Above The Thunder (11 page)

Stuart’s face was lovely, even through the cheap makeup and streaked rouge that looked welted, as though someone had slapped him. He didn’t know why being naked with Stuart right now seemed wrong. It had nothing to do with Hector, and Jack was as attracted to Stuart as ever—perhaps more than ever. If Stuart only knew how often Jack thought of him during the day, how many expressions of Stuart’s he found endearing to the point of heartsickness—the way he raised his shoulders slightly, tipped his chin down to his chest when he laughed, for instance—he would be astounded.

“Do you feel all right?” Jack asked. “You’ve been so quiet all day.”

“I’m fine. Just a little weary.”

“Should we maybe go home and have a quiet evening?”

Stuart glanced over, looked meaningfully into Jack’s eyes but saw at once that Jack’s idea of a quiet evening didn’t necessarily mean an intimate one. “No, let’s go to the party. I need to shake these blues.”

The party was so crowded that it took Jack nearly an hour to determine that Hector wasn’t in any of the rooms. Curtis’s house was amazing: a three-story Arts and Crafts-style design, with spiral steps that wound up three floors. The upper rooms all had open views to the downstairs. Jack saw people on every balcony. The living room was circular, with parquet flooring and exposed brick walls and antique furniture. Over the fireplace was a painting that looked like an original Andrew Wyeth. Jack wasn’t in
the mood, suddenly, for this high-pitched hilarity, the Twister game going on in the corner with the men in Marilyn lingerie, the loud shrieking music of the B-52s.

“I’ll go get some drinks. What do you want?” Jack asked.

“Vodka tonic.”

Jack wandered into the dining room, stopped at the spread of food—caviar, smoked salmon, prosciutto and three kinds of melons. He loaded up a plate, then loaded another for Stuart. Red Sturgeon caviar, it tasted like. This, too, was an awe-inspiring room: a Gustav Stickley breakfront and dining table, and, turning the corner of the carpet over with his toe, a real Oriental, he saw. His father would die if he saw this place, Jack thought, the dentil molding along the ceiling, the wide plank floors that looked like quarter sawn oak, the solid mahogany of the mantels. That was the one thing, the only thing, he had in common with his old man: like him, Jack was loved beautiful things, carpentry and well-crafted furniture.

Jack took two highball glasses from the breakfront, mixed a vodka tonic for Stuart, and a vodka martini for himself.

“Any more people in this room and we’re going to need a lubricant,” a voice beside him said.

Jack turned. The man looked vaguely familiar. “It’s quite a spread.” Jack took a bite of the salmon. “This tastes like Scottish Spey,” he said.

“It most certainly is. At forty dollars a pound.”

“Jesus!” Jack said. “This is all so extravagant.”

“You said it. Mr. Spare-no-Expense, Mr. Opulent, Mr. Dickhead.”

“Oh, yeah? So he’s your ex, I take it?”

“Darling, he’s the X-files. There’s a history to fill volumes. I’m Gary,” he said.

“Jack.” He offered his hand.

“So, Jack, are you involved?”

Jack smiled. “Sorry, yes.” Gary was cute; a little too blond for Jack’s taste, a little short, but he had a solid athletic build and a flat stomach. Stuart’s stomach remained disappointingly poochy regardless of how much he worked out. “Excuse me a second.”

Jack walked back into the living room and found Stuart deep in conversation with a woman. “Hi, darling,” Jack said. “Vodka tonic, and a sampler plate.”

“Thank you,” Stuart said. “This is Pamela. She’s a grad student in art history. We’re discussing the Incans.”

“Don’t let me stop you. I’ll be circulating.”

Jack wandered in and out of conversations, circled through every room, finally ending up in the kitchen where there was a lesbian couple clearly in the middle of an argument. Jack pretended to look for something in the refrigerator. The women were silent behind him. He grabbed a handful of Greek olives, then went back into the dining room to make himself another martini. The stool where Gary had been sitting was empty. Jack went back through the kitchen—the women were now in an embrace—then outside to the backyard. Votive candles burned on low tables. He squinted at the shadowy outlines, looked for Hector’s shape among the figures grouped in twos and threes. People were speaking in soft voices, almost whispers—but perhaps it only seemed that way after the screeching music inside. There was something a little spooky out here, an odor of compost and closed-up rooms. No, that wasn’t it: it was a kind of graveyard smell. When Jack was eight, he and his brother, Ben, found an open crypt in a cemetery, and this was the smell he remembered, damp stones with the humid musk of decay.

A voice behind him spoke. “Hello, Jack.”

He squinted. Gary. Just Gary, goddamnit. Where was that arrogant cocksucker Hispanic? “Hey. What’s going on?”

“Just inhaling the luscious smells,” Gary said.

Jack startled. So he noticed the strange scent, too. “What the hell is that?” He walked over, sat beside Gary on the chaise.

“I believe the technical name is Balm of Gilead.” He swigged from a fifth of something.

“It’s what? What’s that?” Jack thought of embalming fluid.

“It’s the scent of cottonwood trees. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Oh. That’s not what I smell.” He finished off the last of his drink, took the bottle from Gary and took a long swig. Tequila.

“Ho there, tiger!” Gary said. “What’s troubling your Eden, sweetheart? What’s bunching your Bradys?”

“What?” Jack said. “What’s bunching my Bradys?”

“Who’s the nasty Marsha making you feel like Jan?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

“Okay, sweetheart. Whatever you say. You just let Uncle Gary make you feel better. We’ll get you launched on tequila for a start, how’s that?”

Jack laughed. “And then what?”

Gary leaned forward, nibbled Jack’s earlobe.

Between them, they finished off the bottle. Jack took the last swallow and got the worm, a nasty thing textured like a half stale potato chip. He bit it, swallowed. He’d heard somewhere that the tequila worm gave you visions. Probably of the inside of a toilet bowl.

Gary’s hand moved up Jack’s leg, stopped just short of his crotch.

“Where can we be alone?” Jack whispered.

“Follow me.”

Jack ducked around Stuart in the living room, followed Gary up the stairs.

The hallway up here was dark, with four or five doors, all closed. Gary took Jack’s hand and led him inside a tiny room not much bigger than a closet. Inside, to their surprise, a man who looked to be in his fifties was lying on the narrow bed. The portable television blared “Baywatch,” Pamela Anderson running around in that dental floss she called a bikini. On the bed were two or three magazines, and two James Michener novels.

“Oh,” Gary said. “Sorry.” He looked confused a moment, then said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Walt Eisenberg. I sell insurance,” he said, in such a way that Jack thought for a moment that he wanted to write up a policy right then and there. “I’m Craig’s uncle. Uncle Walt. I’m with Mutual Life of Omaha.”

“Okay, whatever.”

“I’m in town for an insurance convention. How’s the party?”

“Swinging. How’s the Baywatching?”

“Don’t I love it,” he said, and turned back to the set.

Gary closed the door, pointed to the staircase leading to the third floor.

The entire third floor was one open space that functioned as a library and study. Jack sat beside Gary on the leather sofa in the greenish light cast from Craig’s computer. Jack looked down at Stuart in the living room. He was talking to a man Jack didn’t recognize.

“Can they see us up here?” Jack asked, feeling like he was eight years old and ambushing girls from a tree house.

“Only if they look up.”

“Maybe it’s not such a good idea,” Jack said. His head was pulsing from the tequila, his crotch with its colony of fire ants burning and painful. He’d have to see somebody about this rash. Except for cursory glances when he was soaping up in the shower, he hadn’t really looked at it, but he thought it might be spreading.

“What is this?” Gary said, touching the inflamed area, which Jack, now partly undressed, felt on his belly.

“An allergy to a soap. Just a little contact dermatitis,” Jack said.

“Is it contagious?”

“Are you an idiot? Can you catch an allergy?”

“Well, now, such an outburst,” Gary said.

He was in no mood for this. All he wanted right now was to be home. He stood up, rearranged his clothing.

“Where are you going?” Gary said, petulant.

“Home.”

“You bitch. You’re not that good-looking, anyway.”

“Sure, whatever.”

“You old fags are all the same. Can’t keep the promise in promiscuity.”

By the time he and Stuart got home, Jack felt miserable. He was sure he had a fever. He was chilled and overheated, shivering then sweating. His throat felt thick. Stuart looked worried, though Jack didn’t tell him the extent of how lousy he felt.

He took a long shower, first hot, then cold, then hot again—he couldn’t seem to regulate his body temperature. The rash was spreading, and there were places where it had become infected—a sore on his inner thigh that he’d scratched open. He stood in front of the mirror, and was shocked. No wonder that boy called him old—he looked positively haggard, at least ten years older than he was. The scabs and bumps appeared much worse in the glass than they had when he’d looked down the length of his body. And when had he lost weight? His skin was the color of old ivory, looser somehow, a thin covering over the sprung trap of his ribs.

He toweled off, wrapped himself in a thick chenille robe and slipped into bed beside Stuart, who was still awake. Jack could almost feel him thinking.

“I’m fine,” Jack said. “It’s just a touch of flu. It’s strange. I felt fine this
morning. I felt okay as recently as a few hours ago.”

“I want you to go to the doctor tomorrow,” Stuart said. “Call first thing in the morning.”

“I will.” Jack kissed him. “I promise.”

All night long he woke and dozed, never falling into a deep sleep. At one point, he got up and took his temperature. It was 103, but in the morning he would remember it as being 99. His dreams were strange: railroad stations, train tracks. The whistle of steam engines in the distance. A feeling of absolute grief and despair.

When he awoke Stuart was gone. In the kitchen, there was a note taped to a pan of freshly baked bran muffins.
Sweetie, I called in sick for you. Also, here’s Dr. Mosites’s number so you don’t have to look it up. Call him! Stay in and lounge today. I’ll call at noon to see if I need to stop at the pharmacy for any Rx. Love, S.

Jack called the doctor’s office and the receptionist took his name and number for the doctor to get back to him. He thought of just going in, but the idea of sitting around the waiting room with a bunch of prissy suburban mothers in their Benetton knit ensembles and their coughing, baby-Gap-clad toddlers filled him with anxiety and fury.

He turned on the TV, waited for the phone to ring. His fever felt as if it had broken. He watched a series of talk shows—white-trash tubbies who shot their husbands; cross-dressing men and the women who loved them. All better than any sitcom. That fake Hispanic, Geraldo, was the worst: he had a barely disguised sadistic streak, a way of ferreting out the truth to make all parties involved look foolish.

Jack changed the channel to Oprah, the bomb, the real wood to the veneers and cheap varnishes that tried to be her. The goddess and wise old woman. She needed to gain a little weight back, though; she was a better interviewer as a size twelve than she was as a six or an eight.

By the time the doctor called, at eleven, he was feeling much better. Exhilarated, even, as though he had won something.

“How are we doing, Jack?” Dr. Mosites said over the phone. Jack liked him, a middle-aged Greek man who was at once both no-nonsense and warm.

“I’m fine, actually. Stuart insisted that I call. I think it’s just a touch of flu.”

“Fever?”

“Last night, yeah. But I think it’s broken now.”

“How high?”

“Ninety-nine.”

“Okay. Any nausea or vomiting? Diarrhea?”

“No.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary?”

“I had an allergic reaction to Qwell, that medicine for lice. And I think I may have gotten an infection from scratching.”

“On your scalp?”

“No. The pubic area.”

“You said your fever was 99?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. It sounds like a low-grade infection. But I want you to come in before I prescribe anything. How about three-thirty. All right?”

“Yes. Thanks, Nick. Anyway, have you seen this kind of thing before? Allergic reactions that get out of control?”

“Sure. Look, Jack, it sounds as if there’s nothing to be alarmed about. But all the same, we need to be sure.”

“Okay. See you this afternoon.”

Stuart called at noon, as promised.

“I’m feeling much better. Mosites seems to think it’s a low-grade infection from the Qwell reaction. But I’m going in later for him to look.”

“Oh, good. Good. I’ll go with you. I can ditch my Anthro class.”

“No, don’t. It’s nothing. I’ll just see you tonight. Maybe if my appetite holds we can go get some dinner.”

In the waiting room, Jack thumbed through old issues of the
New Yorker
, but his attention was clipped; he couldn’t concentrate on anything much beyond the cartoons. His heart was racing, palms sweaty.

Finally, after an endless half an hour, the receptionist took him back to an examining room. Jack knew the second he saw the look on the doctor’s face. Mosites untied the gown, swept a flat hand slowly and lightly along Jack’s arms and trunk, legs and back, knees and toes. Jack felt the rash everywhere Mosites touched, the raised bumps like a Braille text, the body writing its illness on the parchment of skin. Mosites’s expression changed from friendly casual pleasantness to professional alarm. Jack wanted to
laugh it was so obvious, Mosites’s face with its wide, plump planes drawing into knots. He took Jack’s vital signs.