it was 2015, and here was a man, very much alive, whose eyes and gestures and voice were Julian’s.
Fiona sat on the studio’s cement floor, the back of her head against a cupboard. Julian was explaining to the rest of them what Fiona had stammered in the hallway. “What’s the line about rumors of my death? Richard, should I be insulted that you never talk about me?”
Serge found the whole thing hilarious, called Julian a zombie, laughed at the look on Fiona’s face. Cecily didn’t know Julian; she got Fiona a damp paper towel for her forehead.
Richard said, “Fiona, I only found him myself two years ago. We knew you didn’t know where he was. That was the surprise. But if I’d thought for an instant that you’d believed he was—listen, I’d never have sprung that on you.”
How much had she even talked to Richard in the past two years? Not at all, really. She’d emailed to ask if she could come. Before that . . . well, it felt like they’d talked, but that was just a product of seeing his name pop up so often in the world, and of their being such old friends.
Julian stood above her, helpless, running his thumb across his chin. She stared at his face, the ways it had changed. Beyond the normal transformations of age, he had what she recognized as some facial wasting from AZT, and—she was certain—cheek implants to counter the fat loss. Not great ones either. A couple of her volunteers at the store had similar cheeks. And his face had broadened—the steroids, presumably—so that he looked blocky, carved. Still handsome but profoundly different. As if he’d been reconstituted from a police sketch.
He said, “I work in accounting for Universal. We’re shooting right on Richard’s street. Not that I get to be on set. They only flew me in three days ago and I’m in a sad little office.”
She said, “Where—usually—” but she didn’t have words for the rest of what should have been an easy question.
“I’m in L.A. I looked for you on Facebook, you know. A bunch of times!”
“Oh.”
“Hey. I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t sure why he’d said it, but she worried he’d read her mind: Why, she was thinking, should it be Julian Ames, of all people, to show up, a ghost at the door? Why not Nico or Terrence or Yale? Why not Teddy Naples, who’d evaded the virus only to die in ’99 of a heart attack in front of his class? Why not Charlie Keene, for that matter, who was an asshole, but did so much good? She’d loved Julian. She had. But why him?
She made herself smile, because she hadn’t smiled yet.
“I really did try to find you,” he said. “I should have asked Richard.” His voice was the same. Julian’s voice.
“You did ask, remember? Last year, in L.A. And I said I’d get you her email. I forgot, of course.”
She said, “It’s okay.”
Richard said, “I feel like a lout.”
They decided what everyone needed was sandwiches, and Serge was dispatched to buy them. By the time he came back with five plastic-wrapped baguettes of ham and cheese in a paper bag, they were all sitting around the table, and Richard had adroitly defused the awkwardness with a story about the time Yale Tishman had thrown a birthday party for his roommate at Masonic, a man he’d just met who’d had no one in town to visit him. Yale had told them all to bring little presents, and Fiona, to be funny, had bought a Playgirl on the way, only to learn on arrival that the guy was straight. A gruff IV drug user from downstate. “He was not amused,” Richard said.
Fiona still felt detached, floaty, confused. She kept looking at her own hands. If these were the same hands she’d had all along, then it wasn’t impossible that Julian Ames was sitting here across from her, opening his sandwich, asking if Richard had any napkins.
There were events she’d believed herself, for years, to be the sole custodian of—when all along, those parties, those conversations, those jokes had stayed alive in him as well.
Julian said, “Leaving is one of my great regrets in life, Fiona. I want you to know. I thought I was running off to spare everyone, and really I was abandoning them. I’d never imagined they could go before I did. Not in a million years. And I know, from Richard—I know you took care of Yale in particular. It should have