Carry Me Like Water (21 page)

He was standing in the middle of the desert dressed like a groom, his pure white shirt so bright and perfect it seemed it had been cut from the sun. He watched himself as he undid his bow lie, tossing it on a cactus, the thorns shredding it as if it were nothing more than paper. He took off his socks, his shoes, the desert sand burning his feet. He tugged off his shirt as if it were an enemy killing him, the buttons flying into the sky. He ripped the shirt in half and wiped the sweat off his face. He saw that he was strong, his skin pulled tight around the muscles of his arms and back. He shone in the morning light and, for a moment, he was a god. He let his pants drop to the ground and stood naked, completely a part of the desert. He was not afraid of the burning around him. The desert was in flames and he walked through them, and his skin did not burn. Nothing could harm him. In the distance was a river, and he ran toward it, and the river was calling, “Come.” And the river repeated his name.
“
Joaquin.” He kept running through the endless flames, and the river did not seem to be getting any closer. Suddenly, inexplicably, the river was in front of him. “Come.” He looked back one last time to see Jacob fully clothed in the distance behind him. “Come back!” Jacob yelled. Joaquin looked into the cool waters of the river—and jumped.

Joaquin woke up and felt Jacob’s arm around him. “You’re burning up, J,” he said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He rocked him in his arms. He froze for a moment when he realized Joaquin’s breathing was heavier than his body. “Is it hard to breathe?”

Joaquin nodded. He took a deep breath. “I was having a dream, gringo,” he whispered. “The desert was on fire. And there was this river—”

“Shhhhh—don’t talk. Just don’t talk. I’ve got to take you to a hospital.”

“The river was so clear and blue—bluer than your eyes, Jacob, I could even see the fish and they were gold. And I was thirsty and the desert was on fire. And you were calling me but I couldn’t go back so I just jumped.”

“It was just a dream.”

“I wish you believed in dreams.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you remember the time you left me?”

“Shhh—we don’t have to talk about that anymore.”

“I waited and waited, and then I thought you’d never come back. I thought I’d never see you again. I wanted to die, did I tell you?”

“But I came back.”

“Are you glad?”

“Yes.”

“I’m tired, Jacob.”

“Don’t talk. You don’t have to talk.”

“I’m tried.” Joaquin looked up at his lover. “You seem so far, Jake. Are you going away?”

“I have to get you to a doctor.”

“Can’t I just sleep here?”

Jacob kept rocking him in his arms. “Shhhh. Shhhh. I’ll carry you.”

“Like water?”

“What?”

“Like a river carries water.”

“Yes—just like that.”

“How serious is it, Tom?” He had long ceased calling his and Joaquin’s doctor by his title. Tom seemed too young to be a doctor though he’d been one for twenty years, and Jake wondered how it was that a man who worked so many hours managed to look so rested and relaxed. He wanted to like him as he stood in the hallway of the hospital, not that he hated him anymore, just couldn’t like him. “
It was only a kiss, Jake—a very smalt one.” “Did you—” “Look, we’re friends, and have never been more than that, and will never be more.” “I don’t believe you.” “That’s because you don’t know how to have friends.” “What the fuck does that mean, J?” “Look, we’re just friends.” “He had his arm around you.” “I’m only going to say this one more time, gringo, Tom and I are friends. You don’t get to pick my friends and I don’t get to pick yours.”
He looked at the way Tom was processing his simple question—he hated that about him sometimes—the way he was too careful, the way his sincerity took up all the space in the room. “How serious, Tom?”

“Well, it’s serious.”

“A vague answer to a vague question. Doctor.” He combed his hair with his fingers, then pulled at the ends of his hair.

“Pulling your hair out, huh, Jake?”

“Why’d I have to pick a gay doctor with a sense of humor?”

“Good taste.”

The doctor nodded. “You want to have a cup of coffee instead of standing here in a hospital hallway in the middle of the night?”

“Nothing’s open.”

“We can get some in the lounge. It’s a friendly place—always open, always coffee. They’re nice to visitors on this ward—didn’t you know?”

“Yeah, I remember. The last time Joaquin got sick, they were redoing it—making it more user-friendly.”

“It isn’t an instrument.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s just a room with a few couches. Let’s have some coffee.”

“I don’t want to leave him.”

“He’ll be OK.”

“What if he dies?”

“Not tonight.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I know.” Tom walked toward the lounge. Jacob followed him down the hall toward the lounge near the nurses station, Jake noticed his walk—
tight, I wonder what Joaquin ever saw in him? Too asexual.
The hallway was quiet, and it seemed the whole world had gone away and left him with this man, this doctor. The lounge was dim. The carpet was soft and thick and Jake felt his feet sink into the fabric as if he was walking on mud. He read the plaque on the wall that read:
IN MEMORIAM: NORMAN CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
. There were magazines neatly arranged on a glass table and a bookshelf full of books. There was a refrigerator and a drip coffeemaker on a shelf next to a small sink. He stared at the plaque and sat down on a beige-and-turquoise couch that was comfortable enough to be in somebody’s living room. “Very Santa Fe,” he mumbled, then shook his head.

“Huh? Did you say something?”

“No, I was just making remarks about the decor.”

Tom handed him a mug of coffee and sat on an overstuffed chair opposite the couch. “Where were we?”

“I asked if it was serious and you gave me the kind of answer they teach you in medical school.”

Tom smiled, then sipped from his coffee.

“Nice set of teeth, Doc. I bet your parents paid a bundle for those.”

“As a matter of fact I was born with this set of choppers. Are you flirting with me?”

“No. I’m not interested in white boys.”

Tom laughed and shook his head.

They sat in the quiet for a long time, the sound of footsteps moving in the background like calm waves in an ocean. Jake stared at Tom for a while as if he were about to ask him something, but said nothing. Tom remembered the first time Jake had walked into his
office. “
Just good old-fashioned gonorrhea. Are you allergic to penicillin?” “Nope.” “Talkative, are you?” “Didn’t come here to talk.” “I suppose you didn’t come here to talk about your sexual practices either?” “What’s that mean?” “It means you should be careful.” “I know about sexually transmitted diseases.” “Firsthand, I’d say.”
Tom had hated him then, hated him for his don’t-give-a-shit demeanor, his superior sense of masculinity, the complete look of disdain he wore on his face as if it were a medal won in a war. He’d been this man’s doctor for seventeen years, and he felt no nearer to knowing him as he sat there than he had the first time he’d walked into his office. He remembered the first time he’d met Joaquin, how they had connected instantly, how Jake had resented their friendship from the moment it began. “I
want your paws off my boyfriend, Tom.”
Some people were not meant to be friends, he thought, and yet he had never stopped trying. He wanted to break the silence, but it was as hard as the ice of his Minnesota childhood. “How’s the coffee?”

“It sucks.”

The silence returned like the San Francisco fog. “It’s OK to be afraid,” he said finally.

“Thanks for your permission.”

“It’s OK to be afraid,” he repeated, “but it’s not OK to be an asshole.”

Jake smiled. “I deserved that one.”

Again, they sat in the quiet. A patient down the hall was moaning, Jake shivered. “Why are we sitting here?”

“We’re sitting here because your lover has Pneumocystis carinii, and I happen to be your doctor and your friend.”

“Joaquin’s friend,” Jake corrected.

Tom nodded. “Sorry. You know, it’s a good thing I like you, Jake. Otherwise, I’d kick your ass from here to L.A.”

Jacob laughed. “That’ll be the day.” He shook his head as if his hair was wet and he was attempting to dry it. He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you do like me, Tom.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jake sipped on his coffee. “This is really bad stuff.” He looked at Tom. “How can you do this for a living?”

“I was bom to it, I guess.”

“I’d hate it.”

“That’s because you’d have to be nice to people. You’d have to touch them.”

“You know what your problem is, Tom? You think life is a good thing.”

“It is a good thing.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not as disgusting as all that, Jake.”

“Well, you and Rick are a pair, aren’t you?”

“Don’t start in on Rick, Jake. He’s a decent man.”

“Meaning he’s a politically correct faggot.”

Tom kept himself from wincing. He kept his voice steady without hiding his disgust at Jake’s remark. “You have an interesting way of thinking about things, you know that, Jake? You’re so fucking insulting sometimes.”

“Are we taking off the gloves now that Joaquin’s not here to play referee for us?”

“How come life’s a boxing match for you?”

“I had a psychology class in college, too, Tom.”

“Did you pass?”

Jacob stood up from the couch and glared at the doctor. “That’s it—I’m outta here.”

“Finish your coffee.” Tom said calmly. “I don’t want to fight. I’ll change the subject. It’s too late to be arguing with you, Jake. And it’s useless.”

“For both of us.” Jake sat back down.

“Yeah, for both of us. Look, go home and get some rest. You look like hell.”

“To you too, Doc.”

Tom got up and put his mug in the sink. “I’ll come by sometime before noon and check in on Joaquin. I need to check his vision. You’ll be around?”

Jake nodded.

“Get some sleep, Jacob.”

“Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I gonna lose him this time?”

Tom took his time with Jake’s question “I don’t know. Maybe we should …” He paused. “We should be ready for anything.”

There was quiet again between them, but the sadness over Joaquin was shared, and so, for a moment, they did not feet so far away from each other.

Pneumocystis carinii, Pneumocystis carinii. Jacob kept repeating the Latin words like a prayer at matins. He spelled it out in ink over the headlines of the morning newspapers. He thought of the conversation he’d had the night before with Tom. He was a good doctor—the best—and he trusted him completely. Mister Clean, Mister Responsible, Mr. Spokesman for Safe Sex, good diets, and holistic health. If he had been bom straight, he would have been unbearable—too many virtues for Jake’s taste, too much of a social conscience in that morally superior Protestant way he had. “If I hear Dr. Gay Community Awareness say ‘the common good’ one more time tonight, I’m going to stuff my fist down his throat.” He remembered saying that to Joaquin at a party one night. “
How come you think life is a boxing match?”
He looked out the window—the sky seemed as dark to him as Joaquin’s black hair. He sipped on his morning coffee. He picked up the phone and called his office. He recognized Alice’s raspy voice. “I won’t be in till this afternoon.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah. It’s J. He’s in the hospital again.”

“Take the whole day—we can handle it. You got some time coming—take as much as you need. The ads keep coming in by themselves. The
Chronicle
will survive—just make sure you do the same.”

“Thanks, Alice.”

“Give J my love.”

“Sure thing.”

“And eat well, Jacob.”

“Don’t you have enough sons?”

She laughed as she hung up the phone. At least she has a heart.
he thought. Thirty years of selling ads for the
Chronicle
and she still had a heart. Amazing. “I’d have killed somebody by now.”

He got up from the kitchen table, pulled on his bathrobe, and stared at a blue patch of sky that was somehow visible through the fog. He watched as it disappeared. For some reason the sky reminded him of the summer he’d spent in Seattle. He didn’t even remember how’d he’d gotten there—he’d just found himself in that strange and lonely land of rain, nineteen years old with no money and no place to go and no plan and no one to belong to—with no future and a past that only made him want to throw himself or somebody—anybody against a wall until all the bones that held the body together broke and cracked. Didn’t somebody have to pay for what had happened to him? “I should have killed them.” Even now, more than twenty years after he’d left his parents’ house, he felt intimate and comfortable with that hate. “I should have killed them.”