You Can Say You Knew Me When (38 page)

If Jed didn’t return, would it matter? And if it did matter to me—if Jed himself mattered to me—and if he returned in a day, fists crammed with dollars, as promised, would I go away with him?
You and me.
He’d underlined it. I saw myself in that dingy Tenderloin men’s room, reaching into some rough trade’s puddle of piss. Is this what San Francisco held for me after Woody?

On my bed I found the T-shirt Jed was wearing the night before, when I last saw him. A souvenir from a 1983 Police concert, the
Synchronicity
tour. It no longer fit me, but it had enfolded him like gift paper. His sweat still clung to the cotton.

I collapsed on the mattress, depleted, and masked my eyes with the shirt. His smells rose into me—tobacco and unwashed hair and something like milk. Glimpses of him disturbed my sleep: an eyeball tattooed on his forearm, winking; his lips parting to show the space between his front teeth; the fly of his boxers parting to reveal his uncut cock. I woke sensing that he’d been here during the night, in the flesh, and I searched my apartment for signs that he had. Darth Vader was standing again. I couldn’t remember setting it aright, though it must have been me.

Five business days had passed, but the next morning, when I went to the bank, I was told that I had a negative balance in my account. Andy’s check had not cleared. “Insufficient funds,” the teller said. I dropped my head in my hands, my elbows on the counter, and I stayed that way long enough for him to prod, “Is there anything else?”

“God, I hope not,” I replied, an involuntary giggle breaking through. I turned and walked away, and this laughter enlarged, fed by the stunning amazement only excess misfortune can bring.
This isn’t happening,
I told myself. But it was.
Hahaha.

I biked to a place called Buddies, which sounds like a gay bar in a comedy sketch but was actually an Internet café full of coffee sippers standing at tall tables, checking their e-mail. My in-box revealed a series of messages from Deirdre, her anxiety cresting with each one:
I’m worried about you. I can’t get through on the phone. Andy said you never wanted to speak to us again. Get in touch with me. Are you OK?

I typed her a reply that began,
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
? and continued with an all-caps scorcher that I sent without rereading. I didn’t feel any better when I was done. I wasn’t laughing anymore, not even bitterly.

There was an e-mail from Brady with
TRYING AGAIN
in the subject line. I didn’t read it.

There was one from my cousin Tommy:
COMING TO SAN FRAN FOR BUSINESS
. I skimmed it quickly, wrote down his cell-phone number.

The rest of my account was a pileup of spam and political petitions and group invitations from friends I was no longer speaking to. I marked everything for deletion.

And then I noticed one message near the end of the queue that I actually wanted to read: a reply from the literary agency I’d contacted about Dean Foster.

They provided a phone number and address in North Hollywood, California. The street name sounded familiar.

Back at my apartment I flipped quickly through the contents of my
QUEST FOR FATHER
folder, my eye running down the list of the Dean Fosters I’d contacted. Sure enough, I found the North Hollywood address, attached to a Dean Foster I’d mailed a letter to: the angry guy with the barking dog, the one who phoned and threatened to sue for
invasion of privacy.

That man was Danny Ficchino.

W
hen I finally spoke to Deirdre, I didn’t tell her I had found Danny Ficchino, even though I was buzzing with pride. (After months of misfires, I had actually accomplished something.
I’d found him!
) But Deidre was managing a crisis of her own. She had literally wrenched Andy’s laptop from his hands, had brought in an outside financial advisor,
someone Carly Fazio said was really smart,
had forced Andy to itemize their finances. She was not yet sure how much money they had on hand. She promised to wire a portion to me, but the rest would have to wait. I took this news more calmly than I would have thought possible a day earlier. What choice did I have? My sister was afraid she would lose her house. I was embarrassed I’d e-mailed that tirade.

Our conversation took place at Ian’s. I had gone there to page Jed, after I’d sketched for myself a loose plan of action: take the money from Jed and the money from Deirdre, pay off my rent and my phone bill, use the remainder to get myself, and my recorder, to Los Angeles. To Danny Ficchino. Maybe Jed could come along. After I got my interview with Danny, I’d be free to go wherever I wanted, with whomever I wanted.

I thought about calling Danny first. I thought about writing another letter, this time trying to hook him with a more detailed description of my search and what I’d discovered about Teddy, but after the inflamed response I got last time, I put no faith in this. I forced myself to think strategically, as if this were an assignment; I had tracked down plenty of slippery people for interviews. The key was to choose a tactic that intuited the subject’s psychology. All I knew about Danny Ficchino was that he wanted to be left alone. So my best bet was to catch him unawares, the element of surprise on my side. Which meant showing up at his door.

After listening to Deidre’s bad news, after a few hours waiting for Jed’s call, which didn’t come, I felt my buzz fading. “This is ridiculous, going to LA now,” I said. “I’ve bounced my rent check. I’m about to lose my apartment.”

“You’re not going to wind up homeless,” Ian said.

“Does the word
eviction
mean anything to you?”

“If you get evicted, you can move in with me.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly, his words filtered through a long exhale off a cigarette, that I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard right. “Move in?” I asked. “Like, roommates?”

“I’m not going to ask for credit references,” he said. “Though you will be forced into servitude for my website.”

“Sounds like a no-brainer,” I said, sunny again.

He held his palm out, and I slapped it, brother to brother. “Go to LA,” he said. “Strike while it’s hot.”

Late that night, as I laid in bed, open eyed, cycling through the disorder of my life, it came to me. Los Angeles. Colleen.

Colleen, my oldest friend in the world. Colleen, who I was still avoiding. A few days before, a black-haired woman about Colleen’s size had breezed past me on the street wearing something right out of Colleen’s closet—a multicolored, patchwork-leather midi-coat, very seventies, very hippie-chic—and the resemblance was so close it ignited a flurry of stomach nerves that nearly brought my morning coffee back up. Colleen, who had always been my comfort.

If I erased the fact that Colleen had told Brady I’d screwed around behind Woody’s back—which, after all, is what friends do when asked to keep secrets: unburden themselves on other friends—I saw that my anger toward her was a fortress made of sand. My behavior the night of Ray’s opening washed up over this fortress, melting it to a muddy stream. I opened a file on my computer, the one that held a month of transcribed voice mails, and I found the message Colleen left me after I’d nearly shoved her, the one that ended,
Maybe you should figure out what your hostility and internalized homophobia is all about.
I had responded with a joke. Stupidity on top of stupidity.

Years ago, when Colleen had begun dating a man after having previously been only with women, she hid it from everyone, including me. She dropped out of contact, and when I finally cornered her she was curt and defensive.
Well, that’s that
, I’d thought. But a short while later, she surprised me with an unannounced visit, an apology, a bouquet of flowers. What had seemed like the end was just something we got through.

Remembering all this, I got on my bike and headed toward the boutique where she worked, detouring first past a flower stand on Market. I had borrowed a couple of twenties from Ian. The vendor’s offerings were standard-issue—red and yellow carnations, pink-tipped lilies with their maroon pollen-pods stripped away, purple tulips that would probably droop in a day. I went into full-tilt queen mode, annoying the proprietor by insisting I assemble my own bouquet, one stem from this cluster, a couple from that. “I need something elegant enough for a reconciliation,” I told him, shooing away his fistful of baby’s breath.

Through the flashy storefront, I saw Colleen and waved. She buzzed me in from her spot behind the counter. She looked uncharacteristically frazzled, dressed in a shapeless sweatshirt and old jeans. Her black bob was growing out, natural brown roots lining her scalp like weeds.

“Hi,” I said, pulling the flowers from behind my back. “I’ve been a retard.”

She beamed and buried her nose in the bouquet.

“They don’t have much of a smell,” I said.

“You went to the guy on the corner?”

“Yeah. They’re kind of a mess,” I said.

“In a sweet way,” she said, smiling. “They mean well.”

I held my arms out and shrugged, summoning up humility with a sheepish half-smile. We moved in for a hug, both a bit theatrical in our approach. The awkwardness of returning to a friendship that has been put on hold. Our embrace a clutch of relief.

Her boss—the manic half of the team, who we called Up—appeared. “Collee-een,” he hummed, “the delivery?” He frowned suspiciously at my flowers, as though I had wheeled in a shopping cart full of cans.

“This LA trip is killing me,” Colleen said after he spun off to the back room. “I can’t believe I’m going to be living ’round the clock with these two drama queens.”

“When do you leave?”

“I’m driving down in a couple of days.”

“Want company?” I asked, making transparent my ulterior motive. “I have an interview there. For a story.”

“You have a place to stay?” she asked dubiously.

“Do you have space in your hotel room?” Neither a yes nor a no was clear in her eyes. “I could be there at the end of the day to give you foot rubs and peel you grapes and bitch with you about—.” I gestured toward the back, where at this moment Up was cursing and knocking around boxes in a petulant fury.

“It might be just what I need,” she said. “Let me think about it.”

A whine from the back: “Collee-een. Today
,
please.”

We made a plan to see each other that night.

I went to Ian’s expecting Jed’s call. I was sure it would come this afternoon. There wasn’t much else to do at Ian’s but wait; his computer was still dead, so we couldn’t work on the site. I played CDs from his collection, sad that I’d sold off most of my own for so little in return.

Finally the phone rang. Ian went to the other room and came back carrying the cordless. “It’s for you.” I leapt to my feet, and he shook his head. “It’s not…”

“Oh.” I took the phone. “Hello?”

“There he is!”

It took me a moment to recognize the voice through the dropouts of the cellular connection. My cousin Tommy Ficchino. “Where you been?” he roared. “I called, I e-mailed. I’ve been in San Fran half a week and I’m leaving in two days.”

“My phone service has been interrupted.”

“Yeah, your sister told me.”

“She gave you this number?”

“You can run, but you can’t hide, Jamie. Look, you need a loan?”

“No, I’m good.” I bit my lip, unsure.

“Well, tonight everything’s on me,” he said.

“Tonight? I’ve got plans with a friend.”

“Great, I’ll come along,” he said enthusiastically. “I’m supposed to meet the other account manager for a drink, and I’m thinking, I spend all fucking day with him, why am I spending every fucking night with him, too?”

Nothing I said—
I need some one-on-one time with my friend
;
we’ve got plans to settle
;
we’re probably meeting in a gay bar, you wouldn’t like it
—discouraged him. My excuses were no match for the full thrust of his salesmanship, which was motivated, I was guessing, by whatever red flags Deirdre had sent up.

Colleen and I met at Uncle Bert’s, one of the few Castro bars not given over to a wall of monitors cycling through music videos and comedy clips, the kind of place that sponsored its own softball team, where the regulars drank just a little too much and were quick to chat up strangers. I was already into my second drink when she arrived, flustered from last-minute arrangements at work and a hair appointment. She was leaving for LA the next morning, a day earlier than planned. Her bosses wanted to fly her down, but Colleen, who needed sedatives to get past her fear of flying, was sticking to her plan to drive.

I sensed that she was open to taking me along, but she insisted that
we have to work some stuff out first.
And we did, or at least started to, until Tommy walked through the door, booming a greeting and clamping my hand in his meaty grip. I introduced them to each other. Colleen reminded me that they had met over ten years before, when I’d dragged her to a Garner family party.

“I remember your face,” Tommy said to her. “You turned into a real stylish chick. Back then you were in Army boots.”

“And you had hockey hair,” she fired back.

“Short in front, long in back.” His hands gestured from forehead to neck. “You know, a
shlong,
” he said with a suggestive smile.

“You’ve been here a minute and we’re already talking about your dick?” Colleen asked.

“Sorry, I usually wait ten minutes,” he joked.

She smiled despite herself, shaking her head.

Tommy ordered us a round of drinks, his unmistakable New York accent cutting past every other voice in the place. Colleen tried to decline, claiming an early night, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I sensed her misgivings—the sudden largeness of his presence and, worse than that, the fact that I hadn’t warned her he was coming, a definite fuckup on a night designed to restore her confidence in me. I suppose I had counted on him not showing.

Tommy was dressed like what he was, a businessman after-hours: pleated suit trousers, leather loafers, dress shirt opened at the collar revealing a plane of matted hair. Definitely not the norm in this queer dive, and he was sexier because of it. If you were on the make for someone who wasn’t just another Castro clone, he might be your target. I suspected Tommy had been hit on by men before, not only for his swagger, but for his good humor, the instant familiarity that made every conversation an occasion for teasing.

He talked with his hands—bare hands. No wedding ring. After he made mention of one of his kids, Colleen noticed this, too. “Are you divorced?” she asked.

“I’m on vacation,” he said, eyebrows raised to let her in on his misbehavior. I remembered his stories of hiring call girls; I wondered what that was like, sliding the ring on and off to ready yourself for sex. You couldn’t tell yourself that your cheating was a
slip
.

“So your wife is home with four kids,” Colleen prodded, “and you’re sneaking around pretending you’re not even married.”

“Hey, I got enough Catholic guilt already. Don’t call the Pope on me.”

“It’s not a moral issue for me,” she said between sips, “but the situation doesn’t seem very fair to her.”

“She’s happy being a stay-at-home mom. That’s all the fun she asks for. That and a few goodies from Neiman Marcus.”

“Whatever works for you,” Colleen muttered.

I shook my head. “If Deirdre heard this conversation she’d freak.”

Tommy reached an arm over each of our shoulders, marking our alliance. “Whaddaya say we just drop the subject and have ourselves some fun, huh?”

I thought about Tommy’s oldest kid, Brian, the one on the porch with us after the funeral. Did Tommy think of him when he was philandering? Maybe so; maybe Tommy had picked up his behavior from his own father and would one day pass it down to Brian. Though I couldn’t imagine Uncle Angelo taking such a casual attitude about his own marriage, not because his love for Aunt Katie was so consuming, but because he had always held himself up as exemplary, a right-and-wrong guy. Tommy had some of his father’s man-of-the-house attitude, but Tommy was looser about it; I suspected he saw the comedy of his role. Education might have accounted for his vaguely liberal upward mobility; he’d gotten the first master’s degree of anyone in the family, an MBA that had vaulted him to a new class, a more expensive house, kids in private school.

It was Tommy’s idea that we move on to another place, “Somewhere we can shake it a little.”

Colleen again tried to say no but had less conviction in her voice this time; perhaps it was the booze, perhaps Tommy’s amiability was getting under her defenses. “Fuck it,” she pronounced, coaxing the last of her cocktail through a slender red straw. “Who cares if I’m tired for the drive? I’ve given these guys my every waking hour for weeks now.”

“I’ll help with the driving,” I said.

Colleen met my eyes and nodded—enough agreement in her expression to let me know that she had finally confirmed my ride to LA.

We headed to the Café, a small club marked by a long line of trendily dressed boys waiting to get in, quarts of hair gel dispersed across their fashionably spiked locks. A decade earlier this place was a lesbian hangout with a couple of bustling pool tables at which Colleen and I had killed a lot of time. Tommy threw his arm around her as we made our way up Castro Street, saying he was also going to LA for business—maybe the three of us should get together for more fun. I fell behind them, their flirtatious body language like a branch snapping back in my face.