Tommy moved so fast and with such strength Jack didn’t understand what was happening until he was pinned against the wall with Tommy’s forearm jammed under his chin. He couldn’t speak. It was hard to breathe.
“I didn’t steal this, you motherfucking asshole,” Tommy said; his face was so close that Jack could see the small spread of whiskers at the top of Tommy’s cheekbone that he’d missed that morning while shaving. Tommy spoke and spit a little in Jack’s face with each word: “This was a gift from my wife.”
Jack was surprised to find lurking somewhere in his memory the trick they were taught back when he was with ACT UP and they were constantly being hassled and arrested by the police. To just relax, not fight. He held Tommy’s gaze, maintaining a neutral face. Tommy’s face fell and his whole body sagged as he stepped away from Jack.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, and the words barely came out. He sat back down and looked at his hands as if they weren’t his own. “What’s wrong with me?” He turned to Jack. “It was a gift,” he said, as he put his head in his hands and started sobbing. “It was a gift from my wife.”
JACK FOUND HIMSELF in the peculiar situation of making tea for Tommy. He rummaged through the cupboards, a sad collection of items he imagined Tommy bought (Cap’n Crunch, Ramen, boxed mac and cheese) and things someone else had clearly delivered (organic canned chili, packaged quinoa, chamomile tea), and got him to sit at the kitchen table. Tommy spilled the story with little urging and Jack found himself feeling oddly sympathetic. Poor bastard. He would have to proceed delicately.
Jack made his proposal, poured more tea, opened a stale pack of vanilla wafers, and waited for Tommy to respond.
“I don’t know,” Tommy said. He was staring at the closed cabinet door, behind which the statue lived. “I don’t know.”
“You can trust me,” Jack said. “I won’t make a move until you tell me you’re ready. You know if anyone finds out—”
“I know. Believe me, I have nightmares about dropping dead and my daughters having to deal with this.”
“If you want to keep it, I get it.” And Jack did get it. He understood the need for talismans from the dead. He and Walker had lost dozens of friends, had been pulled aside multiple times by a grieving mother or sister or cousin who offered a remembrance of the deceased to take home, like a party gift. Please, a friend’s stepsister had pleaded once, my parents will just drive it all to Goodwill; please take something that will remind you of him. And they did. Multiple things. Michael’s lime-green pocket square, Andrew’s aviator sunglasses, the tiny bistro chairs David used to make from discarded champagne-cork cages, countless framed photos and out-of-order watches and the odd tie or belt. Jack kept everything neatly folded and arranged on one shelf of a bedroom bookcase. The Museum of Death, Walker would grimly joke, but he cherished the tokens, too. All the remembering. The shelf held nothing of value and it held everything of value. It was the past they’d both endured and escaped. It was despair and hope. It was life and death.
“I understand if you want to keep it,” Jack said. “But I also understand”—and here he scooted his chair a little closer and put his hand on Tommy’s and his concern was unfeigned—“I also understand if you need to get rid of it. And I can help you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY–SEVEN
Leo had never been an early riser, but since he’d been living at Stephanie’s the early morning hours had returned to his day, the hours he used to spend fighting consciousness, not wanting to feel the radiating burn of Victoria’s fury from the other side of the bed, not ready for the muddled, self-recriminatory walk to the bathroom for water to soothe his parched, funky mouth, or the inglorious rattle of Advil tumbling into his trembling palm. Those days, there wasn’t a single morning he didn’t wake and swear the day ahead would be different. And not a single day where he didn’t break his promise to himself, usually by midafternoon, gradually denuded by a day of boredom, by the specter of the evening in the company of his bitter, hostile wife.
But these days, he woke as the morning light slowly shifted the sky from black to the watery blue of winter. He’d