In One Person

called me by name, and I truly can’t remember if he ever did; I don’t recall him once addressing me as either Bill or Billy when we were Favorite River students. But what does that matter? I didn’t even know what his first name
was
! Since I’d not seen him onstage as Lear’s Fool, I have a more permanent picture of Delacorte from
Twelfth Night
; he played Sir Andrew Aguecheek—declaring to Sir Toby Belch (Uncle Bob), “O, had I but followed the arts!”
    Delacorte died after several days of near-total silence, with the two clean paper cups held shakily in his hands. Elaine was there that day, with Mrs. Delacorte and me, and—coincidentally—so was Larry. He’d spotted Elaine and me from the doorway of Delacorte’s room, and had poked his head inside. “Not the one you were looking for, or is it?” Larry had asked.
    Elaine and I both shook our heads. A very tired Mrs. Delacorte was dozing while her son slipped away. There was no point in introducing Delacorte to Larry; Delacorte, by his silence, seemed to have already slipped away, or else he was headed in that direction—nor did Elaine and I disturb Mrs. Delacorte to introduce her to Larry. (The little woman hadn’t slept a wink for God knows how long.)
    Naturally, Larry was the AIDS authority in the room. “Your friend hasn’t got long,” he whispered to Elaine and me; then he left us there. Elaine took Mrs. Delacorte to the women’s room, because the exhausted mother was so worn out she looked as if she might fall or become lost if she went by herself.
    I was alone with Delacorte only a moment. I’d grown so accustomed to his silence, I first thought that someone else had spoken. “Have you seen him?” came the faintest whisper. “Leave it to him—he was never the one to be satisfied with just
fitting in
!” Delacorte breathlessly cried.
    “Who?” I whispered in the dying man’s ear, but I knew who. Who
else
would Delacorte have had on his demented mind at that instant, or almost the instant, of his death? Delacorte died minutes later, with his mother’s small hands on his wasted face. Mrs. Delacorte asked Elaine and me if she could have a moment alone with her son’s body; of course we complied.
    Bullshit or not, it was Larry who later told us that we
shouldn’t
have left Mrs. Delacorte alone in the room with her son’s body. “A single mom, right—an only child, I’m guessing?” Larry said. “And when there’s a Hickman catheter, Bill, you don’t want to leave
any
loved one alone with the body.”
    “I didn’t
know
, Larry—I’ve never
heard
of such a thing!” I told him.
    “Of course you haven’t heard of such a thing, Bill—you’re not
involved
! How would you have
heard
? You’re exactly like him, Elaine,” Larry told her. “The two of you are keeping
such
a distance from this disease—you’re barely
bystanders
!”
    “Don’t pull rank on us, Larry,” Elaine said.
    “Larry is
always
pulling rank, one way or another,” I said.
    “You know, you’re not just bisexual, Bill. You’re
bi-everything
!” Larry told me.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him.
    “You’re a solo pilot, aren’t you, Bill?” Larry asked me. “You’re cruising solo—no copilot has any clout with you.” (I still have no idea what Larry meant.)
    “Don’t pull rank on us, Mr. Florence Fucking Nightingale,” Elaine said to Larry.
    Elaine and I had been standing in the corridor outside Delacorte’s room, when one of the nurses passed by and paused to speak to us. “Is Carlton—” the nurse started to say.
    “Yes, he’s gone—his mother is with him,” Elaine said.
    “Oh, dear,” the nurse said, stepping quickly into Delacorte’s room, but she got there too late. Mrs. Delacorte had done what she wanted to do—what she’d probably
planned
to do, once she knew her son was going to die. She must have had the needle and a syringe in her purse. She’d stuck the needle into the end of the Hickman catheter; she’d drawn some blood out of the Hickman, but she emptied that first syringe into the wastebasket. The first syringe was mostly full of heparin. Mrs. Delacorte had done her homework; she knew that the second syringe would be almost entirely Carlton’s blood, teeming with the virus. Then she’d injected herself, deep into her gluteus, with about five milliliters of her son’s blood. (Mrs. Delacorte would die of AIDS in 1989; she died in hospice care in her apartment, in New York.)
    At Elaine’s