“Can you turn off the light? I can’t reach it.” William asked. “I’m gonna sleep until Walter gets here.” His skin was yellow next to the white sheet. He folded his glasses and Girl put them on the side table for him. His eyes closed before she left the room. He looked vulnerable without his glasses, and small and fragile beneath the sheets.
There was a song Girl used to sing back in ninth grade called, “A.I.D.S.—Anally Inflicted Death Sentence.” It was the summer Girl was filled with hate for her parents and their gayness, when she was tired of being bullied and different and on the fringes of society. That’s what you get for having a penis up your ass. That’s what you get when you swallow another man’s load. She sang it because Stepmother would hate it if she knew, but more than that, it would hurt her. Girl wanted so badly to be normal, she wished so hard to be just like everyone else. She was tired of interrupting gay jokes to tell her friends they were being insensitive, the way Stepmother had schooled her to do. She hated being called Lezzie. It wasn’t fair that Mother had chosen to be a lesbian—she always said that she could have been just as happy with a man—so she had willingly chosen a life of ostracism and secrets. Should have used a condom, Girl sang angrily that summer. Now Girl wished that she could take it all back, revoke her mocking, bullying song, pull the lyrics out of her brain like threads of spider web and throw the memory away forever.
A week or so later, William was back at the shop, but now his attitude toward her had changed. On Fridays, he’d take her to the Italian restaurant next door for lunch, and they’d stay twice as long as her allotted thirty minutes. William always paid for her, but Girl was careful to order the cheapest thing on the menu, like her mother taught her.
“Hey, I have to go to the eye doctor on Tuesday,” he asked. “Can you take me? I don’t know if they will be dilating my eyes.”
“Sure, but you know I don’t have a car yet,” Girl said.
“Just meet me at the shop,” he said. “I’ll drive us there, and you can drive us home.”
William looked fragile in the deep black leather bucket seat of his car. He said he was five-foot-five, but Girl thought he was closer to five-foot-three. After his illness, he couldn’t have been much more than one hundred pounds, and his wrists were bony and sharp when he gripped the steering wheel.
“Do you feel how the car just wants to go?” William asked. The silver 944 Porsche shook when it idled at red lights. She guessed that was what he was talking about.
“I just got this one a few months before you started. It’s so much more powerful than my old 928. The 928 is the poor man’s Porsche.” William always pronounced it pore-shah, but Girl felt self-conscious and just said pore-sh. “Did you ever see my old car?”
At the next stoplight William pulled out his wallet and showed her a picture of himself standing in front of a bright yellow car.
“Nice!” she said. Girl liked it better than the one he had now, but didn’t say so. She wasn’t nearly as impressed with the silver 944 as he wanted her to be, but she tried to fake it. To her, the most important aspect of a car was its color.
“Do you feel how smoothly it changes gears?” William said.
“Yeah, but why would you get a sports car with an automatic transmission?” Girl had just learned to drive on a five-speed, and she scorned people who didn’t drive stick.
“I had wanted a stick shift, but this was designed to be a luxury car. They mostly made automatics, so stick shifts are really hard to find used.” Girl must have looked skeptical, because he went on, “Actually, I get tired a lot, so I really need an automatic. I know how to drive stick, but some days I just can’t.”
“Oh.” Girl looked out the passenger’s window and saw nothing but colors blurring by. “How long have you been sick?” Girl knew it wasn’t polite to ask, but she did anyway.
“Almost five years. Since I was twenty.” William didn’t seem to mind talking about it.
They pulled into the mall parking lot. Girl was surprised he didn’t go to a normal eye doctor in a separate office building like she did. Mother always said that mall places weren’t as good.
“Can you tell I’m sick?” he asked quietly as they walked to Lens Crafters.
“No, I don’t think so.” He was skinny, but not as skinny as their boss, Ryan. William wore long sleeves that covered his KS spots and had a little makeup on the one behind his ear.
“I know I look gay, but I don’t want to look sick.”
“No, you look good. I had no idea, really.” They sat side by side in a narrow hall outside the examination room.
“There’re not many doctors that like to treat people with AIDS. That’s why I come here. We get certain eye problems.”
Girl had thought they were just there because he wore glasses like she did. His eyes didn’t look infected or anything. Mother’s left eye was always goopy and swollen. William’s eyes looked fine behind his gold-framed bifocals.
“I like your frames, by the way.”
“Twenty-four karat gold—what else!”
“Of course! What else?”
“Do you mind driving?” William asked when he left the exam room. “I still get really tired.” He’d only been working half days since he got out of the hospital a month ago.
Girl wasn’t really a confident driver, and it made her nervous to have him watch her. She peeled out of the parking lot, accidentally spinning the tires. Girl didn’t realize that William didn’t have anyone else to drive him. Walter had to work all day, and they couldn’t
