Hector felt a hand at his elbow. It was Chris. “Let’s get this party started,” Chris said.
They wove their way through the crowd. Halfway through, Korie Wright, just three years ago a skyrocketing thirty-one-year-old graphic designer, stopped them. Oh God, he looked frail, his chest virtually concave underneath his tank top.
“I have to ask you guys something,” Korie said.
“You’ll probably hear your answer in the presentation,” Chris said, pushing forward.
“Chris, Jesus!” Hector said. Sometimes Chris’s callousness stunned him. He and Chris exchanged a quick, nasty look. Was Chris even HIV-positive? Hector wondered. Was that the source of the callousness? Or was it that he wasn’t? It was strange to him that, even here, people could be coy about their own HIV status. Of course, there were plenty of people like Ricky who were simply too scared to get tested or didn’t see the point of knowing. Some of them saw not knowing as a political choice; if nobody knew their status, then they were all on a level playing field, everyone compelled to have safe sex with one another, nobody branded a pariah.
Hector, with Korie’s arm on his, took Korie’s other arm. “What is it, Korie?”
“Marty Delaney in San Francisco called me back about Compound Q. He’s doing an illegal trial.”
Hector nodded. “I know.”
“You think I should fly out and do it?”
Hector caught Chris rolling his eyes. Hector knew Chris thought Compound Q, the Chinese cancer drug, was a dead-end path for AIDS — Hector pretty much thought so, too — but he couldn’t believe Chris’s insensitivity. “We should talk about it later,” he told Korie. “It’s a complicated decision.”
Korie’s eyes flickered with fear. “You think so?”
“There are major toxicities to consider,” Chris all but barked at him.
Korie frowned. “What?”
“He means that it could have side effects,” Hector said. “It could mess with your head. But let’s have coffee after the meeting and talk about it. I still have to talk to Marty but I think it’s worth considering.”
To Hector’s surprise, Korie hugged him. “Thanks, sweetie. Nice to know that some of you data guys can stay human.” Korie shot a hateful look at Chris, who looked suddenly stricken, then Korie turned on his heel.
Chris and Hector pressed forward. “What the fuck did that mean?” Chris asked him. “I just told him there was a toxicity risk.”
Hector stopped, leveled a stare at Chris. “He didn’t know what toxicity meant. And neither did you two years ago, probably. Stop throwing your knowledge around. People are really sick.”
Chris just looked at him, openmouthed, but said nothing. Hector stared him down for a second, then, with a quiet new sense of authority, continued to push forward, glancing back once to see if Chris was following him. Which he was.
The meeting was called to order. Various committee leaders gave reports, questions were taken, motions to vote were made, votes were cast, actions and new committees were elected into being. Esther Hurwitz went on a long tangent about identity and marginalization until someone in the crowd, breaking the rules of order, shouted, “Wrap it up!” Hector and Chris stepped up to the mic to present.
“This is the data committee’s report on the experimental drug ddI,” Hector began. These public presentations had helped him get over his shyness; the sense of usefulness he felt taking these arcane lab-bench and FDA-backroom goings-on and putting them into simple, blunt language for the people who needed the information most took him out of his self-consciousness and had brought him a new poise, a maturity, he felt. “This drug—”
“Hector Villanueva, you’re fucking hot!” It was some queen way in the back of the crowded room. Hector felt his face go crimson, smiled. The room broke into hysterics and wild screams. “It’s true!” and “I second that!” came from other points in the room. Hector caught Ricky in the crowd, smiling and shaking his head with mock resignation.
Hector took a breath and continued: “This drug looks like it will probably be the first drug approved by the FDA to fight HIV since AZT in 1987.” Boos and hisses. “I know, I know,” he said. “AZT is a fucking fortune and it hasn’t panned out the way we hoped. But there’s a lot of hope that when ddI is combined with AZT, that’ll be the punch the virus needs to—”
There was a stir in the back of the room. “Ava Heyman, Health Department, AIDS killer!” someone shouted. People in the crowd pulled back. There was Ava, his old boss, her graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, her work glasses low on her nose, her groaning black leather workbag slung over her shoulder. She stood alone. Hector watched her from the dais, mesmerized.
“I’m not an AIDS killer,” she said in her loud Queens honk, a touch of her trademark disgust in her voice. “I’m here to listen. And help.”
“You guys at Health have done bullshit for eight years,” someone shouted. It was Ithke Larcy, the housing activist.
“Ithke, you know that’s not true,” Ava shot back. “I’m not going to let you grandstand in front of a crowd. You and Karl were in last week and we mapped out a plan for subsidized housing units for HIV/AIDS-affecteds, and you know it’s under way.”
“AIDS-affecteds!” spat Ithke, the locks on his head shaking with righteous rage. “Listen to how you talk. We’re people.”
Ava flung her hands in the air. “Oh, come on, Ithke, gimme a chance here!”
Chaos was erupting in the back, and Hector noticed a few folks advance toward Ava. “People, hold up!” he found himself booming into the mic. “Hold up!” The crowd quieted, turned back toward him, curious. Some knew, some didn’t, that he’d worked for Ava. Many relied on him to be a conduit to her, to Health. And here she was.
“I know Dr. Heyman,” he told the crowd. “I worked with her at the Health Department for seven years.” Everyone stared up at him, eyebrows raised, as though to ask, And?
“I knew she’d be here tonight,” he continued. “And believe me, if someone leaves work at the bureaucracy of the DOH and comes to one of these meetings, it’s because they want to help. So let’s build allies where we can use them and give Dr. Heyman a chance to listen in tonight and see what we do, and see what she can do for us.” He paused. “And please step back from Dr. Heyman.”
Those aggressive combatants who’d stepped toward her backed away. The room was unusually silent. Across it, Hector and Ava locked eyes. Then an enormous, satirical smile broke across Ava’s face.
“Thank you, Hector,” she called out. “You always were chivalrous.”
Most of the room laughed. Ava felt her jaw and shoulders slacken. There, she thought. The worst was over. Her psych meds made her sweat, and she hoped the sweat under her blouse wasn’t spotting through the back. She put her heavy bag on the floor. Ithke and Karl came over to her, hugged and kissed her. It was amazing how these guys could turn on a dime on you like that! she thought. They were like hurt, impulsive little boys. What were they like to their mothers? What were their mothers like to them?