Nico and Fiona were always broke, even if he’d never heard them mention any millionaires.
On the bottom of one memo, a handwritten scrawl: “Cecily,” it said, “are we involving the Brigg people yet?” The memo was two weeks old. Yale should have been indignant, but he did see where Cecily was coming from. He was new, the gallery itself was relatively new, and this was, potentially, a major donor. She was involving him now, at least. Except part of him wished she weren’t. Probably he was just tired, but all he felt was a sort of pre-dentist-visit dread.
* * *
—
He didn’t know what condition he’d find Charlie in. He might be sweet and contrite, or he might still be angry about nothing. Or he might have taken off, buried himself in work to avoid the whole situation.
But before Yale opened the door, he heard voices. A relief: A crowd was good. Charlie and two of his staffers, Gloria and Rafael, sat around the coffee table poring over back issues. Charlie was in the habit of overworking his staff on the sly by inviting them over on Mondays to celebrate after the week’s issue was out. He’d feed them and then get them working again, right in the living room. As publisher, Charlie might have been hands-off with the paper, but he’d stayed involved with every decision from alderman endorsements to ads. He owned a travel agency with an office on Belmont, and he’d funneled its proceeds into Out Loud Chicago since the paper’s founding three years ago. Charlie wasn’t even particularly interested in travel or in helping other people travel; he’d bought the agency in ’78 from an older lover who was particularly charmed by him and ready to retire. Charlie only went in once a week these days to make sure the place hadn’t burned down and to meet with the few clients who’d specifically requested his attention. He had no problem giving complete autonomy to his agents, but believed his editors and writers required his constant supervision. It drove them nuts.
Yale waved and got himself a beer and disappeared into the bedroom to pack. It took him a few minutes to notice the bed: Charlie had spelled out “SORRY” down Yale’s side in M&Ms. Tan for the S, yellow for the O, and so on. He grinned, ate three orange candies from the tail of the Y. Charlie’s apologies were always tangible and elaborate. The most Yale ever managed was a feeble note.
Yale was debating sweaters when Gloria called him back to the living room. Gloria was a tiny lesbian with earrings all the way up both ears. She handed him an old issue, open to rows of beefcake photos, each advertising a bar or video or escort service. “Flip through,” she said. “Tell me when you see a woman. Or anyone who isn’t a young white guy, for that matter.”
Yale had no luck in the ad section. In a photo of the Halloween party at Berlin, he found two drag queens. “I don’t suppose this counts,” he said.
“Look,” Charlie said. He was worked up. “Ads will dominate the visuals no matter what, and we can’t ask a bathhouse to show, what? The cleaning lady?”
Rafael said, “Yeah, but Out and Out—” and then he swallowed his words. Out and Out was new, founded by three staffers who’d quit Charlie’s paper last year, in a huff that Out Loud Chicago still relegated lesbian-specific coverage to four color-coded pages in the back. Yale had to agree—it seemed regressive, and the headlines were pink—but Charlie’s remaining lesbian staffers preferred the editorial control it gave them. The new paper was cheaply printed and didn’t have great distribution, but even so, Charlie had stepped up his game in response. Same party shots but more activism, editorials, theater and film reviews.
Charlie said, “Out and Out doesn’t have the same problem because they can’t sell ads to save their life.”
Yale grabbed pretzels from the bag on the table, and Rafael nodded meekly. He’d been appointed Editor in Chief after those three staffers left, but he hadn’t learned to shout Charlie down yet, and he’d have to. Funny, because Rafael was hardly shy. He was known for coming right up and biting your face if he was drunk enough. He’d started out as the nightlife reviewer—he was young and cute, with spiked-up hair, and he’d worked as a dancer—but he turned out to be an excellent editor, and despite his deference to Charlie, despite the diminished