“I'm sorry,” she said. “It's just too much for me.”
“Do you want me to come home? I will.”
“No,” she said. “What good would that do?” She started to cry and told me she had to go, she'd call back later when she was feeling better. “It's not just me, it's everyone,” she said and hung up.
I put the receiver down gently. Illuminated by the dirty street light, my room looked dull. It was bare like a hotel room and even the things that marked it — the horny blowfish, the cubist painting, the dead carnations in the vase by the bed — seemed dangerous. I lay down and felt a kind of insipid anxiety that hinted at tomorrow's depression. I closed my eyes, thought, Jesus and Bell and Kevin. The wedding invitation rested on the nightstand. It was traditional with raised black letters, a little envelope and small bits of tissue paper. The wedding was in Los Angeles tomorrow at five. I went to the window. A Mexican whore came out of the hotel across the street. Kevin's features came to me.
C h a p t e r T e n
I WALKED LIGHTLY UP THE STAIRS AND PUT MY EAR TO BELL'S door. If his breath was even, his countenance calm, I'd tell him I was going to Kevin's wedding. The radio was on, a talk show about the chances of war. I could see words scratched into the wood. I fingered the letters, closed my eyes, thought of Bell making love to the little man. I swayed a little, bumped my head. Bell turned down the radio and said, “Who's there?” in a frightened voice.
“It's me, let me in.” I heard him go into the bathroom, open the medicine chest, pause, close it, then walk down the hall to the door. Bell pulled back the dead bolt. He smiled when he saw me.
“Why so serious, Jesse?” he asked. He was wearing the silk kimono, one arm pulled in tightly as if it were sprained. The skin around his eyes was a greasy gray from wearing mascara and removing it with vaseline.
“Well?” he asked. “Did you quit?”
When I nodded he was so relieved his face smoothed and he let out an easy breath. He led me like a child down the hall, all the time keeping his shoulder up and his arm pressed against his side. The place smelled of garlic and burning wax and I saw the big cement lawn statue of Jesus on the black table and the candles lit around it.
“Having a seance?” I asked.
Bell didn't answer. He sat at the table, rifling through a shoe box full of seeds, picking up a packet of sunflowers, then zinnias, reading the tiny instructions on the back. A Chinese newspaper was spread all over the floor and taped to the walls. There was nowhere to sit. The couch springs were uncovered. I eyed the closet and the rumpled futon.
“Ah, lovely,” Bell said, and held up a packet of blue morning glory seeds. He ripped the top off and rattled the contents into his mouth, then swigged from his pint bottle of gin. “I've decided to grow a garden in my stomach.”
“Your heart will think it's found a soulmate,” I said.
Bell smiled, looked over my head. His eyes focused on the tiny Chinese characters and his lips moved as if he could read them. His forehead wrinkled and he leaned toward me, clamping his cool hand over my wrist. The candle flames showed themselves in each of his eyes and I remembered when we used to joke that he was the devil. He motioned with his head for me to move closer and whispered, “Keep your plans secret for now.” I was startled, not sure whether to admit my rental car was waiting outside, that I was anxious to get on the road, anxious to finally meet Kevin. But he didn't continue, just looked into the street as if he might see someone that could save his life. The lamp on the floor cast him in pathetic light. Bell stood, his kimono opened and he asked me if I'd like a drink. His nude body seemed yellow and swollen, with a fine coating of sweat that smelled of juniper berries. He'd been drinking for days. I stared at the texture of his balls, their fragility had always startled me. It seemed men were hostile and mean to protect that vulnerable spot, not to celebrate their hard cocks. He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator. The ice cubes fell into the sink and onto the floor.
“I want you to stop all this wallowing.”
He turned suddenly and even in the shadowy kitchen I could see his face fill with pain. “I killed my father,” he said, his hurt arm tighter as if it was meant to hold him up. “He wanted a haircut. So my mother took him into town to the barbershop. He urged her to leave, he wanted to be alone with the men. When she came back he was waiting outside, shivering. The men teased him, said his son was a faggot.” He left his mouth open, raised his eyebrows, as if to say, isn't that incredible, I killed my father.
“It's still not your fault.”
“It is!” he said, squinting at me, trying to see me as a memory years from now. He wanted to be responsible for his father's death. He'd rather revel in some tragic poignancy than his regular mundane life. It reminded me of my own melancholy about my parents’ divorce. Weeks ago he might have convinced me it was noble, not now. Bell's father was dead and he hadn't seen Kevin for ten years and it was ridiculous for him to be this way. I stood, walked into the dark kitchen, put my arms loosely around his neck and tried to ease him into my body. But he pulled away, reached his hand under his stiff arm and took out a medium-size speckled egg. “I'm going to hatch it,” he said, walking to the table holding the egg down close to the candlelight. “That purple color means it won't be long now,” he said, tucking the egg back under his arm, pressing his elbow against his side. “Is there anything more delicate than an egg?” he asked smiling.
“Yeah,” I said. “Relationships.”
Bell looked at me in a blank way that made me sure it was time to leave. “We should get married,” he said. “My father would love you.”
THE RENTAL CAR HAD A DASHBOARD OF WARM GREEN LIGHT. The interior smelled of the immortality of plastic. The engine was quiet and it seemed more like my mind that pushed me forward than the cylinders of exploding gasoline. The headlights made people on the street momentarily transparent and that image of a face fading away as if from memory got me thinking of Bell, and about how little one person can help another. I'd tried to convince him he wasn't responsible for his father's death and give him some possibility of a future. But the only future I was willing to work for was one together. I could only save him through his commitment to me. And Bell was gay, or at least ambivalent enough to make the idea of marriage ridiculous. But even if I were a man, as I often used to wish, I couldn't stop him from going down. It was what he wanted. I could tell by the way he held his cigarette, how when he spoke he looked coldly through my head and into the next world.
I felt guilty. If I'd ever really loved him, I should have stayed nearby. But I couldn't decide whether it was stronger to leave him or to stay and help. I remembered my mother's face, puffy from crying after Dad left. She took both my hands into hers and said, “Promise me that if you are ever treated badly you will leave.” I only wish all her crazy oaths and advice wouldn't rise so often in my mind. But it was more than that, I was sick of Bell and Madison and Pig and all of San Francisco, sick of being nice, being nurturing, being a good sport, of appeasing people. I started to think of maggots festering in a wound. I thought of betraying people who loved me, of piss and shit mixed foully in a backed-up toilet. I figured if I knew exactly what I wanted then maybe I'd stop being so polite and that's why I had to speak with Kevin. But what did he know about my crazy ideas of love and family — intensified by my parents’ divorce and my own faithless life? I thought about the story my mother often told of reaching for my father in bed and him saying, “Don't embarrass yourself.” Could I blame this whole thing on them, on their divorce? Even as a child I was insecure and sneaky. I always needed a huge amount of attention and I often pretended to be sick or stupid to get it. I'd been the little actress and had not lived the right life from the start.