Spider Season (11 page)

I was more clear-eyed about my own success, or lack of it.
Deep Background
hadn’t shown up on any of the major national bestseller lists, and hadn’t sold anywhere near the number of copies needed if I was to earn back my advance. That made it one of thousands of books released around the same time that barely caused a ripple at the cash register, let alone in the public’s consciousness. With only a few promotional events remaining, my memoir’s shelf life was quickly running out, like a fish flopping on the dock and gasping its last breaths.

“We’ve got to get you on
Jerry Rivers Live,
” Zeitler said, during a quick phone call as she raced around town, escorting her new client to readings and interviews. “Trust me, Benjamin, I haven’t given up. I want that booking!”

“If anyone can get me on
Jerry Rivers Live,
” I said, “it’s you, Judith.”

*   *   *

Ismael called in mid-July to tell me he was coming home, and my heart soared at the news.

While he’d been gone, I’d stayed busy painting my apartment and refinishing the hardwood floor, something I hadn’t done in the eighteen years I’d lived there. Maurice found new curtains to replace the faded ones, and I’d purchased my first full set of dinnerware, after eating for years off a mix of thrift store bargains. On the day Ismael was to arrive home, I took delivery of a new queen-sized mattress and box frame, anticipating the moment when we’d make love for the first time.

The deliverymen were departing as the postal carrier arrived with the day’s mail. Following our new routine, I waited while Fred shuffled from the house to retrieve the items from the mailbox and dispense them accordingly. He handed me the latest issue of the
Lambda Book Report
, a bill from my credit card company, and a plain postcard.

It had been weeks since I’d received a piece of hate mail and when I saw the card I felt myself clench up, despite my vow to not let the taunting messages get to me. The new card was addressed to
Benjamin Virus Justice.
I checked the postmark, which, like the others, indicated a 90046 zip code a few miles northeast, within Los Angeles city limits.

I turned the postcard over to read the message, but there were no words. Just a crude graphic: my photo, cut from the dust jacket of my book and pasted down, with the word
AIDS
drawn in red ink across my face. Most people probably thought AIDS was no longer a serious health crisis, but I knew better. It was still spreading, particularly among minority communities, and was a raging epidemic in the third world. Each year, several hundred people died in L.A. County from AIDS-related complications and an unknown number from the side effects associated with the toxic drugs used to suppress HIV, deaths that rarely showed up in the HIV mortality statistics. So to see the word
AIDS
scrawled in bloodred ink across my face meant something.

Maurice appeared on the front porch, urging Fred to come in out of the sun. When Maurice saw me seething as I studied the postcard, he suspected what it was and joined me, asking to see it. I held the card up, showing him the graphic on the back.

“This has gone quite far enough, Benjamin. It’s got to stop.”

He took the card and studied the familiar handwriting on the front.

“I should have gotten that old letter for you,” he said, “the one I promised to find weeks ago. I’d forgotten all about it. Let me get Fred some lunch and then I’ll attend to it.”

I told Maurice I’d begin looking for the letter myself, and he said he’d join me as soon as he could.

*   *   *

The boxes containing the research material I’d saved through the years were stacked neatly in a far corner of the double garage, sharing space with a 1960 turquoise and white Nash Metropolitan convertible.

Ever meticulous, Maurice had marked each box by topic—story files, article clippings, correspondence, and so on—with the papers inside separated into individual files, where they were arranged alphabetically. He’d salvaged much of the material on my behalf during the years following Jacques’ death and the collapse of my career, the lost years I’d spent drinking obscene amounts of tequila, before Maurice and Fred had intervened to rescue me from myself.

I kneeled and started in on the box marked “Correspondence,” but hadn’t gotten far when a file slugged “Pulitzer” caught my eye. Inside were three formal letters sent to me in 1990 by the Pulitzer committee. None pertained directly to what I was looking for, but I couldn’t pass by them without at least a glance. The first was a letter officially notifying me that I’d won that year’s Pulitzer in the feature-writing category, for my series in the
Los Angeles Times
chronicling the devotion of two gay men for each other as one died slowly from AIDS complications. The articles had been based loosely on my own experience with Jacques, but with the names changed and essential facts altered to create a rosier version of the truth, one that I might live more comfortably with. The second letter came a few weeks after the first, informing me that the committee had been tipped by an anonymous source that the two men featured in my series of articles did not actually exist as depicted, that many other elements in the story had been made up, that an investigation was under way, and that my full cooperation would be appreciated. The third letter had arrived not long after the second, thanking me for my cooperation during the investigation, expressing regret at the outcome, and informing me that my Pulitzer had been rescinded, with a public announcement soon to follow. By then I’d already informed my editor, Harry Brofsky, of my unforgivable betrayal, quit the
Times,
and gone into seclusion, anticipating the news coverage soon to follow.

As I reread the letters now, it wasn’t difficult to envision the first line of my obit when it was eventually written. It would go something like this: “Benjamin Justice, who turned his life around after killing his father in self-defense at age seventeen to become a respected investigative reporter, only to destroy his career in a scandal involving the Pulitzer Prize, died yesterday at the age of…”

My fiftieth birthday was less than two months away. And what was there to show, I asked myself, for the half century I’d been granted? Not much. It felt like time had blown through my life like a storm wind, breaking and scattering nearly everything and everyone I cared about. Fifty years—how could it have gone by so quickly? How could I have made such a mess of things?

“Benjamin? Are you working in here, or daydreaming?”

I looked up to see Maurice approaching through the open garage door, a sticklike figure silhouetted against the glare of sunlight. I shoved the three letters back into the Pulitzer file and the file back into the box.

“I just took a minute to look over some old documents. Nothing important.”

“A minute? Benjamin, you’ve been sitting here for half an hour with those papers, deep in thought. I could see you from the kitchen window.”

“I guess I lost track of time.”

He kneeled beside me, surprisingly nimble for a man his age.

“Let me in there,” he said. “I’ll find that letter in short order.”

It took him less than a minute to locate the file heading he was looking for—“Letters from the Public”—and a few minutes more to find the one in question.

According to the postmark on the envelope and the date on the letter, it had been written and mailed about a week after the public announcement that I’d been forced to relinquish my Pulitzer. The return address and the postmark indicated a 90046 zip code, duplicating those on the anonymous hate mail I’d recently been receiving. I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t remember this particular letter from so long ago; it was possible I’d never even read it, though the envelope had been neatly opened across the top.

“I might have opened it myself,” Maurice said, “last year, when I was helping to organize your papers.”

It was written on heavy flannel stationary, the expensive, embossed kind that one sees less of now that letter writing has largely been replaced by the convenience of e-mail and the quickie cell phone text message. The fine weave of the paper bore a pinkish tint, faint enough that it wasn’t as tacky as it sounds.

At the top of the first page, centered, was an embossed name:
Silvio Galiano.

“Means nothing to me,” I said.

“There was an interior designer by that name,” Maurice said. “Well-known in the old days for his Hollywood clientele. I believe he died some time ago.”

What followed were several pages, rambling and strangely intimate, as if the writer and I were well acquainted. On the surface, the words were friendly and concerned, but venom seeped from nearly every line.

Dear Benjamin,

I call you Benjamin because that’s how you’re known now, your name forever synonymous with scandal and shame. Of course, within my small circle of college friends you were known as Big Ben, after we’d glimpsed you in the showers. I suppose, given your recent problems, you’re not so “big” anymore, are you? (No offense—just a little joke!)

On that subject, how sad I was to read of your great misfortune regarding the Pulitzer Prize. (I won a number of awards myself when I was younger, mostly for my impressive high school science projects. Fortunately, I didn’t have to give mine back!) Caring deeply for you as I do, I wanted to offer my sincere sympathy and condolences. Isn’t it tragic how certain people with genuine potential are also deeply flawed, so much so that they destroy any chance they have at greatness? When we attended college together, I always admired your skill and ambition, and tried to tell you so on numerous occasions. (I often think how differently our lives might have turned out had you not been so uneasy about your sexuality and unresponsive to my overtures of friendship.)

Forgive me for not writing sooner, by the way. I’ve only just returned with Silvio (Silvio Galiano, the acclaimed interior designer; I’m sure you know of him) from a wonderful trip abroad, where we visited with the crème de le crème of European society. While abroad, we were treated like royalty (Hollywood royalty, thank God, not the British kind; they’re so stiff and boring, don’t you think?) and had the most fabulous time. Because of Silvio’s health issues, we don’t get a chance to do much traveling (which is probably just as well, since neither of us is fluent in anything but English, although many people insist that I show remarkable verbal acuity; my IQ is quite high—not bragging, mind you, just stating a fact). We especially loved the Continent, which we found so civilized, although it’s becoming rather expensive. (I’m thinking of writing a book called
Europe on Five Thousand Dollars a Day
—don’t you think that’s clever?)

One recent afternoon in London, when I was having tea and the most delightful biscuits at the Savoy (we stay in only the best hotels), I was reading one of the local rags (the newspapers there are so much more catty and sensational, which is kind of fun, don’t you think?), and I came across a smallish item about your regrettable behavior and the furor it caused because of the Pulitzer. I mention how small the item was only to point out that while you may be notorious in the States, the rest of the world apparently doesn’t know who you are or very much care, which is rather hopeful for your future, don’t you think? Perhaps you can start over again in one of the more remote English-speaking countries, like New Zealand (very homophobic there, however, and quite racist toward the Maori, though many of the blond farmboys are to die for, but then you’ve never been that taken with blonds, have you?). Anyway, when I read the minor news item about your “Pulitzer problem,” my heart went out to you, even though you treated me like shit (pardon my language, but it’s the truth) when we were in college and I was so devoted to you and told everyone what a wonderful person you were, even though it became quite clear over time that you’re not a very nice person at all. (From what I’ve heard since, someone “tipped” the Pulitzer people about your fabrications. Have you any idea who might have done such a thing? One of the countless enemies you’ve made over the years, no doubt. What’s that old saying—what goes around comes around!)

Getting back to the subject of our ill-fated friendship, I guess I was the lucky one, wasn’t I? Things have turned out so well for me. I count among my dearest friends some of the most famous and talented people in the world (did I mention that I had affairs with Sir John Gielgud and Tennessee Williams before I met Silvio? Tennessee insisted that with my looks, I should have no trouble establishing myself in the movies if I should wish it). There’s nothing quite like being in a committed, long-term relationship (even though Silvio is many years older than me, don’t think for a minute that we don’t share a very active and satisfying sex life), and I couldn’t be happier. And you, from what I hear, are just an unhappy, miserable queen. Of course, I put no stock in that kind of gossip and truly hope that, despite the rumors, you’re adjusting well to your recent setbacks. (By the way, how old was Jacques when he died? Twenty-nine, if I’m not mistaken. What a shame, dying so horribly at such a young age. I glimpsed him once or twice when I was out and about and he was still healthy. I suppose he was attractive, if you go for that type. But I’m sure he was a perfectly nice person.)

Anyway, to return to the subject of your various problems, there’s no point in dwelling on the past, is there? I always say look forward, not back—or you might end up with a pain in the neck! (I plan to write a little volume one day of my favorite witticisms and bon mots and those of my famous friends, which would make the most fabulous gift book, don’t you think?) Toward that end (looking forward, I mean), I’d love to do lunch sometime soon and catch up. I know a lovely little restaurant just off Rodeo Drive that serves the most delicious crepes (salads if you’re more health conscious, as I try to be, but I like to treat myself to something sinful every now and then, don’t you?). You needn’t worry about my relationship with Silvio; he knows all about you. It would just be lunch, not a date!