Such Times by Christopher Coe

Author:Christopher Coe [Coe, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Gay, Literary
ISBN: 9780140241433
Google: hPewAAAAIAAJ
Amazon: 0140241434
Goodreads: 383023
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1993-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

“who else knows?” I asked.

“My doctor,” Dominic answered.

“Anyone else?”

“Honey, I’m not exactly hanging out a sign,” Dominic said.

I carried the telephone into the kitchen, poured a little pear brandy, and sat down with it at the table. I lit a cigarette and said to Dominic, “No one really knows what this virus means, do they? How are you feeling?”

“What are you drinking?” Dominic asked.

“Williamine,” I answered.

“That sounds perfect. Hold on, honey.”

I heard the receiver smack against Dominic’s glass table in West Hollywood. I could picture Dominic walking to the trolley cart he uses as a bar, could see him bending over to pour something into a glass. Dominic has always had handsome cocktail glasses, standing ashtrays on pedestals, and huge, lumpy chairs that somehow always come with every place he rents. He has no end of pricey things to wear and never anything comfortable to sit in. Dominic has always lived in places that feel temporary, no matter how long he lives in them. As I waited for him to come back to the telephone, I was aware of the quiet on lie Saint-Louis at that hour, how comfortable I was at my kitchen table, and of how soothing ripening papayas are, heaped in a blue ceramic bowl.

Dominic told me, “I’m not feeling marvelous.”

‘‘Have you ever, sweetheart?” I asked him.

“Not for a while,” Dominic said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t fret. Aren’t they saving that only a small percentage of people who have it end up getting sick?” I asked.

“There aren’t any long-term figures,” Dominic told me. Although I already knew this, it was a chill, hearing it from Dominic. He added, “Not everyone who has it checks out, but that may be because they haven’t had time.”

“You have to get pretty sick before you check out, though, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily,” Dominic said.

“What do you mean, ‘not necessanly’? You don’t just drop dead the day you’re diagnosed,” I said.

“There was someone here who got his diagnosis and was dead two days later,” Dominic said.

“Someone you knew?” I asked.

“I knew of him. I knew people who knew him. He was supposed to have the Dick of Death.”

“So you’ve only heard about this, really. You don’t know how long he could have had it. I mean, he could have had it for ages.”

Six thousand miles away, Dominic was quiet. I did not expect he was thinking what I was: I was hoping Dominic would not be one of the men I’d heard about who, knowing themselves infected, continued to go to quarter movies, exposing others at random in dark little cubicles. Of course, Dominic could argue that anyone who would make himself available in a cubicle would in all likelihood have already been exposed—that anyone who would get Dominic’s virus would get somebody else’s sooner or later.

That is true, of course. Not many people think about the risk of reexposure.

“Have you and Jasper had the test?” Dominic asked.

“We’ve talked about it a couple times. Jasper won’t take it.”

“Tell him about me,” Dominic said.

There was a tightness in his voice.

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