Every day was like this for Oliver. Another member of the inner circle getting in touch, another heart-to-heart. The next morning it was Jonathan, his older cousin, a survivor of three consecutive New York City Marathons, asking to meet him at the West Side Pier, where Jon ran in the mornings before heading in to the architecture firm (he was a junior junior something). Having just finished ten miles, Jonathan was bent over, taking deep breaths, his lightweight jogging hoodie open, his shirt soaked. What did the perennial voice of reason want to tell Oliver? “At least you’re not referring to the baby as it anymore.”
Friends, long out of touch, called as soon as they heard. “Unbelievable” was said, again and again, each pal heartfelt, having the best of intentions, wanting to know: “Can I do anything?”
Ruggles lifted his PBR, kicked his head back, took yet another swig. He loosened his tie and did not pretend to hide his appreciation of the cowboy-hatted college girl behind the bar. “Sahib, I’m telling you, fucking way more’s being done to make sure Phase One and Two cancer drugs are available to patients these days. Serious, man. Cancer drugs are rainmakers. So much goddamn capital’s invested in them. Don’t let this shit get to you, understand?”
Going into a stretch of early afternoon. His dad barely waited for Oliver to pick up the phone. “Those insurance agencies,” Dad began. “Buncha dirty whores. I say this ’cause they have sex for money and don’t bathe after.”
Ruggles slapped away Oliver’s attempt to pay for a round. He smiled at the waitress, watched her withdraw and sashay past. “Jillian made me see Angels in America—you see it? Hell of a play. One of the main characters leaves his infected lover. I couldn’t help think of your situation.” Ruggles took a swig, swallowed. “That’s cocksuckers, though. You’re being a man.
“Plus no kid involved,” Ruggles added.
Oliver returned a call from the previous day’s seven in the morning. Blauner told him to hold on. After a few minutes, there was the sound of a door shutting. When he returned, Blauner was apologetic and asked where they were. Trying to keep medical costs from preventing his wife’s lifesaving transplant, Oliver said. That was where they were.
All the good friends who showed up but were stunned and didn’t know what to say or how to act, and Oliver had to get the hell away from, ASAP.
“And that motherfucking Speaker of the House. Bastard serves his wife with divorce papers while she’s in the hospital getting chemo.” Ruggles wiped his mouth with his sleeve, continued. “You tell me how that fat fuck looks at himself in the mirror.”
“Help with the baby?” A chorus of inquiries. “Help with groceries?”
“Isn’t a bone marrow transplant the modern equivalent of the iron lung? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Where can I register to be a donor? Is there anything you need?”
“One thing you’re going to learn,” Blauner volunteered. “Doctors can be the best people on earth. They can be the worst. Sometimes you get both in the same.”
Jonathan apologized to the nearby bum who asked for spare change. When the vagrant finished cursing them, Oliver’s cousin motioned toward a bench by the water. Fog was thick but not impossibly so. Jonathan said, “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through.”
Oliver felt the breeze on his face. “Honestly, I’m in it, and I can’t imagine.”
Ruggles stared into the dregs of beer number whatever. “Serious now, sahib, you’ve been screwed. You have every right to feel sorry for yourself. I mean, your wife’s been royally screwed. And that poor kid. But my God. What’s happening to you isn’t fair. Isn’t right. I know you know this, but fuck it, I’m drunk, you need to hear someone say it.”
(Dumbfounded, swollen with appreciation, Oliver stared in return.)
The alarm clock showing six thirteen, the phone echoing, his dad calling from the deepest worst part of the night in Cowtown, California. “Sure you don’t want a second opinion?”
“You’re still the poor sonofabitch who’s got to stand strong.” Ruggles’s tongue flared, licked the foam from his lip. “You have to strap up for battle and take care of your family. You’re the one carrying the burden. It’s bullshit and it sure ain’t fair, but that’s the deal. The shitty business of being a man.”
—
During that most indulgent stretch of the eighties, in the wee hours of those wild nights, back when stockbrokers and club freaks had finished their cross-cultural tangles on the various dance floors of Limelight, or had tired of dry humping in the most impenetrable crannies of Tunnel, or had chopped out their final lines on Nell’s glossy tables; after the go-go boys of the Paradise Garage, the strippers from Billy’s Topless, the bears at Mineshaft, and drag queens of Jackie 60, to say nothing of the dominatrices from all those converted basements, and the chicks with dicks who were hooking for tricks on Little West Twelfth; once all of those beautifuls and their damneds had finished crawling through the darkness, done with their respective hobbies, predilections, and transgressions; when they were still strung out, still jittery, and needed a place to calm down, somewhere to hash out all those loose ends, relive the night, perform some more, or just grab some decaf, accepted wisdom — among those who knew — had it that no matter where you’d been, no matter whom on the West Side you might have done, someone else from your particular locale of debauchery would have made their way toward that street of deep grooves and broken cobblestones. The aquamarine-blue metal panels from a different era. Oversize steel letters provided a stylish signature: R & L RESTAURANT, the name of some disappeared Hopperesque diner. This decrepit neighborhood’s single safe haven for a fag to plop himself at such hours. The only place chic enough for a late-night countercultural epicurean to want to hang. The only open joint where there was passable coffee, let alone steak-frites, or the poached egg Caesar with goat cheese (legitimately inspired—you had to try it).
Breaking off a discussion with his liquor distributor, the restaurant owner hurried over, kissing Alice on each cheek of her mask. She looked radiant. How glorious it was to see her. His accent as glamorous as his dusty shag of hair. A moment of proper admiration for the bébé, then he hooked his arm in Alice’s — at which point something clicked. He was horrified, and withdrew what he realized was not a sterile arm — an arm that had put her at risk for infection. His apology was both obvious and implicit, although in Alice’s eyes no damage had been done, and nothing needed to be so much as implied; in this place there was only love.
Taking hold of the stroller handles, the wide-chested man Alice called Florent pushed the apparatus out ahead of them, thus allowing Tilda to guide Alice, the two friends progressing slowly, because Alice had to go slow (Careful, Tilda warned): down the gap of space between the lunch-counter stools and the row of square school-lunchroom-style tables; over linoleum slick with carried sludge and wet footprints. The above-the-fold, large-headline-famous artist, in his usual lunch seat beneath a map of the country that boasted his name, looked up at Alice; all the members of his lunch party did the same. The eyes of busboys consciously avoided Alice, as the owner had long ago ordered others to do with a generation of sickly patients.