Ian McDuff’s sequel to Jackie’s The Undiscovered Country

They were in Houston. At the Texas Heart Institute. It made a change from lawyers’s offices, at least.

Lance stared out the window of his room: the room that, tests over, they were finally letting him leave, on an out-patient basis: he was dressed, packed, and all but pacing to get to their suite at the Warwick. The Houston Chronicle had carried a story that morning: a group of citizens complaining that Houston had insufficient ‘green space.’ They were insane, he thought: all he could really see from the window was canopy, rollers and billows of oceanic green, a sea of trees out of which futuristic buildings emerged like the spars of shipwrecked vessels.....

Dr Cooley cleared his throat, and Lance startled, returning his gaze and his thoughts to the task at hand. He looked at the keen, disciplined, aloof face of the great cardiologist.

Josh was right. God knows why, but I reckon as how God does want me to live. When you go to your local ER and the biggest name in cardiology just happens to be there after doing a seminar....

‘... planner. Mr Bass? Lance!’

‘Hmm? Sorry.’ Lance blushed fiercely. ‘What was that, sir?’

‘Your planner, please. Whatever you kids use these days.’

With a curious reluctance, Lance handed his PDA over. His peripheral vision caught a similar look of concern on JC’s face: there had been no way, no way in hell, his Josh wasn’t going to be there for this, just as much as Jim and Diane and Stace and Ford.

Dr Cooley looked at it, scrolling through the entries. There was a dry chuckle in the physician’s voice, and a faint twinkle in his eye, when he gave it back.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Uh-uh.’

Lance just stared at him.

‘Lance.... You are the biggest Type A I have ever seen. And I include in that a good few doctors, lawyers, and oil executives. Any man who plans out his life in such detail that he has his restaurant choices locked in for months in advance....

‘And, no. This is not a permanent thing. Once the stress of this litigation with TransCon is over, once your health is restored, I won’t need to forbid these things just because of an arrhythmia, but for right now? You are not eating Tex-Mex at Irma’s or red beans, rice, and boudin or andouille sausage at Treebeard’s. You are not going to have the fried shrimp at Biba’s, the chicken-fried steak at the 59 Diner, barbecue at Luling City Market. You are not going down to Gaido’s in Galveston for snapper Pontchartrain, you are not going halfway to Katy for steak at Brenner’s, you can forget steak tonight at the Confederate House, you’ll have to hit Maxim’s the next time you’re in town, and you are definitely not eating at the Pig Stand. While you’re here in my care, you can pretty much resign yourself to the vegetable plate at Luby’s or the Cleburne Cafeteria – and I mean steamed, son: cross the fried okra off your list right now.

‘By the way: who in the world gave you this list of restaurants here in Houston?’

‘Umm. There’s a lawyer here in town who’s working with our counsel on the TransCon suit, doctor.’

‘Give him my card. If this is his usual diet, I’ll be operating on him within a week.

‘Now. You’ve all heard my orders, you understand the diagnosis and the prognosis, you all have been briefed on his meds. Just a few more things. This litigation you’re involved in. You cannot let it add more stress to you. Leave things in the hands of your lawyers: you’re paying them to do the worrying, just as you pay me to guard your health. To the extent possible, I want Lance to spend as much time at home in Mississippi as possible, relaxing. If your beliefs permit – I understand you’re Baptists. I know plenty of them whose beliefs seem to permit,’ Dr Cooley smiled. ‘Once – and only once – your ulcer clears up, a glass of red wine a day wouldn’t hurt. Most of all, I want all of you to work together to keep Lance’s stress levels down. And I might add that one of the best prescriptions I know of for the heart is love: that of family, that of friends, and most of all, a strong, healthy, and loving relationship with one’s own true love.’

JC smiled, exchanging a shy glance with the Basses and Loftons. ‘I think we can arrange for that, Doc.’

‘Good. One final thing. You may want to write this down. Please tell your counsel that –’ and here the cardiologist slowed to dictation speed – ‘it is my professional opinion, within the bounds of reasonable medical probability, that TransCon’s actions seriously endangered Lance’s health and heart, and proximately caused substantive physical injury to him. Got that? I will so testify if needed.’

The Basses, Loftons, Lance, and JC gaped at him. This was more than dynamite: this was being given a tactical nuke for the battle ahead.

JC had stayed behind for all of five minutes, talking to Dr Cooley. Diane, Jim, Stacy, and Ford had not wanted to ask, fearing that the subject might have been, well, um, intimate.... Lance had the same embarrassment, but had asked anyway, only to be met with a mysterious smile.

Now it was Sunday morning: appallingly early on Sunday morning. What in the world was JC, of all people, doing at the communicating door of their hotel rooms, shaven, showered, and dressed casually but well – what was JC, of all people, doing awake, much less coherent?

Within half an hour, a similarly shaven-showered-and-starched, though much less alert and still puzzled, Lance Bass found himself sitting in a taxi with his love, heading north on San Jacinto. It was only when they stopped at Holman, at the great Gothic edifice with its restrained lines and restrained, well-mannered sign, that Lance woke up fully to reality.

‘Trinity Episcopal Church?’

‘Doc Cooley’s parish. There’s an early service that’s, well, special. C’mon, country boy,’ JC said, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet as he tugged his fuddled lover out of the cab.

It was a revelation. The limestone, neo-Gothic church itself – designed by the silk-stocking architects Cram and Ferguson, of Boston, and Houston’s William Ward Watkin, in 1917 – was a sort of quintessence of old money Anglicanism, visually akin to its namesake on Wall Street in New York, all marble tracery and Tiffany stained glass and memorial tablets to people with four last names.... But the hundred year old parish had moved with the times, and on Sunday mornings at 7:00 hosted the Eucharist – and Healing Service – of its outreach program to the homeless and disabled: a mission known as ‘Lord of the Streets’, a congregation of recovering addicts and alcoholics, a family of courtly Jamaicans in fiercely respectable clothes they had salvaged from thrift shops, street people ground down into abject poverty and despair for whom these Sundays were their sole lifeline and ray of hope, and in their midst, blazer-wearing old money Episcopalians getting their fastidious, manicured hands grubby by actually involving themselves in the world in a way their Master would have approved and their Junior League and country club associates certainly and with horror would not.

It was the most moving service Lance had been to in years, and his eyes shone with love and unshed tears as he and JC exchanged the Peace with each other and with the worshipers around them. It was with real regret that the two had to beg off being included in that day’s project, a Habitat for Humanity buildout in the Fifth Ward, but the note they’d left for the Bass family had said they’d be back in time to go to the nearest Baptist service with them, at 11:00. They did take the vicar for the mission program aside, though, and when they left, their wallets as well as their hearts were lighter.

Their ride back to the hotel near the Medical Center was mostly silent, as they discreetly held hands and shared a quiet intimacy. Once, Lance murmured, ‘Thank you, Josh. After that ... I somehow can’t imagine ever calling you “Lord of the Dance” again....’ And a few blocks later, when the cabbie’s attention was safely elsewhere, JC dropped a kiss on Lance’s forehead and said softly, ‘Three guesses what the name of the Episcopal Church in Bowie is. God moves in a mysterious way....’

On Monday afternoon, after Lance’s morning ‘cattle call’ at the Medical Center, he and JC went to the offices of the Houston lawyer who was acting as one of their many co-counsel in the fight against Fat Lou. The litigator – a stocky, booming extrovert who rejoiced in the high-cotton name of Fitzhugh Lee Bland IV (known, inevitably, as ‘F. Lee,’ to his inadequately concealed satisfaction), and was a classic example of all the most lovably pompous quirks a middle-aged WASP, a white-shoe lawyer, and a W&L alum (law and undergrad: a ‘seven year man’) could boast – was ecstatic over their report of Dr Cooley’s opinion. He wouldn’t rest until he’d gotten through to lead counsel in Florida and the rest of ’N SYNC, Johnny, and Clive, on a conference call. ‘Jesus Christ and General Jackson,’ he bellowed jovially, ‘that’s a hole-card so good it’ll make you want to slap your Granny! Closest thing in law to an aces-straights-and-lead-pipe-cinch, there, having Denton Cooley his own self lined up to drop that little bombshell on whatever y’all’s jury equivalent of twelve pipefitters from Pasadena is!’

While the band and the lawyers were making hopeful forecasts for the future, Diane Bass and Dr Cooley were dealing with the shadow of the past. He had asked her to meet with him privately that afternoon, in his curiously aseptic, impersonal, and viewless office at St Luke’s.

‘... the basis for it. He is far too young to have developed an ulcer in this fashion, Mrs Bass. Is ... feel free to correct me if I’m astray here ... is his relationship with JC healthy?’

‘To the extent it’s a relationship, yes. I’m a little bit surprised –’

‘That I picked up on it? No casual observer would, I think –’

‘I suppose not. It’s ... it’s a mite complex, doctor. They love each other. They –’

‘Do you and Jim and the family support this?’

‘Doctor Cooley, I realize you’re a famous physician and rightly so, but if you were in my class you’d spend every afternoon in detention. Do you interrupt ladies frequently, doctor?’

Feeling like a seventh-grader heading for an encounter with the principal, he had the grace to blush. No one had spoken that way to him since he finished his residency, yet somehow, Mama Bass cowed him. Only a quick glance at the ‘ego wall’ of his office, with all its reminders of his status, gave him the guts to answer. Even then, he was apologetic. ‘Yes ma’am, according to my wife, I do. Please. Go on.’

‘We support our boys whole-heartedly, doctor. Now as I was saying ... they do love each other and they’ve been able to admit that to themselves and each other and us – finally. But they have not – and I am certain of this – been intimate, yet.’ She raised a hand to cut off the pending interruption, and the cardiologist deflated as if his knuckles had been rapped by Teacher. ‘And that goes directly to your main concern about Lance’s stress. I need to tell you about Lance and Jessie.’

F. Lee stood as the boys prepared to leave his office. His face tightened, and closed, the jovial mask and rah-rah cheer sponged away in one of those changes only trial lawyers and other Method actors can achieve. ‘Next time, just tell me to call any potential witness, y’all understand? Yes, this is all good and useful but with discovery being what it is and the trend these days being against trial by ambush, there’s some times I don’t want to officially know something as early as I might.’

Lance and JC looked at each other, crestfallen.

‘Now, get your daubers out the dirt, boys, I ain’t chewing too hard on your asses, it is good news. Just next time, let me do the lawyerin’. God knows y’all are like to pay enough for it.’