BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 1-INDICATION

BRIAN’S POV
love on the rocks
ain’t no surprise
pour me a drink
and I’ll tell you some lies

They say the first year of marriage is always the hardest, and while that’s true, it’s certainly not specific enough. It’s more like the first week. But you’re Brian Kinney, and you love a challenge.

Or was that pain?

Fuck, you can’t remember.

It must have been the first Tuesday or Wednesday night of your marriage, you’ve decided, that the shit hit the fan. Your first fight. And in true Kinney-Taylor fashion, it was a doozy.

And you never saw it coming.

He always has dinner ready right when you walk in the door, and he knows right when you’re going to walk in the door because you call him the minute you get in The Car. That’s what he calls it now. The Car. After two months of marriage, he figured out how to dial into The Car’s computer from home, so he could always know where you are. You had the damn thing upgraded with some kick ass wife-buster firewall and put an end to that shit.

Immediately.

Nobody was coming between you and The Car.

But that night, you had something on your mind (which still belongs to you and only to you, thank you very much) when you walked in the door, and you had to take care of it before you forgot, so you headed up the stairs to your study.

You kissed him first. You’re not an idiot.

“I’ll be right down. I just remembered something.” Something important. Something that Cynthia or Theodore or The Car couldn’t do for you. An idea. A Brian Kinney original idea. Something that really excited you.

“Okay.”

Thirty minutes later you were still upstairs. And then he was, in the doorway of your study.

It never dawned on you that he hadn’t even seen this room before.

“Brian, dinner’s getting col- What’s that?” He pointed to the painting on the wall. It was, in retrospect, a very rhetorical question. You looked up. You’d forgotten all about it. It’d been there for four, no five years.

“One of your paintings.”

“I can see that. Why do you have it?” It’s huge. It took up almost the entire wall of the study over your desk. You needed something there. It fit perfectly.

“I bought it.”

“When?”

“When it was for sale.” It was a rather banal conversation you thought, at the time.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted it. I needed something to hang on the wall.”

“You needed something to hang on the wall.” He has a way of speaking sometimes that can make you feel like your age difference is reversed.

Wrong answer.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You weren’t at that show. That was my first show in New York, and you weren’t there. You said you couldn’t come. Why do you have that painting?”

“I bought it over the phone, Justin.”

“You bought it over the phone.” He repeated it back to you slowly, like you were retarded. You felt retarded. “Fuck you.” He went back downstairs. The great idea you were working on looked incredibly stupid on your screen in front of you. You shut down your laptop and followed him.

The two of you ate in silence.

You tried to help him clean up, but he wouldn’t let you.

“Go upstairs and work on your shit, Brian.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t need your help.”

You sat down at the kitchen table and just stared at him as he shoved plates back into the kitchen cabinets. To this day, you have no idea why he just won’t use the fucking dishwasher.

“I’m not sure I know why you’re so angry, Justin.”

“I’m sure you don’t. You can be rather obtuse.” He sprayed cleaner on the counter and half of it got on you.

“Well, why don’t we just agree on that and that way you can just tell me what the fuck you’re so pissed about? Save us both some time.” You tried to take the edge off your voice. He stopped cleaning the counter for the fourth time and stared at you.

“Let me walk you through this, Brian. What day of my show did you buy that painting?”

“The first day, I think.”

“Right. And you just called up there and said, ‘Hi, I want to buy one of Justin Taylor’s paintings. Just send me any old one. Here’s my credit card?’”

“No.”

“Well, then, what?”

“I said I wanted a big one. I knew where it was going.”

“Any old big one?” Oh shit.

“No.”

“Go on, Brian.”

“I asked for the names of them. That’s how I decided.”

“That painting doesn’t have a name, Brian.”

“I know.”

“You know. Get out of this kitchen and leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

He spent the rest of the evening locked in his studio. You spent most of it outside the door, listening to him. He was painting so loud, you imagined you could hear the brush strokes. Finally, around midnight, convinced he was just going to keep rattling around in there, you went to bed. Needless to say, it was the first night since he’d been back that you’d gone to sleep without him.

It didn’t last long.

A jarring crash woke you up an hour and half later. You bolted up in bed. He still wasn’t beside you. The door to his studio was still locked. You knocked.

“Justin, are you okay? What was that noise?”

“I’m fine.” Another crash. Not as loud. “Just leave me alone.”

“Open the door.”

“Go back to bed, Brian.”

You shook your head at the door in frustration. Fuck this. You have a master key for a reason. You turned the light on in your study to find it and saw the reason for the crash. The painting was gone. It was way too big for him to handle by himself. You removed the key from the top drawer, returned to the studio door and knocked again, giving him one more chance to open it.

“Justin, I’m worried about you. Open the door.”

“Leave me alone.”

You counted about ten reasons in your head that you shouldn’t open the door.

********************
her weapons were her crystal eyes
making every man a man

But you did it anyway. The painting was propped against the back wall, covering three windows. He turned around and glared at you,

“You asshole.”

“You stole my painting.”

“I told you to leave me alone.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone. Not when you’re carrying murals around the fucking house by yourself in the middle of the night.”

“You had no right to buy that painting.” The fire in his eyes.

“It’s capitalism, Justin. I had every right.” He threw an empty paint can at you. You ducked.

“You know what the fuck I mean. This is why I hate you, Brian, because you stand there and act like you don’t know what the fuck I mean when you know damn good and well what the fuck I mean. This is why I hate you.” He wasn’t making any sense, just repeating himself again, “This is why I hate you,” as he slid down the wall, the reluctant emotions he was trying so hard to hold back starting to get the best of him. “Just leave me alone.”

You walked over and sat down next to him, carefully putting your arm around him, “I’m trying very hard to understand what the fuck you mean. I swear.”

He lifted his face from his hands and looked at you, imploring you to understand him, “When I put that painting in that show, I didn’t want it back, Brian. I didn’t want to see it again. You had no right to buy it. I hate that fucking painting.”

“Okay. Okay.” He leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, a blank expression on his face.

You looked at the painting, really looked at it for probably the first time since it had arrived all those years ago. To anyone else, it probably just looks like a big, black rectangle. But not to you.

And not to him.

You saw things in it the minute it arrived. Things you didn’t want to see. Colors you didn’t want to remember. And their placement wasn’t an accident, or at least you didn’t think it was, you couldn’t be sure. You wanted to ask him, even back then, but you were afraid. Afraid of the answer he’d give you. Afraid because he didn’t give the painting a name. He always names his paintings.

He names everything.

Gus. Kinnetik. ‘Britin.’

When you called the gallery that day, the innocent call to fill the space on your wall with a Justin Taylor original, you didn’t mean to buy a memory.

But you did. And you knew it. And you made yourself forget it.

Until now.

“I’m sorry, Justin.”

He didn’t look at you. You couldn’t tell if he wanted to tell you what he was thinking or if you were just supposed to know. Something told you that you were supposed to know. You felt like you were failing miserably, so you just wrapped your arms around him. He didn’t really move, but he didn’t pull away. And then he spoke, his voice low, but precise,

“You bought it on purpose because it didn’t have a name, Brian. I know you did.” You have two others somewhere that are also untitled.

No, wait.

Three.

It wasn’t the right time to tell him.

“You’re right. I did. I shouldn’t have.” He was quiet for a few seconds and then laid his head on your shoulder. Finally. You realized that you hadn’t been breathing.

“It was mine to give away. Not yours to keep.” You stroked his hair, tried to comfort him. “You already have everything, Brian. You have all of it. I have nothing. Why do you have to scrounge for every last fucking thing?”

“I don’t know.” You wish you knew. There are so many things you wish you knew. “Just do whatever you want with it, Justin. Whatever you want.”

You thought you were saving something, a piece of him. What the fuck were you thinking? You’ve abandoned more of yourself in the last forty years of your life than you’ve ever cared to keep. Why can’t you grant him the same luxury?

Why isn’t he allowed to let go?

“Will you come to bed with me?” you asked him as his body felt heavier against you. He nodded and you helped him up, closing the door to the studio behind both of you as you made your way down the hall. He sat on the bed, exhausted, and you undressed him and helped him get under the covers. He fell asleep within minutes, holding your hand on top of his chest.

********************
asleep while I wrestle with blue

The dreams started again that night and you danced with him. While he was gone, for those six years, you’d dreamed night after night about him coming back, awakened with your hand between your legs, wet and sticky, feeling like you were in the middle of a prayer, like you’d burned up all of the hope inside you.

He waited for you, saved the last dance, and you melted his heart when you walked in the room, felt the heat between your legs for some reason. You owned that room when you crossed the floor, and when you touched him, you bought him, too—all of him, his perfectly shined shoes, his immaculate tuxedo, the bloody scarf you brought him to wear around his neck.

The perfect corsage.

“Justin!”

He couldn’t hear you.

You panicked and danced.

Panicked and danced.

“Whatever happens, by all means, keep on dancing.”

You kept dancing because eventually you knew he’d give it back to you, and he did. It was as white as virgin snow.

Pure, just like he was.

"Did you see their faces?”

Sporting dead eyes and bloody scarves around their necks. All of them. You hung the bloody scarf around his for the last time and sealed his fate with a kiss.

“I wish I could forget.”

So ridiculously tragic. You don’t believe in happy endings. You never have.

You woke up and he was sleeping soundly next to you on his back. You took him in your arms to see if he was real.

“Mmm, you okay?” He stirred a little.

“Bad dream.” He curled back against you.

“Sorry,” he yawned and settled back down.

You stared at the ceiling, at the walls, at the chair beside the bed. You stared at the curve of his neck as it gave way to his shoulder. You closed your eyes and pressed your face against his back so you wouldn’t have to stare at anything, the scent of him sleeping so familiar to you—

“Go to sleep, Brian.” He reached back, rubbing your thigh. “S’okay.”

You tried to sleep, to clear your head, but the campaign you’d been rolling around in your head all day wouldn’t take no for an answer. You’d been in advertising long enough to know that belaboring something like this was pointless. Advertising, like fucking, was somewhat of an art. It was about timing, attraction, and a little preparation. The rest just fell into place. When a product needed a new logo or a slogan and it didn’t come to you right away, you didn’t obsess over it, you indulged yourself—played a little pool, won a little money, got your dick sucked, threw back a few. Eventually, the right idea would rise to the top. Much like the thousands of tricks who’d gladly been at your mercy, you just had to be open and ready.

Justin was that way when he worked, unafraid to let anything come through him in order to let it out. You’d seen it after the bashing, after dumpster boy, during the Posse, after the bombing. When darkness moved through him, it rarely cast a shadow.

But when it did, it was bigger than both of you.

When you finally fell asleep, an hour or so later, you dreamed of making the perfect pitch in your mind, of getting them in the tent, of convincing them that sex is the only thing that sells tickets. But he was in the corner the entire time, a solemn, distant look on his face, painting and painting and painting that nameless, goddamn mural.

He was trying to sell them death.

And it was working.

You were unconvincing. Ineffective. Impotent in your own domain.

You made a decision when you woke up again, your eyes settling on the blue lit clock on your dresser: 4:47 a.m.

Fuck this.

You and Justin needed to get away for awhile, first thing in the morning.

Time for a little indulgence.

You were going on your honeymoon.


Lyrics from Neil Diamond’s Love on the Rocks, Bananarama’s Venus, The Comas Sweet Sweet 69.