Curled in the Bed of Love by Catherine Brady Page A

grave. By that time the funerals had become as fantastic as the disease—a ceremony in a nightclub rented for the evening, a service conducted jointly by a rabbi and a Buddhist monk, a party where everyone said their good-byes to the host, whose flesh was evaporating from his bones by slow degrees.
    At Michael’s funeral, the mourners were asked to place in the grave some precious gift for him to take into the sweet afterlife. In single file, men lined up to drop onto the coffin a silk scarf, pages torn from a book of poetry, a pinecone, a Game Boy. Jordan was in line ahead of Jim. Jordan dropped into the grave a pair of eyeglasses, explained his awkward gift when Jim stepped up to deposit one perfect peach.
    â€œHe was so vain he wouldn’t use his reading glasses,” Jordan said. “When we went out to eat, somebody always had to read the menu to him.”
    Jordan’s shoulders began to shake, and Jim put an arm around him and led him away. Back then, you took anyone in your arms at these things, for whoever grieved more intensely was only temporarily taking your place in the endlessly reshuffled hierarchy of mourners.
    Jordan put his hands up to ward off Jim. “Don’t,” he said. “I’m not crying for him.” He didn’t have to confess he was seropositive.
    After the service everyone met for lunch at a barbecue restaurant. Jim sat with Jordan, and they discovered they had nothing in common. Jordan was a partner in a small art gallery downtown, and Jim was a physical therapist. Their only mutual interest was their volunteer work in the AIDS ward at San Francisco General. But everyone did that in those days. The ward swarmed with boisterous volunteers who delivered flowers and library books, plumped pillows, told jokes, gave manicures, served the fancy Sunday brunches donated by restaurants and caterers.
    Jim struggled to hold Jordan’s attention. He met all kinds of people in his work, he said. “And you’re touching their bodies, working them through pain. They tell you everything. The writers tell me their ideas for stories, the bankers give me tips on investing. I know more about them than their hairdressers do.”
    Jordan smiled politely, and Jim was thinking of excusing himself to sit with friends when Michael’s cousin turned his video camera on them. Michael’s cousin had been going from table to table, and now he wanted Jim to tell one story about Michael. Jim couldn’t think of a story. All he could remember was that Michael was forever stepping in dog shit. He stared openmouthed at the camera. Instead of turning the punishing lens away, Jordan turned Jim’s face to his, kept his hand cupped protectively along the line of Jim’s jaw.
    That gesture was all it took for Jim to fall for Jordan. Then, intimacy came quickly and fiercely. Jim, still healthy, never had to ask himself whether he really loved Jordan. What he fought down the first night they spent together, when he studied Jordan’s unmarked body in the soft glow of a bedside lamp, imagined the raging disease already scarring organs and unseen tissue, was absolute proof in and of itself.
    Now that time has unfurled before them again, a red carpet unrolled, they can handle a rough spot or two. Jordan has only just started back to work full-time after two years of devoting himself to his health. Jordan was lucky that he could afford the time off—thanks to his parents’ determination to avoid inheritance taxes, he had enough capital sunk into the business that his partner had to accommodate him. How they celebrated his first day back—Jim sent Jordan flowers at the gallery with a card signed “J.J.,” their nickname for each other, the twinned link of their initials, and served up a candlelight dinner when Jordan got home. But Jordan’s been much more tired since he started back at the gallery. Jim worried at first, insisted Jordan go for a battery of