“I don’t know!” he complained. “I gotta go. Gotta find him.” He pulled away, or tried to.
I held on to his arm. “Harlan, you know Joseph and I are old friends.”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead and have dinner. If I find him, we’ll—”
“Harlan, tell me what’s going on. I want to help.”
A woman beside us at the bar was listening. In those cramped quarters, she had little choice except to pretend deafness. Harlan glanced at her. Diane suggested we step outside.
The street was lively. We walked toward West End, into a warm September breeze blowing from the river. The strip of sky visible between its tall apartment buildings showed a brilliant sunset, the variety of color enhanced by the haze of pollution hanging over Jersey. Harlan told the story in a jumble, making it more complicated and longer than its simple facts. In June, he and Joseph had agreed to be tested for AIDS. Both had practiced safe sex for years, but they knew they were vulnerable anyway, given the long incubation period. Harlan kept his promise and his result was negative. Joseph, however, canceled his appointment and postponed several more. Harlan was amazed that a scientist could be so superstitious about knowledge when it came to his own body. “It’s not like the test is gonna give you AIDS,” Harlan argued. Finally, Harlan presented Joe with an unspecified ultimatum that succeeded. Joe had gone for the test three days ago. He was supposed to get the results that morning; he promised to call Harlan at home as soon as he heard. He hadn’t phoned. When Harlan tried to reach him, he discovered Joseph had canceled a lecture, failed to show at his office at Columbia, and hadn’t appeared in his lab all afternoon. He was supposed to come home to change to meet us for dinner and Joseph had failed to do that as well. Harlan took for granted that Joseph had been told he was HIV positive. That wasn’t his immediate concern. He was scared Joseph had killed himself. He said they knew two men who committed suicide within a short time of hearing the news; Joseph, contrary to Harlan and their gay friends, had approved of their action, at least in casual conversation. “It’s not suicide,” Harlan remembered Joseph saying. “It’s just a very effective painkiller.”
That sounded like my mad, rational friend.
I asked about the hours of each canceled event and when his office or lab would be empty. Once it was clear that Joseph couldn’t be alone in either place until now, I suggested Harlan call the office and lab again. He reached an answering machine at the office; no answer at the lab. He said a machine usually picked up at the lab.
“Can we get in?”
“Not if the door’s locked.”
“No, I mean the building.”
“The guard knows me.”
I said we should go there. Neither Harlan nor Diane questioned my choice. I told Diane she could go home. She said, “Are you crazy?”
She drove us to Columbia. Not to the scene of the demonstrations of the sixties (I was reminded of them anyway) but to an old building on Amsterdam and 118th. The floors aboveground were faculty housing, a normal apartment building. Through a side entrance, manned by a sleepy guard behind a folding bridge table, we took an elevator to three subterranean levels where there were laboratories and also, Harlan explained, the university’s furniture storage.
The elevator was wide, an open cage, and moved slowly to gain power for hauling. We passed two landings lit by yellowing fluorescent bulbs.
“This is spooky,” Diane said.
“I always say to Joey,” Harlan commented in a wistful tone, as if he were talking about the very distant past, “this is where they keep Kennedy’s brain.”
I smiled. Diane said, “I feel dumb. What do you mean?”
The elevator shuddered as it stopped. “It’s missing,” Harlan said grimly.
I pulled the elevator gate open. “We’ll find Joe and Kennedy’s brain.”
Harlan nodded, trying to smile. He moved on, turning to the right. The hall was gloomy, although wide. He passed two dented gray metal doors, stopping at the third.
I touched his shoulder as he reached for the knob. “Wait,” I said. Maneuvering around Harlan, I put my ear to the door. I heard something, too faint a noise to identify.
“Somebody’s in there,” I whispered. “Would you pretend not to be here?”
“What?” Harlan was outraged.
“I think it’s possible he’ll answer if only I call out, as if I’m alone.”
Harlan looked at Diane. She nodded encouragingly. He looked back at me. “That sucks,” he said.
“Because I’m less important to him, I’m easier to face.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
I knocked. Not loudly or insistently. Casual. I waited. No response from inside. “Joseph,” I called out, loud, but only to be heard. “It’s Rafe. I took a wild guess you’d be here.”
I thought I heard a cough. Then nothing.
“Come on, Joe, it’s spooky out here. You know me, I’m not gonna bug you. Just want to talk.”
Nothing.
Harlan whispered, “Maybe the guard has a key.”
I heard something shatter. Glass, I thought. Harlan reached for the knob. I caught his hand and shouted, “Joe! It’s Rafe. I’m alone. Don’t leave me out here. It’s too fucking scary.” I motioned for Harlan and Diane to move away. Diane urged Harlan down the hall and he allowed himself to be towed away.
I knocked again. “Come on, Joe, or I’m gonna get really scared.”
Without a warning sound of feet or a lock turning, the door opened. Joseph faced me, bare-chested under a partially unzipped black nylon warm-up jacket. He stared at me through smudged eyeglasses as if I were an intrusive door-to-door salesman. “How did you get here?”
“Harlan brought me.”
Alarm. The door began to close. “He’s here?”
“No.” I stepped in, forcing Joe to move back. “Just me.” I shut the door without locking it. I blinked at the bright, expensively furnished place, as different from the gloomy hall as possible. It consisted of two large rooms, the first an office, jammed with desks, computers, printers, file cabinets and, I noticed, an elaborate stereo system. Everything was well-ordered, the kind of neatness I associated with Joseph’s mother’s housekeeping. The partition to the other room was mostly glass, as was the door. There light also flooded a big room, dominated by row after row of chemistry tables, covered by microscopes and big machines I couldn’t recognize, as well as racks of beakers. In the lab, things were jammed together and, although it might be as organized as the first room, my eye couldn’t tell if that were so — it appeared as a jumble of incomprehensible technology.
“I don’t have to explain?” Joe said quietly.
“It’s definite?” I asked.
“Oh, he’ll do another, just for form’s sake. They’re pretty sloppy sometimes, but,” Joe grinned, “what would you think if I told you I expected a different result? Denial, denial, denial.” The grin disappeared. “You want to see something funny?” Joe opened a filing cabinet, flipped confidently through it, came out with a folder, and removed a letter. He gave it to me.
I sat on a desk and read. The letter was from a prominent AIDS researcher, apparently also an acquaintance, upbraiding Joseph for ignoring AIDS in his work. He pleaded with him at least to help raise money, if not devote himself to the search for a cure. The letter wasn’t formaclass="underline" he accused Joseph of being a self-hating gay man, frightened of exposure if he associated himself with AIDS; he begged Joseph to accept his identity and become an inspiring scientific gay leader. I checked the date: two years ago.
“Such bullshit,” Joseph said when I finished. “I was scared, that’s all. Like a superstitious Jew from the shtetel. Close your eyes and it’ll go away.”