In the City of Shy Hunters (49 page)

That same week, at night. It was Saturday, and I could hear
Saturday Night Live
on the other televisions on the floor. Rose's TV was off. The lights were off. Rose had taken his trazodone, and he and I were floating in the hologram.

Sometime in there, sometime in the staring at my palms, in the laugh-track
Saturday Night Live
hologram, all at once, the guy they put in the bed next to Rose—just like that, shit happens—the guy sat up. Like he'd been stuck with a cattle prod, this guy sat up. He was young, maybe twenty, but he had no hair and his skin was yellow and covered with purple bumps. He just sat there, his eyes staring straight ahead at the green wall. First, he pulled the tube from his nose, then looked at the tube and threw it to the side. Then he reached around and pulled a tube out of his ass. Pulled the IV from his wrist.

He pulled his stick legs around off the side of the bed. His back was a ladder of bones. When his feet hit the floor, he looked down, then around the room. He was smiling like a child who'd taken his first step.

He walked little steps to the end of Rose's bed, stood there, and stared at us. He was white, crew-cut. Tattoos of snakes on his arms.

Rose stared back at him; I couldn't. What was in the guy's eyes, I couldn't look at, so I put my eyes on Rose. Rose smiled a little bit, just enough to move the cracks in the cement of his lips.

It's the birds, the guy said, The fucking birds in the tree. The fucking chirping fucking birds. I'm sorry, the guy said, I just can't take it anymore. It's just too hard.

The guy pulled something off his pinkie finger, held it out to me. I stuck out my hand. On the palm of my hand, the guy laid a gold ring.

Inside the ring it said:
TO ERIC WITH LOVE
,
TOM
.

Then, just like that, out of the blue, the guy picked up the other green Naugahyde chair, turned with the chair in his hands, and threw the chair through the window. The loud crash of breaking glass. Shiny night on the pieces of glass.

As I looked, the green Naugahyde chair, for a moment, was a still point in the black New York sky, and then the chair was gone.

Nowhere.

Quiet only New York can get that fast.

Then the guy ripped off his nightgown. There was a tattoo snake on his penis. His hip bones stuck out, all his ribs, the skeleton of his head poking through.

He turned. Three giant steps, bare feet onto glass, one step, two steps, three, and with one leap, one long uninterrupted muscle, the guy dived through the window.

Just as I looked, the naked guy in the air—his arms Evita don't cry for me, his cock pointing up—for a moment, the guy was a still point in the black New York sky, waving at Rose and me, smiling, and then he was gone.

Nowhere.

Death is only a window.

Rose lifted himself up in his bed, threw the covers back, pulled the IV off his wrist.

That's when I dived, dived onto Rose, a full body press against him, grabbed the bedposts with my fists, tangled my feet in the bedposts at the bottom end of the bed, used every fucking ounce of strength I had to keep Rose down.

Rose went ghetto on me, calling me a motherfucker, a dumb white honky son-of-a-bitch dog, slamming his fists against my kidneys, in the back of my head.

Rose under me was a bucking bull, a bronco, a panther, a black serpent squeezing the life out of me. My face was in his neck, my body pushing down hard onto him, my feet hooked into the bars, my hands pressing his hands down.

Beneath me, just under my shirt and my khakis, the earthquake of Rose, the monster's huge footfall.

My lips at Rose's ear: Rose, no! Please, Rose, no!

After a while, who knows how long, Rose sank down into the quicksand mattress.

My heavy breath in and out was the same as Rose's breath. I raised my head up, looked into Rose's face, into his eyes.

The whole world was in Rose's eyes, every pain and joy, every betrayal, every first date, every jerk-off, every giddy moment, every death, was staring right back at me.

Rose's lips, his cracked sidewalk lips: Let me jump, let me go; please, Will, please, just let me go!

The horrific whisper.

The way I shut Rose up was I laid a big old wet lots-of-tongue-and-heavy-breathing Hollywood kiss onto him.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune.

No way was I going to wave at Rose out the window out there, the still point for a moment in the black New York sky.

No fucking way.

* * *

THE FOURTH WEEK
, things started looking up. They'd moved Rose into a nicer room. He was alone and the room was yellow instead of green, and the window faced west, so there was sometimes a nice color in the room when the sun went down. The inside of Rose's lips wasn't blue, was getting back the sunset color. His skin wasn't so charcoal. No sweat on the horizontal lines of his forehead, no sweat dripping down the verticals.

One day, an old Cary Grant movie was on the TV, the one with him and Randolph Scott, and that day was the first good day. Rose laughed out loud. Cats fucking. Rose's laugh up and down the hallway of Saint Vincent's, like cats fucking.

EVERY DAY I
went up to Rose's apartment and fed Mona and Mary and Jack Flash. While they were eating, I walked around touching things. The ghost of Rose on everything: the brass table, the purple-velvet chair, the blonde-fainting couch. Buddha. The red lava lamp. The Joey Heatherton bed. The French fuchsia telephone With the gold earphone and speaker. The fuchsia bathtub and toilet and sink. The photograph of Elizabeth Taylor as
Cleopatra
behind the brocade blonde-fainting couch, the photograph of Elizabeth Taylor in the white swimsuit in
Suddenly Last Summer
by his bed, and all the other paintings and photographs of Elizabeth Taylor. The Dwight D. Eisenhower ashtray. The Randolph Scott lunch pail. The red velvet curtains. The Persian rugs. The Italian chandelabra that needed dusting.

One day I uncorked the lid on the gallon jar that always sat on the brass coffee table. Leaned over and smelled. The amber liquid was gasoline.

THE FIRST TWO
weeks, every day, at the deli on Second Avenue and Fifth, I bought a carnation for Rose. White ones. Pink ones. Red ones.

One day in the third week, when I walked into Room 335 with another red carnation, Rose pointed at me, then moved his index up next to him. I followed his finger, put my ear down close to his mouth.

Lips at my ear: Fucking funeral flowers! Rose said. Get those motherfucking carnations out of here!

The next day I brought a calla lily.

And the next day black-eyed Susans.

Forget-me-nots.

Chrysanthemums.

Primroses.

A half dozen long-stemmed red roses.

The Cary Grant day, I brought some kind of big purple flowers.

And then—I couldn't believe it—the next day when I walked in—
ta-da!
—the room was
full
of flowers, not just mine. Vases and vases, roses, lilies, daisies, Canterbury bells, phlox, heather, lavender, you name it—every kind of flower every color you could imagine. Except carnations.

There were vases on top of the nightstand, the tray you swing over where you eat, on the windowsill, on the floor, on top of the television, on the shelf above the sink, huge draping fuchsia flowers standing on great Grecian pedestals on the green-and-tan tiled floor. They even had to put some of the flowers in the bathroom.

I was standing in a fucking flower shop.

Elizabeth sent them, Rose said. Isn't she sweet!

ON THE THIRTY-THIRD
day in the hospital, the day he got out, Rose told me what outfit to bring: the black and avocado striped pedal pushers, the red seersucker shirt, his red bikini briefs, the mules, and the hologram earrings.

I brought Rose's mirror and barber clippers like he told me, and in the hospital bathroom, Rose holding the mirror, I clipped Rose's inch of curly black and silver hair down to stubble. Then, Rose's special Kiehl's shaving lotion rubbed in my hands, I applied the shaving lotion open palm to Rose's head.

New razor blades in the razor.

Every pull of the razor against Rose's scalp was a cattle prod to my cock, but I didn't nick him, not once. Then a mixture of rosemary and passion flower oil made Rose's head shine.

The nurses came in, all smiles. Every kind of woman you could imagine, black brown white yellow, short fat thin. Each one of them gave Rose a kiss. They'd made him a card, a drawing of Rose in purple Mae West drag. Under the drawing, the words:

No no no, Yoko Ono!

Rose screamed when he opened the card.

The little scream that gives it all away.

Oh, you shouldn't have! Rose said, bracelets clack-clack.

* * *

FROZEN MOMENTS IN
time.

The way Rose walked out of that hospital was something to behold. Ankles, knees, hips, belly, back, shoulders, arms, neck, head, head bone connected to the tail bone, one long graceful black muscle, mules snapping on the shiny hospital green-and-brown tiles with every step.

Rose handed out roses as he walked.

The bright hallway, shiny tiles, Rose's runway.

Every orderly, every doctor, every anesthesiologist, every nurse and aide, every candy striper, every janitor, every lab technician, every patient who was still alive stopped, watched Rose walk.

You could feel the anticipation, the hope of theater to lay bare the human heart.

In all the world, every eye on Rose, on Rose's body, deep from the center of him, from his balls out to his shoulders, his calves, his ass, to the tips of his fingers, the top of his head. Rose thirty pounds slimmer. Rose's size thirteen mules, his pedal pushers stretched over his ass, his big basket, the red seersucker shirt open and tied at the waist, hologram earring dangle, shiny head, catching light, Rose's bracelets—the green Bakelite, the copper, the silver Sikh, the gold with the lapis, the jade—clack-clack.

In full participation with the life flowing through his body. A man dancing alone in a room. Complete lusty presence, his lucid lucid compulsion, Rose extra extra extra lovely.

Keep dancing and cop an attitude.

A polemical kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy.

MONA AND MARY
and Jack Flash were barking barking, their tongues hanging out like wet bologna, jumping up on Rose. Jack Flash was back and forth every which way around Rose's apartment, running like the wind.

WELCOME HOME ROSE
was the banner I'd hung from wall to wall, and I'd bought helium balloons, fuchsia helium balloons. I'd found an old photo of Elizabeth Taylor in a secondhand shop on Second Avenue. The photo was in an Egyptian deco frame and Elizabeth was Cleopatra. The photo was sitting on the brass coffee table.

The little scream that gives it all away.

Rose picked up the photo and the frame, his eyes, ebony stones rolled smooth, looked at Elizabeth the same way she looked at Montgomery Clift in A
Place in the Sun
.

Rose laid the photo up against his heart.

Perfect, Rose said. Just perfect.

Then Rose threw his arms around me, bracelets clack-clack, and we kissed like they do in Europe, both cheeks.

ROSE SAT DOWN
in his purple-velvet overstuffed chair. I brought him the lovely erect pink penis with a big Sho-ko-lat rabbit turd in it, lit the rabbit turd, and Rose sucked in.

Rose's Sahara palm holding the erect pink penis, Rose's inside sunset color of his lips, Rose's head shiny, his hologram earring, flash flash. Jack Flash was lying in Rose's lap, and Mary and Mona were on the Persian rug at Rose's feet, and the lighting was just so, like Bobbie's Marilyn Monroe light, soft, the red velvet drapes pulled. I put on Maria Callas, “Norma,” and I rolled cigarettes, one for Rose and one for me, lit Rose's, lit mine. I got the Baccarat crystal glasses out, poured us both a Courvoisier VSOP, and we toasted:
Salud, L'chayim
,
Na zdarovya
, Bottoms Up, Here's Looking at You.

For a moment there, I believed everything was going to be all right.

But it wasn't the truth.

Just like that, Rose threw up, all over himself, the purple-velvet overstuffed chair, the brass coffee table, Jack Flash, his red seersucker shirt, and his black and avocado pedal pushers.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

T
he first big winter blizzard that year—whirling big wind like to knock you over—I turned my ball cap back around so the bill could keep the snow off my face, turned the collar of my pea coat up, hunched my shoulders, kept my head down, tried to bury my ears, stuck my hands in my big pea coat pockets, but it was no use.

Show World was warm inside. I stomped off my feet and I could feel my socks wet inside my wet shoes. There was a big black man, not big pumped up, he was just a huge man, like if you took a man my size and stretched everything out a foot longer—this huge man worked at Show World and he's checking me out, so I went right to the magazines in the row of magazines down the center of the room. Unrelenting neon light from above. The magazine I stopped at said
Big Boobs
and there was this blond woman on the cover whose breasts were bigger than her head, twice as big as her head, even with all her big blond hair.

The sign just above on the magazine stand said
HOLD MAGAZINE WITH BOTH HANDS
. My hands were wet and in the unrelenting fluorescence looked like cooked lobsters.

On down the magazine stand:
Blow Job. Wet Pussy. Licking Lesbians. Back Door Love. French Tickler. Bi-Frenzy. Tits and Ass. Ebony and Ivory. Eight Inch Tongue. Yellow Snow. Piss on Me. Cum Suckers. Cock Crazy
.

Downstairs was the gay part. The men were every kind of man and were not looking at the magazines so much as holding the magazine out with both hands so you can see what it was they liked.

Fuck Buddies. Big Cock. Black Dick. Suck and Fuck. Fuck Frenzy. Big Balls. Up the Ass. Latino Lovers. Top Man. Black Brothers. Master and Slave. Sodomy Man. Cum Crazy. Sweaty Assholes. Asian Glory. Cowboys and Indians
.