Afterlife by Paul Monette Page A

a man who, except for his funeral, never planned anything more than two months in advance.
    He was trying to wish smaller than Christmas, apparently, thrown for a moment back to life Before, when he and Victor took in all their circle’s refugees for a plate of turkey. Even as he smiled at the memory, he stopped in his tracks in the ivy, soaking wet from the knees down, squinting into the afternoon sun. Aside from Margaret Kirkham and now Mark Inman, he couldn’t think who else to invite.
    Ray Lee, perhaps, and maybe Heather, though it wouldn’t do to make Thanksgiving a company picnic. Of course he had to include Dell and Sonny, being as it was a holiday. But he couldn’t avoid the sinking feeling of having no one left for the eighth chair. Then he remembered Dell had a sister, even though he’d never met her. He felt better already, just having his table full, and rambled around to his front door, candying yams in his head. Drenched in the fullness of his reprieve.
    When Mark got back from London, ready to kill, there were a hundred and nineteen calls on his call list. His plane touched down at two-thirty, and he told the driver to take him directly to the studio. He was still reeling with jet lag from flying the other way four days ago, but since he’d never had time for jet lag before—a wimp’s condition—he wasn’t buying it now. No, this was the start of dying. There wasn’t a test for it exactly, any more than he could put his finger on a symptom. He just felt sapped. And even if no one could tell him how long, he knew it was only a matter of time before the shrunken shell of him went into its final spasm.
    He sat dully in the back of the limo, hands hanging limply over his knees. His briefcase lay bewildered beside him. He could’ve returned ten calls between LAX and Burbank, but he didn’t. At the Dorchester he’d confined his telephoning to doctors, all over Europe, trying to get a straight answer about drugs. It was quickly obvious there was no sure deal on a magic bullet. Maybe, maybe not , they told him in Paris, Zurich, Stockholm. He thought he’d explode if he heard them say “promising” one more time.
    The guard at the Barham Boulevard gate waved them in, with a fawning smile at the smoked-glass window in the back. The limo wound its stately way through the outskirts of the lot, past the post-nuclear silence of a dusty New York street. Behind the executive building a row of tall eucalyptus trees swayed lazily, trailing along the ridge of a dry wash where savages used to slaughter noble cavalry. At the end of the ridge stood a cluster of thirties bungalows.
    Mark climbed out in his Bond Street grays, the driver promising to leave off his luggage at the house on Skyway Lane, also to lay in milk and juice. Mark stood on the bungalow stoop for a moment, as if he had suffered a brief amnesia. For two years he’d rocketed through this door at full throttle. Now there was something oddly timid about his hand on the screen door latch, dangerously quiet, like men who arrive at work one morning smiling, with a bullet for everyone.
    Connie Hinton, Mark’s dogged secretary, was up from her desk and firing the instant he stepped inside. “Lou’s in Chicago, he wants to buy a horse,” she said without preamble. “A million two, and he doesn’t have his checkbook.” She followed her boss as he headed silently into his inner office. Everything here was gray, and as subtly tailored as the Bond Street suit. The window blinds were tilted to banish the afternoon light. “Eric’s been calling all morning,” Connie continued as Mark went around his desk. “He tried to call your plane . Paramount’s upped their offer, Sid says no, Angela wants him to do it.”
    Eric was Lou Ciotta’s lawyer, Sid his bug-eyed manager, Angela his wife. None of them knew that Mark was gay, or at least they never said so, at