Sweat covered Professor Dean like a flimsy sheet. He was bored. There was nothing to do but bathe in the music Doll brought him and continue waiting. From the earphones, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons created images that would normally have led him on to daydreaming. But today he resisted the desire to slip into other worlds.
He was upset that the beautiful young boy across the hall had wept most of the night. He wished there was something he could have done.
He shifted his weight on the cooling blanket and glanced once more across the hall. The sight of the boy lounging in his bed took him back to the San Francisco bathhouse years—that decadent time before Hell began. The sexual freedom had been addicting for a young man so long kept prisoner in a Bible Belt town closet. Sometimes twenty faceless men in one evening. Just leave the door open, sweetmeat, and don’t forget your towel. Like a small prayer before and after meals.
Then there was the night Doll walked in and closed the door on that part of his life forever. Like all beginnings, the crossover from orgy to monogamy wasn’t easy, but Doll’s love seduced him from his addiction. Not that it saved him. It was too late to stop the Black Plague picking them off ten, then a thousand at a time.
Lord, why hast Thou forsaken us?
He rolled his eyes. Oh come on, darling, don’t you remember the motto? The only life worth living is the one that is risked. He’d risked and lost. Life was, at thirty-six, too short.
Death was fond of young men. He knew that for a fact. Proof was visible in the thousands of names engraved into the black granite wall in D.C., and the endless rows of white military gravestones, standing at attention like ghostly platoons. He could easily have been one of them, what with the disease of war-mongering politicians being as senseless and relentless as the one presently killing him.
What he wouldn’t give to be an old queen full of stories and mischief. He sighed as best he could and closed his eyes. His death was neither timely nor fair, although he did take perverse satisfaction in knowing he’d proved his father right: Mother really had perfected the maternal art of sissification by knotting her apron strings tight around his balls. He’d never had a chance.
Mother. Her moist hands always on him, caressing, invading. Her oiled voice, whispering about Father and his dirty needs, then telling him how lovely he could be if he would just hold still for Mommy to wash his pretty face and comb his lovely hair, and wouldn’t he let Mommy smear a teeny bit of lipstick on his pretty mouth? Didn’t he adore the way Mommy’s silky slips felt on his baby skin? Did he love his Mommy? Mother and son forever.
He tensed, caught himself and swallowed bile. Anxiety pinched the back of his throat as he waited for the wave of cramps. Mercifully, the sharp-taloned devil in his guts remained asleep.
He’d never told anyone, not even Doll, about what had happened on his way back from the Castro Street clinic. The purple and black results slip, which bore his birthdate, private code number, and the abbreviation “POS” in the lower right-hand corner, was neatly tucked into one back pocket, a partial list of 57 past contacts was in the other—at least the ones he could remember.
Say baby, are you absolutely positive? Yes, terminally so.
There was so much to think about and feel, he barely knew which emotion or fear to start with. Did Doll have It? Would he leave him when he found out? His job, the insurance benefits—could they, would they fire him?
His students. Who would substitute and take his group on the tour of Greece next summer? Who would teach them? Should he tell them?
He stopped in front of a playground full of children and listened to the constant twitter of their sweet voices. It was like standing in the middle of an aviary. Children—the defenseless innocents, blank pages open for the imprint of those passing through their lives. It seemed atrocious that some of them would fall into the care of those who were capable of damaging them. But they did, and there wasn’t anything to be done about it except to try and repair the harm later on.
Through the blur of tears, he saw Mother waving to him from the other side of the jungle gym. Outfitted in that ridiculous pink cashmere suit with the mink trim, she wore a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat set absurdly to one side of her overdone beehive. The material pulled tight over the bulk of her arms as she beckoned him to come to her and Jesus.
Mother and her Bible—the invasive demons in his life.
He took off running, not surprised that she ran after him, a lumpy, hysterical mess grabbing at the back of his jacket, refusing to let him be. When the last drop of adrenaline was spent and his legs would not go another step, he spun around to face her
He pulled the HIV test slip from his pocket and held it in front of her eyes, like a vampire’s victim brandishing a crucifix. Here! See? My ticket to freedom. My ticket to peace. I’m going to die, Mother, and you can’t come along.
The IV pump made a changing-gears kind of noise, waited a few seconds, and belched out a series of coded bleeps. The redheaded nurse hurried into the room, mimicking the sound of the machine an octave lower so that her voice and the pump were in harmony. Adjusting the machine, she stared at him, and ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back from his face. “You okay, Bub?”
He blinked and closed his eyes. No.
“Are you feeling worse than yesterday?”
His eyes opened. Yes, worse.
She nodded. “Me too. I did a lot of unhealthy things last night instead of going to bed. Of course, I'm not as bad off as you are, but then again, I don’t get any of the nice drugs you get either. I have to depend on suspicious street people for my highs.”
He gave a lopsided smile. She’s crazy, he thought. I’ve got a funny crazy person for a nurse and she’s going to make me live another day if it kills her.
He considered laughing at that but decided he couldn’t afford the effort. He had to conserve his energy, although it seemed strange that he would need energy to die.
Cat pulled on a pair of exam gloves—or hand condoms, as she called them—and took a deep breath. “All right then, onward it is for us unchristian soldiers. We’re about ready to pull you out of the worse category and demote you to only-feeling-off-kilter classification.”
“Okay.” He gulped for air. “Thank you for your kind—” Kindness. Almost got it all out—five words in a row was too much. He would try for fifteen with his next reply. There was so much to say.
“Funny you should mention that,” she said, unwrapping the isolation pack containing his bed linen. “I was just talking about my kind last night: terminal nurse type A.”
His gaze shifted behind her, his pupils dilating in bewilderment. Scarcely lifting his head, he squinted in order to determine whether a giant cloud of brightly colored helium balloons anchored by a pair of tennis shoes was real or whether he was having noteworthy hallucinations.
“This Professor Dean’s room?” The voice came from some where inside the balloon cloud.
Too astonished to answer, Cat swayed at the magnificent sight.
The balloons bobbed. “We’re going to have to let these things go pretty soon,” said the bodiless voice. “There’s a hundred and twenty balloons here and I’ve got two packages, and they’re kind of heavy. Couple of volunteers had to help me bring them up on the freight elevator. We’re creating a safety hazard by blocking the hallway. Do you want me to release the balloons?”
Springing into action, Cat pulled in the balloons a dozen at a time until the ceiling could no longer be seen.
De-ballooned, a squat, bullnecked deliveryman stood in the middle of the room nervously juggling a clipboard, a clear plastic box containing about twenty cassette tapes, and a ten-pound box of chocolates. Handing the boxes to Cat, he stepped to the side of the bed and placed the clipboard close to the professor’s face. “Sign here.”
Cat stood back and watched the deliveryman slowly become aware of his surroundings. He checked out the wasted body, sniffed, and within a matter of seconds, located the neon-orange sharps box with the biohazard sticker.
He snatched the clipboard away and stiffly stepped back, glaring at her. “Are you fucking kidding me? This guy has AIDS and you let me come in here and breathe his germs? You ought to be shot!” He sped heedlessly down the hall, leaving in his wake a trail of puzzled stares.
Cat glanced back at Professor Dean and shrugged. “AIDS-phobics—notoriously stupid people.”
Undaunted, he gave a weak smile. “It’s okay. We’re the untouchables—like the Jews in Nazi Germany.”
She opened her mouth to protest, felt the protective surgical mask at her chin and the latex gloves on her hands, and hesitated. “It’s only the flesh,” she said. “The disease doesn’t change the spirit.”
“It does to some. They lose faith in others.”
A string from one of the balloons caught in her barrette. She pulled it down from the ceiling and read the inscription aloud. “Dr. Dean—Miss your sharp, right-Engeled re-Marx. Wish you were here. Nancy R.”
Inspecting a dozen more balloons at random, she found each one inscribed with a different name and line of endearment. “Your students?”
“Yes.”
“What did you profess?”
“Poli-sci…Berkeley.”
“I’ll bet you were good.”
“The best.”
“Modesty in moderation. I like that in a man.”
He fought the giggle down. “Don’t make me…laugh.”
They laughed anyway, despite the knowledge that it would turn him blue and start the diarrhea. But having once been children, they both knew that forbidden laughter was the best kind.
Chewing on an almond caramel roll from the box of chocolates, Cat selected a tape from the plastic box, slipped it into his cassette player, and placed the earphones over his ears. There was a moment in which he strained to hear, a second of surprise, and then his face spread into a grin.
While he listened, she bathed him, gently scrubbing around the areas of fungus growing on his feet and legs. It was like washing down a laboratory skeleton. His ribs reminded her of a birdcage.
When she looked up at him again, he was crying.
Without protest he let her take the earphones, which she placed over her own ears.
“…quantum theories and all that useless hype. So, that’s all I’ve got to say for now. Maybe at break I’ll buzz over to SF and pay a visit if you don’t mind and if they’ll let me in to see you. Anyway, there’s a line of people here who want to say something too, so this is Ricky Jason signing off.”
There was silence for a moment. Then the same youthful male voice came on, only lower. “Take care, Prof. We all care about you, you know?”
There was a shuffling noise then a young woman’s cheerful voice. “Hi, Dr. Dean, this is Iris. I wish you were here. Your sub isn’t anywhere near as good as you are. He doesn’t know what a joke is, let alone have the ability to tell one properly. I don’t know how…” There was a long pause. “I wish there was something we could do. You were—I mean, you are such a fantastic guy. You lectured in a way that made sense to all of us. You’re more than just our teacher. You gave us so much of yourself and we love you…”
Cat removed the headset and handed it back to him. “This is very special,” she said. “This is the richest gift anyone could ever receive.”
Later, after dusting his feet, buttocks, and armpits with baby powder, she turned him gently onto his side, changed the linen on half the bed, rolled him over the lump, and changed the other half. In the middle of helping him make brushing motions with his toothbrush, she felt him hook her hand in his and hold it there.
“Do Doll and I…upset you?”
She dropped her gaze to her lap. “No, but I’m jealous of how tender you are with each other. I’ve never been lucky enough to have that kind of relationship.”
“Very sorry,” he said. “You deserve tenderness.” He nuzzled her hand and held up his arm to show off the patchwork of black and purple bruises. The IV she had started the morning before was still good.
“Well done IV. First one…” Suck in air, lungs working overtime. “…that’s lasted more than…twenty-four hours.”
Her nurse side wanted him to go quickly, go to sleep and be gone. The unprofessional, selfish side wanted him to stay. There was something to be learned from him, and soon this lifetime of knowledge would cease to be available.
“How about we try going for another forty-eight hours?”
He stared. “Why would I want…to do that?” The question was neither depressed nor resentful; it was simply that he was ready to go.
Taking another cassette from the box, she pressed it into his hand. “You can’t leave until you’ve let all of them say goodbye.”
* * *
In that fuzzy unreal world six miles left of exhaustion, Nora walked into Dr. Gillespie and partway up his shoes. “Oh no,” she groaned, “Anybody but you.”
Dr. Gillespie’s oversized face swiveled on a nonexistent neck. “Get off my bunions!” He pushed her away, the previous night’s bourbon still clinging to his breath.
Overly apologetic and not quite in her right mind, Nora knelt down and began brushing off his shoes, until the man pulled her up sharply and steered her into Ward Two kitchen, closing the door behind them.
“Listen here, Carmotti.” He brought his face so close to hers she could see the bottoms of his pores. “I’m well aware of the delicacy of this situation, but I’m trusting in your discretion. Let’s just forget about the other night. You forget you saw me with Mrs. Sauerborn, and I’ll forget I saw you in that incriminating condition in a public hallway.”
Nora covered her face at the memory until the full meaning of his words filtered through the marijuana cobwebs. “Wait a minute. Do you mean that woman was Dr. Sauerborn’s wife?”
Dr. Gillespie clapped a pudgy, antiseptic-smelling hand over her mouth. “Keep your voice down, will you? If you utter one word about this to anybody, I’ll have you fired!” He released her, opened the door with a flourish, and pointed a threatening finger. “Not one word—not even to your dog.”
“I don’t own a—”
The physician jabbed a finger at her. “Not one word, understand?”
Nora nodded, trying to suppress a gratified smile. Cat was going to love this one.
* * *
Looking like a lost Great Dane, the older man loomed over Cat and waited for her to acknowledge his presence. Annoyed by his expectant patience, she stubbornly stuck to the task of finishing her morning charting. He shuffled his feet once or twice and increased the volume of his breathing.
She turned her body as far away from his presence as she could and proceeded to write the same sentence twice.
He wrinkled some paper and tapped his fingers.
Her concentration was going. She forgot the patient she was writing about and had to look at the name on the back of the page to refresh her memory.
He sighed a long, forlorn sigh.
Giving up, she swiveled in her chair. “May I—” The words died on her lips. The gentleman before her wore a chartreuse-and-orange-plaid suit, a forest-green vest, and a tan ascot. Where did he find the outfit? Had to be either Salvation Army or Savile Row. Did his mother know he was out in public dressed like that? “May I help you?”
The man raised his eyebrows, which were so thick and straw-like, they resembled a thatched roof. “Yes, I’d like to see Cross. Lucy Cross? I’m Nathan Keplin, her agent. I believe I’m the only visitor allowed in to see her.”
He held out a grocery bag and a pad of drawing paper. “I’ve brought some paints and pens and things. I thought they might help bring her around. I didn’t know what else to do.” He hesitated, and for no particular reason they both looked down at his white Air Jordan high-tops, which were only a half-size larger than hers.
“Is she awake yet?” The question was couched in hope.
Cat put the chart back, then stood to face him. The kind, wrinkled look around his eyes softened her. “I believe we’re making progress in that general direction,” she said, aware that she had suddenly developed a British accent.
It was one of her numerous bad habits to unconsciously mimic people’s accents. Once, she’d spent an evening with an Australian rancher, an anesthesiologist from Georgia, a German car mechanic and Mathilde. By the end of the night, everyone was convinced she had missed her calling as a linguist, an impersonator, or a multiple personality.
She reset her dialect dial to her own Bostonian pahk the cah ovah theah station and continued. “She woke up around four this morning and asked for a tube of cadmium red and a number twenty-nine brush. At four-thirty, she asked if we had anymore gesso or rabbit-skin powder, and an hour later, she woke up long enough to take a few sips of water and complain that her head and arm hurt. She then asked what happened to her, who stole her new roll of canvas, and how long would she have to stay in the academy infirmary.”
“That’s my Cross, “Nathan said, tearing up. “I’m glad she’s back. I couldn’t bear to lose her.”
“She’ll survive,” Cat said, “It takes a strong will to come out of something like this. Come with me. People respond to the voices of those they love more than any other stimulus.”
When they entered Cross’s room, Mathilde was busy restocking the linen supply cabinet. Shyly, Nathan stepped close to the bed. At the sight of Cross’s bruised and lacerated face, his eyes grew huge with alarm.
Seeing his dismay, Mathilde touched his arm. “Do not worry, monsieur. She is only depressed. Wait and see—she will wake up for you soon.” Mathilde ran an appraising eye over his outfit. “Please, monsieur, I must say, it is so refreshing to see a man who dresses with such flair. Quite commendable.” She patted his lapel. “Très chic.”
Nathan bowed and kissed her hand. “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”
Blushing like a schoolgirl, Mathilde took a few mincing steps to the door, blew him a kiss and disappeared down the hall.
Cat and Nathan sat on either side of Cross and held her securely between them, cradling her small shoulders.
“It’s time, Cross,” Cat said, gently shaking her. “It’s time to rise and shine, sweetie.”
* * *
Michael was there, shaking her, saying goodbye as usual, although that wasn’t the reason for her tears. It had more to do with the knot in the vicinity of her psyche that needed rubbing out. A warmer, lighter touch confused her, pulling her from the dark as her body was lifted up and held.
Michael, is that you, or is this going to be one of those nightmares where only the images linger?
She couldn’t remember if he’d left her again, and moaned in her sleep. For her, the saddest thing wasn’t his leaving, but the coming back, only to leave again.
She didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to sleep forever, or at least until she could erase the memory of that ugly scene they’d had over the People magazine interview. She’d kept it as a surprise, hoping that the new publicity would please him and make him see that she was still in demand and to some people, still worthwhile.
Never for a moment did he lose his inscrutable smile, even after he started badgering her.
Nice people didn’t allow themselves to appear on the pages of a smut rag famous for advertising whores and other perverts. Obviously, he’d said, someone had her pegged correctly.
That was when she’d made the mistake of trying to defend herself. She knew better than to disagree with him, knew that it would set him off on a tirade. His escalating venom would then catapult him into violence.
She’d pleaded with him anyway; she couldn’t stop herself. For once, she wanted to make him believe that she really was a good person. Even after he’d dragged her by the hair to the mirror and pinned her neck with his arm, she kept on insisting that she was a good person, someone worthwhile.
Squeezing her neck tighter, he demanded she look herself in the eye and admit she was nothing more than a worthless bitch. She held off until she thought her temples would burst, repeating a phrase she had often said to her father: “I promise I’ll try to be better for you.”
Michael broke the mirror with her forehead and rubbed her face into the broken glass.
She began again, tears sliding down her face. “I’m not a…good person, but I’ll be better. I’ll—”
In a bloodied sliver of mirror, she caught the reflection of her favorite painting. It was one of her first serious works, a small impressionistic study of a garden. At the time it was painted, she had only begun to know her true power as an artist. It was the first painting she’d done in which she’d made the colors mean something beyond tone or pigment. A bad person could not have created that garden.
A long suppressed rebellion surfaced like a geyser, her contempt for Michael and her father erupting in angry defiance. “I’m a good person!” she yelled. “I am an artist and my work brings joy to people. There are people who love me, people who care about—”
The force with which he snapped her head back immobilized her, so that for a moment, she thought he’d broken her neck. Somehow she had the presence of mind to test her toes and fingers for movement.
Michael ripped off her dress and forced himself into her, his fingers digging into the flesh of her buttocks. Yielding to him, she thought if she loved him through it, he would stop.
Pain seared through her left breast. When his face reappeared, his mouth and chin were smeared with blood. “Enjoy it, you worthless bitch,” he said in a peculiar voice, one she’d not heard before. “Because this is the last fucking you’ll ever get from me.”
He held her head in a vise grip as he broke into the rhythm that heralded his own orgasm.
When he was still, she slid cautiously out from under him and cupped her injured breast, searching with her fingers until she found the gaping wound. Using the wall for support, she stood up wondering what to do next.
Wash off. That was the logical action to take. She would wash herself and tend to her wounds. She took a teetering step toward the bathroom and was sent reeling into the dining room table by the impact of his boot against her spine. She saw the hunting knife the split second before it slashed across her cheek. In a daze, she watched more of her blood drip onto the light oak floor. The striking contrast between the yellow and the red held her attention until the shock of a punch to her solar plexus took her breath away.
She crawled toward the door that led to the garden. If she was going to die, that was where she wanted to be.
Michael grabbed her legs and straddled her again, enraged that his body would not provide him with his first choice of a weapon to hurt her. In his frustration, he bit the bridge of her nose, and then pressed his thumbs into her windpipe.
For a moment, part of her wanted him to kill her. To die at his hand was the ultimate submission, proving that her love for him was real. Yet her body, recognizing itself to be in severe distress, rebelled. She struck out blindly until the moment he jumped on her, snapping the bones in her arm.
The last thing her memory saved was the sound of her head being smashed into the corner of the bed frame. The rest appeared in chimerical sequences: inching to the phone, whispering to a faraway voice that demanded to know her name, then the men in sky-blue shirts asking for more complicated answers, being lifted, screaming in pain, and finally, nothing but black.
She was in someone’s arms, secure and cared for. Close to her a woman’s low voice coaxed.
“It’s time to rise and shine, sweetie. You have a visitor.” Cat held the tearing woman, and nodded to Nathan to speak.
“Darling? It’s Nate. You’re not being very polite. Please open your eyes and look at your lonely old dingbat, won’t you?”
There was no response.
“Come out of it, Cross,” Nathan said firmly. “It’s time to wake up now.”
Cross murmured but her eyes remained closed.
Cat used the control to raise the head of the bed and turned on the bedside radio. Strains of Debby Boone singing ‘You Light Up My Life’ shattered the quiet of the room.
“She needs stimulation,” Cat said, opening a window. “She’s been cooped up without any sounds other than a respirator from the next room and an occasional nurse’s voice. Lysol and alcohol swabs are about all she’s had to smell.”
Nathan removed a tube of paint from the crumpled paper bag and smeared a gob of yellow oil paint onto a paper towel. “Smell this, Cross,” he said, holding it under her nose. “Do you remember this?”
Cross opened her eyes and squinted.
Nathan spoke rapidly, running his words together as if he were afraid he might lose her attention before he could get everything out. “Hello my dearest. The garden is looking quite natty and the Japanese cabbage needs tending to. You’re the one with the jade thumb, darling. I can’t do a thing with it so you’ll have to get out there and tame it or we’ll have to plow it under and get a—”
“The garden?”
Nathan beamed. “Yes, darling, the garden. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” She envisioned the purple, cream, and viridian-green hues of the cabbage plant.
“Cross, do you know who this is?” Cat asked.
Lazily focusing on her agent’s face, as if she’d had one too many drinks, Cross nodded. “Nathan.”
Taking her in his arms, Nathan let her head loll on his shoulder. “Your arrival back to planet Earth is much celebrated, darling.”
A drawn-out sob escaped her. “What happened? Where’s…?”
“You’re in the hospital,” Cat said. The woman would be vulnerable; there was no point upsetting her and possibly sending her back into her dark retreat. “You were hurt.”
“Hurt?” Cross strained to recall pieces of the dream, and remembered Michael’s eyes. Growing pale with the fear that she had done something to drive him away, she disengaged herself from Nathan’s embrace and tried to sit forward. A wave of nausea washed over her, pushing her back. “Where’s Michael?”
Nathan’s jaw muscles tightened at the name. “Don’t worry, darling, he’ll never hurt you again.”
Cross desperately clutched at his sleeve. “You have to tell him I’m sorry, tell him I'm okay. Say that I need to see him.”
Appalled, Nathan searched her eyes. Something in his gut bucked and he suddenly felt hugely depressed. “He’s gone away. He’s committed a ghastly crime and he’s run away. The bastard ought to be—”
Cat silenced him with a warning glance. “Don’t worry about Michael right now, Cross. I’m sure he’ll come as soon as he finds out you’re here.”
Cross bowed her head and sobbed as Luther Vandross sang the maudlin tune, ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’.
Nathan rummaged through the paper bag and brought out a pad of drawing paper and several sketching pencils. He placed them on Cross’s lap. “This is what matters,” he tapped the pad hard enough to make the pencils jump. “This is Lucy Cross, and Lucy Cross’s life is her art!
“You seem to have forgotten that you are one of the finest artists in the country, dear one. What comes from you and onto those canvases has deeply affected many people.”
Nathan and Cat waited.
Tentatively placing a finger on the ocher pencil, Cross rolled it back and forth. One by one, the rest of her fingers came to rest on the shaft, and then eagerly accepted it into her waiting hand.