The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper Page B

Wayne says. “No one knows that better than the town faggot.”
    We study each other for a moment or two.
    â€œIt's good to see you,” I say.
    He smirks, and a hint of the old Wayne, young, cocky, perennially amused, briefly flashes across his drawn face. “Aren't you going to tell me how great I look? How kind the years have been?”
    â€œI was just going to say, you must give me the name of your dietitian.”
    Wayne's laugh is a strong and unfettered thing, and I congratulate myself on my direct approach. “Can I come in?” he asks hesitantly, and I see a subtle change in his expression, a quick flicker of doubt, as if he thinks he might very well be rebuffed. In that instant I catch the faintest whiff of the isolation and bigotry he's no doubt suffered as Bush Falls's only confirmed homosexual.
    â€œThat depends,” I say. “Are you mad at me?”
    â€œI promise not to spill any drinks on you, if that's what you mean.”
    â€œYou heard about that.”
    â€œTongues are wagging,” he says, raising his eyebrows dramatically as he steps into the entry hall and looks around. “Wow. Time warp.”
    â€œTell me about it,” I say. “My bedroom is like a shrine to the eighties.”
    â€œI'll bet.”
    He asks after my father, and I give a summary of his condition and the generally pessimistic prognosis. He listens attentively, fiddling in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and a matchbook. He lights the match in the book one-handed, a trick he perfected back in high school, and takes a long, greedy drag on the cigarette. “Cigarette?”
    â€œYes, I know,” I say, and we smile at the old shared joke. “Should you be smoking in your condition?”
    â€œMost definitely.” He arches his eyebrow cynically in what strikes me as a particularly gay manner: stately, self-deprecating, and slightly feminine. I wonder if he had these mannerisms back in high school and I was just oblivious, or if he'd cultivated this demeanor in the years after he left the Falls, living out in Los Angeles, working odd jobs, and auditioning for an endless stream of sitcom pilots. We'd stayed in touch sporadically, writing sarcastic letters to each other, documenting our latest, separate failures. At some point during my senior year at NYU, a routine HIV test Wayne took came back positive and his letters stopped coming. Only recently, in a rare conversation with Brad, had I learned that Wayne had moved back to the Falls, and more than once I'd resolved to give him a call, but predictably never did.
    I look into Wayne's creased face and ravaged eyes, my throat constricting in an involuntary spasm of acute sadness, and I think that he's very much like those pigeons I buried in my youth, flying along minding his own business when the air suddenly turned solid on him. “How long have you been symptomatic?”
    â€œI think I just crossed the line between long enough and too long,” he says with a rueful smile.
    â€œYou're living at home?”
    â€œYeah. Apparently, the AIDS alone wasn't enough to satisfy my masochistic nature.”
    â€œAnd how are the Hargrove seniors?”
    â€œVindicated,” he says with a sour grin. “My mother warned me there'd be hell to pay for my abominations.”
    Wayne's mother is a ball buster of a woman who embroiders obscure biblical verses on pillows and keeps an extensive collection of
Reader's Digest
magazines, which she weeps through every Sunday after church. Beside her, his father is practically invisible, a slight balding man who speaks in muted whispers, as if he's constantly afraid of waking someone up.
    â€œCan I get you anything?” I say, although not having been to the kitchen yet, I have no idea what there might be to be gotten. Beer and Gatorade have always been my father's beverages of choice, but I suspect he still does his shopping one day at a time.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Wayne