Lloyd
I
t’s hard saying good-bye. I can see why Jeff loves Henry: he’s thoughtful, introspective, kind. I watch him walk down the front steps, turning twice to wave good-bye.
Please
,
God
, I pray.
Don’t let him test positive
.
I close my eyes. It’s an old prayer, one uttered too many times in my life, about too many, and not one always granted. I watch Henry unlock the door to his Jeep, lifting the dog crate that contains Clara and settling it gently onto the passenger seat.
Let him be okay, God. Please.
It’s funny, my praying. I don’t believe in the old God, the one you pray to for things to happen—or not—or to ask favors. I believe in a God, a higher power, a collective soul of consciousness, for whom there are reasons for everything. If Henry tests positive, then there is some greater purpose it can serve, some unknown path to enlightenment. Even Javitz came to see his HIV as an ironic gift, as a means by which he could transform. But still, in this moment, the God I’m praying to is indeed my old Lutheran god, the one my father taught me about in his Sunday sermons, a God of not only compassion but
retribution
. A God who was both merciful and angry, for whom divine intervention remained possible. It’s to that God I find myself praying now, imploring Him to please, please not let Henry test positive.
I shut the front door after he’s driven off. I can still smell him on my clothes. I’d kissed him as he got ready to leave: just reached over and kissed him, full on the mouth, after he’d said something that particularly touched me. It was about finding himself, his deepest truth, holding a frightened little man in a motel room one afternoon. He didn’t use those words, but that’s what he meant. His words moved me, and I’d just reached over as we sat there on the couch, and kissed him. He seemed surprised at first, but kissed me back. Afterward we laughed. It had been a lovely, spontaneous kiss.
I’m filled with him right now: his scent, his words, the memory of our talks. If I close my eyes I can see him clearly. Henry is a revelation. I’ve always liked him but never really knew him. It’s odd, really, this feeling of connection: our worldviews, our experiences, are so different. Henry’s like so many young gay men today who’ve never lost anyone, who often don’t even know anyone who is HIV-positive. How different from just a decade ago. Who his age could have said the same thing then? Jeff and I have lost so many, even beyond Javitz: old friends like Paul and Roger and of course Tommy, our friend from our ACT UP days. Tommy’s death had been especially hard, coming so soon after Javitz’s. There had been issues between Jeff and Tommy, but at Tommy’s memorial service Jeff had cried even harder than he had for Javitz.
“I guess,” Henry had said just before he left, “I understand why it’s so difficult for Jeff to talk about it. It’s like coming through a war.”
“A war where the truce is merely a mirage, a ploy of the enemy.” I knew I sounded like Javitz, but there it was, right on the front page of
Bay Windows
:
YOUNG GAY MEN SPREADING HIV IN ALARMING NUMBERS
. Not having known the initial devastation, lulled into complacency by the new drugs, people Henry’s age and younger are repeating all of our old mistakes. Because everyone looks so healthy, no one is forced into talking about the truth of AIDS. The fear is gone. Maybe reintroducing a little fear wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Be careful,” I pleaded with Henry. “Please be careful.”
He smiled at me. “Lloyd,” he asked, seeming to think of something, “would you be interested in coming with me to the Russian River next week?”
I looked at him strangely.
He laughed. “I know it’s last-minute, but I’ve been totally dreading going. See, Shane bought us tickets a long time ago and I promised—but if you came, we could balance out some of the mindless party stuff with talks like these.”
I was dumbfounded. “Henry, are you asking
me
to go to a
circuit party?”
“This one’s different. I promise. It’s outside. The Russian River is beautiful—”
“I know. I love Guerneville. I love all of Northern California. Maybe we could spend a few days in San Francisco—”
Henry’s face lit up. “So you’ll come?”
“If I can still get a ticket.” A trip would definitely do me good. I haven’t had a vacation since we opened Nirvana. And a week away from Eva would give us both some time off from each other.
I climb the stairs to my room planning to call a travel agent. Maybe I’ll even take Henry up to the Harbin hot springs. Suddenly I’m excited about something for the first time in weeks. I’m glad the last of our guests have left, and none are due in for a few days. I need to stop thinking, to just turn off my brain for a while.
But I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about Henry.
Worrying
about him, actually. The world Jeff introduced him to can’t offer him the insight or solace he seeks. It’s a place of denial, a place where the wounded run for refuge. Oh, who can blame them for dancing their asses off? But it’s just running away from the inevitable. Brent didn’t die from the virus that lurked in his bloodstream, but from his refusal to face it, to integrate it, to take power over it—and
from
it.
I let out a long sigh and open the door to my room. I switch on the light.
Eva’s standing there, glaring at me.
“What . . . ?” I sputter. “What are you doing in here?”
I’d left the door unlocked only for the few minutes that it took to walk Henry downstairs and see him off. And here she is, standing in the center of my room, holding something in her hands.
She blushes. “I’m sorry, Lloyd. I was leaving you a gift.”
“A gift?”
She holds out a framed photograph. The two of us standing in the snow outside Nirvana. The day of our closing. “Happy sixth-month anniversary,” she says.
My heart is still thudding in my ears from the start she gave me. “You could have given it to me downstairs. I don’t like anyone in my room.”
I notice her visibly stiffen. “You had
Henry
in here all day,” she says.
“That’s my business.”
Her face twists in desperation. “It’s mine, too! I live here! This is our home!” She starts to cry. “You’ve been pushing me away because you’re seeing Henry now. Isn’t that right?”
I feel my cheeks flush in anger. “I’m not seeing Henry.”
“Oh, Lloyd! Why have you turned on me?”
I sigh, dropping my hands to my side. “I haven’t turned on you, Eva. I’ve simply told you I think you need to be in therapy to work on your own issues. It’s the only way I can see us moving forward together. And I think it would be much healthier if we each had our own sets of friends, our own lives.”
“That’s not how this was supposed to be!”
“Oh? And how did you
think
it was supposed to be, Eva?”
“I thought . . . I thought . . . we would be
together,”
she says in a little voice.
I feel exasperated. “Is that why you locked me in my room, Eva? To keep me with you, and away from Jeff?”
“I
didn’t
, Lloyd. I
swear.”
I lower my face close to hers. “Then how about all those E-mails, Eva? All those E-mails Jeff sent me that I never got?”
She looks up at me with sudden terror in her eyes. I know I need to be careful here, that confrontation might not be the best approach. But it’s time—long past time, in fact—that she be held accountable for these things. Maybe it’s the shock she needs that will finally get her to look at her behavior.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out, Eva?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm and level. “Until I began using my laptop, I read all my E-mail on the main computer downstairs, the one you log on to every morning before I get up. It must have kept you busy, constantly checking for and deleting all of Jeff’s E-mails.”
“Stop!” she shouts, putting her hands to her ears, dropping the photo to the floor. The glass shatters. She makes a sound, shaking her hands in tiny fists.
“No,” I tell her forcefully. “No more scenes!” I rest my hands on her shoulders. “I know that deep down inside you there’s a decent, strong woman, and that’s who I’m talking to right now. I can overlook a lot, but not dishonesty. Admit to me what you did and we’ll find a way to work this out.”
“No!” she cries, breaking free from my grip.
“Eva, you’ve got to stop trying to turn me into Steven. Steven was a gay man, just like me—with a life of his
own
just like me! You can’t make me into what you hoped Steven would be!”
“Stop talking about him!”
“Why? Because you’re afraid I’ll tell you what I know? That your anniversary wasn’t on Valentine’s Day—that Valentine’s Day was Steven’s and Ty’s anniversary? That Steven and Ty were lovers, and that he would have left you if he hadn’t gotten sick?”
She slaps me across the face. I take a step backward in shock.
Her face is white. Her look is one I’ve never seen before. A mixture of rage, hatred, fear, and desperation. It terrifies me.
“I’d like the ring back, please,” she says in a low, hard voice. “You’ve never cared enough to wear it.”
I study her. It’s as if she’d just drunk a potion and turned into something else. No more tears. Now her face is contorted, her mouth full of fangs. I just stand there looking at her.
“My ring!” she shouts.
I open my drawer and retrieve it, handing it to her. She takes it and looks down at it in her hand.
“This should go to someone who cares,” she says, pushing it down into her pocket savagely.
“Eva, if you don’t think I’ve
cared
, then you’re wrong—”
She cuts me off. “Oh, you think you know me so
well,”
she growls in a voice alien to my ears. Low and full of contempt. “You think you know so
much.”
I watch her. She moves toward me, her hands held out like claws at her side.
“Well, you don’t know
anything,”
she spits. Her eyes grow large as they glare up at me. “Anything!”
“Eva,” I say, trying to calm her.
She screeches suddenly like a banshee. She’s in my face, her hands just inches from my skin, her nails ready to scratch my eyes out. Then she pulls back, shaking her head, the tears flying.
“You think you know me, but you don’t, not at all,” she sobs. “Oh, but you’ll
learn
, Lloyd. You’ll find out what I’m
really
like.”
She rushes from my room, slamming the door behind her. I quickly lock it, thankful that the key is in my pocket.
Was that a threat? For the first time, I feel fear in this house. Fear of her, of what she might do. Of what she might be capable of doing. I’m bigger, stronger, but there was such rage in her face. She had hit me, and came close to doing so again. What had she meant, that I’ll find out what she’s
really
like?
I’ve got to get a grip here. It’s my fear, my utter disappointment, the shattering of all my dreams. I stoop down to pick up the shards of glass from the photograph. I feel trapped here in my room. A feeling of despair washes over me, and I start to cry, looking down at our smiling faces. How much hope we’d had then. How had we gotten to this place?
I cry harder. For a man who believes in a purpose for everything in life, in this moment I can’t see anything that makes sense.