I went to his funeral and I was like, Wow, mortality, how sad, you just never know. And it was already in me. I was in denial so long, Yale. I was in denial till the nurse was looking me in the face, telling me I had the virus. She had to tell me three times.
“So yeah, let’s say it takes a few years. That’s now. I’m at the top of the slide. I’m hoping it starts with herpes and thrush at the same time, so I look like some kind of white-tongued dragon when I open my mouth. What’s the thing where you bleed from your gums? I want that too. But then just for you, Yale, when I open my scabbed-up lips to show my bloody gums and the yeast farm I’m growing in my throat, I’m gonna look in the mirror, and just for you I’ll floss. Because I wouldn’t want any plaque in there messing things up.”
Yale held the floss container between his thumb and finger. He said, “Did you sleep at all?”
“I can sleep on the plane.”
“When you’re gone, when it’s been a few days, can I tell people where you went?”
“You can say you saw me, and I looked like a handsome fucking devil, and I said I’m sorry. Feel free to tell them Puerto Rico, because by the time Teddy could fly his ass down there to find me, I’ll be gone.”
“What about your family?”
“I’ll send a postcard.”
Yale found a pen and wrote his office number and the Sharps’ number inside the back copy of Pet Sematary, the one book in Julian’s backpack.
He said, “Let me call you a cab.”
* * *
—
That night, Yale tore off a bit of Julian’s dental floss and threw it away, and then he tore himself some to use. The next night, he used it again. He only did this before bed; he used his own each morning. It was a way of making Julian’s last longer, but it was also a way of reflecting back on his day. One day since Julian had left, two days since Julian had left, and what was different? What had he done?
Not that Julian’s absence should be such a great hole, but about an hour after Julian had taken off, as Yale worked the Sharps’ elaborate coffee machine, he’d been hit by the fact that this was another friend gone from his life. Nico was gone, Terrence was gone, Charlie was on another planet as far as he was concerned, Teddy judged him, and now Julian had gone off to curl up under a palm tree and die. Asher was left, but he was so busy. Fiona was left. There were people he knew a bit who weren’t fully associated with Charlie—Katsu, for instance—but everyone seemed lately to be hunkering down with their oldest, closest friends, not clamoring for new ones. There was Roman. He talked more to Roman than to anyone else, which wasn’t saying much. Roman had gone to the Alphaville show, and told Yale about someone stomping on his foot. Roman was wearing a Pisces T-shirt, and they talked about astrology. Yale tried to drop details that modeled self-acceptance into the conversation: “I haven’t been to Mexico since ’72; that was the year I came out, at least to myself.” Once, when they talked about food, he said, “My ex-partner only knew how to cook three things, but one of them was paella.” Roman never asked more.
He flossed his teeth the night he found a bright purple bruise on his ankle and freaked out all over again.
He flossed his teeth the night of the day the bruise started to fade, turn yellow at the edges.
The night after Bill Lindsey excitedly told him the Soutine experts were on board, Yale weighed the floss container in his hand and tried to guess how much was left. Surely there was some fairy tale like this: a story of a king whose reign would end when the magic ball of twine ran out. That sounded right. He wasn’t going to floss with a two-inch string just to make it last, but he also wasn’t going to waste it the way Charlie always did, an arm’s length every night.
On Valentine’s Day, he looked in the mirror and worked the string between his molars and told himself he’d made it through the week, at least. He’d made it through the test and through the awkwardness with Roman, and he hadn’t broken down and