found some old poppers in the back of the fridge. But is there any point to poppers if you aren’t getting laid?”
“No. Jesus. Poppers?”
“I’m asking seriously!” Julian pulled himself straight. He had a lock of dark hair in front that Charlie maintained made him look like Superman. (“Or a unicorn,” Yale would add.) He brushed it out of his eyes and pouted. Julian was too perfect, if anything. He’d had a nose job when he left Atlanta—better for his acting career—and Yale wished he hadn’t. He’d have preferred an imperfect Julian.
“I’m answering seriously. There’s absolutely no point to doing poppers at a memorial.”
“But this isn’t a funeral, it’s a party. And it’s like—” Julian was close again, conspiratorial in his ear. “It’s like that Poe story, the Red Death one. There’s death out there, but we’re gonna have a fabulous time in here.”
“Julian.” Yale drained the Cuba libre and spat an ice chip back into the glass. “That is not the point. That’s not how the story ends.”
“I was never one to finish my homework.”
Julian put his chin on Yale’s shoulder—a thing he was prone to do, one that always made Yale worry Charlie would glance over right then. Yale had spent the past four years reassuring Charlie he wouldn’t run off with someone like Julian, or like Teddy Naples, who was now leaning out precariously over the railing, his feet off the ground, calling to a friend below. (Teddy was so small that someone could probably catch him if he fell, but still, Yale cringed, looked away.) There was no reason for Charlie’s insecurity, beyond both men’s looks and flirtatiousness. Beyond the fact that Charlie would never feel secure. Yale had been the one to propose monogamy to begin with, but Charlie was the one who dwelt on its possible unraveling. And he’d picked the two most beautiful men in Chicago to affix his anxieties to. Yale shrugged Julian off his shoulder, and Julian smiled dopily and wandered away.
The room had loudened, the sound bouncing off the stories above, more people flooding in. Two very pretty, very young men circulated with trays of little quiches and stuffed mushrooms and deviled eggs. Yale wondered why the food wasn’t Cuban, too, to match the drinks, but Richard probably had just one plan for every party: Open the doors, open the bar, boys with quiche.
In any case, this was infinitely better than that strange and dishonest vigil last night. The church had smelled nicely of incense, but otherwise there was little about it Nico would have liked. “He wouldn’t be caught dead here,” Charlie had said, and then he’d heard himself and tried to laugh. The parents had carefully invited Nico’s lover to the vigil, saying it was “an appropriate time for friends to pay respect.” Meaning, don’t come today to the actual mass. Meaning, don’t really even show up for the vigil, but aren’t we generous? But Terrence had gone last night, and so had eight friends. Mostly to surround Terrence, and to support Fiona, who, it turned out, had convinced her parents to issue the invitation; she’d told them that if Nico’s friends weren’t invited, she’d stand up during the service and say so. Still, plenty of friends had bowed out. Asher Glass had claimed his body would revolt at setting foot in a Catholic church. (“I’d start yelling about rubbers. Swear to God.”)
The eight of them sat shoulder to shoulder in the back, a phalanx of suits around Terrence. It would have been nice if Terrence could have blended in anonymously, but they weren’t even seated yet when Yale heard an older woman pointing him out to her husband: “That one. The black gentleman with the glasses.” As if there were another black guy in this church, one with perfect vision. That woman wasn’t the only one who kept glancing back throughout the service to observe, anthropologically, when and if this gay black specimen might start weeping.
Yale held Charlie’s hand low down—not as a statement, but because Charlie was so allergic to churches. “I see kneelers and hymnals,” he said, “and five tons of Anglican guilt lands on my neck.” So, far below anyone else’s sightline, Yale had rubbed his wide thumb over Charlie’s bony one.
Family members told stories only about Nico as a child, as if he’d died in adolescence. There was one good one, told by Nico’s stoic and ashen father: Fiona, when she was seven, had wanted twenty cents to buy a handful of Swedish Fish