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But back to the task at hand. What to say? I know I could write something long and drawn out, reminding him of how we met and letting him know that I have never forgotten him throughout the passage of years.

I could tell him about the connection I feel to him.

All of that, I think, could be perceived as simply nuts.

I place my fingers on the keyboard and type:

Perhaps a weird question, but did you live (and teach) in Chicago in the early 1980s? If so, we may have met on the ‘L’ train heading out west toward the University of Illinois. If not, never mind
.

I sit back, look at the simple message, question once again if I’m doing the right thing, and click Send.

I wonder if this simple act will change my life. Or if, more likely, it will make absolutely no difference at all.

I turn to Ezra, who has awakened on the couch and stares at me, as if to ask “Isn’t it time for bed yet?”

“Yes, Ezra, let’s go to bed.”

As if the cat understands my words, and I often think he does, he hops from his sleeping place on the couch to strut ahead of me into the bedroom, where he will take up another sleeping place at the foot of my bed.

I pull off my T-shirt and drop it on the pile of clothes on the recliner situated in a corner of my bedroom and join Ezra in bed. I decide I’m too tired for
Dr. Sleep
and will opt for plain old sleep tonight. I reach up to turn off the light and then pull the sheet and quilt up to my neck.

The last thought I have is to wonder if I will dream of Carlos.

T
HE
NEXT
morning, before I fire up the Keurig to make my Pike Place blend of coffee, before I feed Ezra, before I check the weather outside my windows, hell, before I even pee, I hurry into my home office to check my computer to see if there’s been a reply from Carlos.

I wait for my browser to come up and, of all times, the connection to the Internet is being painfully slow. Or maybe it’s just me. Patience has never been one of my virtues. Ezra is up too and winds himself around my legs in a figure eight beneath my chair.

“Just a minute, boy. Just let me check this one thing.”

He gives out a sharp meow, which is almost a bark, and which I interpret as “Okay, but just
one
.”

Finally my home screen comes up, and I bypass checking my e-mail, even though I know Facebook would have forwarded any messages there as well, and go directly to
the
social media presence of the twenty-first century.

My heart skips a beat when I see the little red box next to the message icon at the top of the Facebook page, indicating I do have a message. Really? That fast? I tell myself to be calm. The message could be from Jules, or Tate, or one of the guys I met at the Printers Row book fair last summer whom I promised to meet for coffee but never have, even though we always comment on each other’s postings.

Hand almost trembling, I move the mouse to click on the red box.

I close my eyes. I am not sure whether to smile and jump up and dance.

The message is from Carlos.

I open it and read:

Hey. Thanks for your message. Would you be able to meet up with me for coffee after work tonight at Jumpy on Lincoln Avenue, near the Jewel? Say five-ish?

There’s nothing else. I was expecting at least an “I remember you.” But if he didn’t remember me, why would he want to meet? Of course I’ll meet him. I type in a quick reply.

“I’ll be there.” I’m tempted to add something silly along the lines of “I’ll be the one with a gardenia behind my ear and smoking a cigar” but opt to leave it as is. The hardest thing for me to accept is that I’m still not sure this is my Carlos.

I wonder how I’ll make it through the day. You know, being the impatient sort….

“H
EY
, C
ARLOS
,
can you help me with something?” my assistant, Joel, calls from outside my office. Joel has worked with me at Angels, an AIDS charity, for the past ten years, and is, by necessity, a jack-of-all-trades. It’s how it works for most everyone on staff here. Joel, for example, proofreads the newsletter on HIV awareness I put together every month. He bags meals for the folks we deliver them to. And he answers the phone, directing our clients to the pair of caseworkers we have on staff.

I get up from my cluttered desk and look at Joel, standing near the back door. He’s such a handsome guy, all of thirty, with dark brown hair he wears buzzed close to his skull, a thick beard, and tattoos just about everywhere I can see.
Sigh
. If I were only a few years younger, I would break the rules about fraternizing with employees, but I know better.

“What is it?” I ask, knowing it could be anything. There’s someone in the lobby who refuses to speak to anyone but the person in charge. Or maybe there’s a donor who has a bagful of cash he’s itching to give to us to keep us afloat in this age when people have pretty much forgotten about AIDS, unless directly affected. Perhaps it’s yet another employee ready to give notice because he or she has found higher-paying work elsewhere.

Like McDonald’s.

“Some guy dropped by with books for the library. There’s, like, fourteen boxes. Do you think you could help me carry them in? I can take care of sorting and shelving at some point.”

We have a small library, which started out as being resources on AIDS and HIV and has grown now into two rooms that encompass all things gay-related, including romances and mysteries.

I take off the plaid short-sleeve shirt I wore and meet Joel by the back door, where he’s already stacked the boxes. Our donor has taken off.

“Look at you in your tight white T!” Joel grins, squatting to hoist one of the boxes up to his shoulder. His biceps bulge. “Oh,
Papi
.” He leers and gives me a wink. “When are you gonna go out with me?”

I shake my head and laugh. We’ve had this conversation before. He knows I’d never date anyone associated with Angels, client or employee. It happened once, back when I first started—and look how that turned out. My mood darkens for an instant, like a cloud passing over the sun. I force memories away and make myself smile. “Maybe if you didn’t call me
Papi
you’d stand a chance. Makes me feel like an old man.” I pick up one of the other boxes, being careful to lift from my legs and not my back. I head inside with Joel behind me.

“But I like older guys!” Joel protests, laughing. I notice he’s breathing easy while I am already huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. “And you’re super hot.”

“For an old man?” I sling the box down on a table in the room we grandly call our library and realize I’m out of breath.

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

I roll my eyes and keep to myself that there’s no worse compliment than being told you’re hot “for your age.” Why can’t a person just be hot? Period. To keep things short and simple, all I say is, “Nothing, nothing at all.”

Joel is raring to go get the next box, eyes bright, energized. I envy him. I’m in pretty good shape—wait for it—
for my age
, which isn’t that far away from the dreaded sixty, and unlike many of my contemporaries, I still have all my hair, even though it’s silver, and my weight, aside from a few pounds I can’t seem to get rid of, is pretty close to ideal.

“Tell you what. You bring in half the boxes, and I’ll bring in the other half real soon.”

Joel cocks his head at me, looking, I guess, for an explanation for why we just can’t finish the job together.

“I just remembered I need to make a phone call.”

He nods. I’m glad he didn’t force me to tell him the truth—that carrying in all those heavy boxes would pretty much wipe me out for the morning, if not for the day. I know Joel well enough—his work ethic, his desire to please me—to know he’ll bring in all the boxes himself.

I leave him to it.

I head back to my office and sit down in the creaking leather chair that’s always been mine. It has an indentation that perfectly fits my butt, and on one side, I’ve had to patch it with duct tape.

The joys of working for a nonprofit.

The truth was Joel made me think of Harry, and I needed to get back in here, alone, so I could remember him and, if I needed to, shed a few tears. The tears come with decreasing frequency when I recall the man I lived with, the man I loved for a very long time, but they still come—often out of nowhere, when the least little thing reminds me of my lover.

They’re like Harry himself was—always able to surprise me.

At my desk I take a few calming breaths, deep in and out, waiting, testing my emotions to see if the tears will come, if a choked sob will escape me.

But neither arrives. I’m both relieved and disappointed.

Relieved because I don’t have to worry about Joel walking in on me and catching me blubbering. The big young guy would feel compelled to wrap me up in his massive arms and press me to his chest, which would ignite all sorts of emotions, mostly contradictory, and at this stage of my life, unwelcome.

Disappointed because the dry eyes and the relative composure may indicate the void Harry left behind when he died from pancreatic cancer two years ago is lessening. I know there will always be a hole where Harry once was, but the hole is also getting smaller. It’s like a wound where a scab eventually formed, and now the scab is turning to scar tissue. It will always be there, but it’s a little more bearable, which makes me both grateful and sad.

I look out my window, which overlooks the back of the building and our small parking lot, and watch as Joel bustles in and out with the boxes, lifting them as though they’re empty. I nod to myself as I see that, in short order, he’s got all the boxes inside.

Joel is a good guy. Most of the people who work here—Grace and Paulo, our caseworkers; Gabby, the administrative assistant; and Bryan, our accountant—are. They’re people who could probably make a lot more money doing something easier and less draining, but they choose to be here. To help. To, in a small way, make a difference. Even though the call for our services has been drastically reduced by medications that have given the HIV afflicted new leases on life, it continues to be a problem. Medications are too expensive. People are still poor. The unknowingly infected still wait too long. Newbies need guidance through the labyrinth of limited medical and social services that can help them before it’s too late.

I work with good people. That’s what keeps me here. That’s why I left teaching to work here, God, back in 1991. Back when AIDS was a death sentence and the need for our services was far greater than it is today. It was a different world then. I glance over my shoulder at the huge corkboard I have hanging there, crowded with snapshots of mostly young men, but some women and even kids mixed in. These are the ones who didn’t hang on long enough to see the dawn of drug cocktails that would make their virus a “manageable” disease. These are
my
angels, and I keep their faces there to remind me of how tenuous our grasp on life is—and how even if our time on earth is abbreviated, we can still make a difference, have an impact.

I remember every one of their names and every story that goes with it.

Eight years after I joined the team here at Angels, I met Harry. And even though I broke a cardinal rule, I “fraternized” with a client. I remember that afternoon in autumn like it was yesterday. It’s funny how the significant moments in our life stay so fresh in our minds.

We were in a different office then, up in Rogers Park. A client had left us their condo with views of Lake Michigan, and we took advantage and got out of our roach-infested storefront in Humboldt Park.

The day was crisp and clear, sunny, the sky blue as it can only be in early fall. My office was in one of three bedrooms, and I was lucky: I faced the water. That day the sun and sky merged to create a panorama that was almost tropical. It was near the end of the day, a Friday, and a few folks had cut out early to enjoy the politically incorrect Indian summer weekend in store.

Mary Lee, a black woman who towered over even me, at six foot plus, was one of our caseworkers then. Out, proud, and beautiful, Mary Lee was always just at the beginning of yet another relationship with yet another supermodel-looking woman. Mary Lee’s heart was tough, because it always seemed like she was the one who was inevitably dumped. It never dampened her optimism, and she was like a schoolgirl on her first day at the beginning of each new relationship. Hope was an emotion that, for Mary Lee, was inextinguishable.

Today was no exception. She bounded into my office, a big smile on her face, warm brown eyes beseeching.

“You look like a billion bucks,” I said. She had been dressed in a long white linen tunic, stretch pants, and ballet flats. Thin pewter hoops nearly brushed her shoulders.

“It’s a million, Carlos, but thank you.”

I shrugged. “Inflation.”

She giggled, belying her Amazon size. “Can I ask you a huge favor, sweetie?”

I rolled my eyes. “Got a date? First time? You want out early?”

She neared my desk. “Would you mind ever so? I mean, we only have a couple hours left. And you should see her! Lord, makes Cindy Crawford look like Hermione Gingold.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Cindy Crawford?”

“No, the other one.”

“Google her and you’ll get the power of my comparison. I simply must look gorgeous for her. I need the extra time!”

“You need nothin’, and you know it.”

“You’re too sweet. If I was straight and you were straight—”

“We’d be a match made in heaven,” I finished for her. “Go on, get out of here, you big lipstick lesbian!”

She started toward the door, grinning, then halted. “There’s just one thing.”