“I wanted to see you,” he said simply. “I'm sick.” Gray could see that. His whole being was almost translucent, as though he were disappearing and filled with light.
“What kind of sick?” Gray asked sadly. Just seeing him brought it all back.
“I have AIDS. I'm dying.” Gray didn't ask him how he had gotten it. It was none of his business.
“I'm sorry,” he said, and meant it. His heart went out to him as they looked at each other. “Do you live here? In New York? How did you find me?”
“I looked you up. You're in the phone book. I live in L.A.” He didn't waste time telling Gray about his life. “I just wanted to see you… once… you're the reason why I came here. I'm going back tomorrow.”
“On Christmas?” It seemed like a sad time to travel.
“I'm in treatment. I have to get back. I know this sounds stupid, but I just wanted to say good-bye.” The real tragedy was that they had never said hello. The last time he had seen Boy, he was a child. And then once at their parents' funeral. Gray had never seen him again, nor wanted to. Gray had spent a lifetime closing the door on the past, and now this man had put a foot in it, and was keeping the door open, and shoving it wider, with his deep sunken eyes.
“Are you all right? Do you need anything?” Maybe he needed money. Gray didn't have much. But the young man shook his head.
“No. I'm fine.”
“Are you hungry?” Gray felt as though he should do something for him, and then asked him if he wanted to go out.
“That would be nice. I'm staying at a hotel nearby. Maybe we could go out for a sandwich or something?”
Gray went to get his coat, and a few minutes later they were outside, walking toward a nearby deli. He bought him a pastrami sandwich and a Coke. It was all he wanted. Gray had a cup of coffee and a bagel, and slowly they began talking about the past, as they each knew it. It had been different for Boy, their parents had been older then, they didn't move around as much, but were just as crazy. He had gone back to live on the reservation after they died, then to Albuquerque, and finally L.A. He volunteered that he had been a prostitute at sixteen. His life had been a nightmare. And nothing their parents had done before that had helped. It amazed Gray that Boy was still alive. Looking at him, it was hard to make sense of any of it, and the memories came flooding back. They scarcely knew each other, but they cried for each other and held hands. Boy kissed his fingertips, and looked into his eyes.
“I don't know why, but I just had to see you. I think I wanted to know that one person on this earth will remember me when I'm gone.”
“I always did, even though you were only a kid the last time I saw you.” He had only been a name to him, and now he was a face, a soul, a heart, one more person to lose and to cry for. He didn't want it, but it had come to him, like a gift. This man had come three thousand miles to see him to say good-bye. “I'll remember you,” Gray said softly, engraving him on his memory as he looked at him, and as he did, he knew that one day he would paint him, and he said as much to Boy.
“I'd like that,” he said to Gray. “Then people will see me forever. I'm not afraid to die,” he added. “I don't want to, but I think it will be fine. Do you believe in Heaven?”
“I don't know what I believe in,” Gray said honestly. “Maybe nothing. Or God. But for me, it's kind of free-form.”
“I believe in Heaven, and in people meeting each other again.”
“I hope not.” Gray laughed. “There are a lot of people I've known that I don't want to meet again, like our parents.” If you could call them that.
“Are you happy?” Boy asked him. Everything about him was surreal and ethereal and transparent. Just being there with him was like being in a dream. He didn't know how to respond to Boy's question. He had been happy, until lately. He had been miserable for the past month, over all the bullshit with Sylvia. He told Boy about it.
“Why are you afraid to meet them?”
“What if they don't like me? What if I don't like them? Then she'll hate me. What if we like each other and I get attached to them, and then we break up? Then I never see them again, or I see them but I don't see her. What if they're a couple of spoiled little shits and they make trouble for us? It's all so fucking complicated, I don't need the headache.”
“What have you got without the headache? What would your life be like without her? You'll lose her if you don't see them. She loves them. And it sounds like she loves you.”
“I love her too. But I don't love her children, and I don't want to.”
“Do you love me?” he asked then, and Gray was suddenly reminded of the Little Prince in the Saint-Exupéry book, who dies at the end of the book. And not knowing why he said it, he answered him. He was honest, as though they had been friends and brothers for years.
“Yes, I do. I didn't love you until tonight. I didn't know you. I didn't want to know you,” he said honestly. “I was afraid to. But now I do. Love you, I mean.” He hadn't wanted to know him for all those years, or even see him. He had been afraid of the pain of caring about him, or having a family. All Gray knew was that families hurt, and disappointed you. But Boy wasn't disappointing, he had come to see Gray, as a gesture of pure love for him. It was the gift of love no one in his family had ever given him. It was both painful and beautiful, as only love could be.
“Why do you love me? Because I'm dying?” Boy's eyes were haunting as they bored into Gray's.
“No, because you're my family,” Gray said in a choked voice as tears rolled down his cheeks and wouldn't stop. The floodgates of his heart had opened totally. “You're all I have left.” It felt good to say it. The two men held hands across the table.
“I'll be gone soon,” Boy said matter-of-factly. “And then she'll be all you have left. And her children. They're all you've got. And me.” It wasn't much, and Gray knew it. He didn't have much to show for fifty years on the planet. As crazy as they were, his parents had more. Three kids they'd adopted and made a mess of, but they tried at least, to the best of their limited abilities. They had each other. And all the people they touched as they roamed the world. Even Gray's paintings, and the agony that had inspired them, were somehow an outcropping of the two people who had adopted him and Boy. They had done a lot. More than Gray had ever thought or admitted. He saw that now. His parents had been crazy and limited, but at least they tried, even as messed up as they were. And Boy had tried too. Enough to come and see him. In comparison, Gray felt he had done far less with his emotional life, until Sylvia, and now he was limiting that too, and hurting her because he was scared. Terrified in fact.
“I love you, Boy,” Gray whispered as they sat holding hands across the table. He didn't care who saw them or what they thought. Suddenly he was no longer afraid of everything that had frightened him for so long. Boy was the final living symbol of the family Gray had run from for years.