Spider Season (16 page)

As I opened my book to the marked page, I felt my gut constrict and my face flush. I suddenly had doubts that I could go through with it, reading to an audience of strangers. Even after all these years, my feelings were too raw. I felt too exposed, too vulnerable. Better to read something safer, I thought.

I was about to turn to another chapter when I saw Ismael hurry in from the street. He took a chair near the back, found my eyes, and shrugged apologetically. Seeing him there buoyed my confidence; I suddenly felt less alone, and reading the passage no longer worried me as much. I would read my words to Ismael, I told myself, and it would be okay. I set up the passage for the audience, filling in some background, and started in.

“‘“When you wrote that AIDS series,” Templeton said, “I believe you created the two lovers as a way of idealizing a personal situation that was too painful for you to handle.”

“‘“This isn’t really the time,” I said.

“‘“When will it be time, Justice? So you go on like you are for years, drinking yourself slowly to death, alienated from everyone and everything, because you don’t have the courage to face the truth and move on?”

“‘I turned to walk out but she moved around me and blocked the door.

“‘“Jacques’ death left you consumed with guilt, didn’t it?”

“‘“You didn’t know him,” I said. “Stop using his name as if you did.”

“‘“I think that to this day you feel you didn’t love him enough, didn’t do enough to save him. That you weren’t there for him emotionally the way he’d always been there for you. Because you didn’t know how. Because you were too afraid.”

“‘Volatile feelings rose inside me, but I knew they were driven more by fear than fury. I worried that I might slap her to make her stop and shoved my hands deep in my pockets.

“‘“Maurice told me you did your best,” she went on. “Taking care of Jacques, tending to his physical needs. Feeding him, bathing him, cleaning up his vomit.”

“‘I clamped my eyes shut, unwilling to see it all again. “Yes, I took care of his physical needs.”

“‘“But you couldn’t tell him you loved him, could you?”

“‘Like any good investigative reporter, she’d prepared herself well; she knew the answers before she asked the questions. It was how reporters, like skillful prosecutors and defense attorneys, pushed their prey deeper and deeper into a corner.

“‘“No,” I said, “I couldn’t tell him that.”

“‘“You couldn’t hold him the way he needed to be held. You couldn’t be his lover in the truest sense of the word. Not in those final months. Getting that close terrified you, because you knew you were losing him.”

“‘Bravo, I thought. I’ve mentored you well.

“‘“But the worst moment was yet to come, wasn’t it, Benjamin?”

“‘She recounted the last hour of Jacques’ life, almost minute by minute, when he’d known he was dying of Pneumocystitis and continually asked a nurse named Amelia Tomayo where I was, until she’d lowered the oxygen mask over his face for the final time.

“‘“You found Amelia Tomayo,” I said.

“‘“She still works at County. She spoke to me, off the record.”

“‘“Nice work, Templeton.”

“‘“When Jacques died, you were on assignment. At the moment he needed you most, you were in the Hall of Records, digging through documents related to a slumlord case.”

“‘“Yes, I was in the Hall of Records.”

“‘“You could have been at the hospital. Harry would have given you time off. All the time you needed.”

“‘“Of course.”

“‘“But you didn’t ask for time off.”

“‘“No.”

“‘“Why, Benjamin? Because you couldn’t bear to watch Jacques die?”

“‘“I’m not sure any of us really knows why we make certain choices at certain points in our lives. We’d like to think we do, but we don’t, not always.”

“‘I felt exhausted, sick. I sat on the edge of the Templetons’ plush couch, staring at her spotless Berber carpet.

“‘“You’d planned to write a first-person series about you and Jacques, hadn’t you? About one man caring for his dying partner. It was a story you felt needed telling.”

“‘I nodded.

“‘“But the truth was too painful. When the time came, you couldn’t do it, could you?”

“‘She’d beaten me down. I didn’t want to fight her anymore. I wanted some peace.

“‘“No,” I said.

“‘“So you wrote it the way you wished it had been. You created two fictional men, working with the real feelings you never expressed when Jacques was alive. That’s where the power of the writing came from. And that’s why it won the Pulitzer.”

“‘“There are couples like that all over this city,” I said, “thousands of them. All over this country. Tens of thousands. Helping each other die.”

“‘“They say there’s sometimes more truth in fiction than in fact.”

“‘“Is that what they say?”

“‘She sat down beside me. “It’s time to forgive yourself, Benjamin.”

“‘I turned to look into those remarkable brown eyes of hers, so full of intelligence, as quick to compassion as to anger.

“‘“Have you forgiven me, Templeton? For my transgressions, for the way I disgraced our trade, for the way I hurt you personally by what I did.”

“‘“Is it important?”

“‘I shrugged, smiling a little. “It wouldn’t hurt.”’”

As I closed the book, Ismael stood, leading the applause. I swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in my throat.

“I’d be happy to take a few questions before I sign books,” I said.

I suddenly felt unburdened, lighter and freer than I had in longer than I could remember. Except for a final interview with Cathryn Conroy, my book tour from hell was officially over. And I’d ended it by reading the most difficult passage in
Deep Background
without being overwhelmed by the emotions it stirred up. Putting them down on paper, getting them outside myself, had been therapeutic. Reading the words that night had been a final catharsis, setting the feelings free like releasing memorial balloons into an infinite sky. Without Ismael there, I’m not sure I could have done it. That’s how important he was to me. That’s how much I trusted him.

The moment I’d finished signing stock, I grabbed him and was out of there like a rocket. The rest of the night was for Ismael and me, and nobody else.

*   *   *

We drove in his Toyota Camry to a Mexican restaurant in nearby Silver Lake that he’d picked out himself. I was surprised by his choice because he was so new to the scene and the restaurant he’d selected was so obviously gay. When the most popular drink in the house is a “Margayrita,” you can be pretty sure that its primary clientele is queer.

“How did you find this place?” I asked, as we followed our sashaying host to a booth, past a group of pink-clad mariachis serenading a female couple.

“I may be an almost-forty-year-old virgin,” Ismael said, grinning, “but a man still has to eat.” He winked. “And have some fun.”

Three colorful flags hung above the busy bar—Mexican, U.S., and rainbow—and the murals on the walls offered gender-bending twists on traditional Mexican village scenes. Each dish on the menu was named for a historic GLBT figure or a gay celebrity, from Alexander the Great—the giant burrito grande—to a whitefish special called the Lance Bass. It was all very silly, very camp, which wasn’t usually my style. But at the moment it seemed the perfect choice, a great place to let our hair down, forget our troubles, and share our first dinner together, maybe even a kiss.

We held hands across the table by candlelight, like any other couple falling in love, the kind of simple expression of affection that could have gotten us thrown out or hassled by the cops a few decades ago. Ismael told me how moved he’d been by the passage I’d read at Skylight, and how he wished he had the talent to put his thoughts and reflections into words as I did. In turn, I learned about his family: immigrant parents still alive and still married, half a dozen brothers and sisters, relatives scattered throughout the Southwest but always in touch, with a bunch of nieces and nephews among them, and more on the way. Ismael spoke of frequent holiday reunions, of piñatas and music and dancing and laughter, of elderly grandparents held in high esteem and cared for at home by their children, of a shared sense of family history and ethnic pride. It was the kind of close-knit, warmhearted family I’d never known, the kind that seemed like a fantasy, an impossible dream.

“You’ve come out to them?” I asked.

He nodded. “I started with my sisters, then worked up my courage and told my parents.” He laughed. “Telling my brothers was the hardest part. You know, machismo and all that.” His smile dimmed. “It wasn’t easy, and some of them are having a difficult time with it, especially my parents. More because I gave up the priesthood than the sexual aspect.”

“Any regrets?”

He shook his head. “It was something I had to do. Living a lie, carrying that weight—I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

As I listened to him, losing myself in his deep brown eyes, I felt a rising current of lust, and wondered if Ismael was feeling the same. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for a man who’d remained celibate for so long, contemplating his first sexual experience so late in life. Was he anxious? Afraid? Would the shame the Church had ground into him over a lifetime destroy his pleasure when the time finally came for him to fully express his love for another man?

“It seems like a miracle that you and I are together like this,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. Sometimes I wonder if I’m dreaming.”

“You keep talking like that,” I said, “and you might just get me into bed.”

We laughed awkwardly, but it still felt good, as we gradually became more at ease with each other. After dinner, over small saucers of flan, we seemed on the brink of our first kiss, even if we had to stretch across the table to do it. But the waiter arrived with our check just then, breaking the spell.

With a first kiss, like making love for the first time, timing is everything.

*   *   *

I wanted to take Ismael up to the Griffith Observatory to see the city lights and the stars, if the sky was clear enough. I’d kissed Jacques for the first time up there, and figured maybe the magic would work again.

As we pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, I noticed a familiar-looking car across the street—an old Ferrari similar to the one I’d seen in the driveway of Jason Holt’s house. But the lighting was scant and my angle of vision lousy—the Ferrari was to my left, on my blind side—and by the time I craned my head for a better look we were too far down the street.

“See someone back there you know?” Ismael asked.

I reached over to stroke his sleek, black hair, admiring his profile.

“I only have eyes for you,” I said, and meant it.

*   *   *

At more than four thousand acres—five square miles—Griffith Park was said to be the largest municipal park in the country, situated at the east end of the Hollywood Hills and rising to just above sixteen hundred feet.

The park’s crowning attraction was the Griffith Observatory, an astronomical museum perched on the park’s south rim, just above Los Feliz. Originally built in the early thirties, the observatory had undergone a major overhaul in recent years, but its three golden domes had been preserved, along with its two telescopes, planetarium, and grand architecture, which ranked among the best examples of thirties Art Deco design in a city replete with them.

We entered the park just before ten, as the observatory was about to close and a line of cars streamed down. When we reached the top, the parking lot was emptying out.

“I guess we’re too late,” Ismael said.

I grinned. “We’re just in time. Before too long, we’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

I took his hand as we mounted the steps on the north side. They wound up and around the western portion of the monumental structure, leading us to a series of balconies between and around the three big domes. Various vantage points offered unparalleled views of the city, from downtown to the east, across the Westside, and into the San Fernando Valley to the northwest. When we’d finally picked a spot looking southwest, toward the ocean, we were alone.

With a perfectly straight face, Ismael said, “This place is cursed, you know.”

“No kidding.” My most personal knowledge of Griffth Park was of its fifty-three miles of trails, which I’d explored as a young man mostly on Sunday afternoons, when gay men came up by the hundreds to tan and mingle in the seclusion of the wild chaparral. I decided not to mention that part of my life to Ismael, at least not yet, until he had a firmer footing in a gay world whose social rituals were sometimes shocking to outsiders, forged as they were in a distant time when meetings between homosexuals could only be clandestine and furtive.

I asked him about this alleged curse he’d mentioned, and he gave me a thumbnail history of the park. It had probably been a hunting ground for Gabrieleno Indians, he said, until the Spanish began settling the area toward the end of the eighteenth century, when the vast acreage became part of Rancho Los Feliz, awarded to one of the soldiers accompanying the original forty-four settlers. The Los Feliz family owned it until 1863, when it began passing through a succession of hands, selling for as little as a dollar an acre. The final private owner was Griffith J. Griffith, a self-made millionaire who bought it despite the curse believed to haunt its hills and canyons after the Indians were driven out. The legend of the curse was so entrenched, Ismael said, that Griffth couldn’t find a buyer for the land. So, in 1896, he donated it to the city of Los Angeles, designating that it always be accessible and free to everyone, so the working poor would have a place of recreation and relaxation.

“A noble gesture,” I said, and glanced around at the labyrinth of shadowy passages, and out to the dark hills surrounding us. “What about that curse? Anything to it?”

A grin cracked Ismael’s face and his dark eyes twinkled. “Why? Are you scared?”

I stepped closer, facing him squarely. I reached up to brush a few strands of hair off his forehead, then traced the outline of his lips with a finger.

“Are you?”

His eyes faltered. “Maybe a little.”