guy nor Fred was curious.

Out of deference, since Fred was blind, Guy left the lights off as the night swept in; Guy felt he should share Fred’s darkness.

It was strange how content they were just holding hands, after all the agony of his love-grappling with Andrés, the constant anguish of trying to get another millimeter inside each other’s holes; it was kind, it was peaceful, it was companionable to just sit together like this. After all, Fred had come to the end and his last thought had been for Guy. He was a rough woodcut of a man, but the portrait was of a kind man even so.

Guy felt that his life was under assault and that Fred was doing something crucial to help him. Guy had a superstition that he could preserve his youth only so long as nothing touched him, so long as he remained immune to any intensity of feeling. But now his father’s death, Andrés’s looming plight, Fred’s blindness and imminent death — all these events were threatening to engrave marks on Guy’s face. Something (or maybe it was Nothing) had stunned him into eternal youth, into immobility and imperviousness, but now the ice was cracking, great glacier shelves were collapsing into the sea, a disaster was warming up — and soon he’d be just a shrinking iceberg, another weathered face, he would come to life only to die. He ran to the mirror to look at himself. Nothing had changed.

Another hour went by. By the last glimmer of daylight seeping down an airshaft and through the dirty window, Guy read a few articles out of Variety for Fred about the movie business. The slang and abbreviations were mostly unfamiliar to Guy. (“Is this English?” he asked, and Fred chuckled.)

Apropos of nothing, Fred said, “Remember that line: ‘I grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled’? I always wondered what that meant. But now I know — you shrink as you get old and your pants are too long. And remember how gays are always supposed to be licking their eyebrows down, like this?” and he mimed licking his finger and pressing it down on his eyebrow. “That was always shorthand for saying someone was gay. But your eyebrows do grow long with age and a gay senior would worry about that.”

Suddenly two men came into the room, wearing cream-colored masks and gloves and blue hospital gowns and shower caps. They switched the lights on and one of them said, “Dad?” and he came to sit beside his father, who touched him and said, “Howie? What are you wearing?”

“Who’s this man, Dad?” To Guy he said, “Excuse me, but would you leave? This is a family moment.”

“Stay right where you are, Guy. This putz is my son. Why are you wearing all that junk, Howie?”

“For self-protection, Dad. You’re highly contagious, in case you forgot. A tear, a mosquito bite, a lick of saliva could infect us, then it’s curtains. Guy, is that your name? Scram!”

“How dare you, Howie? Guy’s my lover.”

“Lover?” the other man said, and laughed. He was shorter and rounder than Howie. “Some lover! So you’re the frog scumbag who infected our father, right? What’s he doing here, Dad — how did he get permission to visit? Family only. Nurse! Nurse!”

Fred said, “Don’t budge. These schmucks ignore me for months, then come rushing in for the money shot.”

The one called Howie, his black eyes flashing with rage over his mask, said, “He has no right to be here. Lover? The law doesn’t recognize same-sex lovers.”

“Howie,” Fred said, “we all know you’re a shyster, but the usual laws don’t apply here at St. Vincent’s. Sister Patricia is running the AIDS wards and she knows we’re all about to croak and she has the good sense to recognize real love as opposed to greedy so-called family love.”

“But the law—”

“Law, schmaw,” Fred said wearily. “I’m blind, so I can’t see if you’re all suited up, too, Buster, for your dad the hazmat.”

“I’ve taken the normal precautions,” Buster said primly.

“I suggest you reduce your risk pronto by getting the hell out.”

“What about your estate, Dad? You’re not leaving anything to this frog-slut, are you? We’re the rightful heirs and we’ll fight him tooth and nail.”

“Nail?” Fred laughed. “I guess you know plenty about infected nails in the foot business. I’ll give you ten to get out or I’ll call two big interns to escort you out. Too bad our last meeting had to be so acrimonious.”

“Dad!” Howie wailed indignantly. “We love you. Didn’t we come in all the way from Scarsdale?”

“Big fuckin’ deal. One, two, three—”

“We’re going to fight this, Dad, poor old demented man. They call it the Stockholm syndrome, the victim bonds with his captor—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fred said. “You don’t know anything bout this ’cause you haven’t talked to me in two years. Five, six, seven—”

“He’ll never get a dime,” Buster said, “your scumbag so-called lover.”

“Eight, nine, ten!” Fred pushed the emergency button and the nurse came running.

“Yes, Mr. Fred,” a big Caribbean woman said. “What does my boyfriend want?”

“Helen, I want you to get these shmucks out of here. They’re annoying the hell out of me.”

“But darlin’, they said they’re your sons.”

“No, they’re just bill collectors.”

Helen said, “Shame on you, bothering a nice man like my little sweetheart, Fred. Now git!”

“Ma’am, we really are his sons,” Howie said.

“That’s funny, I never sees you befo’ and I been here the whole time.”

“I can get a court order banning this Guy creep and—”

“You do that, hon, but visiting hours are up, now git before I call for help.”

“And he can stay?” Howie pointed to Guy.

“He’s Mr. Fred’s special friend. Rules don’t apply.”

“We’ll see about that. I’m going right now to the district judge.”

Fred smiled. “I’d say, ‘Over my dead body,’ but I don’t want to rush things.”

“Dad,” Buster said. “Don’t you have any family feeling?”

“No more than you do,” Fred said coolly. “No, don’t touch me with your gloves and masks — just rush right back to your mother with horror stories of your demented dad.”

“Do you admit you’re demented?”

“Get out!” Fred bellowed.

“I’ve taped you saying that you’re demented. It can be used in court.”

The nurse, Helen, had gone off to fetch two orderlies in the meanwhile. “Would you boys escort these gen’men out? They’re bothering my sweetie pie, Mr. Fred, and visiting hours are definitely over.”

As the brothers were accompanied out, the lawyer shook a finger at Guy and said, “You’ll be hearing from us!”

Fred was laughing. “How did I beget two such miserable specimens? Come sit here beside me.” Guy complied and bent down to kiss Fred’s puckered lips.