Angel

His thoughts were interrupted by the two women at the table in front of him.

“I can’t believe he said that in church,” Margaret said, shaking her head.

“Didn’t you know he was gay?” Emily asked.

“I’d heard something about it. I just don’t see why people have to talk about it like that,” Margaret said. “I don’t care what people do, but why do they have to talk about it all the time? It used to be that people just kept it to themselves. I mean, I’m heterosexual. You don’t see me going around advertising who I have sex with.” She looked at Paul, expecting his agreement.

“That’s a nice wedding ring you have,” he said. “Excuse me.”

He left the crowded lobby, crossed the courtyard with his eyes on the ground, hoping no one would greet him, and found a quiet spot in an empty classroom. He sat looking at the posters of shepherds in pastel robes and Noah’s cartoon ark with its smiling giraffes, hippos, and elephants standing two by two. Their whole hippo and giraffe communities were about to be wiped out. Didn’t that pair of smiling lions have a doomed pride back home that loved and cared for them? What did they have to smile about? He sat with his head down, letting the emotions wash over him in waves of anger, sadness, shame, and fear. He was the same person he had always been. How could one choice make him seem suddenly different to the world?

Paul heard the door swinging open. He sat up straight, hoping to seem as though he had an official reason for sitting in an empty classroom in a child-sized chair. He slouched back down when he realized it was Ian, pushing a mop and bucket. Ian, not expecting anyone to be in the room, gasped and jumped back. “What are you doing in here? You scared me to death!”

“Hiding.”

“I’m mopping.”

“I see that. How come you never do that at home?”

“You don’t do sermons at home,” Ian said.

Paul rolled his eyes.

“Why are you hiding?” asked Ian. “Is it the blood thing?”

“What am I going to do about it?”

“You could lie on the form, I guess,” Ian said as he rang out the mop.

“I don’t want to do that. That’s not right.”

“You can say you are anemic or something, or you have the flu.”

“But what about next time?”

“A really bad flu. One of those one-year flus. Tell them you suddenly realized you’re Haitian.” Ian took the mop over to the far side of the room and let it flop down onto the tiles.

“You’re not helping.”

“Well, why am I making up lies for you? You can come up with your own lies.”

“Are you upset that I’m lying?”

“It is what it is, Paul,” Ian said as he pushed the mop along. “It is what it is.”

Paul watched Ian long enough for the clean mop water to become slate gray. It had a smell reminiscent of, but not entirely analogous to, a locker full of dirty socks. As much as Ian scrubbed, Paul could see no difference, except for the fact that before the tile floor was caked with ground-in dirt and was dry, and now it was caked with ground-in dirt and was wet.

“You’re in my way,” Ian said, purposely sloshing the mop onto Paul’s feet under the table.

“Thanks,” he said, lifting his wet shoes up onto one of the tiny chairs across from him. Then he went on as though there had been no pause in their conversation. “Do they really just assume that anyone who is gay has AIDS?”

Ian stopped mopping and leaned, resting his weight on the mop handle. “I don’t know. They’re just overly cautious, I guess.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“I guess I have more important things to worry about than what the bureaucrats at the Red Cross think of my sex life.”

“How often does that happen?”