The Memory Killer

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“Gawd, Patrick,” Prestwick moaned. “Lighten up while I go way … over … there and take a piss.”

Prestwick started toward the bathroom, stopped when Patrick grabbed his arm and pointed at Prestwick’s half-filled glass, sitting on the edge of the table.

“You left your drink, Billy. What have I been telling everyone?”

Prestwick affected ignorance. “Don’t lay your doodle on bars?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Uh, lemme see … Don’t leave drinkies unattended?”

“I mean it, Billy. Never let your glass out of your sight.”

Prestwick picked up the remainder of his drink, drained it away in a single chug, set it back on the table upside-down. He shot Patrick a wink, mouthed, “Thanks, mummy,” and ambled toward the bathroom tapping at his phone to check the barrage of tweets and Instagrams and Facebook updates. He walked into a barstool, corrected, re-aimed for the dark hall holding the bathrooms.

Patrick sighed, used to Billy’s hip-swinging sashays down a sidewalk, the vocal trills for emphasis, the bottomless supply of jokes. Patrick knew that somewhere in the twelve years since they’d met in high school, he had become an adult. He wondered if Billy ever would.

At times Billy showed flashes of adulthood, of introspection, moments in which he realized that his youth and looks were a finite commodity, and though they carried him now, the passage was growing briefer. But such moments were always transient, the span of a meteor across the night sky, as minutes later Billy was ordering another round, or leaving to “comfort” an older man who would repay Billy with one or another generosity, or sometimes just a fistful of cash.

“Come on, buddy,” Patrick whispered to Billy’s retreating back. “Grow up.”

Prestwick entered the bathroom and relieved himself from two feet away, allowing him to splash his initials on the rear of the urinal. He zipped up and turned to the mirror to check the magic.

A face appeared over his shoulder.

“Hello, Billy,” the face said.

Billy spun. “Uh, do I know you, dear?”

“It’s been a long time. You are Billy Prestwick, right?”

“Now you don’t know?” Billy said.

The face didn’t reply. It just stared, as if amused.

“Yes,” Billy said. What did this thing want? “I’m me.”

“And the man you’re sitting across from …” the face continued, like filling in a space on a crossword. “The fellow with the brown hair. That’s uh … lemme see if I can remember …”

Billy hated memory games. “Patrick, Patrick White. You know him, too?”

“Just briefly.”

Billy frowned. “When did we meet?”

“You really don’t remember me?”

“Of course I do, dear, I’m just so poor at names.” Billy also hated guess-where-we-met games. He reached out to touch the man’s shoulder but something made him stop short of contact. “Listen, dearie, great to see you again and all, but I’ve got a par-tay I’ve got to get to.”

The man nodded and smiled like he knew something Billy didn’t.

“Yes … there’s a party waiting for you, Billy.”

The man turned toward a urinal, unzipped as he walked. Billy started to wash his hands but suddenly realized he didn’t want to be in the bathroom any longer and stepped toward the door.

Patrick watched Billy exit the restroom and walk quickly to the table, his pale face frowning he glanced backward toward the dark hall that led to the bathroom.

“You look strange,” Patrick said. “You OK, Billy?”

“It’s nothing. I just saw a guy who knew me. He kinda looked familiar, but …”

Patrick looked toward the bathroom. The guy was either burrowing in for the long haul or had booked out the back door. “Probably someone you met at a party when you were drunk. How often does that happen, Billy?”

Prestwick grabbed at his bag, missed the strap, got it on the second try and slid it over a boney shoulder poking from a purple tank-top with a sequined target centering the chest. “Don’t be a nag, Nurse White.”

“Where you going?” Patrick asked.

Rolled eyes. “My gawd, Patrick … between you and the thing in the pisser I’m playing Twenty Questions tonight.”

“Someone’s gotta worry about you, Billy. Tell me where you’re headed.”

A flash of guilt was quickly replaced by a lopsided grin.

“I gotta date, sweetums. Kind of.”

Patrick frowned. “Someone you know, right? Someone safe?”

Billy shuffled through his bag, arranging phone and iPad, make-up and spare underwear. Patrick knew it as Billy’s avoidance move, and pressed forward.

“Come on, Billy. It’s someone you know, right? Not a stranger?”

“Oh, almost. He’s like a friend of a friend, just some old bear who likes to sit on his Miami Beach veranda and tell tales about the old days, Stonewall and the Castro and whatever. I’ve heard that he’s sweet and harmless and …”

“And might give you a loan you don’t have to repay?”

“I make sweet old men feel young for a few hours. I think of it as charity work. You flying back to Kansas?”

Patrick nodded to the half-mug of ale. “Two sips and I’m outta here.”

Prestwick affected a thousand-watt grin, teetering slightly in his burgundy loafers. “You’ll be running that place, one day. Head Nurse Patrick White, Queen of All the Bedpans.”

Patrick sighed. “You’re taking a cab, right, Billy?”

“My white knight.” Prestwick kissed Patrick’s temple. “Yes, girlfriend. I’m cabbing. Buh-byee!” He started for the door, but was stopped by an invisible force. Turning back to Patrick, without a word he wrapped him in a hug so tight Patrick imagined he felt the beating of Billy’s heart.

“Thank you, dear,” Billy whispered. “Thank you for caring.”

“Some of us do, Billy. We get worried about … about where you’re going. Where you’ll be five years from now.”

Billy stood back with a quiet smile verging on sadness. He flicked a comma of hair from Patrick’s forehead.

“Goodness, Patrick, so existential all of a sudden.”

“You’re smart and talented, Billy. Stop wasting it and use it to do something, go somewhere.”

Billy blew out a breath. His eyes went to the floor and when they rose to meet Patrick’s eyes, were clouded with guilt. But then, like a bright mask clasped to a penitent visage, Billy Prestwick’s face lit in mischief. He winked.

“I am going somewhere, dear Patrick. I’m going to Miami Beach.”

And like smoke in the wind, Billy Prestwick was gone. Patrick righted Prestwick’s glass, wiping spilled margarita with a napkin, putting the napkin in the glass and putting it aside. He walked to the window to see Billy gathered into a swooping flash of yellow taxi, heading to his next destination, never quite knowing whether it would hold danger or sanctuary.

Patrick shook his head. Had he ever been so self-consumed and moment-driven?

Once upon a time. And not all that long ago.

15 (#ulink_181f08ee-ce7d-5607-a9da-403ffa933bd7)

Debro sat in his car across the street from D’Artagnan’s and watched Patrick White through the window. He’d slipped out the back after his conversation with Billy Prestwick. An eight-year-old movie began playing in Debro’s head. The pictures still hurt. Sometimes they stung like hornets.

The movie montage comes from a trendy gay hangout long closed by the cops for underage drinking. The bar, owned by two old queens nicknamed Harold and Maudlin, kitsch collectors, was the place to be that spring, festooned with comic excess on the walls and ceiling: a moose head wearing sunglasses, a bent trombone, a blow-up doll dressed in a tie-dye miniskirt, posters from fifties sci-fi movies, funky birdhouses, a sagging accordion, a stuffed raccoon wearing Mardi Gras beads. The setting evoked fun and laughter.

Having spent days steeling his courage to step inside the bar, a younger Debro orders a gin-gin at the bar. The skinny, arrogant barkeep gives him a sneering once-over and brings the drink five minutes later, retreating to the far end of the bar to talk with a handsome boy in a Panama hat.