“It just would have been nice,” Ariel said, “if other people had visited him. He knew, even when he couldn’t really talk anymore. He knew when people came to see him.”
“Noel stopped talking to me,” AJ said. “Not the other way around. I just assumed he didn’t want to see me. Those are his friends.” Using his chin, he indicated the men who had come from New York and Chicago. And they were almost all men. Extremely somber, haunted-looking men, wearing red ribbons in their lapels. Looking back, I realize these men were just beginning to understand that their lives had become a horror film. They were being stalked. Their ranks would be decimated. How many of them would die within a decade? The conventional wisdom is that people my age, who came into their sexuality in a post-HIV world, were denied something. But I never felt that way. Maybe it came down to the old adage of not being able to miss what you never had. Noel had a few giddy years of finding his place in the world, of being his authentic self. It had killed him. Even at the age of eighteen, I could see how horribly unfair that was.
“The phone works both ways, AJ,” Ariel said. “You could have picked it up any time.”
“And said what? ‘Hey, it’s your old friend you cut off without a word of explanation’?”
“Really? Without a word?”
AJ had grown dangerously fond of arguing. That was my father’s observation, issued just yesterday, when AJ had arrived home for the funeral. “You have grown dangerously fond of arguing. You need to watch out for that. You don’t have to win all the time. Not even with me.”
AJ said now: “Is there something you’re trying to suggest, Ariel? Did Noel ever tell you why he stopped talking to me?”
Ariel considered, started to say something, changed her mind. “No,” she said. “We really didn’t talk that much about you, AJ. Believe it or not. You were no longer the center of our universe.”
Davey, using the mild tone of someone hoping to derail an argument, said: “It doesn’t matter now, does it? I just hope he had a chance to renounce his sins and make a clean breast of things with God.”
“What?” Ariel and AJ were united in their dismay at least.
“I’m sorry, but it’s a sin. Homosexuality. Why do you think they’re being punished this way? It goes against God’s will.”
“If Noel knew you felt this way, he never would have asked you—I wouldn’t have asked you—” In her distress, Ariel could not put a sentence together.
“Look, I was punished, too. For my sins.”
“What sin?” AJ asked. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Sex outside marriage is a sin, too. I almost died and maybe I should have. Noel helped to save my life that night, getting the paramedics there.” I noticed that Davey did not credit AJ. “I’ll never forget that, and that’s why I was happy to sing here today. I owed him that much. But my church, my calling, considers homosexuality a sin. I’m sorry, Ariel. There aren’t exceptions for friends when it comes to God’s law. No loopholes.”
“I think I’ll go check with Noel’s mom to see if there’s anything she needs,” Ariel muttered. Bash and Lynne, who seemed to be getting back together yet again, went to the bar, his arm around her waist. (I did not understand then that funerals, as much as weddings, could lead to hookups.)
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Davey,” AJ repeated.
“I didn’t break the law. But the law, as written, allows a lot of sin. You went to law school. I’m going to seminary. We’re not going to see things the same way.”
“Do you really believe premarital sex between consenting adults is a sin?”
“I believe in God’s word. Laws are made by men. Sin has been defined by God.”
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, Davey.”
“I’ve changed. I’m sorry if that threatens you—”
“Why would it threaten me?”
“It threatens everyone. A change like this, a big change. It’s like when a person stops drinking or doing drugs. A lot of people in their lives don’t support them. I’ve found meaning. I understand things now. You know, it’s never too late to start being good, AJ.”
After a long silence, AJ said: “Speaking of drink, I need one.”
Now I was left alone with Davey. That had never happened before, just the two of us, one-on-one. Had we ever spoken other than the day on the path, when I was with Randy? He must have been coming from Nita Flood’s house that day, I realized. Randy thought he was high, but maybe he was just a young man besotted with a young woman. Were his parents the only reason that Davey hid his relationship with Nita? Or was it her reputation, her acne-scarred face? Nita Flood knows her sausage. God, Lynne had always been a bitch.
“You’ve gotten very pretty, Lu,” Davey said.