doesn’t exist in your time, Clyde. It
won’t show up until the mid-seventies. Like Aramis cologne.”
“What does it do?’
`Èats away at your immune system until the whole thing collapses like the wonderful one-hoss shay. Then every bug
circling around out there, from cancer to chicken pox, rushes in and has a party.”
“Good Christ!”
His smile came and went like a cramp. `Ìf you say so. AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, but every now
and then it pops up in the blood supply. I suppose you could say my kid won big in a very unlucky version of la lotería.”
`Ì’m sorry,” I said, and although I was scared to death of this thin man with the tired face, I meant it. Losing a kid to
something like that . . . what could be worse? Probably something, yeah–there’s
always something–but you’d have to
sit down and think about it, wouldn’t you?
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks, Clyde. It went fast for him, at least. He fell out of the swing in May. The first purple
blotches– Kaposi’s sarcoma–showed up in time for his birthday in September. He died on March 18, 1991. And
maybe he didn’t suffer as much as some of them do, but he suffered. Oh yes, he
suffered.”
I didn’t have the slightest idea what Kaposi’s sarcoma was, either, and decided I didn’t want to ask. I knew more than I
wanted to already.
“You can maybe understand why it slowed me down a little on your book,” he said.
“Can’t you, Clyde?”
I nodded.
`Ì pushed on, though. Mostly because I think make-believe is a great healer. Maybe I have to believe that. I tried to get
on with my life, too, but things kept going wrong with it–it was as if How Like a Fallen Angel was some kind of
weird bad-luck charm that had turned me into Job. My wife went into a deep depression following Danny’s death, and I
was so concerned with her that I hardly noticed the red patches that had started
breaking out on my legs and stomach
and chest. And the itching. I knew it wasn’t AIDS, and at first that was all I was concerned with. But as time went on
and things got worse . . . have you ever had shingles, Clyde?’
Then he laughed and clapped the heel of his hand to his forehead in a what-a-dunce-Iam gesture before I could shake
my head.
`Òf course you haven’t–you’ve never had more than a hangover. Shingles, my shamus friend, is a funny name for a
terrible, chronic ailment. There’s some pretty good medicine available to help
alleviate the symptoms in my version of
Los Angeles, but it wasn’t helping me much; by the end of 1991 I was in agony. Part of it was general depression over
what had happened to Danny, of course, but most of it was the agony and the itching.
That would make an interesting
book title about a tortured writer, don’t you think? The Agony and the Itching, or, Thomas Hardy Faces Puberty.” He
voiced a harsh, distracted little laugh.
“Whatever you say, Sam.”
`Ì say it was a season in hell. Of course it’s easy to make light of it now, but by Thanksgiving of that year it was no
joke–I was getting three hours of sleep a night, tops, and I had days when it felt like my skin was trying to crawl right
off my body and run away like The Gingerbread Man. And I suppose that’s why I didn’t see how bad it was getting with
Linda.”
I didn’t know, couldn’t know . . . but I did. “She killed herself.”
He nodded. `Ìn March of 1992, on the anniversary of Daniel’s death. Over two years ago now.”
A single tear tracked down his wrinkled, prematurely aged cheek, and I had an idea that he had gotten old in one hell of
a hurry. It was sort of awful, realizing I had been made by such a bush-league version of God, but it also explained a
lot. My shortcomings, mainly.
“That’s enough,” he said in a voice which was blurred with anger as well as tears.