and a raffle upstairs at Ann Sather on Belmont, the restaurant a step up from the pass-the-bucket lectures in someone’s apartment. Yale looked forward to it, really. He enjoyed Christmas, which he hadn’t celebrated until he took up with Charlie, and he looked forward to seeing everyone.
One night Yale and Charlie were out at a Vietnamese place in Uptown, huddled in sweaters in the back, and Yale said, “Why don’t you have Richard do a photo essay on the party? For the paper? Like, artsy and journalistic, not just normal party shots. Someone’s hand on a glass, that kind of thing.”
Charlie set his chopsticks in his rice noodles and looked up at Yale. “Oh my God,” he said. “Yes.” Yale felt relieved, as if he’d just evened the score, made up for something. Charlie bit his lip, a code: Wait till we get home.
When they did get home, though, Charlie was tired and wanted to crash. He’d had a fever before Thanksgiving, one that hit him hard at first and seemed to be sticking around in milder form. A year ago they’d have both worried this spelled doom. The fact that a fever could just be a fever now, a cough could just be a cough, a rash could just be a rash—it was a gift the test had given them. This was where Asher was wrong; knowledge was, in some cases, bliss. Yale brought Charlie herbal tea in bed, told him he should take the next day off.
Charlie said, “God, no. If they ever do a whole issue without me, they’ll get ideas.”
* * *
—
Late the next afternoon, Cecily Pearce called to request that Yale meet her for coffee at Clarke’s, a neon-laden place that always gave Yale a headache. There was something so agitated in her voice that, on his way there, Yale developed a paranoid theory: Cecily had blacked out some of that night in Door County nearly a month ago, and it had only this morning come back to her that she’d offered Yale cocaine, put her hand on his leg. Maybe she’d remembered that part but not the rest, not the confirmation of Yale’s sexuality, the fact that he’d dropped her off at her room.
When he arrived, five minutes early, Cecily was already waiting, had already ordered him a to-go cup. She said, “I’m not in a sitting mood.” Yale had been glad to get out of the cold, but she was buttoning her coat, heading out the door. He followed her onto the sidewalk and managed to steer them back toward campus before Cecily could turn toward the chill of the lake. She didn’t complain. Her gloves matched her hat and scarf: all a soft cream that made her look fragile.
She said, “We have a bit of an issue. Have you heard more from our friend Nora?”
“Not a word.”
“Okay. Just as well. I’m honestly hoping this whole thing disappears.” She stopped and looked blankly through a store window at some headless mannequins. “There’s a donor, a trustee actually, by the name of Chuck Donovan. Class of ’52. This is someone who gives ten thousand a year to the annual fund, but there’s a bequest in place for two million. Not our biggest donor of all time, but we need him. We can’t throw people like this away.”
“Of course.” Yale sensed he was being reprimanded, but he couldn’t imagine what for.
She said, “I have to set the stage for you here. This is a man who, and I’m not making this up, once donated a Steinway to the music school, and then when he had some beef with the dean over there, he came into the building himself and removed the little placard with his name on it. With a tiny screwdriver.”
Yale started laughing—he couldn’t help it—and Cecily joined. It surely hadn’t been funny when it happened, when she’d had to deal with the guy’s calls.
She started walking again, and Yale dodged students to keep up. “So. I got a call from Chuck Donovan yesterday, and he’s been talking to Frank Lerner. Frank is Nora’s son. He’s the one who owns the house.”
“Debra’s father,” Yale said.
“Right. They’re both in medical supplies, and I imagine it’s a golf-buddy situation.”
Yale said, “So Frank is mad at us and told him so?” His coffee was way too hot, and it scalded the middle of his tongue. He wouldn’t be able to taste his dinner.
“Ha. Yes. More than that. He had a little speech. He said, ‘You can