BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 42-SURROGATES

ZEEK ZIRROLLI'S POV
here I am
the one that you love 

The headline on the front page of the New York Times that Friday morning, April 8, 2011, was one you expected but that did nothing to lessen its impact when you read it:

New York’s Finest Plead Guilty:  No Denial, No Trial

You tossed away everything but the first few pages, folded them, and stuck them in your interior suit pocket, and when you walked into Mama Zirrolli's at eight a.m. to find your little brother slinging hash in his suit pants, an old t-shirt of yours, and his trusty apron, he only had one question for you, “Who tied your tie?”

“Lana,” you said, pulling a stool up to the cash register island.  “Coffee ready?”  Gabe pointed his spatula at the coffee pot and declared, “So that's where you were last night.”

“That's where I was,” you confirmed for him, sitting down with your very hot mug.

“Rube called you six times.”

“I know.”

“I ended up talking to him for forty-five minutes because you wouldn't answer your fucking phone.”

“I was busy.”

“Busy,” Gabe repeated as if it was the vilest word in the English language.

“It’s your fault.  If you hadn't given Trinity my fucking phone number, I probably wouldn't have been out so late.”

“You just said you were with Lana.”

“Did I say it was a private party?”

*********************
roses are red
some diamonds are blue
chivalry is dead
but you're still kinda cute  

And, indeed, it wasn't...

The night before, well, you'd tried to do the right thing.  You knew what kind of mood you were in when you showed up at Lana's watering hole for the second day in a row knowing that if you showed just the slightest bit of emotional unrest, her personal watering hole would be a welcome shelter for your dick in the very foreseeable future.  She smiled when you saw you walk in; you were soaked to the bone from the endless rain.  She was pouring—and smiling—before you even sat all the way down.  “You're soaking wet,” she said as she handed you a double shot of some top shelf whiskey.  “I'm kind of hoping to say that to you later,” you said as you took it from her.  No need to beat around the bush when the bush was just as happy to be there as you were.  “I get off in an hour and a half,” she replied.  “Then so will I,” you said with a smile.  The bar was crowded and noisy; no one wanted to venture out into the rain, and it was so loud that you never heard your cell phone ring.  At one point in the evening, you went to use the restroom, and in that quieter echo chamber, it beeped at you until you flipped it open.  There were nine calls:  six from Rube and three from a number you didn't recognize.  You called it and were greeted by a chirpy little voice that sounded vaguely familiar... 

“Hello?”

“This is Zeek; who is this?” you asked.

“It's Trinity...from police--”

“How'd you get my number?”

“Your brother.”

You pondered that for a few seconds and decided you didn't really care, “Yeah, whatcha need?”

“Well... it's really late now...but...I was wondering if....”   You wanted to tell her to cut to the chase, but women don't like that when you first meet them, so you waited patiently, staring at the crappy ceiling in the bathroom, “...Wondering if you wanted to have dinner.”

“I already ate.”

“Well, so did I, actually....  I mean, it's so late now....”

You looked at your phone, “Shit, it's eleven thirty.”

“Where are you?”

.......

With your foot propping open the back door of the bar’s kitchen, you pondered what you were about to propose to Lana while you smoked a cigarette.  When you returned to your stool, Lana was way at the other end of the bar, but she eventually saw you and pulled herself away from the scores of drunks clamoring for her attention and made it back to you.  She took one look at you and asked, “What's up?  You okay?”

“You up for anything tonight?” you asked her.

“What happens if I say 'no?'”

“It'd be like old times...you know.....”

“How old?” she asked, leaning on the bar at that point; you could see right down her shirt.

“Dangerously old,” you told her.

Lana got a twinkle in her eye, “'Old' like pretty little artist with long, honey-colored hair and no boundaries...?”

“Same show, different actress,” you said.

“Who?”

“Police chief's sec--,” you responded and before you could say anything else there was a hand on your arm; you turned to your left and there was Trinity, looking much less prissy than she had earlier that day.  Her hair was down; her shirt wet; her smile beguiling.  You introduced her, “Lana, this is Trinity.  Trinity, Lana.”

“Hi,” Trinity said.  Lana smiled at Trinity, filled her drink order, and then smiled at you and said, “Let me wrap things up.”  You put your arm around Trinity's waist and said, “Drink up.”

“So I guess it is too late for dinner,” Trinity said as she picked up her glass.

“Yeah...,” you agreed, “But there's always desert.”

*********************
you’re still the same 

Gabe slammed your breakfast down in front of you.  “You fucked her?  The chief's assistant?  The man who’s doing a major favor for us today?”

“Well, I wasn't the only one,” you offered.

“What in the holy hell is wrong with you?”

“Your vagina is twice as big as your dick, you know that, 'Cakes?  She had no problem with it.  This isn't nineteen fifty-five as much as you wish it was, and besides, I was a total gentleman; I let them get it on first.”

Gabe cracked another egg and threw away the yoke instead of the shell, you were so far under his skin, “Goddamnit.  She's going to be there today; the chief’s going to be there today.  You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“Only you could meet a girl named 'Trinity,' and coax her into a three-way.”

“I told her it was her birth right.”

Gabe tossed his spatula in the sink and sat down across from you, “Unfuckingbelievable.”

“I know; it was like I had my own little ass menagerie.”

Gabe stuck his fork in your face, “It's called a 'ménage à trois,' you dolt.”

“It’s called me and my dick and an all-night pass at Great Ass-venture, and let me reassure you, ‘Cakes, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

*********************
DANNY CARTWRIGHT'S POV
I’m findin’ it hard to believe we’re in heaven 

When you’re alive, you get through each day, each challenge you face, convincing yourself that death is the ultimate relief, but you’d found no relief in this place you found yourself dead in.  You’d been bored, restless, surprised, and confused.  Relief seemed to be a foreign concept in the AfterDeath, but you weren’t willing to give up the ghost completely, although a dead man hanging onto hope certainly should’ve crossed over wearing an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt that had an arrow pointing up.  Your walking and walking and walking was coming to an end again, and there you were in front of:

Door Number One.

You stood there with Tate and Madeline, outside the closed gray door, and waited.  Madeline was fifteen.  She'd become unruly and then an emotional wreck, and then started her period, and then started doing cartwheels and handsprings down the halls, and then she became interested in you...

“She's just like her mother,” Tate said, “And her mother is just like her mother.  If I had a dime for every doctor Ruth batted her eyelashes at, I'd be one rich zombie.”

“It's just...  She's fifteen.”

“Her mother and your son--”

“They're married?” you asked.

Tate laughed at you, “Hell, no.  Your son's a fairy.”  And when she saw the look on your face, she revised her statement, “I'm sorry, I mean he's one of those homosexuals.”

“He's gay?”

“You didn't know that, did you?” she asked.

“He was a kid when I--”

“Shit, shit, shit.  See, that's my fault.  I'm sorry.  We haven't found the remote yet; I shouldn't have told you that.”  You'd stopped walking at that point and were just leaning against the corridor wall.  “Danny, come on,” Tate urged you.

“I don't want him to be gay,” you said.  Tate called ahead to Madeline and asked her to do her gymnastics in one spot for a while; she agreed and you kept hearing her feet smack the ground every few seconds.  “I don't want to go any further,” you told her.  “I don't want to see anything.”

“Well, that doesn't matter; you have to.”

“No, I don't.  I'll just stay here.  I'm in a fucking hospital.  I have everything I need,” you told your post-mortem tour guide.

But then she broke the bad news to you, “This place isn't really a hospital, Danny.  It isn't really anything, and even if Madeline and I were physically able to walk away from you, which were not, it wouldn't stay this way.  It would go away.”

“Why?”

“Because it's only here as a means to a means.”

“You mean a 'means to an end.'”

“No, I meant what I said.  There is no end, at least not one that I've ever seen.”

“Screw it; I don't care.”

Tate walked to the other side of the hall and leaned against the wall, “Let me explain something to you about being dead—the only difference between being up here and down there is that down there you had control over what you did and up here you don't.”

“So?”

“So you're going to feel the same things, want the same things, need the same things—only you can't control how you resolve those feelings or get what you want or need.  The only thing you can do is go with the flow; that's the only choice you have and the best option to get you where you think you need to be.”

“TATE, DANNY, CHECK ME OUT!” you heard next, and Madeline came barreling down the corridor showing off her roundoff double back handspring back-flip and her picture perfect landing, and Tate shook her head at the teen, “Girl, it's a good thing your ass is already dead 'cause you're about to kill yourself.”

“I'm awesome,” she said.

“You ready to walk?” Tate asked you, and you nodded your head, and Madeline took off again.  A few minutes later, you looked up and she was twirling two batons.

“Where the hell she'd get those?” you ask Tate.

“Zombie flea market, I guess,” Tate sighed.

......

On your way to Door Number One, you asked Tate what else she knew about your son, and she was reluctant to say anything, but finally, she gave in—sort of.  “Look, I'm not gonna tell you too much about him because that gets everything out of order.  All I'm gonna say is that I thought at first that you were him because--”

“Because why?” you asked.

“Because one of his friends, Alan, is up here...because he was just murdered in front of your son's home.”

“Because he was gay?” you asked.

Tate seemed exasperated, “Look, I know you died in the eighties and all, but not everything in life—or death—has to do with being gay, okay?”

“Okay, I'm sorry; I just don't understand.”

“He was murdered real bad, and your son found him...”

“Who killed him?”

“Cops.”

“Why?”

“Your son is a rich shrink; Alan was homeless, and they were friends.  Maybe that pissed them off or something.  Hell if I know.”

“My son's a doctor?”

“Yep, a very gay, very rich doctor.”  She turned her head, put her hand on your arm and stopped your forward motion, “Now, you're not so upset about the fairy part, are you?”

“I'm so proud of him,” you gushed.

“He still likes to give blow jobs.”

“Shut up.”

And by that point, you could see Madeline up ahead standing still in front of a closed door, and as you and Tate got closer, she was visibly distressed.  Tate reached out and put her hand on the girl's forehead, “She's burning up.”

“Somebody's in there,” Madeline said as she touched the metal handle on the door and the heat was obvious in her hand; she immediately let go.  “You open it, Tate.”

Tate gave both you and Madeline a wary look and then touched the door knob.  “It's not hot to me,” she said as she turned it and then peeked inside.  “Oh good lord, Jesus,” she whispered and she pulled it shut again.

“What?  What is it?” you asked.

“The remote's in there,” Tate said as if she was rendering bad news.

“Well, go get it,” you said.

“Your wife is in there, too,” she said.

“Emma?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't really want to see her,” you admitted, feeling guilty, “I mean, maybe not right now.”

“No, you don't,” Tate said, “'Cause she ain't in there by herself.” 

Madeline leaned against the door, closed her eyes, and her entire body started to glow.  And then a sly, serene smile covered her face; her eyes closed.  “It's an orgy,” she said, the way one fantasizes about eating a bag of Hershey’s kisses.

“With who?” you asked.

Tate pushed Madeline away from the door as she informed youu, “Emma, her best friend, Sandra, a Ronald Reagan impersonator, and Orville Redenbacher.”

“What?”

“I’m gonna get that clicker; it's on the bed frame, and then I'm gonna get the hell out of there.  Do not follow me in there Madeline.”

“It feels good,” she moaned.

“You listen to me, Maddie.  It probably does, but you don't want your first time to be with a man who probably only needs three minutes in a microwave to pop, got it?”

And then the three of you heard a voice from the other side of the gray door; it was Emma's:

“Oh, Mr. Redenbacher, tear down my walls!”

‘Reagan's’:  “There you go again.”

“Or my name isn't Sandra Lynn Massey!”

You threw up in your mouth.

“Cover me!” Tate said as she bolted inside.  When she returned a few seconds later, slamming the door behind her, she was winded and disheveled.  “Here,” she said, slapping the remote in your hand.

It was covered in butter.

You looked up at Madeline who was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette; she glanced at you as she exhaled; her shirt had gotten tighter, her voice has gotten smoother; “So Danny, was it good for you, too?”

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV
he’s a real nowhere man 

Waking up that Friday morning, the day of Alan’s funeral, wasn’t easy.  In fact, you tried to avoid it for as long as you could.  The guest room in the suite was dark thanks to its heavy, tacky curtains and Brian was right beside you, sound asleep on his stomach.  You pulled the sheets off of him—albeit rather slowly--so you could stare at his body, and then you felt guilty because he might get cold, so you covered him back up and lay right beside him.  His eyes fluttered for a few seconds.  You kissed his bicep and gazed at his face.

…..

You sighed.

……

You rolled on your other side and tried to go back to sleep and that’s when he reached out, snatched you and pulled you back against him.  “Where are you going?” he asked, his words branding the inquiry behind your ear.

“Nowhere, I guess,” you admitted, the significance of his question and your answer yet to make itself relevant.

His hand moved slowly up your back, his fingers eventually combing through your hair as he kissed the back of your neck.  “How long ‘till we have to get up?”

“Doesn’t matter,” you said, “We’re not going.”

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY'S POV
and she’s taking off her dress

Harper invited you into her bedroom that morning when you made it clear that you'd come to see her, so you sat in an winged-back chair by the window, staring out of it when she unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor.  “I really wish you wouldn't do that,” you told her, but she didn't care what you wanted—not one bit--as she picked the pooled fabric off the floor and reintroduced it to a hanger.  She wasn't completely undressed; she was wearing a slip of some sort--something old and stained—as she stood in front of her closet exchanging one dress for another.

“I can't make up my mind,” she said.

“Was that your mother's?” you asked, meaning the creamy aged nylon coating covering her body.  Years of knowing her and Daniel and you knew that therapy for Harper is whenever and wherever she wants it...and free.

“Yes,” she said.

“Is this the first time you've worn it?” you asked her.

“Yes, it is.”

Amelia toddled in with her cereal spoon in her left hand and questioned her mother, “Mommy?”

“You're supposed to eat breakfast at the table, Amelia.”

“But I hafta...  I already knowed that...  I hafta--”

“You have to what?” Harper asked her.

“I'm 'upposed to wear a leckness today 'cause it's a lock... and you're 'upposed to lock it.”

“Yes, you are, but you have to finish your breakfast first, then get dressed, and then I'll put the necklace on for you.”

“'Cause I'm 'upposed to,” Amelia reiterated. 

“It's a 'locket,' Amelia,” Harper stressed.  “One word... locket.”

“I already knowed that it's a lock 'cause you lock it 'cause I already knowed that.”

“Okay, well if you already know that, then why aren't you in the kitchen with your father finishing your breakfast?”

Amelia looked at her spoon and then at you, and you shrugged your shoulders, so she turned back to her mother, her tiny sticky hand reaching out and touching Harper's thigh and, therefore, the slip Harper was wearing; her eyes widened as she touched it as if it had magical powers. “'Cause...'cause you're so 'squisite, Mommy....and Daddy....,” and then she reached out and wrapped both of her arms around Harper's legs and hugged them, “'Cause Daddy F-  'Cause Daddy F-C-U... F-U-C-K you in that bery pretty dress.”

“Sam!”

You made a mental note to buy Amelia a very tiny couch for her birthday.

*********************
BRIAN'S POV
don’t need no baggage
just get on board 

Justin’s announcement had taken you off guard.  He was ready to move on, ostensibly to get his morning fuck right on schedule, but his abrupt change of plans had made you lose interest.  He turned to face you, maybe to see what the hold up was, and that’s when you told him, “Well, I’m going.” You watched his face trying to gauge his reaction as the light around the edges of the curtains began to sneak in, slowly surrendering to the day, and then you finished, “And after what happened to me yesterday, I’m not going by myself.”

“Don’t do this,” he said.                                      

“I’m serious.  I need you with me.”

He sat up and crossed his legs, “No, you don’t.  You need a babysitter.” 

“Okay, fuck that then.  I want you with me.  How’s that?”  He was pissed on all fronts at that point because the bed in the guest room was in a corner, and he had nowhere to go except deeper into it, scooting away from you.

“You didn’t even know Alan.  You’re just being a dick.”

“He painted my goddamn portrait underneath New York City, Justin.  I’m gonna go pay my respects to the guy and his friends.  I happen to have a lot of respect for struggling, young artists.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.  I married one, didn’t I?”

……

And the rapid fire was over as quickly as it had started.

……

And the silence that followed was so awkward it creaked.

……

Like a ghost in the attic.

Sometimes something can go wrong in the weirdest way with Justin, and you never know it until its way too far gone—like cheese and crackers and a picnic on the floor.

You couldn’t tell from the look on his face what you’d said or done, but whatever it was, it was worse than cheese and crackers—way worse.

So you lay there trying to think of what could be worse than cheese and crackers.

Moldy cheese and crackers?

Funny thing…you weren’t that far off.

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY'S POV
and she opens up her eyes

Harper’s bedroom was the darkest room in their apartment, but not because of the windows.  The floor and walls were a dark mahogany reminiscent of an old, old movie.  It was the only room in the apartment where the walls matched the dark hardwood floors, and it made the occupier feel encapsulated, almost as if he or she were living in a very roomy coffin.  It had to be haunted by something.

Amelia was led out of the foreboding room by her father, and then Harper turned to you, “You can stop laughing now.  Why are you here anyway?”  She was still--supposedly--deciding on a dress.  “I wanted to see how you were doing,” you admitted, taking in the random pieces of decorative molding in the corners that didn’t seem to serve any purpose.  “Well, clearly, I'm ‘Mother of the Year.’”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Your righteous-ass boyfriend pissed me off last night.”

“I know, and he's sorry.  He doesn't know you inside and out, and he's used to having a pulpit.”

“Is he okay?”

“Richard?  Of course.”

“No, Justin.  He said you were with Justin last night.”

“I was.”

“Well?  Is he okay?”

“He's struggling with today; are you?”

“You really came all the way over here to check on me?”

“I did.”

“I find that suspiciously considerate of you.”

“Well, regardless, Daniel would be here if he had it in him; he'd be sitting right here.”

“I should call him,” Harper said wistfully, sitting down on her bed.  The thin ivory sheets looked ghostly; the abandoned wrappings of a mummy perhaps.  “I don't want you to call him,” you said, leaning forward, “He's not himself right now.”

“That's why you're here,” she said, and when you nodded, she finished her thought, “I'm worried about the wrong person.”

*********************
BRIAN’S POV
when the walls
come tumblin', tumblin'
crumblin', tumblin'
down  

You knew you could probably seduce Justin out of his well, but you wanted him to come out on his own.  The whirlwind of the last few days was beginning to alter your perspective...

Although Justin had been ‘gone’ for six years, your reunion—for the most part—felt like slipping back into your favorite pair of jeans that had fallen down—almost forgotten--in the back of your closet.  But once you put them back on and started to move around in them, you realized how old they really were, saw that the holes in them were bigger than you remembered, and that there was a bunch of shit in the pockets you’d forgotten all about.

Something had just shaken out of one of those pockets and was lying in between you on the sheets, and nobody wanted to claim it.

Justin’s jaw was set firm, but it was all for show, you could tell.  His anger was a cloak around something else.  “I just said something that really pissed you off, right?”  He nodded his head.  “Gonna tell me what it was?”

……

……

It took him awhile because apparently his mouth was sewn shut.  “The last thing you said,” he finally released.

“The last thing I said?”  He nodded again.  You thought for a second, “That I married an artist?  That pissed you off?”

“Yes."

“Why?  You don’t like that ring on your finger?”

……

(His impending reaction to your remark, well, it reminded you of those tops you used to play with on the kitchen floor when you were little, the ones where you’d yank the wire, let go, and then watch it spin like mad bumping into the dishwasher, the cabinets, the refrigerator, over and over again until the string was back inside.  Sometimes you’d corner it, pull the string, and then put your finger on the very top just to feel the wicked vibration as it spun wildly in place burning your skin.  Justin was starting to spin like that, and his string was a lot longer than you ever imagined…)

“Fuck the ring.  You don’t know what the fuck you married,” he spat out.

“I don’t?”

What came next, his answer to your stupid question, came at you hard, his words like one of those rogue tidal waves that supposedly explains the Bermuda Triangle, “No, you don’t.  You don’t know shit about anything--except that your life is perfect with your millions of dollars and huge house and robots and businesses and minions and me to fuck every night—“

Whoa.

“I passed out cold yesterday and smacked my head on the fucking sidewalk.  What’s perfect about that?” you asked him.

“You’ll have that fixed in three days, tops—just like always.”

“Oh yeah, right; I forgot because I’m also a magician.”

“And probably God,” he shot back.

“Okay, fine, I’m the be all end all, so then who the fuck are you?” you asked him, and that really pissed him off, and he kicked a pillow toward your face.  You caught it and threw it on the floor. 

“Fuck you, Brian.”

“Answer me.”

……

……

He stared at you, his eyes so dark they looked like two gun barrels pointed at your face.

……

You didn’t look away.

……

……

And then he pulled the trigger, and as you suspected, his bullets were blanks…

……

“I’m an idiot,” he said, and the anger was bleeding out of his voice, and you really didn’t like the ache that was taking its place, “A total…fucking…idiot.”

He’d spun out, completely.

…...

“Why are you an idiot?” you asked him, your voice softening in response to the look on his face.

“It’s really complicated,” he answered, almost disgusted by it.

“I know I’m not the genius that you are, but try me, I might understand it.”  He made a face at you, and you made one back, and then the stiff silence returned, but you felt safe enough to reach out and touch him, so you put your hand on his thigh.  He looked down at it.  You squeezed and right then a tear fell and landed on the back of your hand.  “Don’t,” you said, reaching up and wiping away the next one that was ready to fall.  Your request made no difference, so you tugged on his hand, pulling him back down in the sheets.  He pressed his face against your chest as if that was going to hold everything else inside him.  He’d been an emotional basket case for days, but this was different.  Those meltdowns were more about you or the friction between the two of you; this one was about him.  You could feel the difference; you could feel how physically tired he was and what it took for him to get to that moment with you in the room.  So you let him lie there and you thought about the nights after he got hurt when he wouldn’t let you touch him, and you realized that although you’d broken through that barrier a decade ago, you’d missed the mark by a country mile.  You were standing in front of the wrong fucking wall the whole fucking time. 

“Just tell me,” you said, and he wrapped his arms around you and said nothing.  “Are you straight?  Is that it?” you tried.  You could feel him laughing, just a little.  “No, you dumb ass.” (According to the New England Journal of Medicine, verbal marital affection wanes in the morning hours.)

“Pregnant?”

“I was, but it was Zeek’s, so I had an abortion.”  (Talk about a perfect recipe for a dumb blond.)   You reached beneath the covers and pinched his ass. “Ow, damn.”    And again the room got quiet again, so you threw out your last idea, “So what?  You don’t want to bottom anymore?”  And that’s when he looked at you, and it was, in retrospect, one of the scariest ten seconds of your life, but then he finally started getting real with you…

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

USTIN'S POV
but see how deep that bullet lies

The only truth left in your life that morning was a bit of an oxymoron. The only truth was that the man who’d introduced you to every high and low you’d ever felt in your life—usually with very little warning—was the only thing you had left to hold on to. It scared you and reassured you at the same time; that’s why no one else would ever understand why you wanted Brian’s eyes to close when you kissed him, why you wanted to hear him whisper the things that he whispers when his hand is between your legs, why you needed to see the sly smile on his face, however slight, as he fills you, because he never breathes until he’s recovered from that initial so-tight-warm-oh-god pleasure, and when he finally does, he always exhales into a kiss…

Because you needed him deep inside you to tell him the truth, to tell him that since you’d come back, the only time you didn’t feel like an utterly pointless piece of crap was when you were underneath him. You needed to tell him that all of those nights that he’d come from work to find you waiting for him in bed or the sauna with nothing on but a smile weren’t just wedded bliss; they were your whiskey, and the worse it got, the more you needed. You had to tell him that you were really afraid—especially after that particular week in New York—that you’d come back to him for the wrong reason. And so you did. You told him everything because you loved him—especially after that week in New York. You loved him so deep down, so deep that no fuck in the world could ever get to it, and yet you were overwhelmed with this burning compulsion inside you to try to reach it anyway.

And he looked at you in a way that felt sort of familiar and sort of not, and then he kissed you like it might be the last time he was ever going to get the chance, and you stayed with it for as long as you could until you couldn’t because you felt like you’d been dishonest with him, albeit unintentionally, and he put his hand on your face because he knew it would act like a magnet and bring your eyes back to his, and when it did, he asked you, “What?”

“Sometimes I don’t think you listen to me,” you said.

“I listened to everything you said.”

“Then why are you acting like nothing’s wrong?”

“Because it’s okay.”

You sighed in frustration, “No, it’s not okay. I’m trying to tell you that I think came back to you because I was running away from something else.”

“I know.”

“So what? Nothing I do affects you? You’re just above all of this? This isn’t an equal playing field? Am I still some stupid teenager to you or something?”

“No,” he emphasized, “But you’re pissed and we’re fucking, and your ass just got really tight.” And when you moved to drastically change that scenario, he doubled back fast, “I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I was just trying to lighten the mood. Please, just….” And you stayed where you were. “Just talk,” he said, “Just talk; I’ll listen.” And then he kissed you on the forehead and ran his fingers through your hair.

Your hands rested on his shoulders, “Remember when you said that you wanted me safe?”

“Yeah.”

“It goes both ways, Brian.” His body relaxed in your arms. “I don’t think you understand what that’s like for me. I’m not you; I don’t have the resources you have. I can’t protect you with money or influence or even physical strength. I can’t do—"

“You do it with distance,” he said quietly. You could feel the truth percolating inside you, ready to steam through your pores; Brian kissed the side of your face; he could feel it, too.

“When I came to see you after I got hurt, that’s when I realized that that’s all I had. I felt like the closer I got to you, the more pain I caused.”

“That’s not true,” he said.

“And then we tried to make it work and we couldn’t, and the only time I ever had any power in the relationship—"

“Was when you left.”

“And with power comes responsibility,” you admitted.

Brian lifted up a little so he could see you better, “It wasn’t a real power, Justin. It was just perception. You’re not responsible for this shit,” and then he lay back down.

“I know that intellectually, but you have to understand that I want for you what you want for me. I can’t tolerate a minute of my life if I think I’m hurting you.”

“So your solution to this is to suffer in silence? To lie to me in the morning and then spend your days at St. James hanging out with ghosts? Where are you going with this?”

Your hand stopped moving on his back, “How’d you know that?”

“I work in the city; I drive around; I recognize my ‘vette.”

And when you asked him why he didn’t question you earlier about it he told you that he was your partner, not the FBI, and that he trusted you, and that you’d fess up when you were ready…

And when you were done, when the truth had finally come out, you exhaled and relaxed because the source of your cancerous, ongoing discomfort was beginning to dissipate, and the situation was very clear. You’d been trapped inside a bastardized version of The Wizard of Oz:

There’s no place--that feels--like home.

He touched your face, and you smiled because he was smiling a little, and his lips felt very soft and very sweet when he kissed you and then passively urgent and needy in that way he has about him when he wants you, and you didn’t want it to stop; you surrendered to it because you wanted to feel needed, and you wanted to hear him breathe the way he breathes when he wants you to touch him…

*********************
BRIAN'S POV
you got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
maybe we make a deal
maybe together we can get somewhere

his confession a few minutes prior…

You rolled onto your back, “C'mere for a second,” and held him as his head lay heavy on your chest, your fingers twirling his hair. He'd brought the sheets and blankets with him as he lay down, only his head visible. You held his hand where it lay on your chest. “What's happening to you, this isn't your fault, okay?” He didn't say anything; he just tensed up on top of you, and then he let go of your hand, and you thought he was going to get up or move away, but he didn't; his fingers crept up your chest and then wrapped-loosely--around your neck. You put your abandoned hand on his shoulder, letting it dip beneath the sheets.

You lay with him in silence.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually whispered, “I’m sorry I lied to you,” and you put your hand on his chin and made him look at you as you told him, “I don’t give a fuck about that; I give a fuck about how you feel; you’re too pretty to be sad.” He rolled his eyes at you and sort of smiled. “I’m serious,” you reiterated, “It’s a fucking tragedy. It’s worse than starving children in Africa. I can’t take it.”

“You’re so stupid sometimes.”

“Too bad; it’s just the truth.”

He lay back down and sighed; his body feeling heavier and heavier as the seconds passed, and then he finally spoke, his fingers wound tightly in your hair; he was holding onto you...for fear of sinking?

He told you what a nightmare he'd been living, that he felt like he was trying to out run something that was always right behind him, that he was terrified that he'd brought this thing back to you. He told you that he felt like he was tied up—that his love for you had bound this pain inside him, and once inside him, it had rotted him from the inside out and turned him into a corpse.

You told him that you knew, that you understood now, that you could see it in him when you left for work, when you came home from work, that you were hoping like hell—like an idiot--that it was boredom...

He wished.

He talked about the emptiness inside him, and you felt like you were listening to yourself ten years prior because he'd figured out what you'd figured out: that there's no such thing as empty emptiness; there's something there, something dark and dank and deplorable, something that you'd rather not see or smell or touch, so maybe you drank and danced and fucked and maybe he painted for Hollywood hot shots or rich psychiatrists or gallery owners; maybe he sold his pain to the highest bidder--

(--and by the way, why were you such a fucking idiot to buy it?)

And then he realized what you'd finally realized: you can't out run your own shadow.

He told you about St. James, about how he was trying to loosen something inside himself, knock out a brick in the wall between him and this anchor sinking his soul and get some fucking relief. That he would go there, walk around the locker room, the one place where he knew he fought back before he got bashed because he could smell courage in there, because he could feel his fist balling up and making contact; he could taste the blood. The janitor there remembered him, told him to leave the first time, but after that, he just left him alone, let him lean against the lockers and feel the cold metal against his skin....

“That scratch on your back?” you asked him. “You did that to yourself?” He stopped talking and let go of you, so you back-pedaled, “Never mind; it doesn't matter.”

“I didn't mean to,” he said. “Okay.” He lay back down again, and you stroked the back of his head, and then his movie—his feature presentation—began again, telling you that afterwards, he'd go to the loft and take a shower, and lie in your bed—naked and without even drying off--and let himself get freezing cold and try to make something come out of him, something he could put in front of himself and deal with—because he couldn’t take what was inside him anymore.

And then he'd go home and shower and get dressed and smile and be waiting for you when you got home from work, and you were none the wiser.

Except that you were.

You felt sick.

Because you knew something wasn't right. You knew because you’d sent Theodore to the loft one day to get something for you, and when he returned he told you—during what was a very strange conversation—that someone had been there, had just been there, and when you asked him why…

“Because Justin’s blazer from high school is balled up on the bed…and the sheets are wet.”

“Huh?”

“I heard water dripping; I mean I wouldn’t have gone into your bedroom otherwise. The shower was dripping.”

Theodore may be one of the most boring and sometimes annoying people on the planet, but he was also one of the most discreet, and he quietly left your office, making no comment as you gathered your phone and your coat and left Kinnetik. You drove to the loft in complete silence, and when you got there, Theodore was right. The shower was no longer dripping, but everything else was exactly as he’d described it. You called Justin’s cell and were kind of relieved when he didn’t pick up. You hung his blazer back up, storing it back in its plastic storage bag, and then changed the sheets on the bed. And then you left; your memory of what you’d seen left behind balled up in the wet sheets in the dirty clothes.

You’d refused to let that experience or any of the other red flags congregate in your mind to form a picture you didn’t want to see…

Justin didn't want to re-assimilate into the life he once had; he didn't want to socialize; you'd tell yourself he was being a temperamental artist, only he was never in his studio. You'd come from work night after night to a dark house and have to play hide-and-seek to find him. Once in March, you finally stood in your kitchen and called the house from your cell, and when he answered, you asked, “Where are you?”

“In the sauna.”

He didn't answer you in his come-and-get-me voice, but you pretended he did, shedding your clothes and joining him. It was dark in there, too. He'd been in there for a good fifteen minutes; you looked at the timer before you went in. You turned the lights on, keeping them very dim as you stepped inside; he was lying flat on his back on one of the benches. You sat down beside him; he sat up a little and then rested his sweaty head on your legs.

“You've been in here a long time,” you said.

“Feels good.”

“What do you want to do for dinner?”

“I don't know; I'm not really hungry.” It dawned on you that night in the sauna that he hadn't exactly been gaining weight since he got home. He turned his head toward your stomach and moaned, “Give it to me.”

“Give you what?” you asked.

“You know what. I've been lying here for twenty minutes fantasizing about sucking you off.”

“You have?” He didn't answer you; he moved fast and slippery on his stomach, pushing you back into the corner, shoving one of your legs off the bench, and then your hand was on his damp hair as he kissed the inside of your thigh, your balls, and then you were feeding him your cock. He moaned hard when he went down on you, and you gripped his shoulder with one hand and the bench with the other trying to keep your body from sliding as you began to perspire. “Jesus Christ.”

He stopped right before you came, climbed into your lap, and whispered in your ear, “Fuck me.” And you had to bite your lip not to come as he sat down, and he made it last fucking forever, and your eyes were closed and you were about to scream when he finally sat all the way down, and then you reached down and grabbed his little ass with both hands and took advantage of how slick your bodies were and it was over for both of you in a rough take-no-prisoners sixty seconds or so.

“I wanna fuck you tonight,” he whispered in your ear as you were both collapsed against the wall of the sauna. You were still panting.

“Imagine that.”

“I promise; I'll be gentle,” he teased you.

He wasn't.

And all day at work the next day, you caught yourself remembering it, so distracted that you finally went into your private bathroom and jerked off to the images in your head. When you got home that night, he was in the bedroom, undressed and waiting for you.

You gave in to him again.

Something wasn't quite right because you were acting more like him, and he was acting more like you, and there was something so ferocious in him, something so familiar, that you chose to let it fuck you rather than deal with it. And now it had come out from behind that ferocious mask it'd been wearing, and it wasn't ferocious at all; it was just blond, blue-eyed, worried and scared.

......

And you were sad.

And heartbroken.

......

Helpless.

......

......


He'd told no one. Not one person.

Not you; the one person who would buy heaven and earth for him and then pay someone to decorate it and then move it wherever he wanted.

This was what Jon was talking about. No, this was worse…

“You have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—"

“I know that; I have internet access.”

“As does Justin.”

“He doesn’t really remember anything.”

“His is different from yours.”

“Why?”

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

Justin’s fingers moved along the back of your neck, small repetitive strokes, the kind you make when you're not paying attention. He was done talking.

It was your turn.

*********************
DANNY CARTWRIGHT’S POV
pulled into Nazareth,
was feelin’ ‘bout half past dead

Door Number Two.

Madeline was twenty-one when the three of you came upon it; her clothes were tighter, her hair was long and shining, a cold bottle of beer hung from her fingers. The door was bolted shut, so you had no choice but to stare through the rectangular window in the door. “That’s Vic and Leo,” Tate said.

“What are they doing to those guys?” you asked, horrified at the young men they had strapped to a table.

“Looks like ECT to me,” Tate said.

“Maybe Frankenstein-ECT,” you said. Madeline handed her beer to Tate and performed an instant cheer, “E-C-T! Looks like that to me!” “Keep drinking,” Tate said, “You’re too old for that shit now.” The three of you pressed on, not a one of you commenting when the halls became dimmer, and the décor became even older and more discolored. Tate’s uniform was bothering her again; she bitched about it until she stopped in front of a gray door. “This is it,” she said.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

At twenty-five give-or-take, Madeline was absolutely beautiful, “She means that your television is in there.”

“How do you know?” You were stalling things at that point; nothing felt right.

“She can feel it,” Madeline said.

Tate looked away from the door, right into your eyes, “This is Ruth’s room.”

“Who’s Ruth?” you asked.

“She was supposed to be my grandmother,” Madeline said with the sparkle of a hostess on a cruise ship, "But she killed herself."

*********************
JONATHON MASSEY'S POV
don’t you forget about me

“How do you feel about Alan being with your mother now?” you asked Harper as she got up and sat in front of the trunk at the foot on her bed, her legs like a pretzel. “May I?” you asked, and she nodded, so you sat down next to her, holding the lid up after she opened the trunk; everything inside—the paper, the fabric, the smell—was old and faded. Her head lowered as she reached in a pulled out a dark wooden jewelry box, and then you let the lid close so she could set it on the top of the trunk. “You’re showing me the locket?” you asked her, but she shook her head, so you just watched her as she carefully opened the box—one of the brass hinges on the back was broken. The box was lined with what was once bright red velvet and the only thing inside was a yellowing Ziploc bag surrounding an old handkerchief. She held the bag close to her face, to her nose, as she opened it, closing her eyes, going somewhere you'd never been, and then her eyes opened again. Her fingers dipped into the bag and pulled the balled handkerchief out; it quickly fell away, revealing a perfume bottle. Harper pressed the handkerchief to her face that time, and before you were ready for it, she was leaning on your shoulder, your arm closing around hers. “This was your mother's,” you said, no inquiry really needed, and she nodded; you felt your hand touching her hair as if it was another part of you altogether; you were two halves of the same whole--half physician, half confidant.

“When she died, there was still some left,” Harper said, and you looked down because you were holding the bottle now. “I wore it at night because my dad went ballistic if he smelled it in the house. I knew he'd throw it away.” “You put it on when you went to bed?” you asked. “For Alan. I put it on, and then I'd read to him, and sometimes...we'd just pretend....” “He liked that?” you asked.

“He was the one who found her in the middle of the night.... Sometimes he called me 'Mom,' and I didn't tell him not to.”

“After your mother passed, you were the caretaker in your family.”

“Alan was never the same after that,” she said, “I mean, you figure a kid witnesses something that horrible, and they become angry and violent and depressed or something, but not Alan.”

“What do you mean?”

“He became like the characters in the story books I read to him; he was almost...perversely optimistic.”

“For who?” you asked.

Harper wrapped the bottle back in the cloth, “...For me, I think. I never told anybody, but I kind of liked it when he let me be her.”

“You were fantasizing for him, perhaps he was trying to return the favor?”

“Sometimes I wonder if I made it worse for him...because he never stopped.”

You wrapped your other arm around her, “The mind can be a trap door. It will get you out of anything if you train it to. Alan-- He was inoculating himself, trying to find a way around the pain.”

“You don't think that by pretending to be her that I fucked—?”

“No,” you said, “No, I don't. You were as innocent as he was in all of this. You didn't hurt him; if anything, your efforts, the fact that you were trying so hard, probably gave him hope.” “Hope,” she repeated as if it was a word she’d never heard before. “When did you become aware of how your dad felt about Alan, when did you sense his overwhelming disapproval? Before your mother died or after?” She thought about it and then eventually answered you, “Before.” “How did you know? What do you remember? I mean, you somehow knew that your father didn’t disapprove of you, just Alan, right?”

……

……

Harper’s next words were measured; her affect had changed, “Because he wanted to go see her.”

“Go see her? You mean visit your mother in the hospital?”

“Yes.”

You wanted clarification, “He was unhappy with Alan because he missed his mother?”

“Yes.”

“What about you? Did you miss your mother?”

“Jon.”

“What?”

And then the shame inside her roared past the grief, and she sat told you her tear-stained secret, “I should’ve, but I was afraid to.” The guilt inside her was furious, twisted like hardened taffy around every decision she’d made since her mother died.

“Harper, you’re mad at this little girl inside you for the same reason that your dad was mad at Alan.”

“I know.”

“You know it’s not rational then, this guilt you feel?”

“Somewhere inside me I do, but I can’t get to it.”

“Why do you think your dad was so angry at Alan for missing your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

You flipped the question around, “You didn’t profess to miss her, so he wasn’t mad at you, correct?”

“Right; I didn’t tell him.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Because it made him mad.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“I think you do,” you told her, “Picture it in your mind. Picture that little girl telling her father that she misses her mother. What’s happening?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” You were skeptical of that. You pressed her, “Did she do it? Did she tell him?”

“Yes.”

“And nothing’s happening?”

“No.”

You started to dig with that little girl’s shovel tiny shovel, “How does she feel now that she’s told him?”

“Terrible.”

“Why?”

“She’s upset him,” Harper whispered as if her father were in the room.

“Why is he upset?”

“He doesn’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“About the little girl. He doesn’t know how to make her happy.”

“Take her to see her mother. Won’t that make her happy?”

Harper’s head shook back her forth in an exaggerated, child-like fashion, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we always have to leave.”

“What does it feel like when it’s time to leave?”

“A big fucking waste of time,” she said in a voice that didn’t belong to that little girl; her eyes were fixed over your shoulder.

“To him or to her?” you asked.

“They just want to go back as soon as they leave,” she said, the little girl long gone.

“Children need their mother; surely, you can empathize with that?”

“No sense in it if she’s never gonna get better. Might as well cut their losses.”

“Whose losses was he trying to cut, Harper?”

And her answer brought her eyes back to your face, “His.”

“Not telling him you missed your mother, caring for Alan the way you did, you were trying to help him cut his losses; do you see that?” She nodded her head and wiped the tears off her face. “You’d absorbed his emotions and were trying to process them for him; children do that in traumatic situations; they need to keep their caregivers happy in order to survive.” She just looked at you like she was at the end of a book with a new lot of blank pages, so you kept going, “And you tried to shield Alan from understanding that. You kept him in the dark for as long as you could.” (So, so dark he lived underground.)

“And now I can’t anymore.”

“You don’t need to anymore, Harper. The rouse is over.”

“It’s hard to stop dancing when you can still hear the music, Jon.”

“Listen to the song, Harper. It’s not a two-step anymore.”

She pulled her hair on top of her head in a make-believe ponytail and then let it fall, “I’m so pissed at him for bailing on me.”

You smiled at her, “You weren’t fooling him, Harper; he loved you, so he played the same game you were playing. He protected you from yourself.”

“I know that, okay?”

“And maybe he died, but he's not the one who abandoned you.”

“I already know that, too,” she said, and then you both laughed because she sounded like someone else you both knew very well.

“When will I get this, Jon? When will I feel like it’s part of me and not just abstract logic?” she asked you.

You rested your hand on her knee; Harper was no stranger to the truth; she could take it even if she couldn't process it at the moment; her denial didn't run as deep as the rest of her posse's—including Daniel's—which was why their friendship was so crucial and why you were there that morning in the first place...

“Listen,” you said, “You're the lucky one in all of this, okay?”

“Why?” she asked, reaching for a tissue.

“Because you're a woman...and because you're a mother.”

“You forgot basket case.”

“Look, one day the little girl inside you is going feel safe enough to grow up, and you’re going to see this whole thing through a mother’s eyes. You're going to see yourself in Amelia and feel your mother in you, and you're going to feel the anger you've buried for years and years and years—“ You stopped because she was starting to cry again.

“Tell...me,” she said.

Your voice got softer, “And you're going to look at Sam, and at the kind of father he is to Amelia and realize what a jack ass—pardon the technical term—your father was to the three of you--"

“Jon,” she pleaded with you, because the truth hurts.

“And then you're going to pick up your camera and your paint brush, and you're going to work it out, Harper, because you're the lucky woman, the lucky mother, and the lucky artist in all of this. You're blessed like Alan was with a therapeutic imagination.” And then your head turned because the cracked door to Harper's bedroom was closing, and you heard a tiny voice, “But Mommy's bery sad...”

“Today is a sad day, remember?” Sam asked her.

“I already knowed that.”

Harper heard the door as well and started to turn around, “Oh god, did she see me?”

“Sam pulled her back; I think she just heard you crying,” you lied.

“I can't let her see me so upset.”

“Harper, that little girl of yours is no fool. While you were out having dinner last night, she put Daniel to bed, all of her toys, and then asked Richard to read her the book that Alan gave her for Christmas.”

“The rabbit one?”

“Yeah, and she made him read it to her and to the rabbit he gave her. She's working through this, too.”

“Well that explains why she wants to bring the rabbit to the church,” Harper said. “She's already told me twelve times this morning.”

“Yeah, she never really asks, does she?”

“Amelia? Never,” and then she laughed, “Amelia never tries to adapt to the world; she just constantly reminds us that we need to adapt to hers.”

“And do you know why that is?”

“Because her father and every other man she knows spoils her rotten?”

You laughed, “No. It’s because she’s raised in love and not in fear.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Do you know how many long-term patients I’ve had—over my entire career--that come from homes where they were loved and tolerated and supported and humored?”

“No.”

“Ten or twenty. Want to know how many I have that were raised in fear or guilt or some other corrosive emotional void?”

“How many?”

“Multiply that by a hundred.”

“Does that count your future patient Sam?” she asked, a smile finally spreading across her face.

“Yes, my dear, that includes Sam.”

*********************
lady Madonna,
children at your feet

As your conversation with Harper began to settle down, you got to spend a little time with the Harper you’d come to love; the funny, quirky, beautiful woman who somehow made you feel good about being alive while she was alive…

“See,” she said as she leaned against the now closed trunk at the end of her bed, “What was so fucked up about the whole thing was that we—Alan and I—we were closer to Tate than my mother.”

“Tate?”

“My mother’s nurse. She was this big black woman who doted on us when we came to visit my mom. That’s why we wanted to go to the hospital. She spoiled us rotten; she gave us candy; she let us put on gloves and pretend to be nurses and doctors; she hugged us until our eyes bugged out of our heads.” You laughed at the image. “And she adored Alan; he was sort of shy. I wasn’t.”

“Imagine that.” (She was still undressed.)

She straightened her legs and crossed her feet, “When we went in to see my Mom, we always put on a show for her—literally and figuratively. We’d usually perform some popular song and dance around like idiots, and then we’d ‘help’ Tate take care of my mother and tell her made up stories about things we did. We never told her anything bad.”

“Where was your dad?”

“He never came in with us. He would sit in the car in the car in the parking lot even when it was ninety-five degrees outside and smoke.”

“In a car with pleather seats, no doubt.”

“Yeah, and we lived in Georgia. Anyway, My mom would usually doze off about halfway through our hour with her, and then we’d play with Tate. We told her everything. She let us run wild in that place. There was a section of the psych ward that wasn’t used for patients, and she let us run and slide down the hall in our socks, and we’d have races, and she’d tell me that sometimes I had to let Alley win.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, because he and Tate got so excited when he won. It was better than when I won. She’d wink at me when she was hugging him. I couldn’t wink for the longest time, so I’d just blink like this,” and then she demonstrated her initial attempts at winking, blinking both eyes with a really goofy expression on her face, and you cracked up. “It’s just, I’m going to miss him so much; Alan was more to me than a brother—"

Bingo! Stick foot in door!

“Yes, he was, for you and for Daniel.”

“Your eyes just got really big,” she told you.

“What else was he?” you quizzed her.

“I don’t know.”

Ordinarily, you’d take the long way to the answer, but you hourglass was running low, so you didn’t drag it out. “Trauma changes people, right? You said earlier about how Alan was after your mother died.”

“Yeah.”

“I often think of it like this: when we’re born we have a perfectly smooth, endless row in front of us, and as we live our lives, shit happens and the road ends up with potholes and sections of it are completely destroyed and sometimes those sections are immediately repaired by the right people, sometimes they never are, and sometimes bridges or detours are built to get over or around them.”

“Is there a speed limit on this road?”

You laughed, “There probably should be. Some people refuse to obey the rules of the road and end up running into a ditch; some people learn to plan ahead knowing the way they drive and start investing in asphalt.”

“God, I need a shit load of that.”

“Caring for Alan was a detour off your road where you connected with Daniel on his. The first hundred miles of your road feel very familiar to him, and you both ran off your own roads for the same reason.”

“And now the reason is gone.”

“Yeah, and his car is a total piece of shit right now.”

“I can give him a ride?”

“You could, but if you do, he won’t reap the benefits of finding his own way back, and he’ll just run off the road again, and who will be there then?”

“Can’t you just tail him in your car?”

“This is where Amelia gets her stubborn streak, right?”

“I’m just kidding; I hate it, but I get it.” You got up to leave, and as she was walking to the bedroom door with you, she stopped you, a hand on your shoulder, “Wait, is this…. Where’s Justin’s car in all of this?”

“About five hundred miles back, upside-down in a twelve-car pile up.”

“Oh my god. How the fuck is he supposed to get out of that?”

“Brian owns a towing company; it just didn’t occur to him to publish the number nor did it occur to Justin to ask.”

“Whoa.”

“That pretty much sums it up.”

*********************
BRIAN'S POV
I know where you hide
alone in your car
know all of the things
that make you who you are

From the very first night you met Justin, your relationship with him has relied on the sense of touch more than any of the other four, and though you’d almost been burned at the stake for that hundreds of times, it was a blessing on mornings like that one because it had the ability to kick things out of the way when you really needed to get to him. It leveled the playing field between you—anyone could see, hear, taste, or even smell the difference between the two of you if blindfolded, but your sense of touch was unaffected by age or wealth or circumstances. And it was something that the two of you desperately needed in your lives, and in retrospect, as you thought about the years you’d spent without him, about what made those years so difficult, you realized that it was probably that connection that generated the glue that permanently sealed your relationship. And when your relationship was in trouble, when it was lost at sea and taking in water, it was that thread you held on to, and the one you tossed out to him when he was drifting too far away.

That moment on that morning, it was pulling both of you to shore, very slowly as if perhaps picking up speedy might heighten the chance of someone falling overboard, and the more you entertained that metaphor, the more you realized that the first decade of your relationship with Justin had really just been a constant rerun of Gilligan’s Island.

(And you were Ginger.)

But that day, you were getting off the island—finally.

“Don’t stop,” he whispered in your ear as you fucked him, “I love you.”

“If you want me to last, you’ll be quiet,” you admonished him, and he was about to be a smart ass and say something else, but you cut him off by keeping his mouth occupied, closing your eyes when he moaned underneath you, letting yourself get lost in the raw pleasure of being inside him. You wanted to keep it going so you made yourself feel your lips as you kissed him, your shoulders where he was holding onto you; you breathed every last ounce of him into your lungs. You feasted on the sensation of being able to conquer him because he’s physically smaller than you, you watched your hand skim the outline of his hip and then press on the back of his thigh. His eyes opened for a second when your hand slipped in between you, when you touched him; he was wet.

“Brian.”

You watched his eyes blink, felt his whole body tense up. “Relax,” you requested, but his hands twined tighter in your hair. Your finger smoothed across the head of his cock, and then he watched in this sweet desperate state as you slid that same finger in your mouth, and then your eyes moved to the right and his followed yours and you said, “Hand me that,” and he reached for the lube, and when you nodded your head, he opened it and put some on your outstretched fingers, closed it, and threw it back on the mattress, and then you wrapped your left arm underneath him a little more and leaned down and said, “Hold still for me.”

He was still and wound tight as you pulled out and then slid your fingers inside him, and you watched his face as you readied to enter him again, sliding in alongside your fingers, and you hovered above him, keeping your weight off of him until you felt him accepting you, and when you let yourself go, the force of your body, the moment, the need inside him grabbed you and held on, leaving only your hips free, and you fucked him so hard, he started half-panting, half-hissing in your ear, “Uh…god….oh….god…,” and you could feel his body trying to hold you back a little, and you hadn’t felt that in so long….

…that real sense memory of how young and sweet and daring and trusting he was…

…and he came in a shudder that made you freeze for a second, and the second you tried to move, it was over for you, too, and you could feel it, all of it, and it was so wickedly warm; and his hands had torn through your hair and his nails had dug trenches into your upper back.

He lay exhausted in the sheets when all was said and done, and you lay on his torso, licking his stomach clean.

“Thanks,” he said, twirling your hair in his fingers.

“Anytime.”

“I meant for listening to me earlier, for letting me get all of that out.”

“I knew what you meant.”

“Come here,” he said so you stopped what you were doing and responded to the summons, lying next to him on your pillow.

“What?”

“Do you know why I love you?”

“I guess so,” you said. “I mean I’m obscenely rich and smokin’ hot.”

He laughed (way too much) and scooted closer to you, “I love you because you’re the purest person I know. Everything about you is pure—the way you think, the way you work, the ideas you have, the way you look, the way you love me. Every emotion you have is so distilled. They never change or falter or fade.”

“Um, okay; thanks.”

He leaned forward to kiss you; his hand on your face, but then he stopped, “Brian, you’re blushing.” You put your head under your pillow, and he pulled the pillow away, “Don’t hide. What’s wrong with you?”

“A lot. Haven’t you been paying attention lately?”

“Listen to me, okay?”

“Give me back my pillow.”

“Here,” he said, and you tucked it back under your head as he continued, “What I mean is: your emotions, it’s like they all exist in their own little worlds, like little satellite offices of your heart—"

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you sound like a fucking lesbian that seriously needs to douche.”

“Shut the fuck up. I can see all of them; I could see all of them the night I met you; I could see the ones you couldn’t see. They were there just waiting to be annexed into headquarters. I knew that you could only tolerate one at a time back then.”

You smiled at him, mostly just because he’s such an optimistic little douche-bag sometimes. “But it’s different now,” you said.

“I know it is,” he admitted, “And that’s really weird for me.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I just have to re-program myself. I spent years trying to take my emotions out of everything we did; it’s weird to resist that temptation now.”

“I can feel them in my fingertips,” you confessed to him, attacking him with your hand, “I can feel them when I touch you.”

“Funny,” he said, “That’s where I met them.”

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

JONATHON MASSEY'S POV
the hook brings you back

You were pumped full of adrenaline by the time you made it made it back to Daniel’s with both yours and Richard’s clothes for the funeral, and you forced your heart to stop pounding before you went back inside. You hung your suit bags on the coat rack in the hallway and walked into the kitchen where you could smell the breakfast Richard had cooked; he and Daniel—whose back was to you--were sitting at the kitchen table; Richard’s arm was stretched across the table resting on Daniel’s forearm, and he smiled at you when he saw you in the doorway. You smiled back. He spoke to Daniel, not to you, “Dan, I have to go get ready. Jon’s back, okay?” He nodded in slow motion. Richard got up from the table and walked into the hallway, so you followed him, watching his face as he unzipped his suit bag and asked you meaningless questions about what you’d brought him. You could tell by the tone of his voice that he was glad you were back; you didn’t need to ask him how it went.

“Just take all of it upstairs," you told him. “I’ll get ready after you’re done.”

“Look, you’re going to have to help him.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious, every step of the way.”

“I will.”

When you walked back into the kitchen, Daniel was sitting right where you’d left him; he hadn’t moved. You put your hand on his back, “Dan—"

His body sagged as he began to cry.

……

You sat down beside him as the grief bled out of him and for once in your life you didn’t berate, analyze, or taunt him as he went through it. By the time you heard Richard’s shoes thumping above your heads, he had dissolved into the Daniel he was before you met him, the one you’d heard about but never actually known. You listened as Richard descended the stairs, looked up as he stood in the opposite kitchen door so he could see your face. He mouthed the words, “I’m leaving,” and you nodded your head, but then he must’ve really looked at your face because he walked into the kitchen, pulled up a chair and sat down next to the two of you in his black Sears suit and scolded you, “How is he going to get through today if you can’t?”

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“It’s my fault,” said Dan. “He’s crying because I’m crying.”

“Honestly, Dan,” Richard said, “That’s your fault, too?”

“Just go,” you told him, “It’s a fag thing; you wouldn’t understand.”

Richard raised his eyebrow at you, “If this was any other morning, I’d beat your ass for saying that to me.”

“I know,” you said, “That’s why I said it today.” Daniel leaned back in his chair to get out of the conversation and Richard leaned forward to kiss you good-bye. It was short and sweet, and when it ended you told him, “You can still beat my ass later if you want.”

“Both of you, stop it. That’s enough," Dan said, "I'm gonna puke."

……

And then Richard left the two of you alone in that kitchen. Daniel began to pull himself back together and after he’d exhausted the box of tissues in front of him, he looked at you, his face red and swollen, and said, “God, he smells good.”

“I know.”

“That suit, though—"

“Sears.”

“Oh god, no.”

“He hemmed the pants himself,” you confessed.

Daniel looked mortified, “What?”

“Turns out he has a sewing machine; got it the same place he got the pants.”

“And he actually knows how to use it?”

“He thinks he does. You know how it goes; he took Home Ec in high school.”

“Well, who didn’t? You need to get rid of that thing while he’s asleep or something.”

“I know. He mended one of my shirts the other day without even asking me, and the thread he used was a blend.”

The urgency of the situation overtook Daniel, “Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No, I’ll handle it; I just have to find the right time, but thanks for the offer. What’d you guys have for breakfast?” you asked him because the aroma was making you hungry.

“He made me some waffles.” And when you made a shame on you face at him, he added, “And there aren’t any left.”

Of course there weren’t.

*********************
DANNY CARTWRIGHT’S POV
would you know my name if I saw you in Heaven?

“You know, when you die, you pretty much figure you ain’t gonna have to go back to your old job,” Tate told the gray door. “This is bullshit.”

Madeline put her palm on the door and within a few seconds, her entire affect changed. “I’m gonna be sick,” she said, clutching her stomach.

“You better not be pregnant,” Tate said, “’Cause my patience is burnt slap up right now.”

“It’s not in me; it’s in the room. It feels horrible.”

“Then take your hand off,” you told her as you tried to remove it, but it wouldn’t budge. You put your hand on the door. “Do you feel anything?” Tate asked you. “No,” you replied, “Just a door.” Tate was beyond thrilled with your answer, “That’s just great,” and then she directed Madeline, “See if the door will open, Maddie,” so Madeline reached down and turned the handle and sure enough, it popped right open. You hung back on purpose, standing right behind Madeline as Tate got in front of both of you. The woman Tate spoke of—Ruth—was curled up on a hospital bed with another man—

“He’s my uncle,” Madeline whispered. “He brought me here.”

The woman’s face was red and swollen from crying, and she looked away as Tate approached the bed. There was another man, a much older, much larger man passed out in the chair by the window. “What’s in your mouth, Ruth?” Tate asked.

“Uh-lives,” she said, and then she swallowed. You heard a wretched sound and turned around and Madeline was throwing them up in the corner. “Why in hell did you eat those damn things?” Tate scolded her. “He gave them to me,” Ruth said, pointing at the giant lump of a man in the corner. She sounded like a child. Tate was angry, but her mood changed immediately when she sat down in a old plastic sea green chair by the bed and spoke with the man Ruth was holding onto, “How ya doing, Alley?”

“I only ate two of them,” he confessed, and Madeline coughed and threw up again.

“Jack gave you some, too?” Tate asked him.

“He said I could have some.”

“Okay.”

“She ate too many; she won’t let go of me,” he confided in Tate, and then his eyes glanced up at the television mounted in the corner. Your eyes followed his, and then you saw the images of him being taunted and harassed and beaten to death and rescued over and over and over in some kind of insane loop. The man who kept running outside of his house and down the brick steps, he looked just like you, even when he was covered in dirt and screaming for help. Tate looked at you, “Turn it off.”

“Is that my son?”

“Please just turn it off for right now.”

You did as she requested, and then watched as she and the instantly recovering Madeline coaxed Ruth out of the bed. “Harper, you look so pretty,” Ruth said. “This isn’t Harper, Ruthie. This is your over-grown granddaughter, Madeline.”

“I really am insane,” Ruth said as she stared at Maddie. “We all are at this point,” Tate said. “Let’s go see if the cafeteria is still here.” You watched as both women escorted Ruth out of the room. Alone with the man in the bed and the man in the chair, you sat down next to the former and introduced yourself, “You’re Alan, right?”

He perked up a little, “Yeah, who are you?”

“I’m Danny.”

“You look just like him,” Alan said.

“You knew him, my son?”

Alan sat up a little and smiled at you, but before he could say anything else, the door flew open and Madeline came running back in. She grabbed the remote out of your hand and said, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” and then she cleared her throat—you cringed in case she was going to puke again, but it was a false alarm—she continued, “Um, this remote activates,” and then she glanced all around the room, “Um, I guess just this television. There may be things that you want to see and things that you don’t want to see… Alan, shit, what comes next?”

“’But regardless,’” he prompted her.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. But regardless, you will only see what you need to see.” And then she handed it back to you and added, “So, um, have fun; see ya!” and then she ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“She’s just like my sister,” Alan said with a sheepish smile on his face. “God, they grow up so fast, don’t they?”

“She’s certainly a piece of work.” And then you glanced over to the old man passed out in the chair, “May I ask who that is?”

“That’s Jack. He’s been here forever. He works in the kitchen and fills orders.”

“Orders?”

“Yeah, it’s like that movie; he sees dead people—except only for lunch and dinner,” he said and then he laughed. You didn’t know what he was talking about, but while he was laughing, the television had come on, and Alan’s mood had changed. He lay back in the hospital bed and asked you for the blanket that was bunched up at the end of the bed. “Are you okay?” you asked him as you covered him up. “I’m tired of watching my murder,” he said turning away from the screen. “I’ve watched it over and over and over, and I just need to fucking die already.”

You sat down in the chair next to Alan’s bed and stared at the screen, but there was no murder taking place anymore, just the last few minutes of a funeral—yours—and a boy holding his mother’s hand. He wasn’t crying, but she was. And then he was back at home in his room with his door locked putting a stack of copies of the funeral program in a box under his bed. There were articles in the box about your death, your obituary, and then you saw your wallet. You watched in silence as he took everything out—your driver’s license, your business and credit cards, your social security and library card, twenty-three dollars in cash, a coupon for something. He read the expiration date and threw it the trash. He gathered your credit cards and your social security card and left his room in search of Emma who was crying in the kitchen. “Here,” he said, “These are important.” She thanked him, and he walked away, back to his room, locking himself back in. No tears as he put everything back in your wallet, no tears when he was trying to stuff his student ID into a pocket and realized that the picture you carried of him as an infant was blocking it. He took it out and stared at it; it was just two of you sitting in your chair in the den; he was sound asleep in your arms; it was Christmas in the faded photo, but you could still see some of the lights on the tree. He stuffed it back where he found it and slid his ID in front of your driver’s license. Then he emptied the remaining contents of his wallet into yours and threw his wallet in the garbage, putting yours on the table next to his bed. He and Emma ate dinner delivered by the neighbors at six thirty; they barely spoke except to comment on the food. “None of our neighbors can cook worth a damn,” he said, and Emma didn’t scold him for using profanity, she just nodded her head, “I know; it’s so true.” They watched game shows after dinner; he jotted the answers down on a steno pad he always kept lodged in the sofa. Then he got up to take bath—at his usual time in his usual way; Emma retired to her room like she always did. You watched as he came out of the bathroom in his pajamas and walked into the den where you would’ve been sitting and he just stood there next to what was your chair. He put his hand on the arm rest for a few seconds, and then turned around and walked down the hall to his room. He locked the door and got into bed, holding your wallet under his pillow.

He cried for an hour, barely making a sound.

You watched as he went to school the next day with your way too big wallet sticking out of the back of his pants. He lost it by lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day checking the school’s lost and found every thirty minutes; his heart raced for hours; you could feel it. By the final bell, he realized a much older boy had found it in the hallway; Daniel quietly negotiated with him, ultimately giving up the cash to get it back, his heart pounding like a trombone out for vengeance during the entire transaction. When he got home from school, your chair was gone. Emma had given it away. He did his homework in his room instead of at the kitchen table. When he got to the subjects he struggled with, the ones he normally asked you to help him with, he took your picture out of his wallet and sat it in front of his books. When his Spanish homework began to frustrate him, he looked up at your picture and asked you very politely, “I need your help, please.”

You said nothing.

He tried one last time, “Necesito su ayuda, por favor.”

Nada.

********************
BRIAN'S POV
don’t know where I’m going
but I sure know where I’ve been

It was almost sunny outside that Friday morning when you and Justin walked out of The Regency. Hand-in-hand, you decided to walk toward the church; it was your idea, thinking that it might help calm Justin a little; he was nervous, so much so that you had to blow him in the shower to get him to agree to go with you. It felt like a small miracle that he’d actually made it down to the lobby.

Minutes earlier, he’d made it clear as the two of you dressed that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to go as much as it was that he just couldn’t see himself there, and that was scaring him because he didn’t know why he couldn’t get past that in his mind, and once you were ready to go, you sat on the toilet in the bathroom while he was fucking with his hair and made him stay on the subject. “You don’t need to worry about anything but getting in the elevator right now. That’s all.”

“It’s like my mind only goes so far and then it cuts off,” he told you. “It’s freaking me out.”

“Jon gave me some Xanax yesterday. Do you want some?”

“Yeah, maybe. “ You lit a cigarette, handed it to him, and then went and got the medicine. He met you out in the suite and sat on the sofa where he swallowed the pill. You sat down beside him, “I had days like this after you got hurt. What happened to Alan, it’s triggering some shit inside you or something.”

“What did you do?” he asked you.

“I drank and got mad and drank some more.”

“Yeah, great plan,” he said, exhaling his smoke.

“We’re just gonna take it one step at a time, okay?”

He leaned forward and dunked his cigarette in his water glass; his hand was shaking. You started to really believe that Jon was right; the only thing Justin had done with that hand that morning was brush his teeth and wash his hair. “You know, before last night, I was convinced that I could never talk to you about this shit. I really felt like I was alone with this horror I can’t even remember,” he said, half-staring out the window.

“I know.”

“And if I couldn’t talk to you, who the hell was I gonna talk to because there’s no one else, you know?” You kept your eyes on his face as the two of you talked; you didn’t want him to see you noticed his hand; he was pulling it back against him like he used to do so long ago.

“I know, but you can talk to me. What’s got you wound so tight about this?”

He rested his arm on the back of the sofa and then rested his chin on his arm; he was staring outside when he told you, “I mean, okay, so we go to the funeral, then the funeral’s over, and then what? We go back home; you go back to work, and I go back to what?” You reached over and put your hand on his arm. “I don’t want to be alone in that big house with this shit in my head anymore. I can’t even get it on a fucking canvas, Brian.”

“You need to talk to somebody.”

“And it only took six years in New York hanging out with a shrink for someone else to tell me that. God, I’m a fucking genius, aren’t I?”

You moved closer to him, “You wanna play that game? Look how long it took me. I’m fucking forty, Justin. You don’t get that prize, sorry.”

“Yeah, but I want it,” he said.

“You’re pissed; I know. And I don’t blame you.”

“You don’t?” he asked you, and the sincerity behind his question pulled at something inside you.

“No, I don’t. You’re lucky to be alive and functioning after what he did to you.”

The expression on his face was one of genuine relief, and that was the moment that you realized the true cost of the age difference in your relationship, and that was the moment that you saw the ridiculous irony in the choices you’d forced upon him. Your cavalier and brazen approach to your lifestyle, your single-minded determination to be accepted or be damned by him and the world had left no room for him to be accepted for who he was or who he might be becoming. And every time he tried to point that out to you, you’d done nothing but try to steer him back to your side of the road or pretend he didn’t exist or rage against what his request represented. And then when you forced yourself to go back in time and count the number of people who were really there for him after he came out--loud and proud, thanks to you, and really there for him after he was almost killed, you saw yourself holding the lion's share of influence in his life and not always deserving of it. And when you realized that he was still sitting across from you, and there was a band on his finger at that point, you wanted him to know, “You have a right to be angry about what Chris did to you. You have a right to be angry at me. You don’t have to banish yourself to another city and paint spooky pictures; get fucking pissed. Throw some shit, punch me upside the head. It’s okay.”

“You’re not the person I want to punch upside the head. The guy I want to punch is dead.”

“Is that what’s wrong?” you asked him. “You’re trapped in a loop trying to kill a dead man?”

“What do you do when what you need to do has already been done by somebody or something else?” he asked you, and you thought about your father, about fearing him, about hating him, about trying not to become him.

“Maybe the first thing you do is accept it,” you said.

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“I think you just did it,” you told him.

“How can it be so plain and simple when it feels so fucking impossible?”

“You’re the one who shacked up with a shrink, you tell me.”

“God, I must be dense or something.”

“No, you’re just used to feeling afraid of it and angry at it, and letting that go isn’t easy.”

“You’re, like, so mature now that it’s kind of annoying,” he complained.

“It reminds me of when I first met you, and you would lie in bed after we fucked and sketch yourself to sleep, remember?”

“Yeah, before my hand was fucked up.”

“That’s not what this is about; forget about that for a minute. You would sketch, and I would lie next to you and just watch and try to figure out what you were sketching before you were finished, remember?”

He smiled; it was a nice memory for him. “Yeah.”

“Sometimes we made a game out of it, remember? If I figured it out—"

“You made me rim you.”

“You needed the practice.” He smacked your chest because that was a boldface lie; you grabbed his hand and held it. “Anyway, your sketches were always really small because you didn’t want me to guess correctly, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“But they were also some of the best ones you’ve ever done. Nothing you’d ever sell or display, but they were really good and you loved them, right?”

“Honestly? I loved you.”

You reached for him, and he slid over and lay against your shoulder, “The point I’m making is that sometimes it’s not the ten thousand dollar canvas in a museum that’s the answer, sometimes it’s the teeny tiny pencil sketch that you’ve forgotten about. Sometimes it’s something so simple you overlook it.”

Your analogy, though poignant, didn’t linger too long with him. “I fell in love with you playing that game.”

“I fell in love with you when you finally learned how to rim me,” you teased him.

"I can't believe you just admitted that you're forty."

*********************
DANNY CARTWRIGHT’S POV
time grabs you by the wrist
directs you where to go

After watching your young son struggle without you, you wanted to get up and leave, try to find your way back to your old office, to where everything had been far less complicated and where you couldn’t attribute the ache in your chest to anything other than your heart condition, but the scene on the television was changing fast and moving in and out of focus. Years flew by like lightning and then time began to crawl again as you watched your teenage son sit at the stop sign at the end of your street, look both ways, turn right, and then zoom off to college. You saw him learning his way around, dating a girl or two; you saw him wandering into a bookstore one Friday night and coming home with more than a book. There were no more girls after that, just bookstore after bookstore. Graduation came; you saw him in the stands with an impatient look on his face; you saw him in med school studying with a blond-haired guy who kept making jokes in the library until the wee hours of the morning. A few years later, you watched as he turned down an offer to work at the hospital you’d dropped dead in; you saw him working emergency rooms in New York City, treating the craziest of them all night, night after night. You saw him make a name for himself as he tried to heal those who didn’t have one. You saw him join a private practice and watched a guy hang his name on a door.

You saw him all over New York City frequenting restaurants and galleries and museums and the theater and markets that imported everything; you saw him antiquing with the blond guy in an antique car; you saw him get his hair cut every four weeks to the day, his suits custom made; his brownstone cleaned once a week and twice during the holidays. You saw him throw dinner parties to rave reviews; you saw waiters linger afterward for other reasons. You saw the checks he wrote to charity after charity after charity with no hesitation. He never passed anyone on the street without helping them out.

“He’s done well for himself,” you said to Alan.

“He does well for everybody,” Alan said, and the tone in his voice was haunting and strange, and that’s when the picture on the TV set turned grainy like a bad security camera in a convenience store.

*********************
loose end, loose end, cut, cut

And once again, there was Daniel flying down the front steps of his home trying to get to Alan all bloody and beaten, but the picture was black and white and there was no sound, so you turned and looked at Alan and said, “What’s going on?” But Alan was unresponsive. You shook him a little, but he didn’t move. “I hope you’re just asleep,” you said, and you turned back to the television…

The picture was of such poor quality that you really had to concentrate to make everything out. There were people moving in and out of your son’s home; there were easels and canvases and furniture and boxes. There were smiling faces, and finally—FINALLY--a beautiful girl in your son’s life. She looked just like Madeline. “Who’s that girl?” you asked and your answer to that question came from a girl.

Or rather, from someone who’d once been a girl because Alan was gone.

The hospital room and the sleeping man were gone.

The tiny grainy television was gone, replaced by a giant wall of nine, all grainy and hard to make out.

You were sitting in your favorite chair in your living room, and Emma was on the sofa now next to your chair, and Wheel of Fortune began to play on the center TV in clear, vibrant color and the letters began to turn one by one:



And there you sat, furious that she was even there, that she would waste your fucking time, and the letters turned as you answered her:



And the conversation continued:











The letters began to fade at that point, so you turned and looked at your late-wife, and she was struggling; she didn’t want to tell you, but she finally found the strength, and the letters became brighter and started turning again:



*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
and put the load right on me

“Daniel, who's folding your socks?” you asked him as you tried to find a matching black pair in his drawer.

“Me and shut up about it.”

“You’re color blind; I swear. There isn’t one black or brown or navy sock in here that’s matched up correctly.”

“I want my new black shoes,” he said from his perch by the window.

“Yes, ma’am.”

You brought him two matching socks and his shoes and then got in the shower yourself, the quickest one on record, because it always took longer to get ready at Daniel’s; his dressing area was not intuitively designed in your opinion. When you emerged looking not a day over thirty-four, Daniel was right where you left him, shoes and socks on by that time, looking tired and worn out in his new chair. “Where are your new glasses?” you asked him as you sat on the ottoman in front of him. “In my briefcase, I think.” So that meant they were downstairs. “You feel ready to do this?” you asked him.

“No.” You waited a few seconds, knowing that something was probably coming after that, “I should call Harper before we go.”

“I saw her this morning.”

“You did?” He seemed confused.

“Yeah, that’s where I was.”

“Why?”

“Because…. I just needed to see for myself, how she was doing.”

He seemed miffed at first, but it passed quickly, and you saw something else come through, something too heavy to get him out of that chair. “Let’s see, Brian yesterday, Justin last night, and Harper this morning; I’m clearly your next appointment.”

“No, you’re not.” He rolled his eyes at the window. “You’re my friend.”

……

……

……

“Dan.”

……

“You have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve heard you say that?” he asked you.

“Way too long?”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

……

“Can you just let me have a few minutes to myself?” he asked you. “Just wait for me downstairs?”

“Sure.”

*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
because they only remember too well

You closed the door to your bedroom once you were all alone, took a key out of your dresser, and unlocked the bottom drawer of your night stand next to the window. You removed a manila folder that was laying on top, closed the drawer, and locked it again, and then you sat back in your new chair by the window with a pen in your hand.

The outside of the folder was innocent enough until you looked at the handwritten label: Harper, Alan

You opened the folder and reorganized the handwritten sheets inside so that you were looking at the oldest one first, and then you flipped through them in totality for the first time in your life. The dates and times, you could see each of them in your mind as you read, skimming the highlights with the posture and affect you’d used hundreds of times in your office when you were trying to get up to speed on a referral…

*********************
DANNY CARTWRIGHT’S POV
hey Mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?

The wheel-o-chit-chat was over because the TV in the top left corner, the picture began to colorize. You recognized Alan immediately even though he was younger, and you saw the very pretty girl again and the center screen colorized and the words changed:



And then faded to black and white again.

They were both in an art studio with another young man, and Alan was sitting still—posing it looked like—and Harper and—



They were both drawing him and smiling and laughing, and Alan kept sitting in these ridiculous poses, and they were throwing chalk at him, and then the door opened, and you recognized your son seconds before he got beamed in the forehead with a piece of chalk. And then Alan was laughing, and your son was laughing, and then Daniel sat on the sofa, and Alan took Justin’s place and started to draw him, and Harper and Justin ended up leaving, and that left Alan and your son alone, and when Alan said he was finished, Daniel got up and walked over to Alan’s easel and his mouth fell open at what he saw. Alan hadn't drawn Daniel; he'd drawn the Mona Lisa, only with his sister's face, and he's done it from memory. "Holy shit," your son said, his fingers propping up his chin.

The picture froze right there, and the next one came on even brighter as they ate dinner together—





And then you could feel yourself inside your son, like you were looking through his eyes at this young man sitting across the table, and you could feel a reluctance in Alan that you wanted to end, a wall that you wanted to topple, and you and Daniel took a walk with him after dinner because it was a nice night, and you sat perched in Daniel’s heart as he talked to him and in his head as he listened--



And maybe you weren’t a doctor, but you’d run a hospital and spent enough time with every make and model to know what he was doing, and their conversation though therapeutic was also a means to an end; your son wasn’t building a bridge to nowhere, and as they walked and talked, Daniel’s consciousness and wisdom filtered through you like smoke in your lungs:

Schizophrenia? Hereditary? does not present? rule out Schizoaffective
normal affect, no evidence of true paranoia/hallucinations
the jiggling sound in his pockets—meds, a ton of them
facial expressions are delayed and not tied to his emotions; mimicking behavior=comfort
morphing speech patters, a la carte emotions, overly interested in pleasing--not impressing--authority figures.

And then you watched as they walked back to Daniel’s place, and Harper and Justin were back, and Alan left, and then Justin left, and he and Harper sat on his bed and talked and talked and talked about Alan, and then that screen froze right there, and the rest of the televisions came on at once, some with pure white screens, sound playing on only one at a time, and it changed constantly forcing you to jump from scene to scene. Your eyeballs felt like they had springs behind him.

It was pure insanity as…

Alan showed up unexpectedly at Daniel’s one morning. Daniel cancelled his schedule. He went with Alan to a free clinic. There was counseling with an attractive black woman who Alan kept saying looked like Tate—which would’ve only been remotely true if Tate had been a super-model. There was a sheet of paper in Alan’s hand afterward, a calendar. “You’re going to taper off,” Daniel kept saying over and over.

On another screen there was an altercation that occurred at a later time in a tunnel; Alan was beaten up, kicked hard in the stomach, because his pockets were empty.

On another, Daniel was anxious, flipping through his day planner, checking a lunar calendar, making a call to a guy that looked like Sylvester Stallone. “Can you see if you can find him? It’s been three months.”



On the screen where Alan was kicked in the stomach for having empty pockets, Zeek delivers him to your son before sun up, snatches him the second he emerges from a subway tunnel. “Where the fuck have you been?” Daniel gets a phone call before six a.m. that morning that Alan’s on his way; he cancels his morning and waits. Big Zeek waits on the steps while Alan is inside your son’s house like he’s afraid Alan might try to escape.

Daniel stands in the kitchen that morning and knows he’s being lied to. “I called the clinic, Alan. You’re not going to your appointments. You’re just gonna take Haldol and Thorazine for the rest of your life for no reason?”

“I’m not taking it.”

“I can tell by looking at you that you’re taking it.”

“You can look at my blood; it’s not in me.”

Zeek has come inside; when he speaks, he startles Daniel from behind, “He’s faking it; Aren’t you Al?” Alan stares at the floor. “Because they’re beating the shit out of you if you don’t bring it, right?”

“It’s like money,” Alan says. “That’s all.”

“You can live here,” Daniel says. “I want to help you.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I want you to get help and get better.”

“If I did that, they’d kill me.”

Daniel’s pissed and frustrated; you can feel it, and you expect him to do what he used to do—lock himself in his room and start cutting things out to the wee hours of the morning, but he doesn’t. He gets mad and you can feel it in his stomach, and you can hear it in his voice, “So your solution to this is to pretend to be schizophrenic so that people will give you free meds that you don’t fucking need, so that you can give them to a bunch of drug addicts and make them sicker so you can be left alone?”

“Pretty much.”

“Alan, that is stupid, dangerous, and irresponsible.”

“To each their own, doc," Zeek says and then he tells Alan to get the fuck out of there.

……

Seven months pass and Alan is long gone and Daniel never tells Harper what happened. On yet another screen, he tells the blond guy—



He tells Jonathon about this over and over and over. Jonathon tells him to give it a rest.

He won’t and he doesn’t.

*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
will not let you go
let me go
will not let you go
let me go

There’s a dinner one night; it’s starts out as a dinner for one, just you by yourself in your home, but there’s a knock on the door. It’s Alan. He looks like shit. You think he’s looking for Harper, but no, he’s looking for Zeek. You tell him that as far you knew, Zeek moved out of the city to go work with his brother or something. Alan gets an odd look on his face. You offer him dinner; he declines. You offer him a drink; he declines. He asks if he can use your bathroom; you agree.

He doesn’t come out for an hour.

You can hear water running, the shower, and he doesn’t answer when you knock on the door. You pick the lock and pop the door open. He’s sitting in the tub, fully clothed, crying as the water—warm water—falls all over him.

……

He won’t stop crying, and when you turn off the water, it gets even worse. He’s hysterical, so you give him a Valium and a glass of water and sit with him and watch until he starts to relax…
……

Alan’s head fell backward in the tub, and he caught it before it smacked the porcelain, and you reached inside the tub and grabbed his wrist and took his pulse out of habit. “Am I dead?” he asked you. “Hardly,” you replied. He rolled onto his side and appeared to be falling asleep. “This probably isn’t the most comfortable spot to nap in,” you pointed out. “We don’t have a bathtub downstairs,” he said. His hand curled over the side of the tub, steadying himself. “What would you do if you did have one?” you asked him. He yawned, “I would sit in it and read.”

“So there’s hot and cold water running downstairs, then?”

His eyes opened wide and he rolled his head up a little so he could look you straight in the face, “I’m not going to put any water in it.”

And then you watched as he curled into a fetal position and fell sound asleep. You covered him up with a blanket, cranked up the heat in the bathroom a little and found some clothes for him to wear when he woke up. When he awoke, he was calm at first, peeling off his clothes, taking a real shower, changing into clean ones, but when you suggested to him that he wait for his dirty ones to wash and dry, he became very agitated. It was after noon, he said; he’d missed his most important stops. “When do you think you’ll come back to get your clothes?” you asked him in an effort to get some sort of commitment from him, but he wouldn’t say, so you pushed a little harder, “You were extremely upset earlier; I’d really like to understand why.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Has that happened before?”

“I don’t know. I want to talk to Zeek.”

“Go by his parents’ restaurant and ask them for his phone number—"

“They don’t like me; they threw me out of there.”

“I’ll call them. I’ll get the number.”

“Can I use your phone if I want to call him?”

“Of course.”

So the simplest of deals was struck: you’d get Zeek’s phone number, and Alan would return to call him.

It was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end.

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

DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
is this the real life?
is this just fantasy?

seven weeks later…

It was a pretty normal day that Wednesday when you came from work and were standing in the kitchen getting ready to make dinner when Justin came with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and leaned on the kitchen counter right in front of the sink, “Okay, I’m outta here.”

"You said you were staying for dinner," you reminded him. He was wearing the one pair of jeans that you detested fashion-wise but found him undeniably attractive in and that just made his announcement that much worse. “I know, but I’m not,” he said. You tried to hide your disappointment, “Why not?” He sighed, “Because my muse has four very flat tires, and if I don’t go do something, I’m gonna lose the fucking car, too.”

“No luck today then?” you asked him as you started to wash the potatoes. Luckily, they were filthy.

“It was like electrocuting a corpse—utterly pointless.”

“Nice image, Justin.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I think I just need to go somewhere where there are a lot of hot, sweaty, needy men and let them fight over me. That usually works.”

“Well, that’s nice to know for the future.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be a cunt; Alan’s here and he’ll have dinner with you.”

“Justin, I realize that it’s rather en vogue for your social set to use that word, but if you ever call me that again—"

“Jesus, I meant ‘bitch.’ Sorry.”

……

……

“Where is Alan, anyway?”

“He’s in your office pretending to talk to Zeek.”

You shook your potato peeler at him, “Why are you being such a you-know-what today?”

“I’m not. You asked me a question; I answered it.”

“I told him he could call Zeek whenever he wanted. He’s allowed to do that.” Justin laughed and picked up the phone in the kitchen and put it next to your ear, “I know that. I’m telling you that he’s pretending. Check the phone bill.” The dial tone droned in your ear. You stared at Justin, and he stared back, and then you walked out of the kitchen and stood outside your closed office door and listened.

Alan was talking a mile a minute.

Justin waved good-bye over his shoulder and walked out the front door.

*********************
I see a little silhouetto of a man

You were very careful not to expose Alan at dinner. He picked at his food, didn’t seem very interested in it; he seemed much more interested in why Justin wasn’t there. “He decided to go out,” you said. “Are you mad?” he asked you. “No,” you lied, “Why would I be mad?”

“Because you want to have sex with him.” The look on Alan’s face was strangely child-like for such an adult conversation. You took a long sip of water before you answered him, “What makes you think I want to have sex with him?”

“Because you’ve had sex with him before.”

“Did Harper tell you that?” you asked him.

“I saw you kiss him in the hall a long time ago.”

“Have you had sex with people that you’ve kissed?”

“I don’t kiss people.”

……

“Do you want something different to eat, Alan?” you asked him. “You’re not eating what’s on your plate.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I have cookies.”

“Okay.”

You cleared the table and came back with cookies and a half gallon of milk and as you poured, Alan rested his head on top of his hands and smiled. “You look really tired today,” you said.

“That’s ‘cause I am.”

“Why? Did you have a hard day?”

“Yeah. I did,” he said, and you were fascinated just watching him regress right in front of you. He was imagining that hard day in his head.

“Is that why you wanted to talk to Zeek? Because you had a hard day?” you asked him and you watched his face very carefully, and he didn’t miss a beat, “Yeah, ‘cause he understands when you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it and people are hassling you and all that.” He sounded exactly like Zeek when he spoke, so much so that you almost started laughing at the impression.

“It’s nice to have a friend like that to talk to.”

“Yeah, he’s my best friend,” Alan said, “I mean upstairs. He’s my best friend upstairs.”

The cookies were going fast, and you wanted to keep talking to this Alan Harper, so you took a stab at something. “I guess I was kind of disappointed that Justin didn’t stay for dinner tonight.” He stopped chewing and looked at you curiously. “Why?” he asked. “I guess it sort of hurt my feelings,” you explained. “Did you tell him you were mad?” he asked you. “No, not really, but I think he knew.”

“Why?”

“Because we know each other pretty well, and you can just tell those things after a while, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Like if Harper’s frustrated with you, you can probably tell right?”

“She never gets mad at me on purpose.”

You laughed, “Just by accident?”

“Yeah, I guess we have a lot of accidents.” You were both laughing, and you got up from the table and took the dishes into the kitchen, put them into the dishwasher, and when you went back out into the dining room Alan wasn’t there. You called for him, and he answered you. He was sitting on the loveseat in your office with a book in his lap:

Child Development: Nature vs. Nurture

*********************
one is the loneliest number

He looked up at you like a scared little boy as you stood in the doorway. “You okay?” you asked him.

“…I had a lot of accidents,” he said. You stepped inside your office and sat down in the chair opposite the loveseat, “What do you mean?” And then you noticed that although the book was closed, his finger was stuck in the middle of it marking a page. He flipped the book open, turned it so you could read it and handed it to you. You looked down at the heading at the top of the page:

Nocturnal Enuresis

“Bedwetting, you mean?”

“This book says you can’t control it.”

“You can’t. It’s a physical condition—" you said but you cut your explanation short because he was barely listening to you; he was disappearing into his head, and your eyes were wandering to your wall-to-wall bookshelves because you were noticing for the first time that all the books were in different places. He wasn’t coming into your office and pretending to talk to Zeek; he was reading aloud to himself. You closed the book, set it aside, and pulled your chair closer to him, “Alan? You look like you’re very upset.”

“I am,” he said as his face began to redden.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Sometimes I still do it,” he whispered.

“That’s okay. Some people don’t grow out of it.”

“Stitch goes fucking crazy when it happens.”

“What does ‘fucking crazy’ mean?” you asked. He threw his hands up in the air, almost yelling through his tears, “Mad! Mad, mad, mad! He gets very mad,” and then he pulled everything back in like he’d just performed a monologue, taken a bow, and left the stage. You wanted a lot more information, but he was more fragile than a Faberge egg at that moment, so you were careful. “How often does it happen?” you asked him. “When I have a nightmare,” he said.

********************
BRIAN’S POV
because Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
that he didn’t, didn’t already have

As you walked toward the cathedral, you kept yourself focused completely on Justin, your left hand wrapped around his right hand. You thought about nothing else but the next step you had to take; you made yourself forget how familiar that walk felt because you needed to keep your head in the game. As you got within a block of the church, his grip on your hand began to get much tighter. There was a mob scene in his immediate future. The minute Justin saw what you saw, he yanked you into a coffee shop and surrendered. “I can’t do this.” The place was noisy and packed, but you found a place to sit that was right by a window with a view of the church. A minute or so passed, and Justin pointed out the window, “There’s Zeek and Gabe.”

“Yep.”

“They actually look like brothers from far away, you know?” You laughed, “Don’t ever tell them that; they’ll kill each other.” Justin laughed, his fingers fiddling with a pack of Equal until a limo pulled up. No one emerged for several seconds as efforts were made to move the press back, and then finally the door opened, and Sam’s head could be seen—

“God, he’s hot,” you said.

“I know; it’s just wrong.” And then Harper’s long hair appeared, and they were both looking down. Moments later, Amelia could be seen between her parents, the three holding hands and Sam holding a rather large rabbit under his arm as they climbed the steps of the church, very slowly, Amelia quite determined to take her time. She let go of their hands when they got to the top and clapped. “She reminds me so much of you,” Justin said.

“Why?”

“She’s so infinitely proud of herself.”

“I have every reason to be infinitely proud,” you reminded him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Look who I get to fuck every night.”

He turned and smiled at you, and then he kissed you, and then he said, “Do you want me to get you some coffee?”

“Like when we’re at home?” you asked.

“Yeah.”

“No, I want you to tell me why we’re in here.”

He dodged your question, “Can’t we just go back to the hotel and fuck?”

“No. Why aren’t we going in the church like everybody else?”

“I’ll suck you off in the bathroom right now,” he offered.

“I’m touched, but no; you have sixty seconds to answer me or I’m picking you up and carrying you across the street.”

“That’s probably what you’re going to have to do,” he admitted.

“Come here,” you said, taking his hand and pulling him outside the coffee shop so you could hear yourself think, and when you got outside the doors, he seemed resigned to the fact that you were going to hurl him over your shoulder like a caveman, but when you led him over to a bench and told him to sit down instead, he seemed confused, “Am I in time out?” You laughed, “Yeah, you’re in time out.”

“Can I be in time out for the rest of the day?”

“No.”

“Damn.”

“Look at me,” you said, and when he did, you reached down and put your hand on the inside of his thigh as you leaned forward, your mouth right beside his ear, “That courage you were looking for at St. James; it’s not in that locker room; it’s in my hand,” and then you moved your hand forward a little to make your point. You felt him rest his hand on your arm, his forehead on your shoulder as you continued, “And believe me, you have plenty.” And then you felt his hand cover yours and hold it hostage between his legs, and then he looked at you, and you kissed him for a long, long time, and you could tell that he was disappointed when it was over because it somehow hadn’t transported him somewhere else. “Do you know why I fell in love with you?” you asked him. “Because my ass is as pretty as my face?” he answered. A fire truck roared by, sirens on full blast, “…That’s why I wanted you in my bed, not why I fell in love you.”

“Then I have no idea,” he said.

You took your sunglasses off and folded them in your hand. “Because since the moment I met you, I’ve never seen you make a decision out of fear—not even when you probably should have.”

He squinted in the sun, “Really?”

“Really. You’re the only person I know who never lets that factor in. You’re not afraid of anything.”

“I’m afraid right now.”

“No, you’re not; you’re uncomfortable, and so am I. We’d be androids if we weren’t; I mean, after everything we’ve been through together.”

“And apart,” he added.

“Exactly. That’s what I mean; I’m here, okay? Prada didn’t put out an Invisibility line this spring. You do see me, right?”

He laughed at you, “Yes, I see you.”

“Just checking.”

*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
talk to me
so you can see
what’s going on

In the months and years that followed, you worked to gain Alan’s trust, and slowly he came around, literally and figuratively, and you’d often come home from work as Justin was leaving, and he’d give you a funny look and tell you that Alan was ‘talking to Zeek again,’ and you’d just smile, and, admittedly, it diverted your attention from Justin walking away everyday, and when Amelia was an infant, Harper was rarely in the studio for an appreciable length of time, so the situation was nearly perfect—except for Jonathon’s regular diatribe about the risk you were taking treating, “A guy that lives in the fucking sewer.”

In the beginning, Alan was usually in your office with the door closed, and you let him open the door when he was ready, and you never said one word to him about his ‘conversations;’ you’d just go in and see what he had for you—sometimes it was something he’d pulled off of a shelf and sometimes it was something he’d sketched. You kept your office stocked with pads, pencils, charcoal, anything you could think of once you realized how talented he was. Your ‘sessions’ with him were often very superficial; he’d make things up, create experiences to talk to you about, but you just listened because there was truth in that as well, but then fate stepped in and handed you the catalyst you needed—

Your mother died.

Everything was different after that. When you returned to New York, Justin was painting through the night and leaving in the morning—his muse somehow affected by his recent and temporary departure from the city. On the days that Alan showed up, you had to be mindful of Justin’s late arrival, listen for him as he’d wander into the kitchen, grab dinner, and then mosey up the stairs to entertain yet another night of nocturnal inspiration. You became attuned to it and would often just excuse yourself from your office, close the door behind you, make chit chat with Justin for a few minutes, and then feign a mountain of paperwork you needed to catch up on and return to Alan where he was waiting patiently. Your mother’s passing gave you the opportunity you needed, but it was also a risk—one that you didn’t tell Jon or anyone else about—when you left the church bulletin from her funeral in your office in a place where you knew Alan would see it, and it worked, but not in the way you expected.

He began to sketch with the door open.

“May I come in and watch?” you asked him from the doorway.

“If you want,” he said, not looking up.

The first sketch that emerged was very unsettling. There was a boy lying in a bed on his side, naked from the waist down, his legs pulled up to his chest; the view was of his back and his backside not his face, and then there was his hand that was holding onto to a pipe on the wall, but it was a man’s hand, not a little boy’s. “This is you?” you asked him. He didn’t answer you verbally; he just looked up at you apologetically as if to imply that he wished he could answer you, but his voice only existed inside his pencil at that point. He sketched the rest of the bed and although he didn’t draw another figure in it, he drew a deep depression in the sheets, hollowed out right next to him. By the time he finished, his hand was trembling as if it was solely responsible for the revelation and his pencil was dull. You put your hand on top of his and squeezed, removing the pencil with the other. “I want to know what’s going on with this little boy,” you said. And when he continued to shake and was still unable to respond to you, you took a legal pad off of your desk, ripped off a blank page, turned back around and covered the part of the picture that showed the man’s hand. “Not you, Alan. This little boy. What’s going on with him?” He slid the paper out from under your hand, revealing the entire picture again. When you gave him a quizzical look, he said, “This isn’t about him.”

It took several more meetings to get more information out of Alan because the bits and pieces you got were so fragmented that they didn’t make much sense. His sketches were amazing, but the pieces you were able to gather up didn’t really form a coherent picture. But all of the pictures he drew stayed on that one sketch pad that he kept in your office, so you’d often go back and look at older ones when the new ones weren’t making much sense, so one day you went back to that first picture and pointed to the depression Alan had sketched in those sheets and you asked him, “Are those sheets wet? Is that why you’re alone in that bed?”

“They smell,” he said.

“Like urine?”

He nodded, and then he added, “Like sweat.”

“You’re not sweating in that picture; who’s sweating?”

He became nervous, almost sweating himself, “I need to talk to Zeek about this.”

“About what?”

“Because he does it, too.”

“Does what?”

“He has sex with everybody.”

It took one more week for you to get the first layer of truth out of Alan, that Stitch was having sex with him (and not, Alan stressed, the other way around) because every time Stitch had sex with a woman, she got pregnant. It took about a month for you to realize that Stitch had fathered three of the children living in Alan’s underground community, that one of them had died with days of being born, and that Stitch had assigned Alan the task of giving the infant a proper burial. “Because you get used to it,” Alan told you. “Stitch says you get used to it.” It took another two weeks before you were convinced that you were often treating Stitch through Alan, that it was psychiatry by proxy, and that you were in way over your head, but it was too late.

You had long discussions with Alan about Stitch, about his service in the Persian Gulf war, about the personal devastation he faced when he returned home, how he lost his wife and daughter largely because his PTSD was so severe that he couldn’t work. You tried to convince Alan to convince Stitch that because he was a veteran of the Armed Services, there were rights and benefits that he was entitled to, but Alan fought back against you, “He won’t come back upstairs. They won’t help him because he doesn’t have an address. They want to stick in him a loony bin. He won’t go. He needs us.”

“He needs help, Alan. Very serious help. Are you giving him the meds that you’re not taking?”

“Yes.”

“Did he have mental health problems before he went into the service?” you asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“Where was he working before he got called up?”

“He volunteered.”

“Why?”

“Because he couldn’t get a job.”

“Why couldn’t he get a job?”

“Because--,” and then he stopped and stared at you, clearly feeling tricked.

“Because he had mental health issues? I think we're back where we started, Alan."

“Tag, you’re it,” he said.

“No, you’re it, Alan. That’s what I’m trying to get you to see. Stitch has become your new mother. You think if you can take care of him, that will fix all the agony inside you?”

“You don’t get it.”

“The hell I don’t. The only parent you bonded with was schizophrenic or so we think; you think it’s a coincidence that you’re re-enacting that relationship with Stitch? You’re trying to correct it.” Alan stared blankly at you; he knew you were right, and he knew that you knew that he knew. Anger had a way of fizzling out when it got to Alan’s face, disappearing into a child-like ignorance. “Well, I’ll give him this,” you told him, “He’s a little like your father; he takes advantage of you and makes you deal with his emotional crap.”

“He does not.”

“He’s buried himself underground and isolated his ‘family’ the same way your father isolated your family; your father was too inconvenienced to do his manly duty and visit his own wife in the hospital; Stitch makes you have sex with him because he's too inconvenienced to use birth control."

“I don’t mind. It helps us stay warm.”

“Alan, get a blanket and build a fire. That’s ridiculous.”

“He’s happy when we paint.”

“I understand that he’s your friend; that he’s taken you in, but I want you to listen to me. First of all, if he’s schizophrenic, he should’ve never been allowed to serve, but those kinds of horrendous decisions have been made for years, and if he went over there pre-disposed to mental disease and then went through a war, god help him, Alan. No wonder he’s in the shape he’s in. Secondly, there are laws in the state of New York that provide job training and placement for veterans; there are programs that make sure they can find work, that they get all of the care that they need—mental and physical. He’s not the first veteran to go through this and he won’t be the last. He doesn’t have to go through this alone.”

“He doesn’t believe that stuff.”

“Look, tell him if he comes up, I will help him get through the system and get the help he needs. He shouldn’t have to live like this; he fought for our country; it’s disgraceful.”

“We don’t trust people.”

“No,” you corrected him, “He doesn’t trust people. You do. You trust me.”

“He doesn’t know that I trust you. He doesn’t know that I come here to talk to you; he thinks I come here to see Harper and Amelia and Justin because I like his work. That’s all.”

You felt like you were going round and round and round headed for the drain, “Okay, okay. Let’s just forget about Stitch then, okay? Let’s talk about you.”

*********************
don’t punish me with brutality

You told him about losing your father when you were young, about the affect that had on you, about how it made you empathize with him. You reminded him of the first time he spoke to you about his mother’s death years ago, how nothing horrible had happened after that, that it was safe to talk about things. He nodded his head.

“So where did you bury this baby?” you asked him.

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Why?”

“Because somebody will tell the police, and they’ll dig it up.”

“I don’t want to dig up the baby,” you reassured him, and you didn’t, but you felt compelled to tell him that because of his childhood, he needed to be very careful who he hung around with because there were some people in the world, in his ‘family,’ who were exploiting that vulnerability in him—intentionally or unintentionally. “You don’t get used to going through something horrific, Alan; you become desensitized and unconnected. That’s a completely different thing.” And after learning that sex with Stitch was unprotected, you went with him to a clinic and had him tested for everything. The results were negative the first time around, and you told him that you would take him every six months. He gave you the results to keep because he didn’t want Stitch to know he’d seen a doctor. When you gave Jonathon an update, he went fairly ballistic, “You are out of your mind and your league now, Dan. That guy Stitch is probably half-cocked and ready to blow. You better watch your step.”

But knowledge is power, and Alan seemed better as time worn on. Amelia was toddling around so Harper was back in the studio; Justin was coming out of his funk, so he was starting to keep regular hours once again, and you’d often come home from work to find all four of them playing together. Alan came alive when he was around Amelia; she adored him. Even Harper could see the miracle in their relationship because it wasn’t built on confusion or pain or fear or fantasy, but on laughter and affection and really idiotic dance moves. Everything was born in the moment and never regretted. For Alan, Amelia was living proof that there was pure goodness in the world; she wanted nothing from him but his attention. It was the purest of relationships, and it began to change Alan. Harper commented once that, “He knows that she loves him, and I think that’s the first time he’s ever believed that anyone really did.” Amelia’s hysterical giggling echoed all the way down the stairwell. It wasn’t uncommon for Alan to come downstairs for dinner with whatever hat and jewelry Amelia had dressed him in. He was her favorite dress-up doll.

And then there was a night when Justin was babysitting for Amelia because Harper and Sam were out, and Alan was there, and you were downstairs at your dining room table with paperwork spread out everywhere and Amelia’s squeals of laughter were making you smile; it was time for her bath and you knew she was running away from Justin; you could hear her overhead, back and forth in the hall.

“I’m going to play Yellow Submarine all by myself then Amelia,” you heard Justin say, and then you heard Amelia’s response, “No!” and her little feet run all the way back towards the bathroom, “You’re ‘upposed to wait for me!” And the water started running and the usual commotion ensued, and then you looked up, and Alan was standing in front of you white as a sheet. “Hey,” you said.

“I’m having a nightmare.”

“You’re not asleep,” you joked, but then you realized that he was serious, that something was wrong; his pants were darkening; tears were filling his eyes; he stood there like a stranger in his own body, shell-shocked and terrified.

“Alan, it’s okay; it’s okay,” you said as you got up from the table. You put your arm around his shoulders, and he turned and looked at you like he didn’t know who you were. “Let’s just go into the bathroom right here. It’s okay.” He did as you asked; his feet shuffling on the floor, a trail of urine left behind. The tiny guest bathroom was barely big enough for both of you. “Do you need me to help you get out of these clothes?” you asked him once he seemed like he was able to hear you, and he looked down at his pants, and then up at your face, and you said, “It’s over, Alan; it’s okay. Do you need help?”

“I can do it,” he whispered.

“I’ll be right back.”

You went across the hall, opened the linen closet, bent down and unzipped your gym bag, yanking out a pair of underwear, socks and sweat pants that you always kept in there just in case you ever actually went to the gym and then returned to the bathroom. Alan was sitting on the toilet, naked from the waist down, his pants in a ball on the floor. “The pants might be a little short,” you said. “Can you get me a wet towel or something?” he asked. “Sure.” You returned a few seconds later with a warm, damp towel and a dry one, “Just come out when you’re ready, okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, “Okay.”

*********************
you and I collide

“I need to clean up the floor,” Alan said once he was sitting in clean clothes in your office.“I already cleaned it up. Don’t worry about it.” He sat on the loveseat in your office that he’d sat on a million times before, but he looked like a different person; his boyish qualities were receding. “Do you understand what happened?” you asked him, noticing his uneven and dirty fingernails for the first time, his five o’clock shadow. “Uh, yeah, I pissed myself,” he said.

“Right, but I mean mentally and emotionally.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you feel it start?”

“I think so.”

“When you came downstairs, you said that you were having a nightmare. Do you remember that?”

“…Yes.”

You got up and closed the door to your office, dimmed the lights a little in your office because he seemed to be squinting and sat back down, “What was the nightmare? Do you remember?”

“Amelia was in the bathtub.”

“That wasn’t a nightmare; that was real.”

“That was also my nightmare.”

“Why is that a nightmare?”

“Something bad could happen.”

“Like what happened to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you comfortable talking about this?” you asked him, responding to the hesitancy in his voice.

“What if it happens again?”

“I don’t think it will; your bladder is empty, but if it does, it does. I’m not worried about that. I’m dying to replace that couch. Do you want your sketchpad?”

“No.”

You laid it next to him on the loveseat in case he changed his mind, “Let’s try again, okay? We’ll go as far as you want to go; if you don’t feel safe, we’ll stop.”

“Okay.” He pushed the sketch pad off the edge of the sofa and laid down. “Go.”

You pulled your desk chair closer; his arms were crossed over his chest as he stared blankly at the ceiling. “Tell me about the nightmare. Do you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you put me in it?”

“I’m walking into the bathroom; I’m behind myself, not inside myself….”

“Where’s this bathroom?”

“In my house.”

“Is your mother in the nightmare?”

“Yes, but I don’t look at her in the nightmare; I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s… It’s horrible… I can’t….” He started to cry; you handed him the box of tissues off of your desk and his body turned; he held the box the way a child hugs a teddy bear.

The chronology of the nightmare stopped. “Alan, I’m very sorry about what happened to your mother and about what happened to you; no child should ever have to experience something like that,” you said.

“I loved her.”

“Tell me about her; tell me something good about your mother.”

“She babied me; she spoiled me rotten. I don’t mean that she gave me things because we didn’t have money; I just mean that she was always hugging me and she was always smiling at me and tickling me. Always.”

“You were the youngest. She called you something funny, didn’t she? Harper told me—“

“’Alley Oop.’”

“Was your mother artistic like you?”

He smiled, “Yeah, actually she was. She never slept at night when she was home with us; she was always up watching TV, and she was usually doodling, too.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, and then started again, “I miss her.”

“She loved you unconditionally; she cherished you.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t she sleep at night?”

Alan stretched out, abandoning his child-like posture, setting the box of Kleenex on the floor, “You know she always said she couldn’t, that she had insomnia, but I think she wanted to be awake when my Dad was asleep. They never got along. That was her peace and quiet. She slept while we were at school.”

“What happened tonight, Amelia being in the bathtub, that brought that all of those feelings about your mother back, didn’t it?”

Alan turned, looked at you and sat up, his elbows resting on his knees, “She wanted me to come in and play with her.”

“Is that when it happened?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘it.’”

“Is that when you dug up the real baby you buried?”

Alan’s posture stiffened immediately; his eyes shifting from left to right as if he was suddenly in new surroundings, and he watched you like a hawk as you got up and pulled a book off your shelf, one that Alan was familiar with; he’d been reading it. His eyes followed your hand as it sat the book next to him on the sofa; you didn’t need to open it. “Alan, I think Amelia’s unconditional love and affection for you puts you in a very safe emotional place, and I think that when she invited you into the bathroom to play with her, that unguarded part of you walked in there, and I think—“

“I integrated a dissociative state.” You nodded your head at his answer. “Holy fuck.” You laughed at his reaction. “What do I do now?” he asked you, his eyes opening wide.

You knew he knew because he’d dog-eared that part of the book as well. You leaned forward a little as you spoke to him, “You welcome him in and honor him and help him grieve for the loss of his individuality and purpose.”

“Oh, is that all? Piece of cake.”

*********************
there will be no white flag above my door

When Alan left that night, you were very uncomfortable telling him good-bye, but very relieved to see him sitting outside on your front steps the next morning when you were leaving for work. “Hi,” you said, “What’s up?”

“I told Stitch that I’m babysitting Amelia for a couple days; I can’t be down there right now; it’s too weird.”

“Come on in,” you said, “I have to go to work; are you okay being by yourself all day?”

“Yeah.”

When you came home that night, he’d had an artistic explosion, much of it abstract which wasn’t really Alan’s style, but as you talked with him about it, he explained that it was the calling card of the young boy he was leaving behind. “It’s how he feels,” he says, “It's his chaos; he’s being abandoned.”

“He’s not being abandoned. He’s just going to have learn to get along with everyone else. He needs to talk about what happened to him; he needs to share that with everyone else so they understand him. By understanding him, they’ll understand themselves.”

“It’s too hard.”

”It’s very hard, Alan. A child-state is an escape; it can become no different that drugs or alcohol; it’s the equivalent of running and hiding in an emotional closet.”

“He’s a brat.”

“No, he’s afraid. He doesn’t know the rest of you; he doesn’t trust that he’ll be taken care of, but he wants to; that’s why he came through.”

“And peed on the floor.”

“He got your attention, didn’t he?”

“Fuck him.”

“Don’t treat him like your father treated you.” Alan’s expression changed; he was almost glaring at you. “Well, where do you think he came from, Alan? Outer space?” Alan flopped down on the futon in a dramatic, defeated flourish. “You’re not banishing him; you’re just setting some boundaries. I think the way he came through, peeing on the floor, there’s a reason for that.”

“Yeah, no shit; he has no manners.”

“No, he has no control because children rarely have control over anything in their lives—where and what they eat, where and when they go to sleep, elimination and toileting issues—and very often when a child's experiencing stress, that's where you'll see it. I think your nightmare where you keep wetting the bed is a recurrence of finding your mother, and you’re urinating because you’ve lost the ultimate control in that little boy’s life in that point; you can’t keep him safe anymore, and until you let him in, forgive him, and love him, he’s going to keep peeing on the floor because he’s terrified and alone and he’s trying to get your attention now that you’re old enough to help him.”

“You have no idea how much I hate it when you’re right.”

You stood up, “I’m starving. I’m meeting Jon for dinner tonight, and I’m going to be late.”

“What about me?”

“You stay here and work on your relationship with him; I’ll see you when I get back.”

“God, you suck,” he said, and you laughed at him as you ran down the stairs.

*********************
a heart in New York

When you got home from dinner with Jon, you climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Alan zonked out on the futon in the studio. You walked quietly from easel to easel. The abstract paintings were dry and tossed aside, replaced by a charcoal sketch of a woman you’d never seen before, but the likeness was unmistakable.

It was Ruth.

The image haunts you to this day because he sketched himself as a little boy staring at the back of his mother’s head and shoulders as she sat on the sofa staring at a television that was nothing but static. You had an overwhelming feeling that this was the way that Alan wanted to remember Ruth because the detail in the sketch was unbelievably meticulous. He had drawn a copy of TV Guide propped open on the arm of the sofa, a bag of potato chips showing just above the arm of the sofa with a price tag reading fifty nine cents. As you exited the room, you turned off the lights. When you awoke the next morning—a Saturday—the studio was back its immaculate condition, and the sketch of Ruth was lying on the end of your bed, a post-it attached--

When Alan visited from that point on, things went back to normal. Your ‘sessions’ with him seemed to be over. He was no longer sketching in your office when you came home from work; many times he was leaving as you arrived, and you’d stand on the sidewalk in front of your home and chat with him as you would any other friend you had. He was carrying himself differently; he had an aura of self-reliance about him on the street.

On the days when you came home and found him still in the studio, he was the old Alan, much meeker and still playing the part for Harper; he didn’t stand up as straight or speak with as much veracity, but he was clearly there for Amelia. She saw the real Alan more than anyone else; his guard began to fall with her as time went by. One afternoon when the skies were clearing after a bunch of rainy days, Alan offered to take Amelia for a walk so she could get some of her pent up energy out, and you watched Harper’s face as she accepted the fact that her little brother was in fact a man and could be trusted to hold his niece’s hand and walk around the block. Harper’s grieving process for her little brother began long before he was actually dead.

And then one night when you were in the kitchen after a particularly messy dinner, Alan was helping you rinse off the dishes, and when you asked him how he was doing in your quiet, serious doctor voice, he said, very calmly, “I sleep with my pants on now.” You patted him on the shoulder and smiled.

*********************
if not now
then when?

And all the while Alan was finding his voice, Justin had been finding his heart, and when he announced that he was leaving the city and reuniting with his partner, you reluctantly admitted to yourself that having Justin around to massage your ego when he wasn't the least bit interested in massaging anything else had been nothing but a very attractive crutch for you, and when you put it down, you realized that you weren't really yearning for another 'Justin' to take his place.  And when it was time to tell him good-bye, when he thanked you for everything you'd done for him, you felt the real hole in your heart. You missed him—yes; he was a true friend, but when Alan stood in the doorway of your kitchen one day in March of that year and asked if he could, "Maybe use Justin's studio space, if it's okay? You know, maybe just to try. I don't know; do you think I'm good enough?" you felt it fill up again.

"You're more than good enough," you told him, "Are you serious?"

"Well, I mean, it would be nice to have sunlight when I draw, you know an actual window.”

You smiled, "I'm sure it would be.”

"I don't know if I want to sell it or just fuck around with it; I don't know."

"Doesn't matter. Art is a lot like therapy; sometimes you don't know why you're there, but you show up and just see what happens."

"And I'm so done with therapy," he said.

You laughed, "Then art it shall be."
……

You didn’t tell Harper that Alan had asked for Justin’s vacated studio space or that he was considering spending much more of his time ‘upstairs’ because you felt it was his decision and his place to tell her if and when he was ready. You were expecting his answer any day.

Never did you imagine that it would forever stain your sidewalk.

*********************
sitting in his Nowhere Land,
making all his nowhere plans
for nobody

Having reviewed your notes on Alan for the last time, you rose from your chair that Friday morning, left your bedroom and walked into Harper’s studio and removed an open cardboard box from one of her shelves. It was full of half-used tubes of paint and boxes of charcoal and pencils and everything else that Justin had casually left behind, “Harper or Alan, they can have this stuff if they want it. It’s not worth packing, Dan.” You sat the box on Harper’s desk and began to tear the folder and all of its contents into a million little pieces, watching them fall into the box like snowflakes, and when you were done, you carried the box downstairs where Jon was waiting for you with your nice eyeglasses in his hands, and you switched pairs, leaving your old ones on a table in the foyer.

“What’s in the box?” he asked you.

“Trash.”

He knew you were lying, but he didn’t argue with you; he just followed your lead and walked with you down the sidewalk until you stopped and said, “I have to get rid of this before we get there, okay?”

“Whatever you say.”

And you crossed a busy street and walked some more until you came to a subway station, “Come on,” and Jon followed you down the stairs and stood with you in silence as you waited for a train to come, and after it came and went, you walked up to the edge of the platform by yourself, hugging the box in your arms as you faced the tracks, and said a quiet good-bye…

“Alan, I want you to know that I’m proud of you; that you did some of the hardest work I’ve ever seen on the couch. I don’t know if you know that or not; you did something that very few people are ever able to do.” You stopped because you were starting to cry. Jon was watching, he could tell so he started to approach you, but you shook your head and he backed off. And then you heard his voice, “You’re too close to the tracks, Dan. Back up.” And when you looked back over your shoulder, you saw transit cops standing with him and a few nosy bystanders, so you took a few steps back, re-focused and continued, “I don’t understand why they did this to you; maybe I’ll find out someday, maybe I won’t…but I hope that wherever you are, you’re at least as happy as the last time I saw you.” The crowd behind you was growing and the noise in the tunnel was getting louder, “I don’t know if it matters to you, but you were…,” the platform began to vibrate, “You were more than a patient or a friend to me, Alan; I feel like….” You looked up and saw the steel force heading your way. “Every time we talked, I heard that familiar echo inside you, a boy growing up without a father; I’m so sorry that I too let you down, that I didn’t get to you in time— Alan, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” you told him, “A train is coming.” And with that, you turned the box over and dumped everything onto the tracks—the paint, the chalk, the torn scraps of your notes and his sketches, and when you turned around, there were two transit cops towering behind you, and you handed one of them the box, and said, “Could you throw this out for me, please?” and the officer looked rather taken aback, but then he looked at your face and said, “Uh, yeah, sure.” And there was a reporter in the crowd, and he pushed through and tried to get in your face, “Dr. Cartwright, are you aware that the officers--?”

“Kindly get the fuck out of my way,” you said, and you could feel Jon on your heels as you pushed your way back up the subway stairs, headed for the street and the sunlight, trying to convince yourself step by step that Alan had finally found his window.

********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
sometimes I’m right then I can be wrong

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Dan took off, walking faster than hell toward the church, and you had to work to keep up. You asked him to slow down, but he wouldn’t, responding, “We’ll be late,” and took off again, so you spoke to his back, “I’m twice the shrink you are; you know that right?” He stopped and turned around, and before he could say anything else, you finished your thought, “But you’re ten times the man I am, okay? I get it; it’s over. You win.” He stared at you, looking tired and confused. You kept talking, “I couldn’t have done what you just did; thrown it all away like that. Never, not in a million years.”

“It’s his recovery; it belongs to him, not me.”

“That’s what I mean,” you said. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He continued to stare at you like you were boring him to death. “I thought I knew who you were, okay? You’re my best friend, and I thought I knew you inside and out, but I didn’t. I guess…I underestimated you.”

Daniel looked down at his wrist at the watch he forgot to put on and then back at you, “Beautiful, eloquent speech. Can we please get a move on?”

You looked at yours and threw your hand up--your second surrender in five minutes--to stop a cab.

********************
BRIAN’S POV
some are quick to take the bait

Forgoing the traditional Brian Kinney limo-arrival of late had been the smartest decision you made that day. You and Justin were barely noticed as you crossed the busy street and blended into the crowd in front of the church. Your timing was perfect; Alan’s underground family was getting all of the press attention when you arrived. Once you entered the sanctuary, you both immediately saw Zeek, tall, dark and playing the role of God’s bouncer in his imposing black suit, his hands clasped in front of him.

“You’re in a church, not Babylon,” you said as you approached him.

“Both are rather biblical if memory serves,” he reminded you, still standing at attention like he was at Buckingham palace.

“You look nice, Zeek,” Justin said, and Zeek immediately returned the compliment and then stood at attention again.

Justin let go of your hand when he saw Harper walking in his direction, her hand outstretched. Zeek stopped your forward motion; his hand on your bicep, “Boss man, wait.”

“What?”

“You read the paper this morning?”

You were watching Justin when you told him ‘no,’ and when Zeek said, “Here,“ you looked down at the folded paper in your hand and flipped it open so you could read the headline: New York’s Finest Plead Guilty: No Denial, No Trial. When the expression on your face didn’t immediately change, Zeek prodded you, “C’mon, man; this is good news.”

“As if there’s such a thing as no denial,” you countered.

A very thin, pretty girl approached the two of you as you finished your sentence, touched Zeek’s arm, smiled, and walked away; her dress was so tight, her butt squeaked. “When did you find time to tap that piece of ass?” you asked your newspaper when she was out of earshot.

“Front door at about a quarter to two; back door about two thirty.”

“You must be exhausted.”

“Nah, she rode; I watched.”

You knew just from looking at the lithe little sparrow that Zeek was full of shit. “There’s no way that little matchstick’s caboose rode your joystick. She’d be in the ER.”

“Eggo been telling big fish stories again?” You slapped him with his newspaper, so he amended his tale, pointing to the woman you’d met earlier in the week who was chatting up the little sparrow in a pew in the middle of the sanctuary. “We use the buddy system,” he declared proudly. “And besides, her name’s ‘Trinity.’”

“And you know what that word means?” you asked him.

Zeek’s eyes cut sharply in your direction while his head stayed exactly where it was, “You’re just jealous now that you and your wife are homogenous.”

(Well, at least he got the ‘homo’ part right…)

‘I would just like to remind you both that we are in church,” came a voice from behind you, and when you turned, you saw Gabe standing there in a suit that looked exactly like one you owned—two years ago. “You done primping for Jesus, ‘Cakes?” Zeek asked him.

“It’s nice to see you, Brian,” Gabe said.

“Well, ladies, the Armani-angel Gabriel has forced me to see the error of my ways,” you told them both. “I shall take my leave of both of you.”

“And I of you,” Gabe said to Zeek, “You lecherous heathen.”

“Oh, bad news, ‘Cakes,” Zeek warned his little brother, “God just heard that. God. Just. Heard. That.”

And so you abandoned Gabe and Zeek and entered God’s house to rejoin Justin, the cathedral smelling like every other church you’d ever been in; it had that musty pious smell that competed constantly with the colognes or lack thereof of its parishioners. All of it changed in intensity as you moved from aisle to pew to aisle and back again, the sound of false pleasantries was drowned out—quite nicely—by Nate at the piano.

He was playing Yesterday.

Lyrics taken from Bryan Adams’ Here I Am, Nelly Frutada and Timberland’s Promiscuous, Bob Seger’s Still the Same, Bryan Adams’ Heaven, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man, The Talking Heads’s And She Was, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, The Talking Heads And She Was again, John Cougar Mellencamp’s Crumblin’ Down, Kate Bush’s Running Up that Hill, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, The Band’s The Weight, Tears for Fears Don’t You Forget About Me, The Beatles’ Lady Madonna, Maroon 5’s She Will Be Loved, Blues Traveler’s Hook, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, Whitesnakes’s Here I Go Again, Greenday’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), The Dave Matthews Band Ants Marching, The Band’s The Weight again, Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man, The Band’s The Weight again, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody three times, Three Dog Night’s One is the Loneliest Number, America’s Tin Man, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? twice, Howie Day’s Collide, Dido’s White Flag, Art Garfunkel’s A Heart in New York, Tracy Chapman’s If Not Now, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man again, Sly and the Family Stone’s Everyday People, and America’s Tin Man again.