Dear Old Dead Read Free

Victor wouldn’t understand, either. They lived in a fog, these children. The world was not what it had been when Charles van Straadt was young.
    Charles took a long deep drag on his cigar and sighed.
    “Do me a favor,” he said. “Go downstairs and get me one of those fudgey ice lolly things from the cafeteria. I’ll wait here for a while and think through what I want to do.”
    “Do you think it’s safe?”
    “Your going or my staying?”
    “Your staying, of course. It’s so—deserted up here.”
    “It’s deserted up here because there’s an emergency down there,” Charles said. “Take off now, I’ll be fine. I promise.”
    “All right,” Rosalie said, reluctantly.
    “Take off now.”
    Rosalie hesitated a moment longer. Then she shrugged her elegant shoulders and strode out of the office, not looking back.
    “Try not to get yourself mugged,” she told him as she slammed the door behind herself. It popped open again, refusing to catch.
    Charles van Straadt took another drag on his cigar and got out of his chair. Michael’s phone was covered with Post-It notes, but it was otherwise free of debris. Charles sat down in Michael’s chair and picked up the receiver.
    “I would like to speak to Martha van Straadt,” he told the house operator. “I believe she’s on duty in post-op this evening.”
    The operator said something inane in half-Spanish, half-English and Charles chewed at the end of his cigar.
    Crises, crises, crises, he thought.
    There never seemed to be an end to crises.

3
    U NLIKE PRACTICALLY EVERYBODY ELSE in the city of New York—or at least, practically everybody else who didn’t work at the Sojourner Truth Health Center—Father Eamon Donleavy had not been surprised to open his copy of the Daily News this morning to find Michael Pride splashed all over the front of it. He hadn’t even been surprised at the occasion for the story, which was the fact that Michael had been caught in the raid of a particularly nasty gay porno house off Times Square. Eamon Donleavy and Michael Pride had known each other all their lives. Their families had had practically identical six-room ranch houses next door to each other in Kickamer, Long Island, and they had gone straight through high school together, with Eamon two years older and more or less on track, and Michael not even old enough to drive on the day he graduated. After that, Eamon and Michael had parted. Eamon had gone on to the seminary and Michael had gone on to MIT. It had surprised neither of them when, running into each other much later, it had turned out that they had a lot in common. It had surprised Eamon not at all that Michael was “gay.” Eamon always put quotes around that word because, in Michael’s case, the situation was somewhat complicated. Eamon knew dozens of gay men. It was impossible not to, living in New York. Michael was something different, an original, a law unto himself. Michael wasn’t so much definitely gay as he was definitely crazy.
    Eamon Donleavy had the newspapers spread out across his desk: the Post, the Daily News, even The Times. The only paper that hadn’t played up the story of Michael’s arrest was the Sentinel, and that was Charles van Straadt shielding his personal saint. Eamon didn’t know how long the Sentinel ’s silence could possibly last. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, either. The center couldn’t operate without Michael. The center was Michael. Eamon didn’t think Michael could operate without the center. It was getting as crazy as Michael’s personal life.
    Eamon Donleavy served as chaplain to the nuns who worked at the Sojourner Truth Health Center, and offered Mass once a day to anyone who wanted to attend, and gave classes in reading and religion to anybody who wanted to show up. He was really here to ensure that the Archdiocese of New York did not get into any serious trouble through the fact that they provided the Sojourner Truth Health Center with a good deal of