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IT WAS A REGULAR FRIDAY afternoon. I had no real desire to go straight home after work since there was nothing to go home to. I was glad when one of my colleagues, Sarah, asked me to go to the shopping center with her.
Sarah was a music teacher, the granddaughter of a Caucasian World War II veteran who had served on the island during the war. He had returned after the war was over with his American wife to the country with which he had fallen in love, after Sarah’s parents died in a car crash. She was seven years younger and single like me, but I never really considered her to be girlfriend material since she was very moody and I was definitely not willing to deal with her complexities. Besides, only on those days on which she cared enough to make an effort to dress nicely and to put on make-up did she look attractive. Those days were sporadic.
It was not my first outing with Sarah. We had done the shopping thing several times before, we had gone to the beach with mutual friends, we’d had drinks together on odd occasions with other colleagues, and I had been to her home for a special curry duck and dhalpouri meal. She was the only white person I knew who made tasty curry.
We lingered in the electronics aisles of the superstore marveling at how remarkably technology was advancing. I made a mental list of the things I would have liked to come back to purchase: the digital voice recorder that could transcribe its contents to a computer, a new digital camera and a DVD recorder were on the list. But I knew that I would never return; I had made similar lists before and I put them off long enough to no longer want the items.
The clothing aisle did not keep us for long since the one thing that held my interest – underwear – was not much cheaper than in the regular shopping district. The styles of shirts and pants on sale were not what any self-respecting black man would wear.
The aisle with household items had us planning what we should get for our respective homes – how useful the George Foreman grill would be, where we could put the bread maker, and the pros and cons of getting a steam mop. And then I saw her.
Ayanna was not someone I was going to forget in this lifetime or the next. I abandoned Sarah mid-sentence as she was extolling the beauty of a porcelain vase she was holding. I bounded after Ayanna just as she headed for the exercise equipment.
“Hello, Ayanna,” I said as casually as I could, but my heart was racing. She looked up and quickly turned away like a thief avoiding eye contact with her victim. “I’m sure you remember me.”
This time she stopped and looked at me. “You must have me confused with someone else.” She walked away quickly and I followed.
“Last year, the Ambassador hotel, my friend had a bachelor party. You were there. You and two other girls. Does that ring a bell?”
She spun around and faced me, forcing a smile. “Yes. But I don’t do that shit anymore.”
“Wayne is HIV positive.”
“What the hell does that have to do with me?”
“He had unprotected sex with you before he went back home.”
“And you think I was the only one he screwed? Leave me to hell alone.” She walked away and even though we were providing live entertainment for the shoppers who happened to be in our vicinity, this was the one time when I could not give a damn about what anybody thought of me; this was one time when I had to stand up for my friend. It was a matter of life and death.
Wayne and I were buddies from university. We met in our first year when we were thrown together in the same group for a project on the eating habits of ancient civilizations – the two of us and Jake – the only group in the freshman class with only guys. It was a dubious honor that I could have lived without. But the three of us bonded tighter than the three Musketeers. We did everything together and were adopted by each other’s families. Jake was from the island of Antigua and he often said that Trinidad was his second home. When the academic year finished in May, Wayne and I would jump on a plane and head up to Antigua – our second home.
Wayne had fallen so deeply in love with Antigua that after graduation he headed out there and got an engineering job at the desalination plant on the island. He was happy with the white sandy beaches, the tourists he often met, and the ease of travel to the United States for shopping. He was the vain one in the group, and could easily give divas like Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez competition when it came to fashion.
Jake fell in love with a Trinidadian girl and she made a decent man out of him, we teased. At first we were jealous when he could no longer spend as much time with us as he used to, but Christine got along easily with us, was a way better prankster than all of us put together and soon we considered her the fourth Musketeer.
I grabbed her arm. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed, but I tightened my grip on her.
“You were positive and didn’t even tell him. Now he is dying.”
“Fuck you!” she spat, looking like a caged animal, her chest rising and falling and her eyes on fire. She tried to wrench her hand free, but I held on to it, not knowing what I was going to do with it.
“Is everything all right here?” the strapping security officer asked. Another one had his hand on his baton. I relaxed my grip on Ayanna and she pulled away, making her way through the crowd.
I was trembling with rage. I stood there gazing at the onlookers as their lips formed questions, as their eyes searched for answers. My feet refused to budge and then I felt a soft hand in mine leading me. I followed and only when I got outside in the fresh air did I realize that it was Sarah. We stood in front of her car a long while before she spoke. I still hadn’t caught my breath.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Sarah was selfless. She never meddled and only ventured to go where she was invited. She never complained about anything, and she did not get involved in people’s lives beyond the surface level. I would later discover that she had been dealing with the issue of a runaway groom and so she held everyone at a distance.
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
And then she held me for a really long time on that balmy afternoon and she felt good. As her breasts pressed against me, I inhaled the cucumber shampoo in her hair. Her frail frame in my arms made me long for someone who would always hold me that way whenever my world was crumbling. Maybe she, Sarah, was The One.
When I got home that afternoon I made a decision: I was going to see Wayne’s parents. I could not keep the weight of his secret any longer. I could not carry it alone. Besides, I owed them that much. They were like family to me. Maybe they could help him where I had failed.
Wayne had called me three months earlier. He said that I was the only one he could talk to so I booked a flight and, telling everyone that I was on going to a conference, I took off one Thursday morning to see my friend. I was not prepared for what I saw.
The dimpled, smiling cheeks had been transformed into a dark, long, hairy mask. His muscular body – his temple in which he worshiped daily – had been desecrated. I tried to cover my revulsion at his emaciated frame and hugged him at the airport.
“How you doing, man?” I asked, patting his back.
He hugged me a long moment before letting me go. “This way,” he said, taking my bag.
We got into the car, Wayne with some difficulty, and he busied himself with the seatbelt. I rested my hand on his shoulder and he looked at me. I looked into his eyes but there was nothing there – just emptiness.
“I’m sorry, Wayne. I’m sorry it happened.”
He shrugged and started the engine.
Instead of heading to his apartment we detoured to the beach. I felt the tension slip off my shoulders as I played dolphin in the warm, turquoise water. Wayne sat on the sand looking at me and only when I begged him did he join me. I rambled on about everything I could think of to try to show him that I was comfortable with the fact that he had AIDS. He mostly listened, adding only the obligatory comments. But he never laughed at my jokes like he used to, and we did not splash around in the water as was our custom.
And then Wayne did something that gave me a chill on that sunny tropical afternoon: he swam way beyond what I considered a safe distance from shore. Both of us were strong swimmers – we were certified lifeguards and that was one of the ways we had made money as undergrads. But we always had a great respect for the sea and seldom went out beyond where we could comfortably stand. And not only did he swim out, but he remained there.
“Wayne,” I shouted. “Let’s get out of the water, man.” I doubted that he could hear me so I tried signaling and shouting. “Hey, Wayne, I’m getting out.” I was hoping that if I headed out to shore he would follow me. But he did not, not until he was ready.
“That was a dumb thing to do,” I said to him when he finally rejoined me.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Clay. I can handle my own stories.”
But I was not sure.
By the Saturday we had done the same things and gone to the same places we had the first time we visited Antigua. Wayne’s mood lightened only marginally and I pretended it did not matter. I tried to understand what it must be like for him, a man with his days numbered. On one hand I considered him fortunate for he could plan every day of his life to check items off his bucket list. Most of us ran around spending time on things that did not matter beyond the present. On the other hand, I felt sorry that he would not see many more days: he would not grow old and have children and watch them grow up, he would not see advances in technology, and we would not be old men together, rocking away on our chairs, our dentures falling out when we laughed too hard.
Wayne did not go to church with me on Sunday morning and I was surprised to find a wrinkled white woman, most likely a tourist, leaving his room when I got back.
“Who was that?” I asked when she had gone.
“I have no idea. I met her on my way from the market. Fish is okay for lunch?”
The topic was now closed, I realized, so I said that I would help him in the kitchen. That was the only time he spoke of his illness.
“I’m not going down alone, Clay. I’m taking people with me.”
“Which people?”
“Any fucking body. That bitch gave it to me. She had to know she had it but she said she didn’t mind doing it bareback.” I was afraid to tell my friend that he was as much to blame for it was irresponsible to have sex without a condom with an exotic dancer he did not know. So I let him rant as he massacred the fish. “After that night in the hotel, I met her every day until I left and I fucked her like I never fucked anybody before.” I had never heard Wayne use so much profanity at one go and I cringed every time. But he was entitled to his anger. At some later point he would accept his condition and he would be at peace with himself and his world. “It was like I was under some spell. Do you know me to behave like that with any woman?”
I shook my head. It was true. Wayne had been taken with Ayanna even though he had a fiancée in Antigua.
“My life is over, Clay, all because of some fucking sick-ass prostitute.” He slammed the oven door and walked out of the kitchen. I shuddered. I was standing in the presence of death and I did not know what to do about it. It reminded me of the Pompous Jackass dying of AIDS, and the suffering he had gone through, and once again I felt helpless. All I could manage as I breathed a prayer was, “God, help him.”
I left Wayne to brood in his cave while I continued to prepare lunch. After all, that was what Dr. Gray had said in his book about the way men deal with problems. But then the front door slammed and Wayne left.
Three hours past lunchtime I decided to have my meal alone since a headache was accompanying my hunger pangs. While I washed the dishes after the meal, Wayne returned with another tourist – this time a male. I knew that white people dressed funny when they were on the islands, but this one did strike me as particularly odd. He was in his forties, tall, thin and dirty-looking, with a flowered shirt that no one but tourists wear on the islands, and very short pants that clung to his skinny ass.
“I’m coming just now,” Wayne said to his guest before disappearing into his bedroom.
The man sauntered over to the kitchen counter, leaned over and flashed coffee-stained teeth at me. “Are you staying too?” He was American – or Canadian – I could not tell.
“Only until tomorrow.”
“Good. We should have a great time, the three of us.”
I struggled to keep the food down when the full force of what he was hinting hit me. At that moment, Wayne called, “Stu,” and the visitor made his way happily to Wayne’s room. My eyes connected with Wayne’s, begging him not to do what he was about to do but his eyes told me to mind my own damn business.
I stayed away from Wayne’s apartment until sleep threatened to overpower me. He was waiting up for me. He was angry. “I invite you to spend the weekend with me and you run off and leave me here by myself.”
“You had company.” I turned to go to the guest room but Wayne stood in my path.
“So what – you’re judging me now? Is that it?” He shoved me. “You think you’re better than me, asshole?”
“What you’re doing is wrong.”
“What I’m doing is called getting even.”
“Why? What did those people ever do to you?”
He walked away from me. “The problem with this fucking world is that everybody wants something for nothing. Well, they got more than they bargained for.”
I did not try to argue with him. I went to my room and locked the door. I slept little that night for I feared that he might have tried to give the virus to me too. Maybe stick me with a needle or something. I felt suffocated and was glad when Monday came and I was at the airport.
We did not embrace at the airport. We stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say. Should I tell him to take care of himself? Good luck? See you soon? All of those words seemed so trite, inadequate. He must have seen the confusion on my face so he said, “Goodbye”, patted my shoulder and left.
That was the last time I saw Wayne alive.
*
AS THE WEEKEND AFTER my encounter with Ayanna drew to a close I lost all resolve to tell Wayne’s parents the truth about his condition. I wanted to spare them the feelings of disappointment and shame I knew they would have felt. I didn’t want them to lose confidence in me too, for I had allowed their son to go down a slippery slope and into an abyss.
