“Yeah, go ahead, sign me up.”
Maurice splayed a hand on one cheek, fighting back tears.
“I’m so glad you’re doing this, Benjamin. I can’t tell you how worried we’ve been.”
He opened his arms to me.
“Give a fussy old man a hug, will you?”
*
There were messages on my machine when I finally got upstairs and into the apartment. One was from Oree, a pleasant hello and how are you, nothing more pushy than that. Templeton had called twice, once from the
Times,
once from home, wondering where I was. The last message, to my surprise, was from Randall Capri, telling me he’d call again but without leaving a number.
I dialed Templeton at the
Times
and she picked right up, which meant she was sitting in her reporter’s pod in the city room, working on a story.
“Templeton here.”
“Justice here.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
I told her, including the fact that I had Chucho Pernales with me, ready to talk.
“You’ll need to get upstairs and have a word with legal. Arrange to tape an interview with Chucho, with a lawyer present. For tomorrow if you can.”
“OK.”
I heard something funny in her voice and said so.
“It’s about the interview, Benjamin.”
“What about the interview?”
“You won’t be able to be there.”
In my excitement, I’d forgotten all about that.
“No, I guess I won’t, will I.”
She lowered her voice, and probably covered the phone with her hand.
“If the
Times
even knew you were involved like this—”
“I know, Templeton.”
“If it were up to me—”
“Templeton, it’s OK. I understand.”
A moment passed that got us over the hump.
“So what else have you got for me, vagabond?”
“I was hoping you’d have something to report to me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The old house on West Adams, where Freddie Fuentes took the Asian kid the day I followed him. And the Caddy in the driveway—you were going to the plates.”
“Damn, I completely forgot. I promise to get right on it. I’ll check property records and the DMV.
“I’m only pushing because that Caddy might lead to something. I ran into it a second time, when I was up in Montecito Friday evening.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’ve been kinda busy the last few days.”
I filled her in on my most recent visit to Equus, when I’d discovered the vintage Cadillac outside George Krytanos’s cottage and, inside, a strange woman who’d come at me with a scalpel, then claimed to be his mother. When I mentioned almost getting off the road on my way back by a hulking SUV, Templeton suddenly got a case of the jitters.
“Ben, I think this whole thing might be getting out of hand. Maybe it’s time for us to go to the cops with what we have.”
“What do we have, Alex? A bunch of wild stories, conjecture, loose ends. Let’s get Chucho on tape tomorrow, see what he has to say, make our next move from there.”
“Why don’t we set up the interview today?”
“Today he’s getting checked out at AHF, where he’ll be a new client if everything works out. Me, too, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re starting treatment?”
“Looks that way.”
“Why the change of mind?”
“I guess sitting in a two-room house in a Tijuana shantytown with a mother who loves her kids made me realize what a jerk I’ve been.”
“I could have told you that and saved you the mileage.”
“You did, if I remember right. Get up to legal, Templeton, see what the lawyers have to say. And those records checks. We’ll talk later.”
As I hung up, I heard Maurice calling from the bottom of the stairs.
“Benjamin! Benjamin, come down, will you?”
I stepped to the door and looked out to see Maurice and Fred standing with Sol Shapiro, the neighbor who lived across the street from Charlotte Preston’s place. In his arms, he held a squirming bundle of dirty brown and white fur. As I trotted down the stairs, Shapiro began telling his story in his genteel, professorial manner.
“I found her on Charlotte’s doorstep last night, shivering and cold. She must have found her way back up the canyon. I took her home, dried her off, and gave her a meal. My dog wasn’t too happy about it, but I managed to keep them apart. I saw your ad in the paper, and now she’s home.”
I attempted a smile.
“So to speak.”
The screen door banged on the back porch of the house and Chucho came across the yard. When he saw Mei-Ling, he lit up like a kid at Christmas.
“Wow! That is the cutest little dog I ever see.”
He asked if he could touch the dog and Shapiro said of course. The moment Chucho ruffled her matted fur, Mei-Ling responded in her usual way, going to work on his face with her busy tongue. Shapiro transferred the dog into Chucho’s arms, and he laughed as she licked him on the nose.
I told him the dog’s name was Mei-Ling.
“I think she likes you, Chucho.”
“You know what? I always dream of having a dog like this. A tiny dog with such a cute little face.”
“No kidding.”
“
Sí,
a doggie just like this one.”
“She’s yours, then.”
He looked at me, wide-eyed.
“This dog I can have?”
“She’ll need lots of attention.”
“Oh, my God, the dog I always want look exactly like this one. I can have her for sure?”
“I think Charlotte Preston would be fine with that.”
“Charlotte Preston?”
“It’s a long story, Chucho. Maybe another time.”
He kissed Mei-Ling on the top of her head, cuddled her to his shoulder.
“You give me this dog, and I tell you everything you want to know, everything I see. I do not hold nothing back from you, I swear.”
*
Maurice’s phone calls were successful, and by late afternoon, Chucho and I were at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s westside clinic. I’d been there too many times before with too many other people—helping them fill out application forms or get their blood drawn or prepare for a trip to Cedar-Sinai Medical Center next door, if they were becoming too sick for outpatient care. Never did I think I’d be filling out the application forms myself.
Having Chucho with me was oddly reassuring. To him, a miracle was taking place, the kind of thing, he said, that could happen only in America. It was the reason so many like him came el norte, to change their lives, even to save them. I’d come full circle in my life, as I seemed so often to do, from watching Jacques die of the disease and swearing to myself that I’d never have anything to do with it again, never be a part of the AIDS community, to finally admitting that I was infected, to accepting my fate, whatever it might be.
Chucho and I went off to separate rooms for in-take counseling, then to get weighed and have our blood drawn. We’d return for checkups the following week, when all our lab results were back. We were issued AHF client cards, given information packets and manuals on HIV and AIDS. Then we were done, making the short walk home with Band-Aids and cotton swabs over the puncture wounds inside our elbows, back through the trendy shopping district along Robertson Boulevard, past The Ivy, where the Hollywood crowd lunched, up to Santa Monica Boulevard and Boy’s Town, and, finally, back to Norma Place—back home.
As we approached the house, I saw Oree Joffrien sitting behind the wheel of the Mustang, running his big hands admiringly over the new upholstery. Chucho thought at first that my car was being stolen, and I had to explain that Oree was a friend, a university professor who also had the virus in him. I introduced them, then got fresh-squeezed lemonade from Maurice’s refrigerator. We drank it sitting on the front porch swing, while Chucho picked burrs from Mei-Ling’s matted fur and I told Oree about my long weekend in Tijuana.
He glanced across the yard at the car.
“I like what you did with the Mustang. Looks very sharp.”
“Next comes the engine. Time for an overhaul. Then new tires, new brakes.”
“Sounds like you’re putting some pieces back together, Ben.”
Our eyes met.
“Is that what it sounds like?”
He nodded, saying nothing more about it.
Maurice and Fred came back from the supermarket loaded down with groceries, and invited Oree to stay for a barbecue. He thanked them but told them he’d come by hoping he might take me to dinner to celebrate my safe return from Tijuana. He swung his handsome head slowly my way as he said it, then waited patiently for my answer, his narrow, heavy-lidded eyes steady but undemanding, ever the calm Buddha.
“Sure, dinner would be great.”
Dusk was gathering as we strolled down the hill to the boulevard. Chucho walked with Mei-Ling, who was tethered to Maggie’s leash. He headed off with Maurice and Fred toward U-Wash Doggie to give Mei-Ling a wash and fluff, while Oree and I sauntered farther down the boulevard to Itana Bahia for a tasty Brazilian dinner.
We got there early enough to get a window table, and I told Oree I’d need some wine, that I was still a little edgy coming back from the tequila detour I’d taken against my will in TJ. He ordered a nice bottle of Argentine sauvignon blanc and we drank our first glass watching the evening crowd pass along the sidewalk, while the waitress lit the candle on the table as dusk deepened and a big sports utility vehicle that I should have recognized rolled slowly by on the street.
*
Halfway home, as we turned off the boulevard and headed up Hilldale, Oree reached down and took my hand. We walked the rest of the way like two lovers who didn’t have a care in the world.
When we reached the apartment, I left the message machine on to give us some privacy, some time alone. Music drifted up from the patio, where Maurice and Fred relaxed in lounge chairs with Maggie and the cats, letting the glowing coals from the barbecue disintegrate into graying ash. The music was an old tape that belonged to Maurice, ballads by Edith Piaf, haunting but lovely in the still of the night. Chucho was asleep in his new bed, Maurice had informed me, with Mei-Ling happily curled up beside him. He’d eaten a good dinner, then nodded off on the living room couch watching a soap opera on Telemundo. Fred had lifted him and carried him to bed without ever waking him, and Maurice had followed with the dog, tucking them in together. The ever-changing family in the little house on Norma Place had evolved and re-formed once again.
As I listened to the sad, brave voice of Piaf coming through the screen door, it struck me that my world was almost intact again, almost back to what passed in my life for normalcy. All of it except for Oree, and the question of where he might fit in, if at all. We’d been in the apartment several minutes, talking awkwardly about nothing much, when he suddenly took my face in his hands and kissed me boldly on the mouth. I was willing, and responded with a kind of cautious hunger.
I hadn’t kissed a man like that, with real feeling, for more than a year. Not since the rape, not since the virus had gotten into me almost as if fate had ordained it. Oree and I continued to kiss, tenderly but with our passion rising and no sense of time, the way men do who love each other as we did. Yet I could feel a part of me holding back; my mind wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t stop thinking, analyzing, worrying, fearing. From time to time, I’d manage to slip free, escaping for a moment, letting instinct take over, letting my body feel again, letting it respond. Always, though, on the brink of letting go, I’d pull back.
Just as Oree had initiated the first kiss, he was the first to find a button, then a buckle, then a zipper. He undressed me slowly, then took my hands and encouraged me to do the same for him. He was as magnificent naked as I’d imagined he would be, rangy and lean, dark and smooth, sinewy with muscle yet gentle and graceful in the way he used his power, and as comfortable with his remarkable beauty as he was with the sensuality he so generously shared. When I dared to touch him below the waist, I found him fully aroused, potent with desire and longing. My own half-hearted erection, by comparison, thrust me back into my head again, into retreat.
He must have sensed my mental withdrawal.
“Come to bed with me, Benjamin. Lie down with me, at least.”
Just as he took my hand, the phone rang. The machine clicked on, and I heard my recorded voice asking the caller to leave a message. Then Randall Capri came on, talking to the machine in an agitated voice. I drew away from Oree, grabbed the phone, shut off the machine, told Capri I was on the line. When he started talking, he sounded no less rattled than he’d been the last time I saw him, as he fled the Hollywood public library with his hands over his ears. He went straight to the heart of the matter.
“Justice, I’m begging you, stop looking into this Charlotte Preston case.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest—you have no idea.”