Chapter One

Winter Weather

This King lay at Camelot at Christmastide;
Many good knights and gay his guests were there . . .

—Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

t snowed all night and high wind-blown drifts had transformed the park into the pristine landscape of an Alaskan wilderness. Standing at the frosty windowpane, Ren realized at a glance that he could forget about getting a cab: there was no traffic moving through Central Park. Still, his chest softened at the sight of the untainted snow settling over the city, the temporary return to nature. It would be a welcome distraction, he thought, looking down at Jack curled in bed, his neck and one white shoulder exposed. Under ordinary circumstances Ren would have bent and kissed his throat, made some campy joke about vampires and Victorian heroines, but today he only drew up the covers with a quick embarrassed gesture. You didn’t think about sex when someone was as sick as Jack was – or rather you did think about it, too much, all the time, but you didn’t do it much. Jack’s appetite for it – though he kept hoping it would come back – was all but gone. Sometimes he couldn’t even take Ren’s weight.

Ren walked over to the window, longing for a cigarette. But that was another vice he’d given up for Jack. Chain smoking and chain fucking – both unhealthy. He shook his head. It was hard to believe what an earnest little brute he’d fallen for. But everything about this passion of his was unusual. He smiled at the figure on the bed, glad he’d let Jack persuade him to spend the night uptown instead of in Ren’s Village pad.

It meant he’d had a long subway ride uptown after rehearsal at the Village theater, but now they’d have a shorter trip to the hospital. Ren had run through the first act of his production of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. The results had confirmed the wisdom of his decision to join the Back Alley Players. They were not only smart and funny, they were getting quite a bit of buzz in the press. Being with them had made Ren happier than he’d been in years. As an actor on Broadway and off, he’d been everything from walk-on to leading man. But he’d been increasingly frustrated by difficult directors and lines that had no meaning for him. What he wanted, he’d realized, was to move to the other side of the footlights and shape a play himself. Now, with the Back Alley Players, he was finally getting a chance. It all rested in his hands.

Adapting a medieval romance for his debut as a director was risky. But completely convinced the drama was there, he’d quite easily persuaded the others. Ren had always loved the story of Gawain’s encounter with the Green Knight because of its mysterious plot. From childhood he’d been fascinated by the terrifying green-skinned giant who had come to King Arthur’s court, challenging someone to behead him, with the bizarre proviso that he would return the blow in a year and a day. Ren had shivered with pleasurable fear when the stranger picked up the head Gawain severed, and named their meeting place with bloody lips.

The next part of the story was equally mysterious. A year later, searching for the Green Knight, Gawain comes to a castle whose genial Host leaves him alone with his beautiful, seductive wife. Gawain refuses her advances, but takes her girdle – a sash really – because he believes it will save his life. Then, and this was the part that Ren found most surprising, it turns out that the frightening Green Knight and the Host are the same person – the Green Knight is a shape-changing magician! Because Gawain has resisted evil, the Green Knight spares his life but nicks him on the neck with his ax to punish him for taking the girdle.

As a child, Ren didn’t understand Gawain’s sexual temptation. All he knew was that Gawain had been in danger of doing something really bad, resisted, and received only a token punishment. To Ren’s great relief, Gawain won the Green Knight’s forgiveness. Eventually, Ren concluded that it had all been a test of Gawain’s worthiness by a powerful older man who, in some versions of the story, was revealed to be Gawain’s father.

Jack turned over on his back, mumbling something in his sleep. Ren bent to hear it and caught sight of himself in the wall mirror, all six-feet-four of him twisted down like a giant pretzel, his face worried as a Jewish mother’s. “Darling,” he whispered to his reflection, “it’s lucky you’re going to be a brilliant director because you look a fright. And I can’t imagine how someone like you who doesn’t give a damn for anyone else – don’t grimace, you know I’m right – can find his insides turned to butter every time this child – past twenty but still deliciously fresh – looks up at you.” As if to prove the point, Jack opened his gray-green eyes and Ren felt his heart pound. Jack blinked. Smiled. There was a slight smudge of dark, like a thumb print, under each eye.

“Time already?” he asked.

The dark bruise-like shadows hurt Ren to look at. “Play-time,” he answered, overly cheerful. “We’re going to have an unexpected holiday in the Alps. After I make sure you’re not going back to sleep again, I’m going to check out your skis.” He opened the window a few inches and scooped at the snow outside on the sill.

“Hey, watch out for my fish,” Jack called. There was a big aquarium on a stand near the window.

Ren put the snow in his other hand and dropped a pinch of fish food into the tank, watching as the three sunfish came up to the surface working their mouths; then he lobbed a compact snowball at Jack’s chest.

Jack whooped and threw back what was left, making a snow shower that subsided on the floor. Then he got up and pushed at the window to be sure the fish weren’t getting a draft. God, the kid was insane about them. Ren remembered how skeptical he’d been when Jack brought them back from one of his field trips up the Hudson to check on the spawning grounds and to tag fish that Fisheries wanted to follow. The sunfish were right in the middle of the food chain, Jack had explained to him, and if their numbers decreased or if their flesh was found to contain higher than usual PCBs, this would be a danger signal for other river populations they were working to safeguard. Ren had been sure the sunfish wouldn’t survive, but they not only survived, they flourished. Ren had even gotten to like them. They were colorful little buggers, with their orange-spotted gills and yellow bellies. Unusually bright for a freshwater fish.

“They’re fine. I cleaned the tank yesterday.” Ren grabbed an elegant striped robe from a chair and threw it to him. “Put something on. You’re shivering.”

Just then the phone rang. Ren could tell from Jack’s deferential tone that it was his father, Malcolm. “No, I don’t need any help, I’m fine. My friend Ren’s here. We’re going to ski through the park to Mount Sinai.”

“You’re what?” Ren could hear the explosion from where he was standing.

“Parents should all be shot,” he said when Jack put down the phone. “Especially middle-class parents. Parenting is the disease of our century.”

“What would you say if he ignored me? That he was neglectful and self-interested? So he wanted his chauffeur to pick me up? So what? The poor guy sounded so disappointed when I said no.” Jack rubbed a hand over his head and Ren hung fire for a minute, subdued by the sight of his pink scalp showing through the gold fuzz. Then he rallied.

“If you had something less savory, I wonder if he’d be so blasted helpful. You said yourself it was a relief to have cancer, not . . .” Ren stopped suddenly, flushed to the eyes. It was ugly to throw Jack’s words back at him that way, uglier to want to strip him of his comfort. He’d been so childishly happy to have family friends calling and asking for him. Glad not to be hidden away like a leper.

“It’s still a relief,” Jack said quietly, but his face turned white.

“Go on,” Ren prompted, “and, and . . .”

Jack shook his head.

“Why can’t you tell me I’m being an insensitive shit? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“I’m conserving energy. Give me a break.” Jack sighed, a low soft sound somewhere between exasperation and tolerance, and headed towards the bathroom.

Ren followed him. “I thought a little fight would relieve the tension. Nu? It didn’t?” he asked, affecting his Jewish-mother voice.

Jack turned around. He wasn’t amused. “I know you get off on fighting, but I don’t. And especially not today. I’m going to shower.” He shut the bathroom door.

Ren put his face against the wood. “Can’t you even slam the door?” he said more to himself than to Jack. “Why do you have to be such a saint?”

You’re a big help, darling, his mirror image taunted him. Weren’t you coming along as an objective observer? Because poor Jack would be too fuddled to take notes? Ren heard Jack in the bathroom. Yes. He certainly was a big help. He’d given Jack the runs. A great start to a two-tranquilizer day. But he couldn’t help it. Whenever Jack mentioned his father, bile started to flow, giving him a bad case of heartburn. He heard the shower go on and it was all he could do not to go in and cover Jack with kisses.

It was awful that loving someone didn’t automatically make you love their relatives. But Jack’s father was such an arrogant prick, with that smug little smile of his. Always right, no matter what the argument. It was hard, hard to understand how Jack managed to love him. But what was inconceivable was that to spare his father’s feelings, Jack wouldn’t tell the old man he was gay.

“He’s already pissed that I’m cleaning up the environment instead of practicing medicine,” Jack had said when Ren pressed him. “Poor Pop couldn’t believe that I’d use a perfectly good biology major just to study fish. I can’t do this to him too. He’d be humiliated at his club. You know how conservative those guys are. At least now he can show his friends my photo and boast about how popular I am with women.”

“What are you saying? That you’re an ornament on his watch fob? A pretty little trinket? Oh, shit.” Ren had known then that Jack would tell his father zilch. It was hopeless.

Ren countered the misery this memory gave him by imagining a huge success for his play. Maybe Jack would be proud enough of him then to tell his father about their relationship. Ren pictured Malcolm sitting in the audience overcome with admiration, swept away by Ren’s vision. From the beginning, Ren had had a visceral sense of how the play should make the audience feel. He wanted the whole thing vivid as a dream. A dream of pleasure from the outset at Camelot, with kissing games, music and over-rich food – then a brilliantly lit nightmare when the Green Knight bursts in with his axe and issues his macabre challenge.

It was easy for Ren to imagine how much more effective the opening scenes would be when the actors were moving freely and there were costumes and lights – he wanted the sparkling jewel-like effect of stained glass. But already, even though the actors were still dressed in jeans and T-shirts, penciling notes in their scripts, they exuded youthful energy and joie de vivre. True, there were some problems; Gawain’s voice in particular seemed too soft. But Ren wasn’t going to panic and think he’d miscast her, or doubt his decision to use a woman in the part. As an actor, he’d had enough experience with temperamental directors to be patient now. Even the best actors could shut down if you criticized them too soon. And he wanted them wide open and digging deep.

Just then, Jack came up behind him and flicked him with his towel. “Admit it. You’re jealous because I asked Dad to meet us at the hospital.”

“Mmm,” Ren said, smelling the damp skin, wet hair, a faint odor of aftershave.

“I asked him because he’s savvy. He’s good at statistics. Neither you nor I would know a statistic from a laundry list.” He hugged Ren lightly from behind. “Just remember, you’re my number one.”

Ren felt his cock begin to rise, then flushed with chagrin and lust. So he was jealous, of course he was jealous, a hysterical aging queen. He kept wanting to make Jack see that his father was the kind of man he’d hate if he’d met him outside his family – a supporter of all the values that were making America a wasteland of plenty. Ren spent insomniac hours imagining car crashes and heart attacks for the old man, though he knew perfectly well that a tragic death would enshrine him in Jack’s heart forever.

“Sorry,” he said, leaning back against Jack’s chest. “I don’t know why you put up with me.” He let himself drink in the warmth, savor the stillness for a minute, then he made himself go and look in the hall closet for the skis. He pulled them out, holding them in both arms.

Jack followed him. “I love you, that’s why. No one has ever taken care of me the way you do. And you have a great imagination. But sometimes you can be a real pain in the ass.” He tried to take his skis out of Ren’s arms but Ren pushed him away.

“Sorry if I’m getting on your nerves, darling. But at least let me be useful. Go ring for the elevator.” Ren was indeed sorry, but he couldn’t resist striking a languishing Camille pose for the electronic eye as they went down in the rosewood-paneled elevator. He imagined Daddy was watching. He wanted him to see how things were between them. To know that one thing he didn’t own was his son’s body.

Outside, the sun was glorious on the snow as they made their way along a channel that had been cleared in the middle of the sidewalk. When they got to the park entrance at Ninetieth Street and Fifth Avenue, it was all pure glitter and dazzle, blinding whiteness. Ren knelt and clamped on Jack’s skis, then did his own. They followed the path that ran beside the park’s snow-covered outer wall, uptown. At Ninety-fourth Street they veered slightly inward to cross the transverse bridge that arched over the street. When they reached Ninety-ninth Street, they could take one of several connecting paths that led out of the park and come out on Fifth Avenue near Mount Sinai.

It really was like a holiday. Better even than Sundays when the park was closed to cars. People smiled when they passed each other. Waved colorful mittened hands: skiers, kids with sleds, a lone snowshoer in a plaid woodsman’s shirt, lovers walking hand-in-hand through the drifts. Even the line of watching skyscrapers seemed less aggressively massive than usual, their starkness softened by soft snow mantles. Some of them were beautiful with the light on their rosy brick facades.

Ren checked Jack for signs of fatigue, but aside from the smudges under his eyes, he looked radiant, his cheeks glowing from the cold air and the exercise. After awhile he admitted to being a little short of breath and Ren put an arm around him. They moved then together, their poles like the legs of a single giant insect.

It was good moving like that, fluid, light, as if they didn’t have a care in the world, with the slight crunch of the thin crust in his ears and the clean smell of snow. Ren didn’t want it to end. He slowed as they neared the East Meadow and moved his free arm languorously up and down. “We could make angels. The snow is perfect for it.”

Jack looked at him. “Hey,” he said, “you don’t have to come in with me, you know. Just get me to the door and then you can play all you want. You could let my Dad do this one.”

“No way.”

“I know you hate hospitals.”

Ren clapped his hand over his mouth. “Hate them. Why Lord ’a mercy, Miss Scarlet! No, I love them . . . all those nurses in their cute little S and M uniforms, those gleaming needles and knives. It’s better than the back room at the Fur Tunnel.”

Jack laughed. “If you love it so much, why’d you faint last time when they couldn’t find my vein?” “I was just resting. And what if I did faint? Some of us are more sensitive than others.” In fact, watching those poisons drip into Jack’s arm every three weeks for six months had made him sick. Again he wondered how in God’s name he could be here. He loved perfect, well bodies, was terrified of disease, of dying. At 45 he hated every sign of aging in himself. His stiff joints when he climbed up on the stage to show some tricky movement sequence. The way he woke up three times a night to pee, his prostate swelling like a rotten fruit. Jack was different. He tolerated deformations of every kind with the bemused interest of a Buddhist priest. Just now he was exclaiming in delight over some alpine moss that had the perverse idea of blooming in a city park in winter.

By the time they emerged from the park, Ren had worked himself up into a panic. There was no way he could wait passively for Jack’s disease to gather force. The idea made him crazy. All this business about coming along to help gather facts about the new procedure was bullshit. Sure he’d help, he’d listen and pretend to weigh the pros and cons, but even if the treatment ended up being worse than the disease itself, he knew he wanted Jack to try it. He’d already started to pressure him subtly – by a slight change in intonation, slight questioning of his raised eyebrow. If Jack hung back, he’d bring up the fish. Isn’t what gets you about them their determination? That no matter how much they’ve been spilled and dumped on, despite their PCB levels, they keep trying to survive? Unfortunately, he could imagine Jack answering that they weren’t the ones asking for the chemicals. They didn’t have the choice of their “treatment.” He did.

© Brenda Webster