“I’m afraid I really am,” I replied. “Larry wouldn’t have called me if it wasn’t important, much less remind me that I owe him…” I let the sentence trail off.
Catherine filled in the blank. “Your life?”
I shrugged. “My professional life, anyway.”
“Still,” she said dismissively. “Sounds like a slow plea to me.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s the favor?”
“If I take the case I’ll need someone to stand in for me on my cases up here. Just to get continuances.”
“It’ll cost you, Henry,” she warned.
I smiled. “My professional life?”
“We’ll start with lunch,” she replied. “Get me a list of your cases and we’ll discuss them then. Is that it?”
I stood up. “For now. Thanks, Cathy.”
She looked at me. “Don’t you ever get tired of losing, Henry?”
I thought about this for a second. “No,” I said.
It was still raining when I left my office at six to meet Larry’s plane at the San Francisco airport. The wind was up, scattering red and yellow leaves like bright coins into the wet, shiny streets. A stalwart jogger, wrapped in sweats, crossed the street at the light and I felt a twinge of regret. The only kind of running I did these days was between courts. Still, a glance in the mirror reported no significant change in my appearance from my last birthday — my thirty-sixth. The light flashed green and I jostled my Accord forward onto the freeway ramp.
I entered a freeway that was clogged with Friday night traffic. Sitting there, watching the rain come down, gave me time to think. It wasn’t true that I never got tired of losing. Only three years earlier I had been tired enough of it to resign from the P.D.’s office, expecting to abandon law altogether. But I had fallen in love with a man who was murdered. Hugh Paris’s death led me back into law though I took a lot of detours getting there. One of them was through the drunk ward of a local hospital. I might have been there yet had it not been for Larry Ross and the United States Supreme Court.
The summer I entered the drunk ward was the same summer that the Supreme Court, in a case involving Georgia, upheld the right of states to make sodomy — a generic term for every sexual practice but the missionary position — illegal. Within weeks there was a move to reinstate California’s sodomy law, which had been repealed ten years earlier, by a special election. A statewide committee of lawyers was organized to fight the effort. Larry Ross, a hitherto closeted partner in a well- known Los Angeles firm, chaired the committee. He needed a lawyer from northern California to lead the effort up here. After asking around, he found me, or rather, what was left of me.
We went into the campaign with the polls running against us. Larry poured all his energy and a quarter of his net worth — which was considerable — into trying to change the numbers. Halfway through, however, it was plain that we would lose. Since we couldn’t win the election, we decided to try to knock the sodomy initiative off the ballot with a lawsuit. We went directly to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the initiative violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the state constitution.
Two days before the ballot went to the print shop, the court ruled in our favor. It looked like a victory but it wasn’t. We had merely prevented things from getting worse, not improved them. Since then, some part of me had been waiting for the next fight. Maybe Larry had found it in this Pears case.
I pulled into a parking space at the airport and hurried across the street to the terminal. I was nearly twenty minutes late. Coming to the gate I saw Larry in a blue suit, raincoat draped over one arm and a briefcase under the other. He was far away yet I could hardly fail to recognize his spindly stride and the gleaming dome of his head.
Then, coming closer, I thought I had made a mistake. The man who now approached me was a stranger. The flesh of his face was too tight and vaguely green in the bright fluorescent light. But it was Larry. The edges of his mouth turned upward in a smile.
“Henry,” he said embracing me, or rather, pulling me to his chest, which was as far up on him as I came.
I broke the embrace and made myself smile. “Larry.’’
He looked at me and the smile faded. I looked away.
It was then I noticed the odor coming off his clothes. It was the smell of death.
2
To cover my shock at his appearance I asked, “Do you have any luggage?”
“No, I’m catching the red-eye back to L.A. Where are we eating?”
I named a restaurant in the Castro. As we talked, he looked less strange to me, and I thought perhaps it was only exhaustion I saw on his face. He worked achingly long hours in the bizarre vineyard of Hollywood. We talked of small things as I drove into San Francisco. We came over a hill and then, abruptly, the city’s towers rose before us through the mist and rain, glittering stalagmites in the cave of night, and beyond them, sensed rather than seen, the wintry tumble of the ocean.
We rolled through the city on glassy streets shimmering with reflected lights. On Castro, the sidewalks were jammed with men who, in their flak jackets, flannel shirts, tight jeans, wool caps and long scarves, resembled a retreating army. I parked and we walked back down to Nineteenth Street to the restaurant. Inside it was dim and loud. Elegant waiters in threadbare tuxedos raced through the small dining rooms with imperturbable poise. We were seated at a table in the smaller of the two dining rooms in the back with a view of the derelict patio just outside. Menus were placed before us.
“It’s really good to see you,” Larry said, and picked up his menu as if not expecting a response. I ventured one anyway.
“You’ve been working too hard,” I said.
“I suspect you’re right,” he replied.
I dithered with the menu as I tried to decide whether to pursue the subject.
“What you want to say,” Larry said, “is that I look terrible.”
“You look-” I fumbled for a word.
“Different?” he asked, almost mockingly. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of the comer of his mouth away from me. I waited for him to continue. Instead, the waiter came and Larry ordered his dinner. When it was my turn I asked for the same.
We sat in nervous silence until our salads were brought to us. The waiter drizzled dressing over the salads. Larry caught my eye and held it. When the waiter departed, Larry picked up his fork, set it down again and relit his discarded cigarette.
“I’m dying, Henry,” he said softly.
“Larry- “
“I was diagnosed eight months ago. I’ve already survived one bout of pneumocystis.” He smiled a little. “Two years ago I wouldn’t have been able to pronounce that word. AIDS has taught me a new vocabulary.” He put out his cigarette.
“I’m so sorry,” I said stupidly.
The waiter came by. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine,” Larry said.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.
“There was nothing you could have done then,” he said, cutting up a slice of tomato.
“Is there now?”
“Yes. Defend Jim Pears.” He put a forkful of salad in his mouth and chewed gingerly.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to die, Henry,” he said slowly. “Not just because of AIDS but also because the lives of queers are expendable. Highly expendable.” He stopped abruptly and stared down at his plate, then continued, more emphatically. “They hate us, Henry, and they’d just as soon we all died. I’m dying. Save Jim Pears’s life for me.”
“Don’t die,” I said, and the words sounded childlike even to my own ears.
“I won’t just yet,” he replied. “But when I do I want it to be my life for Jim’s. That would balance the accounts.”
“But it’s entirely different,” I said.
“It’s the same disease,” he insisted. “Bigotry. It doesn’t matter whether it shows itself in letting people die of AIDS or making it so difficult for them to come out that it’s easier to murder.”