I picture Arnold behind the wheel of that frozen custard truck, trundling over his ex-wife’s brand-new husband — a man who had done him no wrong except that he dared to marry the woman Arnold could no longer possess — and then backing up and running him over again to make sure he was good and pancaked. (That was the story we heard, but it wasn’t the one that the jury got.)
Candy and I exchange looks of only slightly veiled apprehension. My stomach does a somersault as he starts to make his way toward us. Why? Why is he coming over here?
“I’m going to the little girls’ room,” Candy announces with a nervous laugh. “There’s Rodney Tomasini over there. See him? The love of my junior year. Damn, he’s looking good.” And as Cindy backs away from me and away from the fast-approaching ex-con Arnold Mordaunt, she adds, “Maybe Rodney’s forgiven me for two-timing him that whole year we went steady. And maybe he’s outgrown all that crazy.”
“Don’t leave me alone with Arnold!” But Candy pretends not to hear me as she accelerates her retreat.
Arnold’s eyes have that look — that look that used to send shivers down my spine when he’d get some act of mischief into his head and you could almost see the gears turning as he tried to figure out how he was going to pull it off.
“Hi Yvette!” he says, putting me into a near-bonecrushing bear hug. “Long time, huh? I’ve been in prison, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” I mumble, finding it hard to speak in a clear, calm voice.
“But that’s all behind me now. In prison I found Christ. A minister I’ve been in touch with has lined up a job for me with a church outreach program over on Vine.”
I relax. I actually start to look forward to hearing how Arnold Mordaunt has turned his life around. And I’m prepared to hear even more of this most inspiring story of faith and personal redemption, but something unfortunate keeps this from happening. Patricia Last-Name-That-Probably-Isn’t-McCloud-Anymore announces through a bloodcurdling scream that my friend Candy Melcori has just been strangled to death in the little girls’ room by a spectacularly vengeful Rodney Tomasini.
Same ol’ lunatic Rodney.
1983 ETCHED IN STONE IN WASHINGTON D.C
Ari Gregory hadn’t slept well the night before. It wasn’t the bed; it wasn’t anything about his room at the Hotel Harrington. The problem was Ari. All day he’d been thinking — first in Wilmington and then on the train down to D.C. — about what he’d been reading about the new “gay epidemic.” First the scientists called it “GRID,” which stood for “Gay-related immune deficiency.” For a while, the Centers for Disease Control had taken to calling it, informally, the “4-H disease,” because it seemed to afflict, disproportionately, Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users. Once word got out that prostitutes were also coming down with it, a fifth “H”—“hookers”—was half-facetiously added. Then, just last year the scientific community agreed on the acronym AIDS, the letters standing for “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.”
Ari liked this better, but it didn’t make him sleep any easier. Sometimes late at night he entertained wild thoughts — thoughts that never would have entered his head in the clear light of day — that a person didn’t contract AIDS because of what he did but because of what he was. That there might even be some credence to the malignant words of the smug fundamentalist preachers: that AIDS was God’s punishment for being gay. Yet, if this were true, thought Ari, what had hemophiliacs done to deserve it? Or Haitians? It made no sense. So little of it made sense.
When Ari confessed this fear to his friend Trevor, the wise British expat didn’t bat an eye. “Gay people are paranoid by nature. Society makes sure that we stay that way. There’s no reason you shouldn’t think you could get a disease just because of who you are. There’s also no reason that I can’t from time to time slap a little common sense into that worrisome puss of yours.”
It was June. Seven months had passed since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated. Ari put off going until the crowds thinned out. He didn’t want the crush of visitors to spoil his pilgrimage. He wanted to see the name of his friend Brad etched into the black granite. He had gone through high school with Brad, and then the two went off to college together — William and Mary. Ari studied colonial history, Brad was pre-law. Ari graduated. Brad dropped out to go to Vietnam, even though nobody—nobody was volunteering go to ’Nam in 1968. By 1968 everybody had gotten the memo: this was a fucked-up war, this was a war that couldn’t be won. Guys were doing everything they could think of to keep from getting shipped out, to get themselves discharged once they got drafted. Even the doyen of broadcast journalists, Walter Cronkite, regarded as the avuncular conscience of the nation, had turned against the war.
Ari had wanted to tell Brad what a mistake he was making. He’d wanted to beg Brad to stay home, to finish college, to be the lawyer he’d always wanted to be. Ari loved Brad. But it was a different kind of love than the kind that Brad felt for Ari. He was Ari’s best friend — Damon to his Pythias. The two had run track together in high school, had worked on the yearbook together. But Ari’s feelings for Brad ran much deeper. Ari loved Brad more than he’d loved anyone in his life. He had followed him all the way to W & M, for Chrissakes.
After Brad’s death in Ninh Thuan in May of 1969, Ari had been shattered. He’d even contemplated suicide. Life was different for Ari after Brad died. From that point forward it was a life only half lived.
Ari wondered if seeing Brad’s name on the Memorial wall would help him let go. It was all pop-psychology shit, he knew that, but he was willing to try anything. Fourteen years was a long time to mourn someone who didn’t even know you’d been nuts about him.
Because Ari had never given Brad even an inkling as to his true feelings. Because Brad was as straight — as proud a pussy-loving heterosexual as they came. There was a silver lining to Brad’s death, Ari would have to admit: that Bradley Patterson didn’t live long enough to have to face the day when Ari, unable to contain his feelings any longer, confessed his love and let the chips fall where they may. It could have been messy. It could have been very, very messy.
Today was Brad’s birthday.
Ari grabbed an egg sandwich and cup of coffee at a counter-diner in the neighborhood of the hotel and then walked over to the Mall. It wasn’t too long a hike — just long enough to give Ari more time to think. And to worry. The world had never been a safe place, especially not for people like him, but things seemed even more precarious now. Several months earlier, Ari’s brother and sister-in-law in Lawrence, Kansas, had acted as extras in The Day After, a television movie about a nuclear attack on the United States. The movie was set to air in November. While Reagan was busy rattling his presidential saber at the Soviet Union and forming his global shield initiative (dubbed “Star Wars” by a skeptical press), an American embassy was bombed by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon with great loss of life.
Reaching Constitution Gardens just north of the Reflecting Pool, Ari quickly found himself convoyed by several groups of people moving silently — almost reverently — in the same direction. Though referred to as “the Memorial Wall,” the monument was actually two walls that came together at a 125-degree angle, both seeming to rise up out of the ground to convey the sense of a great gash — a wound that was now closing up, in the process of healing. People of all ages and ethnicities stood or squatted or bent down before the wall, each relating to the monument in his or her own way. Hardly anyone was speaking. There was a sepulchral hush among the memorial’s visitors that was undisturbed even by whispers. It was as if all conversation in this sacred place was limited to telepathic dialogues between the living and the dead.