FICTION : MONOPOLIES OF LOSS <i> by Adam Mars-Jones (Alfred A. Knopf: $21; 250 pp.)</i>

In the last of these 10 stories about the AIDS epidemic, the owner of a London hospice finds often that a mother comes in alone to visit her dying son, while the father, unwilling to face this final proof of the son’s homosexuality, stays outside in his car “in a way he would find hard to forgive himself for, later on.” The owner takes cups of tea out to such fathers, gently shaming them into reconciliation. “My teapot,” he says, “has brought more families together than all the counseling services . . . combined.”

Adam Mars-Jones (who co-authored “The Darker Proof” with Edmund White) has written stories much like those cups of tea. He is a formidably intelligent writer, issuing civilized, if urgent, invitations for the straight world to reconcile itself with the gay, on a basis of common humanity--for AIDS, of course, respects no boundaries.

“Monopolies of Loss” begins face to face with the disease, in the mind of a terminal patient. Then it moves gradually away, into the minds of the volunteers who live with patients, care for them, love them. Then it moves back. An HIV-positive youth goes to a hospital to get a splinter removed from his finger, and his friend realizes: “A tiled corridor filled with doctors and nurses opened off every room he would ever share with Neil.” The suicide of a man who doesn’t have AIDS offends those who do. Finally, we’re in the hospice, again face to face with Death. The American way of holding it at bay is with stiff-lipped stoicism; Mars-Jones, being British, would rather distract it with teatime chatter. His voice--the outstanding feature of these stories--is dry, witty, campy, angry; unsentimental yet profoundly tender.