Sacrament

CHAPTER I

i

'It's going to take time to get you up and moving normally again,' Doctor Koppelman explained to Will a few days after the awakening.

'But you're still reasonably young, reasonably resilient. And you were fit. All that puts you ahead of the game.'

'Is that what it's going to be?' Will said. He was sitting up in bed, drinking sweet tea.

'A game? No, I'm afraid not. It's going to be brutal some of the time.' 'And the rest?'

'Merely horrendous.'

'Your bedside manner's for shit, you know that?'

Koppelman laughed. 'You'll love it.'

'Says who?'

'Adrianna. She told me you had a distinctly masochistic streak. Loved discomfort, she said. Only happy when you were up to your neck in swamp-water.'

'Did she tell you anything else?'

Koppelman threw Will a sly smile. 'Nothing you wouldn't be proud of,' he said. 'She's quite a lady.'

'Lady?'

'I'm afraid I'm an old-fashioned chauvinist. I haven't called her with the news, by the way. I thought it'd be better coming from you.'

'I suppose so,' Will said, without much enthusiasm.

'You want to do it today?'

'No, but leave me the number. I'll get around to it.'

'When you're feeling a little better-' Koppelman looked a little embarrassed. '-I wonder if you'd do me a favour? My wife's sister Laura works in a bookstore. She's a big fan of your pictures. When she heard I was looking after you, she practically threatened my life if I didn't get you back to work, happy and healthy. If I brought in a book, would you sign it for her?'

'It'd be my pleasure.'

'That's good to see.'

' What?'

'That smile. You've got reason to be happy, Mr Rabjohns. I wasn't betting on you coming out of this. You took your time.'

'I was ... wandering,' Will replied.

'Anywhere you remember?'

'A lot of places.'

'If you want to talk to one of the therapists about it at some point, I'll set it up.'

'I don't trust therapists.'

'Any particular reason?'

'I dated one once. He was the most royally fucked up guy I ever met. Besides, aren't they supposed to take the pain away? Why the hell would I want that?'

When Koppelman had gone, Will revisited the conversation, or rather the latter part of it. He hadn't thought about Eliot Cameron, the therapist he'd dated, in a long time. It had been a short affair, conducted at Eliot's insistence behind locked doors in a hotel room booked under an assumed name. At first the furtiveness had tickled Will's sense of play, but the secrecy soon began to wear out its welcome, fuelled as it was by Eliot's shame at his orientation. They had argued often, sometimes violently, the fisticuffs invariably followed by a sensational bout of love-making. Then had come the publication of Will's first book, Transgressions, a collection of photographs whose common theme was animal trespassers and their punishment. The book had appeared without attracting a single review, and seemed destined for total obscurity until a commentator in The Washington Post took exception to it, using it as an object lesson in how gay artists were tainting public discourse.

It is tasteless enough, the man had written, that ecological tragedies be appropriated as political metaphor, but doubly so when one considers the nature of the pleading involved. Mr Rabjohns should be ashamed of himself. He has attempted to turn these documents into an irrational and self-dramatizing metaphor for the homosexual's place in America; and in doing so has demeaned his craft, his sexuality and - most unforgivably - the animals whose dying throes and rotting carcasses he has so obsessively documented.

The piece sparked controversy, and within forty-eight hours Will found himself in the middle of a fiercely contested debate involving ecologists, gay rights lobbyists, art critics and politicians in need of the publicity. A strange phenomenon rapidly became evident: that everyone saw what they wanted to see when they looked at him. For some he was a mudspattered wheel, raging around amongst prissy aesthetes. For others he was simply a bad boy with good cheekbones and a damn strange look in his eyes. For another faction still he was a sexual outsider, his photographs of less consequence than his function as a violator of taboos. Ironically, even though he'd never intended the agenda he'd been accused of promulgating, the controversy had done to him what the Post piece had claimed he was doing to his subjects: it had turned him into metaphor. In desperate need of some simple affection, he'd sought out Eliot. But Eliot had decided the spotlight might spill a little light on him, and had taken refuge in Vermont. When Will finally found his way through the maze the man had left to conceal his route, Eliot told him it would be better all around if Will left him alone for a while. After all, he'd explained in his inimitable fashion, it wasn't as if they'd ever really been lovers, was it? Fuck-buddies maybe, but not lovers.

Six months later, while Will was on a shoot on the Ruwenzori massif, an invitation to Eliot's wedding had found its tortuous way into his hands. It was accompanied by a scrawled note from the groom-to-be saying that he perfectly understood Will wouldn't be able to make it, but he didn't want him to feel forgotten. Fuelled by an heroic perversity, Will had packed up the shoot early and flown back to Boston for the wedding. He'd ended up having a drunken exchange with Eliot's brother-in-law, another therapist, in which he'd loudly and comprehensively trashed the entire profession. They were the proctologists of the soul, he'd said; they took a wholly unhealthy interest in other people's shit. There had been a cryptic telephone message from Eliot a week later, telling Will to keep his distance in future, and that had been the end of Will's experience with therapists. No, not quite true. He'd had a short fling with the brotherin-law; but that was another adventure altogether. He had not spoken to Eliot since, though he'd heard from mutual friends that the marriage was still intact. No children, but several houses.

ii

'How longs this going to take?' Will asked Koppelman next time he came around.

'What, to get you up and about?'

'Up, about and out of here.'

'Depends on you. Depends how hard you work at it.'

'Are we talking days, weeks-?'

'At least six weeks,' Koppelman replied.

'I'll halve it,' Will said. 'Three weeks and I'm gone.'

'Tell your legs that.'

'I already did. We had a great conversation.'

'By the way, I got a call from Adrianna.'

'Shit. What did you tell her?'

'I had no choice but to tell her the truth. I did say you were still feeling woozy, and you hadn't felt like calling up all your friends, but she wasn't convinced. You'd better make your peace with her.'

'First you're my doctor, now you're my conscience?'

'I am indeed,' he replied gravely.

'I'll call her today.'

She made him squirm.

'Here's me going around in a fucking depression thinking about you lying there in a coma and you're not! You're awake, and you don't have the fucking time to call me up and tell me?'

'I'm sorry.'

'No you're not. You've never been sorry for anything in your life.'

'I was feeling like shit. I didn't talk to anybody.' Silence. 'Peace?' Still silence. 'Are you still there?'

'Still here.'

'Peace?'

'I heard you the first time: you are an egocentric fucking son of a fucking bitch, you know that?'

'Koppelman said you thought I was a genius.'

'I never said genius. I may have said talented, but I thought you were going to die so I was feeling generous.'

'You cried.'

'Not that generous.'

'Christ, you're a hard woman.'

'All right, I cried. A little. But I will not make that mistake again, even if you feed yourself to a fucking pack of polar bears.'

'Which reminds me. What happened to Guthrie?'

'Dead and buried. There was an obituary in The Times, believe it or not.'

'For Guthrie?'

'He'd had quite a life. So ... when are you coming back?'

'Koppelman's pretty vague about that right now. It's going to be a few weeks, he says.'

'But you'll come straight home to San Francisco, won't you?'

'I haven't made up my mind.'

'There's a lot of people care about you here. Patrick, for one. He's always asking after you. And there's me, and Glenn-'

'You're back with Glenn?'

'Don't change the subject. But yes, I'm back with Glenn. I'll open up your house, get it together for you so you can have a real homecoming.'

'Homecomings are for people who have homes,' Will said. He'd never much liked the house on Sanchez Street; never much liked any house, in fact.

'So pretend,' Adrianna told him. 'Give yourself some time to kick back.'

'I'll think about it. How is Patrick, by the way?'

'I saw him last week. He's put on some weight since I saw him.'

'Will you call him for me?'

'No.'

'Adrianna

'You call him. He'd like that. A lot. In fact that's how you can make it up to me, by calling Patrick and telling him you're okay.'

'That is the most fucked up piece of logic.'

'It isn't logic. It's a guilt-trip. I learned it from my mother. Have you got Patrick's number?'

'Probably.'

'No excuses. Write it down. Have you got a pen?' He rummaged for one on the table beside his bed. She gave him the number and he dutifully jotted it down. 'I'm going to speak to him tomorrow, Will,' Adrianna said. 'And if you haven't called him there'll be trouble.'

'I'll call him, I'll call him. Jesus.'

'Rafael walked out on him, so don't mention the little fuck's name.'

'I thought you liked him.'

'Oh he knows how to turn on the charm,' Adrianna said, 'but he was just another party-boy at heart.'

'He's young. He's allowed.'

'Whereas we

-are old and wise and full of flatulence.'

Adrianna giggled. 'I've missed you,' she said.

'And quite right too.'

'Patrick's got himself a guru, by the way: Bethlynn Reichle. She's teaching him to meditate. It's quite nostalgic really. Now when I see Pat we sit cross-legged on the floor, smoke weed and make peace signs at one another.'

'Whatever he's telling you, Patrick was never a flower-child. The summer of love didn't reach Minneapolis.'

'He comes from Minneapolis?'

'Just outside. His father's a pig farmer.'

'What?' said Adrianna, in mock outrage. 'He said his Dad was a landscape artist

-who died of a brain tumor? Yeah, he tells everybody that. It's not true. His Dad's alive and kicking and living in pigshit in the middle of Minnesota. And making a mint from the bacon business, I might add.'

'Pat's such a lying bastard. Wait till I tell him.'

Will chuckled. 'Don't expect him to be contrite,' he said. 'He doesn't do contrite. How are things going with Glenn?'

'We putter on,' she said unenthusiastically. 'It's better than a lot of folks have got. It's just not inspired. I always wanted one grand romance in my life. One that was reciprocated, I mean. Now I think it's too late.' She sighed. 'God, listen to me!'

'You need a cocktail, that's all.'

'Are you allowed to drink yet?'

'I'll ask Bernie. I don't know. Did he try and put the moves on you, by the way?'

'What, Koppelman? No. Why?'

'I just think he was smitten with you, that's all. The way he talks about you.'

'Well why the hell didn't he say something?'

'You probably intimidated him.'

'L'il of me? Nah. I'm a pussy-cat, you know that. Not that I would have said yes if he'd offered. I mean, I've got some standards. They're low, granted, but I've got 'em and I'm proud of 'em.'

'Have you considered becoming a comedienne?' Will said, much amused. 'You'd probably have a decent career.'

'Does this mean you meant what you said in Balthazar? About giving it all up?'

'I think it's the other way round,' Will said. 'Photography's done with me, Adie. And we've both seen enough bone-yards for one lifetime.'

'So what happens now?'

'I finish the book. I deliver the book. Then I wait. You know how I like waiting. Watching.'

'For what, Will?'

'I don't know. Something wild.'