BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 38-RESURRECTION

STITCH’S POV


it's been a long, long time coming,
but I know a change is gonna come

There was no way around it; Alan’s death was going to mean permanent changes in your life, and for all the obsessive planning you’d done over the years trying to keep everything just right, you couldn’t for the life of you figure out why you’d never even considered this scenario because this was a what your buddies in the service would’ve called FUBAR: fucked up beyond all repair. And as you stood across the street from NYPD headquarters, hidden from view, you watched Zeek’s brother get out of some shiny limousine and follow Zeek inside the building, and you tried to figure out at what exact point you’d made the wrong turn because…

Alan Harper wasn’t just any lost soul looking for a place to live, and you didn’t choose him as your roommate and your runner just because he was nice and smart and had connections and was an unbelievable artist, you chose him because you knew he was—the forgotten son of James Harper, one of the main, colossal, pain-in-your-ass, eight-to-five superintendents of the subway system who liked to spend all of his free time instructing his minions to terrorize anyone who was near the trains and not getting on or off. You were a little younger than James, but not by much, and the two of you had been at war with one another for a long time; your troops against his, and yours were usually victorious because they had more time and weren’t limited to conventional weapons. So when you first saw Alan loitering around certain spots, you watched him to see if he was a mole, but when you finally spoke to him, and he asked you about your art and not accommodations, you thought he might malleable; there was something inside him that desperately needed to get out.

So with Alan on your side, you had a trump card, a buffer, because no transit lackey was going to mace their boss’s kid, just wasn’t going to happen. But now your buffer had been ripped out from under you, exposing a very raw wound, and you were terrified because whatever action James took, you were fucked. If things went back to the way they were before but with a vengeance, all you could see was bloodshed. And if he decided to make it personal, to just go after you, well, that left an entire community unprotected.

Zeek kept telling you, “One fucking step at a time, Stitch. One. Fucking. Step.”

You wondered if you should start praying, or, for that matter, if you even remembered how.

*********************
ZEEK ZIRROLLI’S POV


don't know much about history
don't know much biology
don't know much about a science book
don't know much about the French I took

To see your little brother step out of what might as well have been a Brian Kinney special, pressed and tucked, onto a New York City sidewalk took you back a bit; you were expecting a yellow taxi cab, not the Queen Mary; Jesus Christ, he didn’t even open his own door. “What in the fucking hell are you doing using a car service?” you asked him as he smoothed out the one tiny crinkle in his suit that looked like it cost more than your van.

“I have an expense account,” he said defending himself.

“Do you have an ass wiper on the payroll now, too?” you asked him.

“I fired him,” Gabe told you, “He wasn’t attentive enough.” You laughed at him as he put his arm around you and hugged you, “You said you needed me here; you needed my help. I just wanted to get here as quick as I could; that’s all.”

“Thanks,” you told him. “I appreciate it.”

“So where’s the guy you told me about? What’s his name? Rip?”

“His name is ‘Stitch?’” you told him, “And he’s across the street.” You pointed him out for Gabe.

“Where?”

“You see that guy staring at the trash can?”

“With the hat and the sunglasses?”

“Yeah. That’s him.” Gabe waved at him; you grabbed his hand and shot it back down, “Jesus, don’t do that; he’ll shit on himself. He thinks he’s invisible.”

“Sorry.”

……

Once the two of you were inside police headquarters, the noise of the city silenced by the closing doors, Gabe asked, “We have an appointment, right?”

“Basically.”

And once you were in the elevator, just you and Gabe, he wanted clarification, “’Basically’ means ‘no,’ right?”

“More or less.”

Gabe used his reflection in the wall of the stainless steel elevator to tug on his suit, straighten his tie, do everything he does before he steps into a room, glancing at his fingernails to be sure they were perfectly clean, “This is why you need me? Because we’re doing this cold?”

The elevator stopped on your floor, “Bingo, Babycakes. You’re on.”

*********************


pour some sugar on me

Your little brother made you so fucking proud that day because while you would’ve been nervous and damn near distracted by the chief’s fucking hot secretary whose blouse you could see straight down, your brother was none of those things, he was polished and polite and calm and un-fucking-flappable, “Good afternoon, Trinity.”

Trinity? Her name… You looked around… Where did he find her name? You’d ask him later.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“Hi. Gabe Zirrolli. I was hoping to have a few minutes with the chief.”

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked him.

He shook his head, “No, no I don’t. I just got into town, however, it’s critical that I speak to him. I’m more than happy to wait if you need to check with him, if you could just let him know that Gabe and Zeek Zirrolli are here, I’d truly appreciate it.”

“You said ‘Gabe’ and ‘Zeek,’ right?” she asked.

You popped out from behind your brother, “Yeah, that’s me. I’m Zeek.”

“I’ll be right back," she said. Trinity walked away in that way that early-twenty-something girls do, such a spring in their step that just screams you know you wanna fuck me when I get back to my desk!

“How’d you know her name?” you asked Gabe.

He smiled and knocked on your skull with his fist, “You have to listen. When we got off the elevator, somebody paged a ‘Trinity’ and she’s the one that picked up the phone.”

“Damn, you’re hard core.”

“Shh, here she comes, and she’s smiling. We’re in.”

Trinity stopped in front of the two of you, and you had to shove your hands in your pocket to keep from tweaking her nipples just to hear her squeaky voice, “Mr. Zirrolli and…Mr. Zirrolli…he said he’d be glad to see you.”

“Thank you so much, Trinity,” Gabe said.

“Right this way, gentlemen.”

You whispered in Gabe’s ear as you walked, “I so don’t want to be gentle with her, man. I want to tear her up.”

“Keep it in your pants, please,” he mumbled. “No refreshments until half time.”

*********************


backbeat the word was on the street

The chief stood as you and your brother walked into his office, smiling, walking around his desk to greet both of you--Gabe first, “Well, well, well, the great Gabe Zirrolli sets foot back in New York City, and I’m the first person he comes to see; I’m honored.”

“Chief.”

“Please sit down, both of you.” And Gabe did, but you stood for awhile, enjoying the view from his window, you could practically see the whole city, even Stitch pacing down below. Your brother and the chief exchanged pleasantries, the usual: how’s the weather?, how’s the family, how’s business?, etc., and that’s why you felt like you needed Gabe to get you in the door because your idea of pleasantries was more along the line of: how’s it hanging?, working hard or hardly working?, hey, you hittin’ that hot piece of ass in reception or is she fair game?, and you knew that wasn’t the right way to do things, plus you just didn’t look like Gabe did; you weren’t presentable. Gabe was one of those guys that would’ve been the perfect serial killer had he been so inclined because everything about him said, Trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing, and, by the way, you’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.

You told Harper that once, the difference between you and your little brother, that Gabe had been born with a Charm School diploma sticking out of his ass, and she laughed and made you look at her because you were almost asleep—you’d fucked her at least three times; there was no need to add a notch to your belt every time you fucked a girl like Harper because your fucking belt would just fall off after the first week—and told you, “You’re very charming, Zeek Zirrolli, you just need to learn to be that way when you’re not aroused.” And that just confused the shit out of you because you were always aroused—at least back then.

But Gabe was moving the conversation along and it was time for you to pay attention because the chief was acknowledging that he knew why both of you were there, that he wished the circumstances were different, that he knew he had a fucking mess on his hands.

“It’s worse than that,” Gabe said.

“I figured,” he said, and you sat down then. “It was my guys that did this, not the Port Authority,” he admitted.

“We know,” you said.

The chief’s hands closed in front of from, “Doesn’t make that much of a difference, I suppose. Cops are cops.” And then the chief looked at you and not your brother, “Off the record, Monday morning’s headline, they’re pleading guilty. No trial. Twenty-five to life."

“You sure about that?” you asked him.

“I’m positive. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Gabe shifted in his seat and nodded his head at you like go on, so you did, “Kind of, but not really. We need a favor, a big favor, and it would go a long way toward making things right on the streets again.”

The chief leaned forward, a little bit of suspicion of his face, “What?”

You cleared your throat, “The funeral’s tomorrow; Alan’s friends, his underground family, they want to come; all of them do—"

“That’s not a problem,” the chief interrupted you.

“No, I mean all of them. The mothers with their children, the ones who’ve had a few run-ins with your boys, all of them, but they’re afraid if they come up, you’ll snatch them off the streets.”

The chief’s eyes volleyed back and forth between you and your brother, “Anybody on the FBI’s most wanted list living down there?”

“No. All they want is to be able to come up tomorrow, go to the funeral and go back by sundown without worrying. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“No police around, including Port Authority, no bullshit in the tunnels or on the tracks, coming or going?” you asked.

“I’ll take care of it; I’ll put the word out. I can’t pull the cops off the street, but…hang on a second…,” he said, getting up from his desk and disappearing into a small room behind his office.

You looked at Gabe, “How am I doing?”

“So far, so good.”

“Am I forgetting anything?” you asked him.

“Don’t ask him to pull your finger, and, um, zip your fly.”

“Shit,” and then you looked down and it was fine. “Fucker—"

And then the chief was back with a small, dusty white box for you, “Here. This is a box of really old business cards I had from before I was promoted. Tell them to carry one of these tomorrow, all of them, even the children, and if they get stopped or hassled, it’s their Get Out of Jail Free card, but only tomorrow and only till sundown.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“But, I want something in return, Zeek,” the chief said as you and Gabe stood to conclude your meeting.

“What?”

“Tell Stitch that if he’ll stop vandalizing the trains, we’ll call off the dogs when he and his cohorts paint the tunnels. He’s costing the Port Authority thousands of taxpayer dollars to acid wash or replace those cars, and he knows it, and I’m sick of it. Tell him the tunnels he paints…well, I’ve seen pictures; we all have. He’s amazing.” And then the chief pointed to a stack of photos on his desk.

“May I see those?” Gabe asked, and the chief obliged, handing them to him, and you looked over Gabe’s shoulder as he flipped through them. “Whoa, this is unbelievable. It’s like a concrete museum.”

“It is,” the chief said, “It’s hard to be impressed and furious at the same time.”

You took the photos out of Gabe’s hands and handed them back to the chief, telling him, “Try impressed and in mourning. Most of those were done by Alan. Look at the tag. Stitch doesn’t come up so much anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

……

The conversation was over; Gabe shook the chief’s hand, “Thanks for your time, for seeing us on such short notice.” You thanked him as well—for the courtesy and the cards.

“I’ll be there tomorrow, guys. Several of my officers will be as well, in plain clothes. The two that did this, they don’t represent this department.”

……

As you walked out of the chief’s office and got back on the elevator, you were truly pre-occupied with talking to Stitch, with getting all of this worked out and over with, with getting Gabe back for making you fall for the oldest trick in the book; you were so lost in thought that you didn’t even hear Trinity’s squeaky little voice when she said good-bye...to you.

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


and I guess I lost my way
there were oh so many roads

That day you learned a little about what it felt like to be homeless in the city because never in your life had you felt so ungrounded and yet so burdened at the same time, never that lost, not even when you were a kid trying to predict what hotspot Brian would choose for his evening’s pleasure because you no longer had a goal anymore; you were empty, afraid to let anything in for fear of contamination. Because whatever was inside you, it had done something wrong, something inadvertently horrible, and you didn’t even know it, you just let it happen, and you left Father Dick’s church that day void of faith, hope, and direction. You no longer trusted yourself.

Daniel knew you were gone because he saw you leave, saw you refuse Nate’s offer of a sandwich, and Daniel had listened quite stoically as you told him that you didn’t know where you were going, you just needed to not be there anymore, and to please, just leave you alone. So he did, and you left and began to walk, wondering all the while where your feet were taking you.

True, you had the basics of life down pat and in spades, but somehow that began to mean less and less to you, began to anger you even, because why would you ever think that was the answer to any of this? What were you doing? What had you done? Everything that you believed in, that you relied on, it didn’t feel like it was you anymore, and if it wasn’t you, when had you made the wrong turn? And how were you supposed to get back there and go the other way if you had zero visibility in either direction?

You thought about going to your old, old studio, Sam’s place, knowing you could jimmy the door and get in, but it didn’t feel like the right answer, so you just walked…thinking about your first days on those busy streets…how excited you were…and your last days…how sad you were to say good-bye to your friends, and at the end of a good hour, you were turning the corner and just a few feet away from Daniel’s place, and you still had a key, and right before you made the turn, you wondered if Brian was there, but he wasn’t; nobody was. The place was empty.

Empty of everyone else, but maybe there was something in it for you? At that point, you felt like you had nowhere to go and nothing to lose.

*********************
ALAN HARPER’S POV


for now there is no sound
for we all live underground

It was less than twenty-four hours until your funeral, and if there were reporters in the AfterDeath (and why the hell not? the place seemed to have everything else) and one of them wanted to interview you for some bizarre reason, you would’ve told him that you were looking forward to it because the closer you got to the actual earthly send off, the more insane your non-life was becoming…

First of all, Jack was drunk off his ass, and, by that point, everybody had a martini—even Sandra under the picnic table—but Jack was the only one getting smashed. It seemed that the more the lot of you drank, the worse Jack got, and he was finally reduced to half-sitting, half-lying on one of the long, C-shaped couches in ‘Babylon,’ sobbing while he watched the televisions. He didn’t like his entertainment for the evening.

Your mother was standing next to you, seemed she’d wandered out from behind the bar, and she leaned on your arm and whispered in your ear, “Think I should give him a lap dance?”

“Mom!” you said.

“Well, I don’t how much longer I’m going to have Harper’s figure. I kind of want to torture the son of a bitch.”

“No.”

“Plus, I really like this music.”

“No. I do not want to watch my mother give some asshole—or anybody for that matter—a lap dance, thank you very much.”

“Would Harper do it?” she asked you.

You lied and told her, “Absolutely not.”

And then you covered your eyes as you mother went over to Chris and Cody and gave them one, frozen as they were. “What the fuck is she doing?” Leo asked you.

“She thinks she’s giving them a lap dance.”

“Is she going to strip?” he asked you. “Because I’m taking cover under the picnic table if this place is about to turn into a titty bar.”

“Hopefully she’ll lose that body and the self-confidence that comes with it any minute,” you told him.

……

What was playing out in front of you on the televisions was truly strange, some of it familiar to you, some of it not. Vic joked (though it wasn’t funny) as he tried to explain everything to you, “It’s sort of a sick, bastardized replication of My Three Sons to the third power.”

Jack was bawling because he was watching himself on the center television: as a young father yelling and slapping his son because he happened to toddle in front of the football game he was watching, to a man who took the stress of everyday life out on his wife and his children, to the man who’s teenage son was taller than he was but afraid to hit him back, to a man about to die and an encounter in a freezing cold garage with a son who had no warmth left for him at all.

And then on another screen, you saw yourself with your dad, and though the abuse wasn’t really physical, it still hurt just as much to watch how he systematically eradicated you from the family, wanting nothing to do with you because he thought you were just like your mother—your mother who was at that moment giving a lap dance to a couple of zombies. (Let the record show, you really were nothing like your mother.) And you saw yourself with Harper trying to understand what it was about your mother that was so terrible, why it was such a sin to remind your father of her. “It’s complicated,” Harper would always say, “When he thinks about her, he feels like a failure.” Shortly before your death, you’d decided, though you never told anyone but Stitch, that your father was a failure at the only thing at ever really mattered…being your father.

And on a third screen was a teenage Justin with his father and a lot of yelling and screaming and storming in and out and doors slamming and coming and going, and you stood there and watched that feed, stunned at how different your feed looked from his even though the two of you were the same age; you were so meek, never stood up for yourself like Justin did, and you were feeling bad about that, feeling like maybe you were a coward, and then you saw him get knocked down.

The other six feeds on the periphery, they were brighter…

One of Zeek helping you find Harper, over and over and over, so many different days…

One of Brian with Justin throwing a tennis ball on a sunny day, a very short loop, playing over and over and over…

One of Stitch taking you in and letting you stay with him, showing you around, explaining the rules you had to follow to live in his community…

One of Daniel offering Justin studio space, nodding as Justin explained that Harper would have to come with him, feeling Daniel sleep better at night because he knew Justin was in there painting, his brush moving across the canvas…

One of Leo, Nate, and Sarah at a reception at Brown Athletics for Brian, his award-winning commercial playing on several screens in the background…

And the final feed, the sixth one, it was flickering in and out, but you could tell it was Jonathon and Brian somewhere in the city…

“Get Sandra,” you told Leo, “Tell her to get out from under there. She should see this.”

Leo was eventually successful, and Sandra wound up standing next to you, “What? What horrible thing is my son doing now?”

“I’m not sure,” you told her, “But whatever it is, it’s a good thing; I can feel it.”

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV


and when I’m down on my knees,
that’s when I’m the closest to Heaven

Even to this very day, it’s difficult to explain to anyone what it felt like to spend that afternoon with Brian. You can’t say that it was what you expected because you didn’t really know what to expect; it was basically just the most comfortable time you’d ever spent feeling uncomfortable. You were almost two hours into your lunch when you began to feel anxious; you were both finished eating, but the check hadn’t come and it just didn’t feel like lunch was over. Ever since Brian’s phone had rung earlier, you’d been expecting Justin to come through the front door any minute and you weren’t facing the door, so you’d be the last to know. But—one problem at a time… the check. You asked Brian, and he smiled and laughed and told you it wasn’t coming, and when you asked for clarification, he explained that it wasn’t coming because there wasn’t one, that the meal was comped, that, “Gabe Zirrolli is probably the only New Yorker who left the city to make it big,” and that he, Brian Kinney, “Never dropped a dime in a New York restaurant since then because they’re probably hoping I’ll offer them their own restaurant, too.” Brian wasn’t boastful, just matter of fact.

“So you really weren’t kidding about Justin and the free lunch thing?” you asked him.

“Well, we go about it in different ways, I guess.”

So, lunch wasn’t over…and Brian was still talking…

“And speaking of that, of going about things in different ways, I’d like to know how you started dating a priest in the first place,” Brian asked you.

“Why do you want to know?”

“You really want me to answer that?” he followed up, all joking aside.

“Uh...yes. I really want to know why you want to know,” you told him; it’s a reflex really, something they teach you over and over and over in med school: When a patient asks about you, he’s really asking about himself.

“Okay,” Brian began as he took a cigarette out of his pocket and twirled it between his fingers. “Two reasons: because your relationship with him is strange and a bit risky—"

“Like yours was with Justin.”

“Fine. And because he’s madly in love with you, and I want to know if you’re going to break his heart.” And then he folded his hands in front of him on the table, the cigarette pointing right at you, and smiled.

“You think he’s madly in love with me?” you asked.

“He adores you; it’s blatantly obvious.”

“To you or to everyone?”

“To me and probably the trained homo- and possibly metro- sexual eye.”

“He’s not out,” you told Brian.

“I know that. That’s also blatantly obvious.”

“The whole thing was an accident,” you confessed, your years of high-dollar, psychiatric training flying out the window and getting slammed by a tour bus.

“How so?”

You sighed, feeling weighted down all of a sudden; the reality of the situation not something you were interested in entertaining right then, but you felt compelled to do it anyway. Finding someone you could actually talk to about this whole subject (besides Daniel-because, let’s face it, you already knew what he was going to say before he said it) was, well, next to-- next to-- next to-- impossible. So you told Brian, “I needed help with a patient. I called every Catholic church in this city, and he was the only one who’d help me out, so he did. The case was over quickly because, quite frankly, Richard was more insane than my patient.” Brian laughed. “I’m not kidding,” you told him.

“I know.”

“So, I took him out to dinner to thank him for helping me; it was completely benign, I swear to you, and we talked for almost five hours. It was one of the best dates I wasn’t really on.”

“Hmm.”

“So we went to see a movie that we both wanted to see the next weekend because we were probably the only two people in the city interested in seeing it, and, of course, we had dinner afterwards, and…”

“Another all nighter?”

“Basically. And this just keeps going on for about two and half weeks, and I’m starting to want more, but I’m thinking this is idiotic; he’s a priest. What’s wrong with me? Blah, blah, blah.”

“Right.”

“So I ask Daniel what he thinks, and he says I should tell him, so I try, but I can’t. I can’t do it when I’m looking at him. I can’t do it when I’m talking to him on the phone; so finally, I leave work early one day and I go to the church and go to Confession.”

“No way.”

“I had to. He has to be quiet. He has to listen, and I don’t have to look at him. So, I went in there and confessed. I said, you know, ‘Forgive me, Father, for I am a completely revolting individual, and I want more from this relationship than I should, so please just condemn me to Hell and it’s been nice knowing you—"

“So what did he say?”

You smiled as you remembered it, “He said, ‘Then ‘revolting’ must be in this season.”

“He made a fashion joke?” Brian asked.

“I’m telling you, the man’s a complete enigma.”

“Did you know that he was gay?” Brian wanted to know.

“God, no. He’s a priest. I never asked him who he’d be fucking if he could fuck somebody. That’s not something you ask a priest.”

“I would,” Brian said.

“Well, I didn’t.”

“So?”

“So, I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Looks like we’re going to Hell together.’”

“And had he ever been to 'Hell' before?” Brian wanted to know.

You hung your head, “No, but he has now. Trust me.”

“Did he like it?”

“Like it? He wants to remodel. Hell, he’s probably out buying flame-retardant sheets as we speak.”

“Holy shit...no pun intended."

“Exactly. So anytime you think you’ve done something horrible, you just think about me and what I’ve done.”

“You’re the snake in the garden of Eden.”

“That’s me--eight-point-nine inches of sin for the taking.”

“An honest man who doesn’t round up—very rare in this day and age.”

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking a priest,” you said, “I figure I better not take my chances with anything else.”

……

……

“Well, he does love you,” Brian said after a minute or so.

“You said, ‘He adores me,’” you corrected him.

“Yeah, but adoration marinated at such a high temperature cooks nicely; makes something quite tasty when everything’s said and done.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “Is that right?”

“I’m an expert on the subject; trust me,” he reassured you.

……

“Yeah, but this one started cooking really late,” you pointed out.

“That’s okay; it just won’t take him as long to be well done.”

……

……

“You waited a long time, didn’t you, Brian?”

……

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, I did…but it was worth it.”

*********************


the time is precious I know

Which brought you to the second problem…

“I keep thinking that Justin’s going to walk in any minute. Don’t you?” you asked Brian, wondering why he wasn’t getting up to go smoke the cigarette he was playing with.

“He might,” Brian conceded, glancing at his watch.

“But you don’t think so?” you asked. It was weird, how vague he seemed; you hadn’t known him very long, but ‘vague’ wasn’t a word you’d use to describe him.

It took him a while to answer you, as if he was considering each word very carefully, “I don’t spend a lot of time trying to predict what he’s going to do.”

“Okay.”

You thought about that for a minute…

“Because he’s a boomerang; because he always comes back? Is that what you mean?”

Brian shrugged, “Sort of. If he’s not here right now…well, let’s just say it’s his call where he wants to be.”

……

The whole situation was becoming unnerving for some reason. The man sitting in front of you was wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, successful to a fault, and not paying you a dime, and yet you felt like you weren’t giving him his money’s worth, like you were wasting his time. You knew that people paid a pretty penny to have even fifteen minutes of Brian’s undivided attention and you’d had it for two hours and counting. He wasn’t your patient; you weren’t his client, but for some reason, you felt this weight of self-imposed obligation sitting on you like an elephant.

And then there was the cigarette he was fondling; it was bothering you, too. So you decided to tell him, to quit fucking around and just lay all your cards on the table,

“Brian, I want to talk to you about what happened to you last night and today and about Justin.”

“Okay.”

That seemed way too easy, so you asked, “Maybe you’d like to go smoke that cigarette first?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“The last time I smoked a cigarette, I passed out, right?”

You laughed, “That’s not why you passed out.”

“I know; I was just fucking with you. You’re worried about the check, about Justin walking in here, about whether or not I need to smoke, and I just want you, Justin, hell, anybody at this point, to tell me what the fuck is happening to me.”

Well, the cards were certainly on the table.

……

“Fair enough,” you began. “What do you think is happening to you?”

He gave you a look you hadn’t seen before, one you didn’t particularly appreciate, “Oh, we’re going to play this game now?”

“No, it’s not a game at all. I really need to know what you think.”

He pulled a small white napkin in front of him and began to unravel the cigarette, letting the tobacco pour out, “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Am I?” he asked, his eyes on the mountain he was making, where they’d stay for quite a while.

“No, you’re not.”

“Good.”

“You have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—"

“I know that; I have internet access.”

“As does Justin.”

“He doesn’t really remember anything,” Brian said.

“His is different from yours.”

He glanced up at you very quickly, very briefly, before his eyes returned to the mess he was making, “Why?”

“Yours is directly linked to the incident itself; his is a result of the aftermath.”

……

He balled the napkin up with the destroyed cigarette inside it and threw it to the far end of the table and then looked at you again, “I took care of him afterwards. I am his aftermath.”

……

You took a deep breath, “This is not going to be easy to talk about, Brian. It’s going to make you really angry and upset, but it’s supposed to make you feel that way. If it didn’t, there would really be something wrong with you.”

……

“I’m extremely pissed right now,” he told you.

“I know you are, but I promise you that there’s no threat here. And we can stop whenever you want. But, Brian—" And then you stopped because he wasn’t looking at you again. “What’s the matter?”

“I need some water.”

“I’ll get it.”

“He saw me. He’s coming.”

And as the waiter brought a new pitcher of water, you watched as Brian refilled his glass, and waited for him to look at you again, “Okay, but what you were saying, that you were Justin’s aftermath; that’s why we have to talk about this.” Brian just looked at you as if he wanted to say something, but he just couldn’t, so you continued, “Justin needs help, Brian. He’s struggling with this, and he won’t allow himself to heal as long as you’re still unable to process this. He puts you first.”

“I’ll make him get help,” Brian decreed as if that was the answer you were looking for.

“It won’t matter. He loves you and to get past this and leave you behind would be a betrayal. He won’t do it.”

And that was not something Brian wanted to hear, almost spitting out his response, “That is bullshit.”

“It’s The Gift of the Magi, Brian.” And when he gave you a blank look, you explained, “O. Henry? The timeless tale-"

“I know what it is, don’t insult me.”

“Withdrawn.”

……

He removed yet another cigarette and began twirling it again, staring at you like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of you…friend or foe? Patients do that to you all the time when you hit a nerve, so you were okay with that, leaning back and letting him absorb what you’d said. Finally, Brian spoke, “Don’t you have anything else to add or is that it?”

“You’re pissed at me; I don’t think you care what I have to say right now,” you told him.

“True.”

“Why are you pissed?”

Another fifteen seconds passed…

“You don’t know Justin,” he said, every word heavy and deliberate.

“You’re right; I don’t. He lived here for six years; I’ve known him for over four; I consider him a good friend of mine, and I’ve only known about the most significant event in his entire life for less than twenty-four hours.” Brian watched you carefully as you spoke, like maybe you were lying to him. “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you; I guess, I just never thought—"

“That’s how hard this is for him, Brian.”

Brian shook his head as if he was disgusted with himself, “He can’t even talk to me.”

“He’s afraid,” you said. “Every step he takes makes him feel like he’s falling off a cliff.”

……

……

“He’s already fallen,” Brian said, looking worn down from the realization, pressed by the urgency, “He’s barely hanging on. Tell me what to do, tell me how to help him.”

“We have to help you first.”

*********************
ALAN HARPER’S POV


he watches his bridges burn
from the point of no return

And that was when it happened; that was the beginning of the end. The center screen went blank, the eight different feeds merged and all became Jon and Brian talking at the restaurant. Your mother became your mother again, and the AfterDeath looked like its namesake, like the way a club looks when you turn the lights on at four a.m. and there’s confetti and glitter everywhere, and you really just want to take a shower. And when the central feed came back on, it wasn’t anything anyone was expecting at all.

It was daybreak in a Pittsburgh courthouse and Meredith Hobbs was walking through hollow sounding halls, standing in line, and when she got to the front, “I need to have this cancelled, please.”

“What’s your reason?” the deputy asked as he opened the document he was handed.

“I’m afraid Mr. Bell’s been rung for the last time. He died last night in Kansas in a meth lab explosion, so I don’t think I need this anymore.”

“Cody Bell,” the deputy said like he was trying the name on for size, “May you rest in peace. We’ll take care of this for you…Ms. Hobbs.”

“Thank you,” she said as she walked away. “Free at last.”

……

And with that, so were Chris and Cody, and damn if they weren’t as stunned as the rest of you.

The restraining order was lifted. There was nothing holding anyone back.

*********************
HARPER COLLINS’S POV


tell him, tell him, tell him right now

Amelia wanted nothing from you on the cab ride back to the church but a solemn promise that she would not have to take a nap, and she planned to procure this promise from you by standing in your lap and pressing her finger to your lips and her forehead to yours and telling you, “You hafta, hafta promise no nap, Mommy; you hafta.”

“I told you, ‘Melia, you don’t have to take a nap unless you fall asleep.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m not gonna fall ‘sleep ‘cause I’m not so tired.” And then she yawned. Sarah smiled at you and then turned her head toward the window so Amelia wouldn’t see her laughing. “’Cause I wanna show Brime Kinney my bery pretty dress,” she’d say every few minutes.

“Don’t you want to show Daddy your very pretty dress?” you asked her. “I’ll bet he’d really like to see it, too.”

“Yeah,” she said, sitting down between you and Sarah, “I’ll show Daddy first and then I’ll show Brime Kinney for a bery long time.”

“Okay.”

……

You’d called Sam when the three of you got in the cab, and he was waiting for you on the curb outside the church when you pulled up with twelve million shopping bags and Amelia sound asleep in your arms. “Have fun?” he asked, and you laughed and Sarah said, “No comment,” and relieved you of most of your stuff, leaving you alone with your tiny family and disappearing into the church to rehearse with Nate.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked. “You’re being weird,” he said as he took Amelia from you and let her sleep on his shoulder for awhile.

“Your daughter is a smooth criminal.”

“Huh?”

He was going to have a complete hissy fit when you told him, so you figured you might as well tell when while he was holding your sleeping child on a public sidewalk because then he wouldn’t scream at you, “I lost Amelia in Macy’s; Security found her in the children’s department shoplifting jewelry. They got her on tape and everything. It was the most terrifying thirty minutes of my life, and don’t go off on me about it or I’ll kick you in the nuts.”

“Oh, god, babe. Whoa. Silence the violence.”

He didn’t seem angry, but then again, Sam was a purebred WASP, so his anger was automatically enrolled in a five year deferment program that came with him when he was born, “She thinks she’s a grown up, Sam. We screwed up somewhere. She’s not even three, and I swear to god, if we told her she needed to get a full time job to support us, she’d be working at Merrill Lynch tomorrow.”

“Yuck. Why does she have to work at Merrill Lynch?”

“Sam, you know what I mean.”

“But I like her the way she is,” Sam said, holding her a little tighter, “I think she’s perfect.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, see if you still feel that way in six weeks when we can’t find her, and we call the cops and put out an Amber Alert, and then we find out she’s working at Brime Kinney, Inc.”

“His company is called Kinnetik,” he corrected you.

And then you realized the entire problem; it came to you clear as day: Amelia was Sam, single-minded, self-assured, unstoppable. You were arguing, trying to reason with a man who truly believed that the first line in Green Eggs and Ham was written expressly for him, so you threw in the towel, “Okay, just forget it. If you’re happy with raising a thirty-year-old who still has to poop in a practice potty, then I guess I am, too.”

Sam rolled his eyes at you as he leaned in to give you a kiss, “Now you’re just trying to make her sound like one of those functionally retarded people.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” you told him, “She loves her Daddy.”

*********************


the highway’s jammed with broken heroes

As you walked into the church with Sam and then down the hallway to find Daniel and Richard, you told him that Justin had left you a message hours ago that you hadn’t even heard until the three of you were done with lunch. “He said he wanted to talk to me.” You assumed he was at the church, that everyone was, but Sam shook his head. “No, you missed the silent movie this morning. We’ve had a bit of a kerfluffle.”

“Please don’t talk nonsense right now,” you scolded him. "The last time you used that word it meant 'Fraggle fart.'"

He corrected himself in his highbrow tone of voice that he always uses when imitating his mother, “Fine, we’ve had a ‘situation.’”

“Sam.”

He relented, spitting out the words like they were burning his tongue, “Justin and Brian had a fight. I don’t know the details. Brian left with Jon; I haven’t seen him since. Justin was here for a while doing something for Daniel or for Alan or something, and then he left. He was upset when he left; Daniel’s upset. Everybody is upset.”

“Upset about what?”

“I do not know, and I did not ask.”

……

You and Sam kept walking, found everybody in the church’s kitchen and checked in with Richard and Daniel and Nate regarding the funeral plans, and, on the surface, everything seemed upbeat and okay, and after a few minutes you asked, “Where’s Justin?” just to see what kind of answer you’d get. And Daniel looked at you and said, “Not here,” and the room got quiet, and had there been a live audience and a spotlight, you would’ve thought you were suddenly the hostess of the 2011 American Midol semifinals…

“Well, where’d he go?” you asked.

“I think he went for a walk,” Daniel said, his head down that time.

“By himself?” you asked.

“By himself,” Richard confirmed. “He didn’t want anyone to go with him.”

“What’s going on?” you asked the lot of them, and Nate got up immediately, “Excuse me, I’ll leave you guys alone. Don’t really think this concerns me.” He shirked by you as if he was afraid you were going to reach out and throw him back in the stew.

“Is someone going to answer me?” you asked Daniel and/or Richard, and Richard spoke up, which, of course, meant that whatever happened had nothing to do with him, “Well, we’ve just had a rather—“

“Richard, can you excuse us for a minute? I need to talk to Daniel in private.”

He got up and apologized to Daniel before leaving the room; Sam left right behind him, had he not been carrying Amelia, he probably would’ve been running.

……

You sat down next to Daniel by the huge stainless steel island in the middle of the kitchen and asked him again, “What’s going on?”

……

When Daniel finally spoke, it was as if every word was killing him, “Under the circumstances, I think it’s better if I don’t go into it too much. It’s really complicated.”

He’d looked like shit when you’d seen him that morning, and though he looked a little better now, his demeanor was almost painful, like nothing you’d ever seen, and it was really, really bothering you, so you reached out and put your hand over his and said, “Look, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but, number one, you’re really freaking me out because you are never like this, and Daniel—“ and then you took a deep breath because you were starting to get upset, and you really didn’t feel like doing that at the moment.

“Don’t, Harper. It’s okay.”

“Look, you have done so much for me, for Sam, for Amelia…for Alan, so it’s not okay for me to see you like this. It’s really not. And now Justin’s leaving me messages that he really needs to talk to me, and he sounds all weird, and he was really strange this morning. What the fuck, Daniel?”

Daniel seemed relieved, “So you’re the one he called. Okay, that makes sense.”

“I’m glad it makes sense to somebody.”

“Call him back. He really needs to talk to you. The rest will sort itself out.”

“He called me hours ago; I was in fucking Macy’s. Where is he? Is he okay?”

Daniel stood up, pushed his chair in, and hugged you, “Call him and find out, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll call him. Are you okay, Daniel? Because you don’t look okay.”

“I’ll be all right; don’t worry about me.”
……

Jesus Christ, you thought, Men.

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


you go back, Jack,
do it again

an hour before

Upon your arrival at Daniel’s, your footsteps into his pristine foyer, it was quiet as a tomb, the way it always was on the days you came to paint there, the days when Harper probably wasn’t coming because Amelia was finally sitting up or crawling or taking her first steps, and it saddened you immediately because you missed coming there every day, wondering what you’d accomplish, wondering if Harper would stop by for lunch and stay to work for during Amelia’s nap or not. But when you opened the door and saw the new addition to the room…you turned around…walking quickly down the hall to Daniel’s room to see it’s brand new twin and then back again to what was supposed to feel at least a little bit like your space and slammed the fucking door as hard as you could.

The tea party in Amelia’s little kitchen lost its teapot; it tipped over, fell off the table and rolled against the wall, an unceremonious accident that was no match for the fury bouncing around inside you.

*********************
BRIAN’S POV


I need somewhere to begin

That Thursday in April would prove to be one of the single, most pivotal days in your entire life, but the reason for that wouldn’t be so singular…

Perhaps it was some sort of cosmic irony that had been hatched a long, long time ago, perhaps the first morning you woke up next to Justin, following you in your disparaged Jeep as it sped to St. James’s Academy, watching you as you informed him quite publicly in front of his private school that he’d see you in his dreams because from that moment on, it had been exactly the opposite—it was your dreams that had been hijacked by images of you fucking him from behind while helping him with his Calculus homework. And it was your dreams that became infected with a virus after Justin was so brutally attacked, a virus that bred violence and rage and helplessness every time you fell asleep.

But you weren’t dreaming anymore.

Your nightmares had become reality, and your reality had landed you across from a guy who smiled a lot, who could be Justin at forty since who the fuck knew where your glasses were, who seemed genuinely interested in helping you, and for the first time in your life you felt a sense of incremental relief that didn’t come with a side of ejaculate. It was just plain old relief and a strange sense of benevolence for this man you’d just met, a guy who didn’t really know you and thus far, in all honesty, had only seen you at your worst…

……

When a client comes into your office with a product they can’t sell and a bottom line that’s shrinking fast, it usually takes you about twenty minutes to decide on the correct course of action, maybe forty-five minutes to present it, and then you generally give them very little time to decide because there’s never any need to agonize over those decisions. You’re either ready to make a change and make some money or you’re not. And that’s how you felt with Jon that day. He was giving you a choice: ready or not?

“Okay. I’m ready,” you said.

You had to be; there was way too much at stake.

……

Jonathon began by asking you if you knew why you fainted, telling you that it was the same thing that caused your ‘break’ the night before, but you didn’t know. You tried, but you couldn’t remember. “Just tell me,” you said. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t ‘do’ anything. You saw the stain on the sidewalk, where Alan-"

Oh fuck.

Your lunch came up in the back of your throat, acidic…

“You okay?” he asked you, leaning across the table.

“Feel sick.”

And dizzy.

“You’re white as a sheet, Brian.”

And hot.

You got up and started walking toward the restroom, propelling yourself as fast as you could into the first stall where you promptly threw up your free lunch. When it was over, your eyes were wet like they’d tried to purge themselves, too, and you wiped them on your sleeve as you head hung over the toilet bowl. And when you tried to get up, when it was all over, you found that you couldn’t, that Jon was standing over you, “Don’t get up, Brian. No need. Just stay there, okay?”

“Fuck,” you said as you spat into the toilet bowl, “Christ, he’s right; I should go home.” You could feel Jon’s hand on your shoulder pulling double duty—trying to comfort you and make sure you didn’t stand up at the same time.

“Mr. Kinney? Are you all right?” A voice from the doorway, your waiter.

“He’s fine,” Jon told him stepping out of the stall you were still sprawled in, “He’s just not feeling well.”

“Something he ate?” the waiter asked.

“No, no. He’s been under the weather.”

“Does he need a doctor?” he asked.

“I am a doctor,” Jon said. “He’s okay.”

And then the waiter was obviously speaking to you or rather the cracked door of your stall, “We’re closed until four p.m., Mr. Kinney. That’s when we re-open for dinner. No one will come in or out.”

You glanced at your watch: Two thirty-seven. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Kinney. Anything you need, just let us know.”

After the waiter had gone and the door had shut, Jon handed you a cold paper towel which felt like heaven on your face, “You’re like Jesus to these people or something.”

“I guess so.”

……

So Jonathon sat outside the stall while you leaned against the inside wall and the two of you began again, “Brian, I think you should take the lead. Every time I try you pass out or hurl. Why don’t you start?”

Like you knew where to start. You told him as much. He told you to try, and you did, but nothing would come out, besides you were too preoccupied by your heartbeat thumping like a bass drum in your head. “I can’t,” you told him. “I really can’t.”

“Okay. That’s all right. You’ve never talked with anyone about this have you?”

“No, just Justin, kind of.”

“Okay, let’s just forget that for now. Tell me what it’s been like since Justin came back. Talk to me about that.”

*********************

JONATHON MASSEY’S POV


I begin to think I understand

Better you thought to stay in the present and maybe work your way back…

“There’s no real way to describe it, waking up in the morning or the middle of the night, which is even better, really, and realizing he’s next to me,” Brian said, looking up at the ceiling, “I mean, I missed the fuck out of him; I’d always hoped he’d come back but I never really knew, and the years go by, and pretty soon you just start thinking that he probably won’t, you know?”

You unwrapped a new roll of toilet paper and handed it to him; it was really murder for him to talk about this, “No, I don’t know,” you said. “He’s devoted to you; I guess I don’t understand that.”

“It’s hard to explain. When he left, I didn’t want to put any conditions--, didn’t want him to feel obligated, I guess.”

“Why did he leave?”

“To become an artist,” Brian said, like maybe you were stupid or something.

“He couldn’t paint in Pennsylvania or wherever you live?”

“Actually, looking back on it, I don’t think he could.”

“Help me understand that.”

As Brian spoke, you got the impression that it was just beginning to make sense to him as he was explaining it to you, “Ever since he came back, he hasn’t been able to paint. He’s really frustrated about it…. We’ve talked about it. I thought that maybe it was because it’s just me and him in our huge house, and that he’s lonely…. He’s used to sharing his studio with Harper, used to having company.”

“But you don’t think that’s it?”

“I wish that was it,” he said, the reality of it settling on his face, “But that’s not it. He can’t paint because he’s blocked, and he’s blocked because of me.”

“You don’t think that’s a bit of a leap?” you asked him.

“No, it’s true. That’s why he’s screaming at me about his artwork and throwing shit at me and painting over some of his best work—"

“Painting over what?” you asked.

“I bought one of his paintings, an untitled mural from one of his first shows."

“I know which painting it is. Daniel almost bought it; you beat him to it.”

“Well, Justin didn’t know that I bought it and when he got home and saw it hanging over the desk in my study, he went ballistic.”

“He told us last night that he was angry because he thought his work was selling like crazy, and then he found out that you were one of the major buyers the entire time.”

“Well, that might be what he told you, but that’s not why he’s pissed. You’re not a very perceptive shrink if you bought that crap.”

“Fair enough. He’s pissed because of that particular painting? Why?”

“I don’t know.” (He was lying.) “It’s calm and violent all at the same time and it’s currently covered with some tacky gray primer and a tarp in his studio. I keep expecting to come home from work one day and find him burning it in the backyard, only that’ll never happen because there are gnomes in the backyard, so he’ll probably burn the damn thing in the front yard.”

“Why do you care about this painting?”

“I bought the fucking thing.”

“Brian, you have more money than you know what to do with.”

“That painting belongs to me.”

“Because you bought it?”

“Because I’m in it,” he said, clearly angry…at somebody or something.

“I’ve seen that painting, Brian. It’s completely abstract; there’s nobody in it.”

“That’s because you don’t know what you’re looking at.”

……

The anger was back.

……

You let it go; he was in no shape to go any further down that road.

……

“Okay,” you said by way of redirection, “So Justin’s come back of his own free will; he can’t paint; he’s blocked; he’s angry and destroying things he painted while he was here. What else?”

“He’s got this job at PIFA, at the art school; he’s supposed to teach a seminar or something, and the days we ride in together, he follows me, the days he’s supposed to be there working, I see him other places. He lies to me. He’s got zero interest in that class; I don’t even think he’s really working there.”

“Have you told him that you’ve seen him other places?”

Brian shook his head, “No, he’ll tell me when he’s ready.”

“You give him a remarkable amount of latitude, Brian.”

“It’s gone both ways over the years, trust me.”

“Okay, what else?”

Brian thought about it for a moment, “He hates my car and my kitchen.”

“Your car and your kitchen?”

“Yeah, the refrigerator sent him an email and that was the straw that fucked the camel up the ass, if you know what I mean.”

You honestly had no idea what that meant, but whatever. “What does he like, Brian?”

“Fucking and the wine cellar.”

You weren’t sure if you heard him right, “Fucking in the wine cellar?”

“Sometimes, but we’ll probably do more of that in the summer. In the winter, we fuck in the sauna.”

“Well, naturally.”

……

And then Brian told you he was tired of sitting on the floor, that he wanted to get up and go back to the table.

“Can you stand up without falling down?” you asked him.

“I think so.”

You stood next to him as he washed his hands and splashed water on his face and then followed him back to the table. Once the two of you sat down, a waiter was immediately there, ready to serve, “Are you okay, Mr. Kinney? Do you need anything?”

“Ginger ale,” he said. “On the rocks.”

*********************
ZEEK ZIRROLLI’S POV


what’s the matter with the clothes I’m wearing?

The other reason for Gabe’s prompt arrival in the city was the unspoken one: someone had to take you shopping to get a suit. It could’ve been Kinney if Kinney hadn’t stepped in a pile of crazy the night before, and you didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone else, and Gabe knew that without you even having to tell him. You were going to hate every minute of it because the only places Gabe liked to shop catered to men who only ate celery and splooge, not to men who had real bodies with actual tone and muscle and macho-ness.

“Machismo,” Gabe said, when you told him that in the cab.

“I thought that was one of those coffee drinks you like.”

“That’s a macchiato.”

Your head was beginning to hurt, “But, wait, I thought that was one of those people who likes getting their ass whipped and shit.”

“That’s a masochist,” Gabe said.

“Well, fuck me,” you said, “I thought that was what chicks used when they got that ‘not so fresh’ feeling.”

And then your cab driver thought he’d get jump into the conversation with an accent thicker than Emmett’s designer knee-pads, “Dat’s Massengill’s, Misser Malaprop!”

And that just pissed you the fuck off, “Yo, Green Card, welcome to A-mer-i-ca. We speak English.”

(“That was English,” Gabe whispered to you, but you ignored him.)

“Jou coulda fooled me.”

Gabe just shook his head at you, “You know, sometimes you should just quit when you’re ahead, you know that?”

“I’m not gonna quit until someone’s giving me head,” you told him.

“Well, don’ looka me,” the cabbie quipped.

“Shut the fuck up, Ricky Ricardo.”

*********************

JONATHON MASSEY’S POV


see if you can somehow factor in

Back at your table in the restaurant, your waiter brought you ginger ale, too; maybe you looked like you needed it or something. While you’d been talking to Brian in the restaurant, as the conversation progressed, there was something going on under the surface that you were determined to tease out; there was more to this, another piece to the puzzle…

“Brian, without going into too much detail, I just want to confirm a few things.”

“Okay.”

“Justin went to high school, graduated, did he go to college?”

“He took some classes, art classes, never graduated. Went to Hollywood for a while; his work was going to be made into a movie.”

This was news to you, “What work?”

“A comic book.”

“Didn’t know he did that kind of work. What was it?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re going to have a fucking field day with it.”

“Look, I don’t try to do your job; don’t try to do mine,” you told him.

“Fine, it was a gay comic book based on a super hero named ‘Rage’ which was me.”

You sat back in your seat, “Whoa.”

“See, I told you.”

“The movie didn’t get made?” (It couldn’t have, you thought, because you and Daniel would’ve been at that theater every night for a least two weeks just to argue about symbolism, subtext, and spandex and where exactly the thrice should meet.)

“No. It tanked.”

It was at that point that you realized the scope of what you were dealing with and the challenge of keeping all of it front and center, so you began to unroll an unused cloth napkin that you’d pushed to the end of the table and setting the knife, spoon, and fork in front of you. Brian asked what you were doing, and you said, “Placeholders. You’ll see. So Justin came back?”

“Yeah.”

“You say that like you were surprised,” you told him.

“I was. I figured he’d get a taste of Hollywood, of LA, and forget all about Pittsburgh.”

“And all about you?”

“Yeah.”

“That seems to be a recurrent theme in your life. The storyline of the comic book, was it--?”

“Autobiographical?” Brian asked, finishing your sentence.

“For Justin?”

Brian sighed, “Yeah.”

“And it tanked?”

“Hook, line, and sinker,” Brian said. He didn’t seem surprised, which seemed a little strange to you, but then again maybe not, there was something about that that you wanted to come back to so you picked up the fork and placed it in front of you, horizontally, between you and Brian. “What’s that for?” he asked.

“Something I want to come back to. How was Justin when he came back? Disappointed?”

Brian seemed suspicious of your psycho-cutlery but answered you anyway, “Yeah. He tried to act like he didn’t take it personally, but he did.”

“I can imagine. He was what? Twenty?”

“Yeah, twenty.”

“So, this comic is autobiographical for Justin, but the central character is you as ‘Rage’ and—"

Brian interrupted you, “He didn’t write it; he just illustrated it.”

“Really?”

“A friend of mine wrote it.”

“A friend of yours or a friend of yours and Justin’s?” you asked.

“Well, both of us at that point,” Brian conceded.

“Your friend went to LA as well?”

“No.”

“Why not?” you asked.

“He wasn’t asked to go,” Brian said. “They wanted Justin.”

You moved the spoon next to the fork, “And how long did this project go on?”

“Couple years.”

You wanted to get your hands on this comic book yesterday, but you weren’t exactly a magician so, “Okay, so Justin only illustrates it; he stays once removed?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Was he afraid to get any closer, even then?”

Brian dodged you, defending Justin, “He’s an artist, not a writer.”

……

You were learning on your feet and very quickly with both Brian and Justin and the quickest way to end a conversation with either of them was to probe the motivations or intentions of the other, and while you found this intriguing, you were smart enough to back off of a land mine lest you find yourself ejected from the property, so you decided to slow down a little, to lull the pace of the conversation a little and make it less of a firing squad and more of a fact-finding mission, “Right, I see your point. Your friend, what’s his name?”

“Michael.”

“Right, Michael. He writes the script, so to speak, and then Justin fills in the illustrations; am I correct?”

“Yeah,” Brian said, like he was hoping you’d just buy that answer and move on.

“So, Justin didn’t have any real input into the story?”

……

Brian looked around the restaurant as if he’d never seen it before, and finally admitted, “Well, he had some input, I guess.”

“Okay, but just a little, for artistic reasons?”

“Well, no. I mean, he wasn’t going to just illustrate something he didn’t like.”

“Makes sense. Every artist has their own sense of artistic integrity. I can understand that,” you told him. Brian smiled at you. “Okay, so your friend would write the issue and then bring it to Justin, and he’d illustrate it? Is that how it worked?”

Brian shook his head, “Yeah…sort of. Not really. It was collaborative. They usually worked together, especially in the beginning.”

“Justin liked that? The collaboration?”

Brian let a breath of laughter escape, “Yeah, he liked it all right. He liked it a lot.”

“Why are you smiling?” you asked him.

He did it again; the huff of laughter through his nose, “He was so young, everything made him either unbelievably happy or totally fucking miserable. There wasn’t much in between.”

“Did that include you?” you asked him.

Brian’s smile became more of a sneer, “You could say that.”

……

You moved back to the comic book, “So if the comic book is more or less about Justin and you, and Justin has significant input into the storyline, and he’s the illustrator and the one who’s invited to LA to make the movie, what exactly was Michael’s role in all of this?”

……

Brian’s eyes narrowed before he could stop them, “Is that some sort of a trick question or something?”

You answered him honestly, “Absolutely not.”

……

Brian was clearly exasperated with you or perhaps the subject matter at this point, answering you with an I’ve had quite enough of this tone to his voice, “Fuck, I don’t know, channeling?”

Honest answer, you thought. You were impressed. “Channeling what?”

If the table between you and Brian weren’t bolted to the floor, Brian would’ve successfully pinned you with it at that moment, leaning back in the booth like he really needed to get the hell away from you, but was unable to get up, “What the fuck are you getting at? Just fucking say it because now you’re just pissing me the fuck off.”

So you told him because like Richard always says when he’s under the covers, ‘Ask and ye shall receive,’ “Well, what I’m getting at is that it’s an awful lot of work to produce an entire comic book—that someone else ‘writes’ for you--and eventually end up all the way across the country making a movie about your relationship when you could just sit down and talk to the man you love about how you feel.” Brian stared at you and said nothing, just stared as if you’d suddenly sprouted another head. “Justin didn’t have to draw you and your rage; he could’ve talked to you about it, tried to help you work through it perhaps?”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s not—that wasn’t the way we did things.”

“So he goes all the way to LA to do this and it bombs, and he comes back to you, and what happens?”

“We’re totally out of sync.”

“How so?”

“He needed things from me that I wouldn’t give him.”

“Like what?” (The firing squad was front and center again. You were beginning to think he preferred it.)

“Like everything.”

“Why didn’t you give him what him what he wanted?” you asked.

“I don’t even fucking know,” His defensiveness was back, “I wanted to; I could see what he wanted, but it was like I just couldn’t do it, felt like I was fucking paralyzed.” He stopped, and you thought he was finished but he wasn’t, “Sometimes I would stare at myself in the mirror, and I’d be screaming at myself in my head to just stop this shit, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything.”

“What happened?”

“Shit got weird, and he left me.”

Just talking about this, Brian’s entire demeanor had changed; he wasn’t the confident ad exec anymore; he wasn’t a man on the brink of forty; he was a frustrated man stumbling around in a dark room trying to find his light switch of denial, so you softened your voice a little, gave him a little time to feel his way around… Let him tread water for awhile…

“Okay, let’s back up a little. There’s a pattern or a reflex in your relationship—things get difficult or tense and someone has to leave or the scenery has to change. You see that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You and Justin had to the leave this place last night; you left Justin at the hotel later on, you left him today at the church—"

“That’s not the same thing,” he interrupted you.

“Why not?”

“When he leaves, he leaves. He goes; he’s gone.”

“You don’t leave him like that?”

“No, never.”

“Tell me why he leaves. Is it the same reason over and over?” you asked.

“No. The first time he left me for someone else.”

That surprised you, “Okay. Who?”

“A musician.”

“Someone who could express himself?”

“Yeah. Then he left to go to Hollywood.”

“To express himself?”

Brian looked at you like you were an irritating fly buzzing around his head, “Yeah, and then when he came back, he left because—"

“You couldn’t express yourself?”

“Fine, whatever.”

(Different reasons, indeed. A rose, a tulip, a daffodil...all growing in the same garden...)

……

“What did you do when Justin left that time, Brian; when he was back from LA?”

Brian laughed, seemingly at himself, at his defeat, “I went over to my friend’s house and tore him a new one.”

“Your friend?”

“The writer.”

“Michael? The surrogate?” you asked.

“Yeah. I killed the messenger.”

……

“And Justin?” you asked.

“He got to watch,” Brian said, proud and ashamed of it at the same time.

“Once again, once removed?”

Brian’s shoulders sank, “Yeah.”

“Well at least you were finally expressing yourself.”

……

“Brian, looking back on it, what do you think would’ve happened if you’d given Justin what he wanted when he came back from LA?”

……

And as you waited for an answer, the color began to disappear from Brian’s face again…

……

So you back pedaled, “It’s okay; you don’t have to tell me. I understand.” You could tell by the look on his face that Brian understood, too. “You weren’t ready,” you told him. “It’s okay. You didn’t know why. Forget it; let it go.”

Brian’s voice was wavering as he told you, “But then the club exploded.”

*********************
HARPER COLLINS’S POV


in all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean

Your phone call to Justin revealed that he was at Daniel’s in your studio, and he seemed mildly pleased when you told him you were on your way, and when you let yourself in, the whole place was dark—blinds drawn, doors shut, including the one to the studio; the day had begun to get cloudy so everything was covered with shades of gray as you climbed the stairs and tapped on the door, “Justin? It’s me.”

“Yeah.”

You let the door pop open, and your eyes adjusted to the room, even darker than the rest of the house because there were shades on the studio windows; Daniel and Sam had installed them for Amelia, for when she was napping or staying over. You left the door open so you could see better. Justin was lying on the futon, sprawled on his back, one knee up, the other leg halfway on the floor facing the covered windows, a tiny border of light trying to peek through each one.

“Can you shut the door?” he asked you without even turning in your direction.

“It’s awfully dark in here,” you said.

“Light a candle or something.”

“Okay.”

So you fished in your desk for a match and lit a candle that sat on a small table in the corner of the room which put the light behind Justin; he moved his legs, so you could sit on the other side of the futon and continued to stare at the ceiling.

“I got your message late because I was in Macy’s; I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

……

……

“You said you needed to talk to me.”

“I do.”

His shin was pressed against your thigh, and you let your hand rest there, curious to see if he’d push you away, but he didn’t, “I’m listening.”

“I can’t speak at Alan’s funeral tomorrow,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Are you going to?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’m not sure yet, probably whatever comes out of my mouth.”

……

He covered his eyes with his forearm, “I tried to write something, but nothing came out; I mean, nothing that I could say. I just don’t think I can.”

You shrugged, a little confused as to why he was so focused on that, “You don’t have do to anything you don’t want to do, Justin. Tomorrow’s about you saying good-bye to Alan however you want to. You can do anything you want.”

……

“Are you ready to tell him good-bye?” he asked you.

“Am I ready…?” You pondered the question for a while… “Mostly, I think I am. In a lot of ways, I think I said good-bye to him a long time ago. I’m not sure; I think some of the readiness will actually come tomorrow.”

……

Justin seemed so distressed, so out of sorts, so uncomfortable, you thought you’d just make light conversation for a few minutes, “Hey, off the subject, but why is Daniel’s chair in here?”

……

Of all the words you’d ever spoken in your life, those were the ones you wished you could take back.

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV


this could be the end of everything

You weren’t planning on bringing up the explosion at Babylon, but since Brian did, you kept him going, “I read about that,” you told him, “Let’s keep a wide lens on it so you don’t get sick again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Justin wasn’t hurt—"

“No, but Michael was, my friend— It almost obliterated the messenger,” Brian said, looking tired all of sudden as if the years of all this grief were finally starting to sink in; his age was returning. “He’s Jenny’s father.”

“So he’s part of Gus’s life as well; it would’ve been a huge loss all around?”

“Enormous.”

“The tragedy, it brought you and Justin back together?”

“Tragedies have a way of doing that,” Brian said, almost flippantly, the emotions beginning to saturate him. “That’s when I asked him to marry me. He refused the first time, and then he agreed.”

“He didn’t believe you were serious the first time or something?”

“I believe the technical term is ‘full of shit.’”

……

“Tell me why you didn’t get married,” you asked him, trying to steer him away from images of blood and ambulances.

“We are married.”

“You know what I mean, before.”

“So he could come here.”

“He could’ve come here married; there’s no law against that.”

“I told you I didn’t want him to feel obligated.”

“Did you believe that he loved you?”

Brian smiled and laughed at little, “Yes.”

“Why is that funny?”

“I don’t know; it just is.”

“So you love him; he loves you, but you don’t know if he’s ever coming back?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he know if he was going to come back?” you asked.

“I don’t know; you’d have to ask him.”

And then it was your turn to laugh, “No, thanks. I don’t do couples counseling.”

“You don’t?” Brian asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s bull shit.”

……

And then you asked Brian something that you and Daniel had been wondering about since Justin had set foot back in the city with a ring on his finger, “Why didn’t Justin invite any of his city friends to the wedding?”

Brian looked at you and laughed, his eyebrow headed for the ceiling, “Because our bed isn’t big enough.”

“There was no ceremony?” you asked.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Who officiated?” you asked, strictly on Richard’s behalf because he was dying to know.

“My dick.”

*********************


somewhere, somehow,
somebody must have kicked you around some

The string you were trying to pull, you’d see it for a few seconds and then it would disappear again, sucked back up into this emotional quagmire, but you kept trying, determined to grab it…

So, basically, “You pushed Justin out of the nest, right?” you asked Brian.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you push anybody.”

“But when he left to come here, he left knowing that you really loved him, unlike when he went to California. Is that a fair assessment?"

“Yeah, I made sure of it,” he said, possibly unaware that he was sliding his ring up and down his finger. He was correcting a mistake; you got the feeling it was the first of many, and your instincts told you that some of ones he was correcting didn’t even belong to him; he was trying to shed a legacy. So you asked him if it was okay to switch gears for a while, to focus on something else for a few minutes, and Brian seemed relieved. You asked about his family and listened as he talked about them, no warmth in his voice, no emotion really, mostly a stale disgust, and when you asked if he ever saw any of them, he told you no and, “My father’s dead.” You took the knife from your right side and sat it in front of you, next to the spoon.

“I’m sorry to hear that; when did he die?”

“When I was twenty-nine.”

“How was your relationship with your father before he died?” Brian laughed at you. “So you were estranged from your father?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“What kind of relationship did you have with your father growing up?”

“He beat me; let’s leave it at that.”

“That’s a horrible thing for a father to do to his son, Brian. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“He’s dead; it’s over.”

“Tell me a little bit about him; what was he like?”

Brian looked at you with his glass of ginger ale in his hand, suddenly holding it like it was something much more potent, and shook his head, “There’s nothing to tell. My father was a blue collar bully, and he’s dead. The end.”

So you went in the back door, “Point taken. But if he were alive today, what would he think of the man you become?”

Brian sneered, “I’m a fag, Jon. Please.”

“Okay, I understand that; let’s just put that aside for a moment. What would he think?”

Brian was quiet for a few seconds, staring at the tablecloth, running his finger across the fabric, and then he looked up at you soaked with the realization, “He’d be proud of me.”

“Really? He would, why?”

“Because I’m just like him, only my collar’s white.”

*********************


pass before my eyes,
a curiosity

Although much of your conversation with Brian that afternoon was wandering all over the place, the duality you were interested in was coming into focus, slowly but surely, separating within him like oil in water…

“What kind of relationship did Justin have with his father?” you asked Brian.

“Before me or after me?” he asked.

“You think you changed Justin’s relationship with his dad?”

“Yes…I know I did. I know I have. Back then…his father attacked me once when he saw Justin and I making out outside a club.”

“Were you badly hurt?”

“I was on the ground; he kicked me repeatedly in the ribs. Justin was screaming at him, trying to pull him off.”

“Was this before or after Justin was attacked?”

“Before.”

“You didn’t retaliate?”

“Not then and never physically.”

“You retaliated later?”

“Yes.”

“In front of Justin?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Why did I retaliate?”

“No, why not in front of Justin?” Brian looked at you and then looked away, like he didn’t want to answer you. “Because parents shouldn’t fight in front of the children?” you continued.

Brian’s eyes shifted back to your face, “No, because it was between Craig and I.”

“Man to man?” you asked.

“Right.”

“Not man-to-son to man who’s fucking that man’s son?” You garnered no response from Brian, so you switched lanes, “Brian, are Justin’s parents still married?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they got divorced.” (Ask a dumb question; get a dumb answer)

“How old was Justin when they got divorced?” you asked.

“Eighteen, nineteen, somewhere in there.”

“So after Justin got hurt then?”

*********************


he learned to walk while I was away

This was when the rest of your first-hand knowledge about Daniel, Justin and company came into play because although you were no miracle worker nor a psychic, you’d been a faithful fly on the wall of Daniel’s heart since the night he met Justin and knew enough about Daniel to lead you to some conclusions about Justin before you’d ever even considered Justin your friend. Daniel was an only child, his father a hospital administrator, a high-powered, well paid man who died out of the blue when Daniel was thirteen—after lunch in his office from an undiagnosed heart condition. Daniel became a doctor because of that tragic moment in his life and took forever to come to terms with specializing in Psychiatry because he felt he was never doing enough, that maybe if he became a heart surgeon he could bring a dead man back to life. Since then, he’d admitted to you that he finally chose Psychiatry because he thought it would be ‘a lot less life and death,’ and you told him that he was abhorrently naive if he really believed that because Psychiatry is nothing more than presiding over a protracted death sentence in very expensive, fifty-minute increments.

So when Daniel would gravitate toward lovers who were way too young for him, who were unsettled and aimless or committed but not to him, you were never really surprised because you never felt like Daniel really wanted a partner; he wanted a son of sorts. He wanted to be the father who didn’t just die one day and leave his family shrouded in grief and uncertainty; he wanted to be the answer to someone’s question, the reason that Justin felt safe and welcome in the city. It meant more to Daniel than Justin ever understood; it was the reason that Harper was still around…because she did. She could relate to Daniel, to the need to take care of somebody, to be the person who wouldn’t disappear. And as you sat across from Brian that day, you could feel that vibe coming off of him; he seasoned it a little and was much more astute at disguising it, but by the same token, his was like the Cocaine you’d buy from your friends in the Eighties—sinfully pure and at such a high price.

“Brian, is Justin’s father proud of him?” you asked him, watching him closely as he absorbed your question.

Brian’s eyes locked on yours when you asked, his gaze had become untrusting again as he answered you with a lie lined with velvet, “I wouldn’t know.” You didn't care that he lied to you because it wasn't the real question anyway...it was the bait. And next came the switch: “Does Justin know?” And though the answer to both questions was the same, it was the truth of the second one that was destroying Brian more than the first. You didn’t need him to answer it. “Has it always been that way?” you asked him.

“Since I’ve known him,” Brian said quietly.

This was the loose end you’d been pulling, and now you’d finally gotten to it, you’d unraveled the entire ball of yarn and found the knot in the middle, the one that had been there for years, that gave the ball its shape in the first place. You didn’t have to spell it out for Brian; he knew that you’d figured it out; he knew that his efforts to disguise this aspect of his relationship with Justin were aging just like he was, wearing like an old pair of jeans, threadbare at the knees. But there was another side of all of this that was really concerning you, the side he wasn’t seeing, and that’s what you needed to help him with so that he, in turn, could begin to help Justin.

*********************


will you walk with me out on the wire?

The afternoon was ticking away; you knew it and Brian knew it. You didn’t have much more time to make a real difference, so you told Brian as much and more, “Brian, last night, when we brought Justin to Dan’s, he was truly frightened about what had happened to you, heartbroken even—"

He interrupted you, “It’s done, okay? I can’t go back and erase it now. I’ve gotta go forward.”

“You’re right, you do, but I want to talk to you a little bit about Justin, about what happened, so you can move forward; I need you to help me with a few things.”

“I’m listening.”

“Dan and I talked to him after he’d gotten you calmed down and you’d fallen back asleep, and Justin gave us the brief synopsis about what’d happened to him, but it was almost emotionless, almost like he was talking about a horrific event that happened to someone else. But when I tried to press Justin for information, he changed the subject and made it about you.”

Brian looked confused, as if he was suddenly surrounded by fruit flies that fed on his guilt, “What do you mean? All about me?”

“He had a very difficult time talking about it from his own point of view. He talked about your feelings as if they were his own.”

“What feelings?” Brian asked.

You smiled, “Well, exactly, that’s what I mean. What feelings? There were none. He said the guy that attacked him got community service, and when I asked him how he felt about that, he said he didn’t know because he was recovering.”

Brian shrugged, “Well, he was.”

“Okay, so then I asked him how you felt about it, and again, no real emotion; he said that you think that’s the way the world works, that you expected the outcome.”

“I suppose I did.”

Brian’s tone of voice was as flat as it was when he’d ordered lunch earlier, no passion at all; if you didn’t know better, you’d think he wasn’t even interested in the subject you were discussing. So you took a very quick, very calculated risk…

“Brian, why did Chris hit Justin?”

“He saw us dancing at the prom—"

“No, I mean why did he hit Justin? Why didn’t he go after you or both of you? Surely, you were much more of a threat to him than Justin.”

……

“I was in the car,” he said, his words metering out like they’d been stuck in mud for years.

“He waited until Justin was alone?” you asked.

“Yeah. He followed us....” The expression on Brian’s face began to change; he wasn’t ordering lunch anymore. “He watched us goofing around and kissing and saying good-bye…and that’s…

……


“…that’s when he went after…him.

……

“Fucking little coward.”

……

You weren’t sitting across from a man who fainted at the sight of blood anymore, you were sitting across from a man whose fists were tightening, whose jaw was setting firm, who was experiencing this anger for the first time in all its substantive glory.

……

“Brian?” You said his name, calling him back to the present. “Brian, tell me—"

……

His eyes closed tight and then re-opened to stare at you again like you’d caught him robbing a bank. He wasn’t sick or dizzy or anything but furious.

“Where’s this anger been, Brian?”

……

After about another minute, he finally admitted that he didn’t know.

……

Normally, this would’ve been the moment you’d stop and say, ’We’ve done some excellent work today; we’ll pick up here next week’ but there was no next week. There was only that night and tomorrow and a nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach that if you left it there, it would hang right there for a long time—maybe even forever—because Brian, despite his best intentions, was frozen. You’d gotten him to the hand off, to the point that Justin grabbed the baton and took off running and hadn’t been seen since…

……

It was time to set the table.

*********************



I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

“Brian, I’ve hardly known you long enough to do what I’m about to do, but in the interest of time, and the fact that I’ve known Justin for a while, I’m going to give you my two cents. You can stop me whenever you want.”

“No, go ahead,” he said, “I’m tired of talking.”

“Okay,” you said, “Here goes nothing.”

You picked up the fork and put it back where it belonged, “That anger that you just felt a few minutes ago, that paralyzed you, that practically shut you down, that’s why Justin came here. He came here to dispose of it, to get rid of it for both of you. He’d tried so many times before to get rid of it, tried and failed, and ended up right back where he started. I think, this time, he was determined to do it right. That was probably why your separation felt so open-ended; I’m sure Justin didn’t know how long it was going to take him to get rid of something considering it didn’t even belong to him.”

……

You stopped; the look on Brian’s face; you couldn’t even describe it. “Are you all right?” you asked.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Keep going?” you asked.

He nodded.

……

You returned the spoon to it’s former position, “Justin has taken on this burden either by choice or obligation; I’m not really sure, but it’s something he’s felt for years, and everyone around him recognizes it as his burden as well, even Hollywood. They wanted him and not Michael. Even you see it as his burden, unable to stop yourself when you know you’re hurting him, weighing him down with more than he can carry, forcing him to leave you when it comes to a head instead of helping him work through this stuff.”

A tear ran down Brian’s face, and he let it fall; he didn’t stop it or even acknowledge it.

……

“Brian, let’s stop, okay? This is too much.”

“No, don’t stop. Go.”

“Brian,” you insisted.

“Go.”

……


“When you told Justin to put his anger into his work, he did, but you didn’t realize that he was the guardian of your anger as well, and he gladly did as you instructed him, but when you turned around and bought it back, it was like a slap in the face to him. He went to unbelievable lengths to get it away from you, Brian. He made an entire comic book that someone else wrote; he went to California to make a movie about it; he post-poned his own relationship with you to come here and bury it.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And now, Brian, all of these things have failed. The comic book is dead; the movie tanked; he came back to you to find his artwork in your home, and last night you scared the fuck out of him thinking that he’d gotten hurt again. He’s terrified, Brian. He’s trying to protect you, and he can’t.”

“He doesn’t need to protect me.”

“You’re his role model, Brian. That’s like telling the son of a four star general not to join the army.”

And finally you took the knife and put it back next to the spoon, “You have to understand why he’s doing this, how high the stakes are for Justin. You’re more to him than his lover or his partner; you’re his foundation. You were the man he turned to when he was coming out, when he was hurt, when he was recovering; you’re everything to him. His family fell apart; his relationship with his father is adversarial; you yourself weren't even surprised when his efforts failed. He's killing himself trying to do the impossible. He’ll do anything to keep you safe, losing you or seeing you in pain is unbearable to him because every time he peels back a layer of his life, you’re an integral part of that memory, and you know that. It’s why you take such good care of him, give him so much freedom. He’s more than a partner to you as well.”

……

You couldn't see Brian's face for a solid minute.

……

“How do I fix this?” he finally asked.

“You get some help. Stand on your own two feet about this stuff, so that Justin can stand on his. He has his own feelings, his own questions, about what happened to him that he can’t even reach much less express because he’s so concerned about you. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I understand.”

*********************


you don’t need no baggage,
you just get on board

Your time was up.

You made your point, and Brian was on the move again, just as he was when he stormed out of the church hours before, and it was your choice: keep up or get lost. So you got up and started putting your wallet and your pager in your pocket and then Brian asked you, “What’s your hourly rate?”

“Insured or uninsured?”

“Fuck, who cares?”

“High end, five fifty an hour,” you said.

“Are you shitting me?”

“I’m good at what I do.”

Brian threw a wad of bills on the table, “Well, fifteen hundred’s gonna have to cover it.” And then he turned to your waiter who’d been watching him like a hawk, “It’s not a restaurant, but it’s the best I can do. Thanks for the service.”

“And the discretion,” you added.

“Absolutely, Mr. Kinney,” he said, “Anytime.”

The young hostess who’d just come on duty, a beautiful, young, skinny wisp of a girl who smelled like lilies opened the door for both of you as you walked out, “Mr. Kinney, Dr. Massey, have a nice afternoon.”

“Hey,” you told Brian once you were both inside a taxi, “She knew my name.”

“Of course, she did,” he said, “You were with me.”

……

One call to Richard from your cab, and the two of you learned that Justin wasn’t at the church, but Sam was, and he confirmed that Harper was with Justin at the studio, so that’s where—against your better judgment—you and Brian were headed. You fought with Brian because he had no business going back there, but he wouldn’t take your advice and just go back to the hotel and wait for Justin, so you called Daniel’s cell and told him the two of you were on the way, to have the door unlocked because you weren’t going to allow Brian to loiter outside of Daniel’s place for more than a nanosecond lest he bite the dust again.

*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV


so take a look at me now
there's just an empty space

You’d been home for almost half an hour, holding your own private vigil in your own kitchen trying to rework your speech for Alan’s funeral. It was an exercise in futility because your legal pad was wet from random tears, and your mind was worn out from wandering all over the place. But the call from Jon made you snap out of it, that and their almost instantaneous arrival about two minutes later.

Brian stood at the bottom of the stairs once he was inside your place and looked up, “Is he alone in there?”

“No, Harper’s with him. They’ve been in there for almost two hours.”

Brian looked at Jon and then sat down on the bottom of the stairs, his long legs reminding you of a grasshopper, “Got anything to eat? Some crackers or something?”

“Yeah, sure,” you said, and Jon followed you into the kitchen.

……

“How’d it go with Justin?” he asked.

“Let’s just say it went,” you said. “You?”

Jonathon gave you a quick synopsis of his afternoon:

“Well, we switched the chairs, put the old one in the studio—"

You stopped him, “What?”

“We switched them.”

“You put the old one in the studio? Are you out of you fucking mind?”

Jonathon looked at you, his eyes widening as he realized that yes, he was out of his fucking mind, his hand covering his mouth, “Oh, fuck. I swear to god, I didn’t even think about that. Oh shit.”

You shook the box of the crackers you were about to open in his face, “No wonder Justin won’t come out of there. Why didn’t you get rid of it? Jesus.”

“I don’t know; I didn’t even think about it. Wasn’t that the whole point anyway? To stop trying to shovel everything under the proverbial rug?”

You glared at Jon’s dead-on assessment as you backed out of the kitchen, “Well, next time, warn me when you’re planning on using such a big shovel.”

“Why don’t you just pull up the fucking carpet?” Jon shot back. “Go with hardwood? It’s much easier to keep clean.”

“I don’t have time for this right now,” you whispered to him in what he always refers to as your Mommie Dearest voice, “We have company.”

And by company, you clearly meant a fucking disaster.
……

So the two of you exited the kitchen to rejoin Brian on the staircase, but he wasn’t there so you and Jonathon took one look at each other and then started up the stairs, but halfway up, you were stopped by a tall figure tapping your leg through the banister, “I’m down here in the living room.”

You were both relieved until you saw the double shot of whiskey in his hand.

*********************


sit around gettin’ older

You watched as Jonathon tried to talk Brian out of it. “I’ll write you something, okay? Daniel’s got samples here. At least, give it a try, at least for today, okay? You can go back to whiskey after the funeral.”

Brian tipped the glass back and the whiskey started to disappear into his mouth, but he didn’t swallow it; he swished and spit it back into the glass. “Mouthwash,” he said. “He expects it.”

Jonathon stared at Brian like he was his new puppy that just started to paper train but spoke to you, “Whatcha got, Dan? Go get it.”

So you disappeared into your office and re-emerged with Xanax and Ativan and Valium and handed them to Jon, “Pick your poison.”

“And stay away from red wine, red anything really, just be careful, until you’ve had more therapy. I don’t want you to be schmoozing clients and hit the floor when somebody breaks out a Merlot.”

……

Jonathon said he was hungry and Brian had scarfed the entire box of crackers you’d given him, so you went in the kitchen and threw together some finger food, and the three of you sat in your living room for half an hour eating and talking, until finally, Jonathon was getting antsy, “How long are they gonna stay up there?”

“Go pull the fire alarm,” Brian said, after he’d eaten all of the celery himself.

That reminded you of when you were in college and, “Jon, remember when they’d do that just to get everybody on the front lawn so everybody could see who was fucking who?”

Jon laughed, “Um, yeah. Never saw many girls on our lawn, did they?”

“Except that one time, remember, and we were all freaking out, and it turned out to be Eddie’s sister?”

“Uh, yeah. She picked a bad weekend to visit.”

Brian was laughing, saying that talk of college was making him feel really old, and then Jon was kicking his shoes off and declaring, “Okay, I’m going up there; just to listen for a second; just to see if we’re anywhere near the end or if we need to go out for the evening.”

“If he opens that door and sees you,” you warned him, and Brian finished your sentence, “God help you.”

“God helps me everyday,” Jon said, “I’m fucking one of his underlings.”

You and Brian laughed as Jonathon tip-toed up the stairs; he knew exactly where to step so as not to make them creak.

*********************


tonight this fool’s just a halfway to heaven
and a mile outta hell

With Jonathon on his clandestine mission, that left you and Brian alone for a little while. For years, you’d tried to imagine the kind of man that he was just from the little you’d seen of him the night he came to get Justin and the images of him that Justin had created in his studio, and you had to admit to yourself that you’d built him up quite a bit in your head, perhaps saw him the way you felt Justin did—perhaps a bit tainted with hero worship—but in your living room that late afternoon, you didn’t find him as imposing.

“Jonathon said you fainted out front earlier?” you asked him.

Brian rubbed the back of his head at the memory, “Yeah, luckily I wasn’t standing up at the time. He said I was squatting down on the ground.”

“You don’t remember?” you asked him.

“Not really, and I don’t think he wants me to talk about it. I get sick and stuff.”

“Oh, sorry,” you said.

“No problem.”

……

“There’s something I want to show you in my office,” you told Brian, “I need to show you before Jon comes back downstairs.”

“Okay.”

Brian got up and followed you into your office, and you closed the door almost all the way and started pulling out a package that was strategically hidden behind your sofa. When you turned around to show it to Brian, he was sitting at your desk which was covered with news clippings about Alan’s murder. You sat the package on the sofa. “Brian, you probably shouldn’t be looking at those. Some of them are crime scene photos.” You tried to gather up everything he didn’t have in his hands. Jonathon was going to kill you…

“I’m not looking at the pictures,” he said. “I’m reading this article.”

“What article?” you asked, still frantically looking all around him trying to grab everything you could find.

“This article that says that the cops that beat Alan, that you testified against them, that the killing…may have been…retribution…”

“Brian, give me that, please,” you said, grabbing it out of his hand.

“Are they blaming you for his murder?”

“It’s just speculation, okay? It’s just the media.”

“Is it true?”

“Is what true? That I testified against those cops? Yeah, I did. Over a year ago. They have anger management problems; they barely met the psychological requirements to be on the force to begin with, and no one took their earlier incidents seriously enough.”

“It’s not your fault, Daniel.”

“Brian, please. I’ve already caused both you and Justin a horrific amount of pain since what happened to Alan because I didn’t know about Justin; I don’t think we should talk about this, this is dangerous, okay? You’re not well.”

“That’s not your fault either.”

“Jesus Christ, where’s the fucking Xanax?” you asked the ceiling.

“Here,” Brian said, handing you one out of his pocket, “Calm down. You go from like zero to queen in three seconds. What did you want to show me?”

You flopped down on your couch next to the package you’d uncovered, “It’s hardly worth it now, trust me.”

“What is it?”

You laughed because at that point the day really couldn’t get any worse and began to unwrap the bubble wrap, “This is what I’m giving Jon for his birthday in a couple of months. I wanted to show it to you to explain why we did what we did today, that we were truly worried about you and especially about Justin because—"

He cut you off, “You don’t have to explain.”

“It’s just that this isn’t the kind of stuff you fuck around with, and I know that Justin’s really angry at me right now.”

“He won’t be pissed forever. He’ll get over it.”

You weren’t convinced, but you had the gift unwrapped by then, “So instead of telling you all that crap, I was just going to show you this because it sort of expresses the same sentiment, and plus, it’s so Jonathon:

“He’ll love it,” Brian said, a smile spreading across his face. “Did you fuck that artist, too?”

“Um, that would be a negative, but you get ten points for having wit sharper than an ice pick.”

“Why thank you,” he said. “How kind of you to notice.”

“Don’t mention it.”

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV


if you get caught between the moon and New York City

You stood with your hands stuffed in your pockets, your legs crossed, your right ear against the door of the studio and listened to the bits and pieces of conversation that were escaping now and then. Justin’s voice was virtually impossible to decode; his register was too low, but Harper’s wasn’t, and every few seconds you’d get a few words straight from her mouth, loud and clear…

"…well, it’s not exactly the same thing, Justin…

"…because… we were children…

"Okay, okay…. look… Justin… will you please... let me say something?...

"It’s apples and oranges.

"Okay, fine….red apples and green apples…

……

"Because…

"Because....... we each lost our mother. Your situation...... different. And two, we were children."

……

Harper sounded frustrated, worse than she usually did when Sam wouldn’t stop talking like Fozzie the Bear.

"…let me put it to you this way, then.... never get that chance now.... I’m ready to talk to him about it...won't matter.... he’s dead."

……

"I can’t do this anymore." And that was Justin’s voice which meant that he was way too close to the door. You almost pissed on yourself.

"Please just sit down for a minute." Harper, closer.

"Please, Justin." Harper, farther away.

You froze until you knew they no where near the door, turned around, and scurried back down the stairs.

*********************


time is the season
time ain’t no reason

“Well?” Daniel asked.

“It’s probably going to be weird if they come out, and the three of us are sitting here,” you said.

“What’s going on in there? Could you hear?” Brian asked.

You shook your head and lied to him, “No, couldn’t really make anything out,” because you wanted to give Justin the chance to tell Brian what he felt, whenever he was finally ready. “I’m going to catch up with Richard, go back to the church. Why don’t you two come with me?”

Daniel agreed immediately, but Brian refused, “No, I’m going to wait for him.”

“Will you be all right?” you asked him.

He pulled out a pocket full of pills you’d given him and put them on the coffee table, “I have an arsenal of happy pills; I should be fine, right?”

“Stay out of the liquor cabinet, please.”

“Aye, aye, doc,” he said, and then he saluted you.

You handed him one of your business cards and wrote your pager number on it, “Here. Page me if you need me. I’ll call you right back.” Brian took it and laid it on the table with his medicine.

“Good luck, Brian,” Daniel said. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Make yourself at home.”

“Yeah,” you said, “Just whatever you do, don’t fuck up any more furniture, okay?”

He was laughing as the two of you were leaving, laughing and stretching out on the couch, “Yeah, I’ll try, but I have an overwhelming urge to trash this sofa right now. Don’t know if I can stop myself.”

“Baby steps, Brian,” you told him from the doorway, “Baby steps.”

*********************
BRIAN’S POV


what’s your name, little girl,
what’s your name?

an hour later…

And it was baby steps that woke you up—so to speak—because for the second time that day you awoke to find yourself alone in a room with Amelia, only this time, she wasn’t sitting on your chest watching television, she was standing next to you while you napped on the sofa with one of Daniel’s stethoscopes hanging off of her head while she pressed the very cold end of it to your forehead. When you opened your eyes, she smiled at you like you were a Christmas tree and she was the very bright star on the top.

“Hi, Amelia,” you said.

She smiled and laughed and did a little move that was some sort of toddler ecstasy, and then got serious again, “You’re bery, bery sick, Brime Kinney.”

“I am?” you asked her, trying to move the stethoscope cord off of your face.

She pointed her finger at you, “You took a bery good nap, but you have a feber.”

“Is that why you have a stethoscope on my head?”

“It’s your tempature.”

You turned your head toward the coffee table and noticed that it’d been completely cleaned off, no magazines, no meds, nothing. “Amelia, where’s the medicine that was on the coffee table?”

“Daddy put it up high,” she told you, “’Cause it’s bery dangerous.”

“Where is Sam?” you asked her.

She started moving the stethoscope down your face, onto your chest, down your arm; the ever-serious look on her face never changing as she answered your questions, “Yeah...he’s upstairs ‘cause if Mommy doesn’t come down right now I’m gonna borget what she looks like.” When you laughed, she looked at you, studied your face, and then pretended to laugh as well, and then she walked back up to your head to break the horrible news to you in person, “I’m bery, bery sorry, Brime Kinney, but you have to go to the hobspittal.”

“Why?” you asked.

“You have affection.”

“Um, I don’t think I have to go to the hospital for that.” Maybe straight to bed for a solid week, you thought, but not to the hospital. Bad case of affection could put me down for a month even…that wouldn’t be so bad…

The next expression that arrived on her face was one of Harper’s, one of exasperation, and then she bent down and stood back up, smacking your stomach with her little black purse, “You have to have a big shot then if you don’t go to the hobspittal ‘cause you’re so ‘tagious.” You started to have Syphilis flashbacks while Amelia wandered into Daniel’s office and came back out with an ink pen. When she started jabbing you in the hip with it and telling you to, “Roll ober ‘cause it’s so big,” you put an end to her little game.

“I’m sorry, but you have to have a lot more training before I’ll roll over for you, sweetheart. Go put Daniel’s pen back where you found it.”

She was so enthused that you were sitting up and talking to her that she did what you said, looking back over her shoulder a couple of times to see if you were still there as she walked away. You put her little purse and the stethoscope on the coffee table and looked up to see Justin on the stairs watching you.

“Hey,” you said.

“Hey.” He smiled.

Amelia came back out, immensely proud of herself for following your instructions, “I put it back right where I founded it, Brime Kinney!”

“Good job,” you told her as she came back over and stood in front of you. You picked her up and put her in your lap, but your eyes were on Justin because he was walking over and sitting down next to you, too.

“Hi, Waffle,” Amelia said.

“Hi.”

“Why does she call you that?” you asked him.

“It’s a very, very long story,” Justin said.

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s onceupomatime,” Amelia said, standing up in your lap so she could walk back and forth between you and Justin.

“That’s right,” Justin said as she came his way. “Once upon a time.”

*********************


once in your life you find her,
someone that turns your heart around

Sam and Harper came down a few minutes later, and Amelia got to tell her version of shopping at Macy’s in which everyone she met was named ‘Macy,’ how she ‘got losted by the accident,’ and like any good story there was surprise twist at the end…

“Amelia,” Harper said, “Show Daddy the money in your purse.”

Amelia was in heaven during the story because she was the star, and she made a huge production of digging in her purse and pulling out the plastic ice cube she’d been toting around, “This is my fweezer money, Daddy, like Mommy.”

“Freezer money?” Sam asked.

“Yes, honey. You made me freeze my credit cards, so now our daughter thinks that anything in the freezer is money. Isn’t that wonderful?”

(At that point, you weren’t sure who was enjoying this little production more—Amelia or her mother.)

“Show Daddy the rest of your money, Amelia.” Harper said.

So Amelia proudly—and right on queue--pulled four one dollar bills out of her purse one at a time and showed them to Sam who asked, “Where’d you get those?”

Harper smiled at her husband, “She got those when she returned the bracelet she stole.” (Sam looked mildly horrified.)

But Harper and Sam were young parents then and not yet cognizant of the fact that the one golden rule of parenting is that the joke is always on you…

Because Amelia was still digging in her purse, desperately trying to help her mother show her father exactly what she meant and when she finally pulled her little hand out, her face gleaming with pride because she had tangible proof of what her money could’ve bought had it been so inclined—a tiny, colorful, Hello Kitty bracelet—and she proclaimed with the enthusiasm of an Olympic gold-medalist, “Here, Daddy, look! It’s so ‘squisite ‘cause I stoled it!”

And it was Harper’s turn to be horrified.

......

And in an odd way, it gave you hope. You weren’t the only well-intentioned soul in the world whose influence over someone much younger than you, someone that you loved in a way you could barely describe had gotten off track; maybe these things happen to everybody to some degree or another; maybe the stubborn, faulty reasoning of a beautiful, little girl with unbelievable taste in men could help you forgive yourself for what you felt you’d done to Justin.

Because all those years that you thought you were keeping him safe with condoms, unconventional commitment, and insisting that he get a PhD in the Brian Kinney Beer Before Liquor and Related Substances Program had been a complete joke, and, quite frankly, it really wasn't funny anymore.

*********************


no good deed goes unpunished

Justin wasn’t really himself until you got back to The Regency which was about forty minutes after Amelia’s one woman show. You felt like you’d been at a party with him, some company thing that he didn’t really want to be at-where he was just cordial and polite to everyone, including you-until you got back inside your suite. But he didn’t move away from you when you put your arm around him on the ride back to the hotel and when you helped him out of the cab in front of the hotel, he never let go of your hand, walking a step behind you all the way through the lobby.

But once you were alone with him, things began to change again…

“How did this get here?” he asked, pointing to his garment bag hanging in the open coat closet as you stepped off the elevator.

“That’s your suit. Gabe’s in town; I asked him to bring it…for tomorrow. They must’ve brought it up.”

“Are my—?”

“Your shoes are in there.”

“What about--?”

“I have a tie you can wear.”

He walked over to your suitcase, flipped it over, and began to dig through your clothes, presumably to look at his options, and you were going to just go show him, but you didn’t really think that what he was in there mumbling about really had anything to do with ties, so you went into the outer room and sat down on the sofa and looked out the window at the view of the city. It was five o’clock and the frenzy was starting.

“I don’t really like any of the ones you brought,” he told you from the doorway of your bedroom. “They don’t look like me; they look like you.”

You stared out the window, wondering if it was going to rain, “There’s one in there that’s just black. You can wear that one.”

“I don’t like that one either.”

……

“Then don’t wear one.”

……

You knew he was just standing in the doorway, staring at you with his arms crossed because that’s what he does, so you offered up another alternative, “Call downstairs. They’ll get you anything you want. You can pick it out online; they’ll go get it.” He waited a few seconds and then disappeared from the doorway.

He said nothing; he just closed the door between you—a quiet but firm click.

*********************


wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then

You watched as it began to rain, watched it trickle down the window, felt the darkness fight and then give up as it began to settle too early over the room. You stared at the door he’d closed between you; there was no light underneath it, no invitation. He’d given up as well. You knew on some level that you had work to do, that you needed to get up and do something, but that something was stopping you because you found yourself, once again, faced with a revolving bookcase of sorts…the kind that you’d seen in the The Addam’s Family… only yours was fashioned not out of books of Morticia’s incantations but out of the decade of guilt you’d harbored because of that one night, and when it turned, it wasn’t a fake fireplace ready to blend in with the rest of the room, it was a patchwork of indecision, a rouse to fool yourself—and Justin-- that you were doing what was best for him by doing nothing. After all, if he disagreed, if he pushed you against the wall, well, all you had to do was smile, and, lo and behold, it disappeared.

Voila!

As you sat there watching the rain, your sense of obligation began to knit, to repair the connection between the two of you, willing to bear the burden for the time being. You got up and tapped on the door, and when he didn’t respond you opened it. Your suitcase was on the floor, and he was lying on the bed, facing away from you, staring out the window at his own storm.

Lyrics taken from Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, What A Wonderful World, Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me, Oasis’s Wonderwall, Bob Seger’s Against the Wind, Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity, Gene McLellan’s Put Your Hand in the Hand, Culture Club Time, Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters, Bert Russell Berns’s Tell Him, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Steely Dan’s Do It Again, Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know, Kenny Loggins’s Whenever I Call You Friend, Billy Joel’s It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me, Fastball’s Out of My Head, Bob Seger’s Against the Wind again, Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know again, Tom Petty’s Refugee, Kansas’s Dust in the Wind, Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle, Steely Dan’s Reelin’ in the Years, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run again and Hungry Heart, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, Phil Collins’s Against All Odd from the motion picture soundtrack An Officer and a Gentleman, Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark and Better Days, Arthur’s Theme (Best that You Can Do) by Christopher Cross, Blue Oyster Cult’s Burnin’ for You, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s What’s Your Name?, Arthur’s Theme (Best that You Can Do) by Christopher Cross again, John Mellencamp’s Crumblin’ Down, and Bob Seger's Against the Wind again.

Icon bases used throughout this story came from basicbases, basebeat, khushi_icons, obsessiveicons, graphical_love, anithradia, simplybases, randomicons, bases_by_maggie, blackwhiteicons, dramadiva_icons, driveon_icons, foryourhead, icon_goddess, amillionicons, joelzbutterly, icon_duration, timepunching, andos_pics, some icon communities at Greatest Journal, and the website Absolute Trouble.