Threshold

Bill Merklee

Henry answers his door down on one knee.

“I guess we’re not going to lunch,” I say, helping him to the sofa.

“I can barely breathe,” he says.

“Then we’re going to the hospital. It’s right up the street.”

“No, I need to see my doctors. In Westchester. My brother and his wife are flying in this afternoon. They’ll take me.”

“You need to go now.”

“I can’t go looking like this.”

“Really? I’ll get your shoes.”

“So much for leaving a good-looking corpse.”

Henry puts his meds in a fanny pack. With his left arm across my shoulders, we shuffle to my car. I buckle him in like he’s a limp toddler.

Up the Palisades to 9W and the Tappan Zee, the drive to Westchester takes about an hour. For somebody having trouble breathing, Henry can still talk my ear off.

“Last Friday, I met a friend who came in for the Gay Olympics. He was staying in midtown, so we went down to the village for lunch. The city was just crawling with faggots and dykes. When we got to Christopher Street, forget it. They were all over the place. They should have just blocked off the street. And that was only Friday. So there I am, walking around in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. I only saw two other people who looked sick. One of them was in total denial.

“The uniform for Summer ’94 seems to be tank tops or no shirts, those knee-length khaki shorts, kind of preppy looking, and those Sinead O’Connor black work boots, all laced up. He was dressed like that, but he looked ludicrous because his legs were pencil-thin, thinner than mine. He had on a tank top, and his bones were popping out everywhere. How do you leave the house like that?”

Henry coughs. Takes several tries to clear his throat.

“The other guy I saw was very thin. Wore a big-brimmed hat and a long-sleeved shirt and long pants. But I could tell he was sick by how gaunt he was. Everyone else looked healthy. I’m certain at least a third were infected. There’s a difference between being infected and being sick.”

He squints through pulsing sunlight at the glittering Hudson on its slow roll to the sea.

“When I got home, I was so depressed. Being in that crowd, in that energy — I mean, I didn’t go fuck five guys behind the bushes or get dates for the next five nights, but I did like the flirtation, checking people out and knowing they were checking others out. I felt like such an eyesore.

“My friend said, ‘I don’t think you look as bad as all that.’ I said it was all the foundation. This is going to sound bigoted because my friend is Korean, but I told him Korean gays think all white men are gorgeous, just like straight men think all Japanese women are exotic. Like all the Latin men I knew wanted a blonde. It didn’t matter what you looked like under the hair as long as it was blonde.

“So yes, I’m depressed about the way I look. More depressed that I have so little control over it.”

Henry falls silent. Thinking I should keep him awake, I bring up our first high school reunion. How the asshole drunks were still asshole drunks ten years later. How some girls I wouldn’t have looked at twice in homeroom showed up stunning. How everyone I’d suspected of being gay really was.

“Your gay-dar was almost as good as mine,” he says.

“Some managed to fly under,” I say.

“Certain football players.”

“Yeah. And the hunky actor.”

“And still, I was always crushing on my straight friends.”

Outside the emergency room, Henry cannot stand. I pick him up like he’s made of straw and carry him through the sliding doors. A nurse helps me lay him on a stretcher and wheels him to a side room.

When I was a kid, the antiseptic air of a hospital meant needles, stitches, and casts. A couple of years from now, it will signify magic and joy when my wife brings new life into the world.

Today, it’s the last hope.

The doctor says Henry will stay a few days to have fluid drained from his lungs, and do I have any questions. Someone rolls in a comfortable chair, asks if they can get me anything, if I need to use a phone. The staff are stealing glances from the nurses’ station when I realize who they think I am. I say nothing.

Bill Merklee’s work has appeared in numerous journals, was included in Best Microfiction 2021 and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2024. Most recently, he was long-listed for the 2023 SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition and short-listed for the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award.