“But you’re not going to give me a name.”
“The name doesn’t really matter, Justice. We’re all just pawns in a bigger game. The people who run the show, they don’t have a name, not even a face. I get cryptic messages, phone calls from strangers in the night, attorneys maybe. I don’t know who they are or who they work for. I don’t want to know.”
“So you become a part of the big lie.”
“We’re all part of it, Justice. They own us, the faceless, nameless people. Half the world’s wealth controlled by one percent. That’s how it’s set up, how it works.”
“And Taylor Fairchild’s just another pawn?”
“Just another pawn.”
“Pawn to queen, perhaps?”
“Why do you have to push it so far, Justice?”
“Fifteen years ago, when Winston Tsao-Ping was calling his mother from the hospital, you were calling Taylor Fairchild’s mother, weren’t you? Rose Fairchild knew how to take care of things, especially when it came to protecting her own. You called her again a few weeks ago, when you learned that Callahan had the videotape.”
Montego’s eyes were steady, untroubled.
“Your friend needs your help, Justice.”
Peter came down, motionless but breathing steadily, and I caught him in my arms. Montego removed his jacket, emptied the pockets, and used it to cover Peter.
“How do you get through the day, Montego? As a cop, I mean? Knowing what you know?”
His eyes never wavered.
“By going home every night and kissing my wife, and playing with my kids, and tucking them safely into bed. By taking them to church on Sunday, and kneeling down, giving thanks and praying to God to protect them. That’s what’s real to me, Justice. The rest is just a big game, smoke and mirrors, completely beyond my control. Or yours.”
I nodded at the cassettes.
“What happens to them?”
“These tapes don’t exist. They never did.”
“And Gitt?”
“Don’t worry about Gitt. I’ll take care of Gitt.”
I glanced around, at the blood, the sex toys, the drugs.
“Could be messy.”
“Callahan and Mittelman died at the hands of a sex deviate. The autopsy reports showed both men were sodomized. The evidence pointed overwhelmingly to Charlie Gitt. When I came here to question him, he tried to kill me. I defended myself.”
“You’re committing murder, Montego.”
“I’m saving your life, and your friend’s. I’m providing Melissa Zeigler with some closure. End of story.”
I carried Peter up the cellar steps, out to the yard, and down the viny pathway past the dead dog. Peter started to come around and mumbled my name. I told him he was going to be all right, that we were going home.
Montego had sprung the big gate and left it open. As I passed through, I heard a single gunshot, and knew that Charlie Gitt was dead. My only regret was that I hadn’t been there to watch him die.
Taylor Fairchild was sworn in as the new chief of police on the same day I was scheduled to receive the results of my HIV blood test.
By then, several other events had taken place. Peter’s girlfriend, Cheryl, flew out from Minnesota, and took him home. With the
Los Angeles Sun
shut down, Roger Lawson accepted a position as the mayor’s top public relations officer, and moved into a bigger office and better-paying position at City Hall. Katie Nakamura and her fiancé left for Portland to start a new magazine on the Internet. Alexandra Templeton went home to be with her parents and think about her future.
To my surprise, Cecile Chang called, offering me the opportunity to complete the revisions on my script and see it through production. I gratefully accepted although, in the end, PBS would consider my segment too controversial for broadcast, especially with my tarnished name attached, and would eliminate it from the series. Reporters continued to try to reach me with questions related to Templeton’s
GQ
piece, and a producer or two even hinted at possible film projects, but I didn’t return any of their calls. As for the article itself, I never did get around to reading it, and Templeton never brought it up again, although I did finally break down and tell her what had happened to me at the Reptile Den.
My appointment at the Jeffrey Goodman Clinic was on a Thursday at 4 p.m. I talked long distance with Templeton about it, then drove to the clinic alone, telling myself I was prepared for the worst but not really believing it. I took the elevator to the second floor, as before, and signed in, again using my numbered code for anonymity. A few minutes later, a young Filipino man with a round face and a wispy mustache stepped from an office and called out my code numbers in a neutral voice that troubled me.
I sat in a chair next to his desk. The office was so small, our knees nearly touched. He looked through the form I had filled out previously, and noted that my last test had been negative. He explained that my blood had been sent through two separate testing procedures—the ELISA and the Western Blot—to rule out the chance of false negatives and false positives. The short time he took to explain these things, no more than a minute or two, seemed interminable. Worse, with all my previous tests, when the results had come back negative, the explanation leading up to the test results had not been so lengthy and elaborate.
Finally, he got to the point.
“I’m afraid the results of your tests are inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive.”
“One of the tests was negative, the other came back inconclusive. So we’re unable to verify for certain whether your blood is clearly with or without antibodies at this point.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It could mean a number of things.”
“Could it mean that I’m sero-converting?”
He hesitated, for half a second.
“It’s a possibility.”
“How much of a possibility?”
“I can’t really put a statistical figure on it.”
His eyes shifted uneasily. I didn’t need a figure. I suddenly felt as if I were suffocating in the tiny office. I stood, and he stood with me.
“We’ll need to take another blood sample, run the tests again.”
“I think I’ll wait a few months, if it’s all the same. Enough time so the results are conclusive, one way or the other. I don’t like jumping through these emotional hoops.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks for your time.”
“Just don’t wait too long. With early treatment—”
“Thanks, I know the speech.”
I pulled open the door and went out, past men and women sitting on benches who all looked up, all studied me, to see if they could tell. There was fear in some of the eyes, stark fear, which I’m sure they saw in mine.
I walked briskly down the hallway, not looking anyone in the eye, and through a restroom door. I went straight into the stall, locked the door behind me, dropped my pants, and just made it onto the toilet seat as my intestines emptied themselves clean. It was a large stall, designed for wheelchair use, with sanitized white tiles on the floor and a screened window open on the far side for fresh air. Through the window, I could hear the sounds of the city. The rumble of car engines, a horn.
I’d never felt more alone, more afraid.
When I felt the walls closing in, and a strange voice speaking inside my head so fast I couldn’t understand the words, I cleaned up and went out. I rode down in the elevator, avoiding more eyes. When the doors opened, I saw Oree Joffrien across the lobby, waiting for me.
I wanted to walk past him, to get some air, but he moved at an angle toward the door and blocked my path.
“Alexandra called. She thought someone should be here for you, just in case.”
“That was thoughtful of her.”
“It didn’t go well, did it?”
“Is it so obvious?”
He nodded, and smiled sympathetically. I told him the exact results, that nothing was settled yet, that there was a small chance I wasn’t sero-converting and the next tests might come back completely negative. He didn’t say anything to that.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Trying to pull myself together, trying to stop the speedy voices bouncing around inside my skull.
“It was nice of you to come, Oree.”
“I???ve been through this myself. I know how it feels.”
“Was someone waiting in the lobby for you?”
“Cecile.”
We started walking, through the double glass doors, out to the sunny street. Oree put a hand on my shoulder.
“I think this is the point when you’re supposed to ask me if my results were negative or positive.”
“That’s your business, Oree, not mine.”
“Not if we’re serious about seeing each other.”
“Are we serious? Both of us?”
We were on the sidewalk, next to the Mustang. He stopped and faced me.
“I tested positive, Benjamin. Not quite four years ago.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat, confused by my feelings, not sure if I was relieved or saddened by what he was telling me.
“Is that the secret you were holding back? The fact that you’re infected?”
He nodded.
“That’s why you didn’t want to get involved too quickly?”
“I wanted to become friends first, Ben. Before sharing my secrets. Before becoming romantically involved. That’s the way I’ve always been, even before I sero-converted.”
“It was a lover who infected you then? Someone you were serious with?”
“We were a couple. We’d both tested negative. By chance, he was one of those rare people with advanced AIDS but no symptoms, who tested falsely negative because his system was no longer producing antibodies to the virus. It happens from time to time. Unfortunately, I got caught in one of those times.”
“Tough break. I’m sorry.”
“We thought we were safe as a couple. We got careless, foolish, assumed too much. I became infected, not long before he came down with pneumocystis.”
“I take it he’s gone.”
He nodded. A truck rumbled by on the street and backfired, making me jump.
“I don’t know what to say, Oree. Right now, things are—I don’t know—up in the air.”
“Worse than that, I imagine.”
I tried to smile.
“Worse, yes.”
“Could you use another friend, Benjamin?”
He held open his arms, and took me to him. His arms, his chest, everything about him, were strong. Yet he was unabashedly gentle, at ease with his humanity, his feelings. A man, in the true and complete sense.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Oree.”
“None of us does, Ben. None of us does.”
“I need some time.”
“You’re finally learning patience, then.”
He was smiling as he said it, and the warmth of his smile washed over me, helping me to forget some of the coldness I was feeling. We stood holding one another for what seemed like a long time, until some of the turmoil inside me began to dissipate, and I felt my equilibrium coming back.
Oree asked me if I wanted to get an early dinner, maybe down in Little Ethiopia where we’d first met.
“Tomorrow, maybe. Right now, I have an errand to run.”
“Tomorrow, then, if you still feel like it.”
I climbed into the Mustang and pulled away, watching him wave in my rearview mirror until he was a speck in the distance. Fifteen minutes later, I was on Fairfax Avenue, driving south past the kosher bakeries and delicatessens, following Templeton’s directions. When I saw the street sign I was looking for, I made my turn, and found the Golden Harmony Convalescent Home midway down a block lined with oaks and maples, and frail older couples shuffling along the sidewalks with small dogs.
The lobby felt cool and crisp as I entered, and smelled clean without seeming disinfected. I spoke to a woman behind a counter, who directed me to an inner office. There, another woman greeted me pleasantly and answered my questions politely. I was concerned about Harry’s insurance limitations, about how we were going to pay for his long-term care, if it came to that. The woman called up Harry’s file on her computer, then told me there was nothing to worry about, everything was taken care of.
“I don’t understand.”
“An attorney for Rose Fairchild came to visit us, Mr. Justice. Mr. Brofsky’s bills are covered for as long as he needs to stay with us.”
“Are you sure there’s not some mistake?”
She scanned the computer screen again.
“No mistake. It’s all right here. The bills are to be sent directly to Mrs. Fairchild’s attorney.”
I managed a smile.
“How thoughtful of Mrs. Fairchild.”
I asked if it was possible to see Harry. The woman walked to the doorway and pointed toward the back of the building where glass doors opened into a garden courtyard. Roses bloomed in containers and water spouted up and splashed in a central fountain. I made my way past elderly people with walkers or in wheelchairs, hearing some Yiddish along the way. I’d never thought of Harry Brofsky as Jewish, but of course he was; he’d just never talked about it much that I could remember. There had been a lot Harry and I had never talked about.
He sat alone in the shade of a patio umbrella, propped up on pillows in a wheelchair, wearing yellow pajamas, a pale blue bathrobe, and white terrycloth slippers. I pulled up a chair, sat down beside him, and straightened his robe before retying it at his waist. His eyes moved in my direction, and settled slowly on mine, but that was all the response he made.
“You know what, Harry? They were right. Turning forty’s a bitch.”
I took his limp hand and held it. I’d never held Harry’s hand like that, and I hoped he wouldn’t mind. The longer I sat there, and the more I thought about it, I didn’t think he would.