Author's Notes: As I explained in the Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Post 513-Prologue post, this story is a sequel to Framed. Thanks for all of your feedback on that story as well as the Prologue. I truly appreciate it.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 1—INDICATION
BRIAN’S POV

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

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

Or was that pain?

Fuck, you can’t remember.

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

And you never saw it coming.

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

Immediately.

Nobody was coming between you and The Car.

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

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

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

“Okay.”

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

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

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

“One of your paintings.”

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

“I bought it.”

“When?”

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

“Why?”

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

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

Wrong answer.

“That’s not what I meant.”

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

“I bought it over the phone, Justin.”

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

The two of you ate in silence.

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

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

“I don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t need your help.”

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

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

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

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

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

“The first day, I think.”

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

“No.”

“Well, then, what?”

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

“Any old big one?” Oh shit.

“No.”

“Go on, Brian.”

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

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

“I know.”

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

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

It didn’t last long.

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

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

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

“Open the door.”

“Go back to bed, Brian.”

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

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

“Leave me alone.”

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

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

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

“You asshole.”

“You stole my painting.”

“I told you to leave me alone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And not to him.

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

He names everything.

Gus. Kinnetic. ‘Britin.’

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

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

Until now.

“I’m sorry, Justin.”

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

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

No, wait.

Three.

It wasn’t the right time to tell him.

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

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

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

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

Why isn’t he allowed to let go?

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

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

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

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

The perfect corsage.

“Justin!”

He couldn’t hear you.

You panicked and danced.

Panicked and danced.

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

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

Pure, just like he was.

"Did you see their faces?”

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

“I wish I could forget.”

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

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

“Mmm, you okay?” He stirred a little.

“Bad dream.” He curled back against you.

“Sorry,” he yawned and settled back down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was trying to sell them death.

And it was working.

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

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

Fuck this.

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

Time for a little indulgence.

You were going on your honeymoon.


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

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 3-OPPORTUNITIES

BRIAN'S POV

a bottle of red,
a bottle of white,
it all depends upon your appetite

It'd been a hot, humid, summer day four and half years ago when you'd decided that the only place you were going to find the man you needed was in New York City. Mama Zirrolli's wasn't the classiest Italian restaurant in the city by any means, not nearly elegant enough for your taste. But you weren't there for the ambiance; you were there to find him.

His resume had come in with every other Business major's resume along the east coast along with a cover letter and a photo. He sent a photo. You thought that was odd and brave at the same time. Every time you looked at it, all you could think of was JFK, Jr. You decided that if you looked like John Jr., you'd send your photo to everyone, too. And he had the whitest teeth you'd ever seen. Your eyes kept coming back to his picture, his resume, every time you sat down to review your options. Finally, thinking you were losing your mind and getting tired of him staring back at you, you gave the whole stack to Ted and told him to pick out his top ten.

This guy wasn't one of them.

You hadn't given Ted the photo.

You interviewed seven of Ted's top ten and nothing was clicking for you. They were all great candidates, had great credentials, but they weren't exactly what you needed. After the seventh felt like another lukewarm letdown, you added JFK, Jr. to the list as number eleven and had Cynthia call him to set up an interview. He would be in your office in the following Monday.

You went to New York City the next day. The first time you'd gone since Justin left.

The minute you got into the cab at the airport, the buzz of the city overtook you. You used to feel like that buzz was you, what you were going to be, but it didn't feel like that that day. It felt like something you longed for. Something you'd always long for.

You recognized him the minute you walked into the door of Mama Zirrolli's. He looked just like his picture. You figured he was about twenty-eight.

"Table for one, sir?"

"Yes." You asked to sit in the back. It gave you a better view.

"Your server will be right with you."

"Thank you.”

You watched him while you ate your salad, watched him greet customers, watched him help out the wait staff when the place began to fill up, watched him answer the phone, work people in, schmooze with everyone who came in the door—from elite businessmen to mothers with screaming toddlers. And he did all of this with his sleeves rolled up, the true sign of a work-a-holic. He never stopped moving. And the lasagna was fucking amazing.

He noticed when you were nearly finished with your meal and came over to see if you wanted dessert. People waved to him through the window that you were sitting in front of. He smiled and waved back.

"Sir, can I get you anything else? Coffee, perhaps?"

"You're Gabe Zirrolli, aren't you?" He gave you a funny smile. It took you a minute to realize that everyone knew who he was. It was a dumb question in retrospect. Of course, he was Gabe Zirrolli.

"Yes, I am. Was everything satisfactory?" He told you a year later that he thought you were a food critic.

"It was delicious. Damn near perfect." You handed him your business card. "I'm Brian Kinney." It took him a second to make the connection.

"Oh my goodness, I didn't know. I'm interviewing with you next Monday. I just got my e-ticket from your assistant today."

"This was your interview. The job is yours if you want it. Do you have a few minutes to schmooze with me?"

"Oh my god, absolutely. Let me go tell my father so he can come out here and cover for me."

"Certainly."

You talked with Gabe for about half an hour, offered him a relocation package to come to Pittsburgh, talked about where he got his business degree, and then asked him why in the world he wanted to leave this, his family's restaurant that he was obviously born to run, and the hubbub of the city.

"I've literally been working here all my life. I want to make it on my own, branch out a little. I've always wanted to manage my own restaurant, and I can't open one in the city and compete with my family. My parents have worked too hard for this. I couldn't…..I wouldn't do that to them. There'll be plenty of time for me to run this place when I'm an old man. But I'm not right now, and I want a chance to prove myself to someone other than my father."

"Fair enough. You can prove yourself to me. I'd like you to be settled in thirty days or less. Zeal opens in two months. That'll give you a month there before it opens."

"I just can't believe this. That you just showed up here. I was still stressing over what I was going to wear." To this day, Gabe's neurotic tendencies make you laugh. He's worse than Theodore.

"You're what I want. You have the perfect disposition to keep paying customers happy."

"I guess it's in my blood. Customer service and all that."

"Okay, well, I'll see you in a month. Call my assistant for help with relocating, whatever you need. She can help you."

"Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Kinney—“

“Brian.”

“Brian. I look forward to working with you."

"Same here."

Gabe introduced you to his parents before you left. His mother told you that she just knew that it was Gabe's lucky day when she woke up that morning. You knew you'd made the right decision. He was the one you wanted. Someone who looked the part, had the experience and education, and who was more loyal than a Golden Retriever.

You'd secured your fortune that day in the city, and a month later, when Gabe arrived, he hit the ground running.

The sun beat down on you as you stood outside of Mama Zirrolli's after that meeting, as you watched the myriad of pedestrians negotiate their way on the busy streets. You stood still and weighed your options.

One down. One to go.

But first, you had some negotiating of your own to do.

**************************
I realize it's just a picture in a frame

The name of the gallery was shoved in your wallet on a post-it note: Frequency. It was less than two blocks from Mama Zirrolli’s. You’ll never forget your visit there because of the way you were greeted when you walked in the door,

“Good afternoon, sir. Please excuse the heat. Our air-conditioning is broken.” A very petite, brown-haired woman in her early thirties stood in the foyer. Her eyeglass frames matched her hair color perfectly.

“Well, it’s certainly a bad day for that.”

“That’s very true. My name’s Margy. What can I do for you?” Her name had a hard ‘g.’ She spelled it for you when you looked perplexed.

“Margy. M-A-R-G-Y. Margaret’s too formal, but my parents gave me that nickname. I’m not responsible for it.”

You smiled, “You don’t want to know the nicknames my parents have for me.”

“Oh, so you’re charming. How refreshing on such a hot day.”

Your eyebrow went up before you could stop it, “Was that sarcasm?”

“Quite possibly. Or I might just be flirting. I never really know until I see how things turn out.” Her mischievous smile lit up her face. “But you didn’t come in here to be hit on by me, or at least, I highly doubt it, so what can I do for you?”

You pointed to a small painting hanging on the wall, “I called the other day. I think I spoke to someone else. I’m interested in buying that painting.”

“That painting?” She walked over to it and studied it for a second. “I’m sorry, but it’s already been sold.” You knew that, thought you’d take your chances anyway.

“How much did it sell for?” She walked behind a counter and pulled out a book, her finger running down the page until she found what she wanted.

“Seventeen hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I’ll give you two thousand.”

“You want to give me two thousand dollars for a painting that’s already been sold?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I won’t, I guess.”

“I’ll give you twenty-five hundred. Two thousand for the painting and five hundred for your trouble.”

“My trouble?”

“Your crisis of conscience.” She eyed you up and down, probably wondering if you were good for the money. “In cash.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.” She erased something on the page she was holding hostage with her finger and looked right at you.

“I suppose everyone makes mistakes.” She took the cash out of your offered hand and wrote you a receipt for two thousand dollars. “This is the most intimate thing you and I will ever do, isn’t it?”

You rolled your lips in as you wrote the address for Kinnetic on a piece of paper for and handed it to her, “I’m afraid so, but rest assured, it was good for me.”

She blushed and looked down at the piece of paper in her hand, “Well, Mr. Kinney, you certainly know how to treat a lady.” Her facetiousness, though over the top, was impressive.

“Takes practice.”

“And I’m sure you’ve had plenty.”

“Less than you could ever imagine, trust me. I’m just a quick study.” She walked you to the door.

“Well, thank you for your business……and for somehow making it unbearably hotter in here.”

“My pleasure. The painting will be delivered by the end of this week?”

“Yes, and now, I have to go call the gentleman who purchased this painting the first time, and tell him how horribly I fucked up. And I know him. He won’t take it well. He’s a bit uptight.” Her voice went up at the end of the sentence as she held the door open for you.

“Well, thank you again, Margy, and have a good day.”

“You do the same, although you didn’t have to say my name. Now, I’ll be in a puddle before you even get halfway down the street.”

“That’s one way to stay cool, huh?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Kinney, and enjoy your art.”

“I will.”

**************************
Rikki, don't lose that number
it's the only one you've got

A block away from the gallery, you stopped staring at your cell phone and actually used it. You called Justin and got his voice mail.

"Hey. I'm in town on business. Last minute thing. Thought maybe I could see you—" He was beeping back in as you were leaving the message.

"Brian?"

"Hey."

"Something wrong? What's up?"

"I'm in town. I'm here. On business. Last minute thing."

"Oh…. Whoa."

"I'm done. For the day." It was one fifteen.

There was an awkward silence before he spoke again, "I'm actually at a coffee shop. Can you catch a cab?"

"Sure." He gave you the address. You wrote it on your hand. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Okay. Great." His voice sounded tentative, like he didn’t really think you were there, like you might have been playing a joke on him.

**************************
must be the clouds in my eyes

The bell on the door of the coffee shop rang loudly as you opened it, your body grateful for the blast of ice cold air-conditioning. Your sunglasses fogged up as you saw him, almost a blond blur toward the back. The five or six patrons in the restaurant glanced up when you walked past them and then looked down again. You tucked your shades in your shirt pocket and smiled as you sat down. He smiled back, closing his sketchbook. A waitress came over and poured coffee for you that you didn't want. You didn't stop her.

He spoke first, "This is a surprise."

"It's good to see you." It was so good to see him.

"Have you eaten?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, well, I'm just hanging out here. My roommate's fucking her boyfriend in our place."

"Oh….. well, I didn't know I was coming. Last minute thing."

"Yeah, you said that on the phone."

……

……

"You doing okay?"

"Great." You didn't quite believe him. "I like it here. Keeps me inspired, you know?" He glanced around the coffee shop. You got the feeling he spent a lot of time there.

"Right. That's good."

……
……

"Are you staying somewhere?" He sounded like he wanted the answer to be, 'yes.'

"Just here for the day. I fly back tonight, early evening."

"Oh." He sipped his coffee. His eyelashes looked longer. "Well, you look really nice." The compliment felt good. You returned it.

"So do you." He laughed a little like he didn't believe you, his cargo pants and t-shirt no match for your designer label.

It got quiet again after that, and you drummed your fingers on the table, pretended to look around the coffee shop, to read the menu over the counter.

This place sells a lot of pastries, you thought.

Your eyes moved back to him, and he was looking at you. They met and he looked away, out the window, running his hand through the back of his hair. You raised your arm pretending to look at your watch, and his eyes returned to yours.

"I could stay somewhere for a while. If you want." His smile seemed almost grateful as he put his sketch pad and his cell phone in his bag.

"Okay, we could take a walk or something."

"Okay." You stood up. He stood up, throwing ten dollars on the table. You motioned for him to walk in front of you, and you both stepped out onto the sidewalk. When you touched him, the small of his back felt exactly the same, but your hand didn't linger.

Which way do you want to go?" he asked, looking at you, his eyes squinting in the sunlight.

"You lead." The two of you walked in silence for about half a block until he stopped at the entrance of a nice hotel.

He turned to face you, "This okay?"

"Sure." You opened the door for him, getting the second blast of cold air you'd had in fifteen minutes, the sweat on your skin cooling immediately. He looked around and then sat on a gold-colored sofa near the front desk. Your hand rested on his shoulder for a brief second, "I'll be right back."

The elevator ride was quiet, stopping on the seventh floor, and you motioned for him to step off. He did, looking back at you as you pointed the way, "Right here. It's this one."

**************************
and she'll wrap herself around you like a well-worn tire

The room was as cold as the lobby and the hallway, so you walked over to the vent under the window and backed the air conditioning off a little, your eyes following him as he put his bag on a chair. You walked over and stood in front of him, putting your hands on his wrists as he reached to put his arms around your neck, holding onto them for a few seconds, thinking that you should say something, but you couldn't think of anything, so you didn't.

You kissed him with your eyes wide open.

"I miss you."

You felt like he was talking to his fingers, and you stood still as he loosened your tie and unbuttoned your shirt, gently tugging the fabric out of your pants. His lips felt soft and open on your chest, your body almost tingling as they brushed over your skin. He sucked your nipple into his mouth and you moaned, pressing his head against you, and held him, standing there frozen in time, until you felt his hands undoing your belt, unzipping your zipper.

His hand slipped inside your underwear, and you squeezed his shoulders, feeling like you were about to lift him off the floor. His palm was warm as it slid down your cock, as you pushed into it. He rubbed you softly as he sucked, his fingers skimming over your slit, as you tightened your hands around his arms.

It was a matter of seconds before you came in his hand. Raising his chin with your finger, you leaned down and kissed him, your hand cradling the side of his face. He slid his other hand inside your underwear and pushed them down, undressing you completely. You reached between you, undoing his pants with one hand, and he kicked them off and laid back on the bed, welcoming you as you lowered your body to his. You felt him spread his legs, felt him want you as you laid on top of him, felt like lust had never been so heavy.

It was going to crush him.

In a way, it was like this moment had already happened, that you were really just daydreaming, because it was exactly how you thought it would be, because you'd imagined it in your mind since the day he left. Imagined him winding his fingers in your hair just like he was doing right then, imagined the sounds he'd make as you kissed him, the way he'd arch his body for you when you slid your hand between his legs.

And this was it. This was perfect. You wanted to be wanted.

It was strange and familiar at the same time, the way his hands moved over your body, the way they knew you so well when you didn't really feel like you knew him at all.

Not anymore.

And it was so unfair to want this so badly, to have to have it, to need this like it was essential for your survival. But it was. And somewhere inside you it felt like a favor he was doing for you, like a sacrifice.

But your body wouldn’t let you care.

He released your hair, letting it slide through his fingers, as you roamed down his body, your hands looping underneath his legs.

"Brian." It was a whisper. It was your face running down the inside of his thigh. It was your mouth on his skin.

You felt his other leg along your back, holding you, using you for leverage as he lifted his hips for you, drowning in his urgent need to press against your face.

He smelled so ready.

You'd missed that smell, the smell of you about to fuck him. He moaned as you pushed your palms up the back of his thighs, lifting his balls into your mouth. Your mouth was greedy on him, soaking his balls, running up and down his cock, and then you pushed again and he held his legs up for you as you started to rim him. He knew what you wanted.

You licked him slowly, your thumbs parting his ass, savoring the squeeze on your tongue as you pressed it inside him, generously wetting him as he softly said your name.

He begged eventually, quietly, "Just fuck me. Please fuck me," panting on the bedspread as you put the condom on, stroking himself, until you pushed inside him all at once.

His body jerked underneath you, the moist skin between his legs suctioning against you as you moved inside him. "Keep them spread, just like that," you told him as you fucked him, unrestrained, your hard breath against his ear, "Just like that."

He wrapped his arms around you and hugged you, combing your hair with his fingernails, trying to lock his legs around you as you put your hand on his inner thigh and pushed them back apart, "I'm going to come, please."

"Come like this." His feet slipped on the bedspread, and he scrambled to plant them again, pulling your hair as your thrusts quickened. You felt his hand slip between the two of you. He pressed his cock hard against your stomach and arched into you, his body shaking in your hands.

"Brian, please. Help me."

He was struggling to get his shirt off before he came. You gave it a hard yank and pulled it over his head, letting him cling to you when he started to come, fucking him harder as you felt his body trembling underneath you, the warmth of his come sealing you together.

And then he kissed you as you came, his eyes dark and intense as you looked at him, and then you collapsed over his shoulder, the hotel smell of the bedspread filling your nose. His lips were sweet and wet on the side of your face as he held you, his voice in your ear,

"Did you wear that suit on purpose?"

You couldn't for the life of you remember what suit you'd worn that day. You felt like you came here naked, just like this, like you'd never been anywhere but here.

"No. Why?"

"It's just that it's the first suit I ever saw you in."

**************************
there was a time
I was everything and nothing all in one

He invited you under the covers in silence, pulling them back for you, lying on the white sheets. You laid beside him, pulling the sheets over both of you and held him, kissing him softly, kissing him everywhere, your hands moving over his warm, smooth body until he said he had to go,

"I'm sorry. I have to be somewhere." You released him.

"It's okay."

You watched him get dressed, unable to participate.

"I didn't know you were coming, or I would've--"

"It's okay. It was just a last minute thing."

He knew you weren't coming downstairs with him when he kissed you good-bye.

You laid there until you had to go to the airport, replaying the last few hours in your head over and over. The last time you'd fucked him, he was hours from boarding a plane, and now, you were.

When you got in the cab, you checked your messages. Gabe Zirrolli had formally accepted your offer.

You left New York that day thinking Justin never would. You left knowing you'd been right all along:

One down.

One to go.

You glanced at your palm as the cabbie swerved in and out of traffic. The address of the coffee shop had nearly faded away.

Lyrics taken from Billy Joel's Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing Baby, Steely Dan's Rikki Don't Lose that Number, Elton John's Daniel, Island Girl, and Something About the Way You Look Tonight.

 BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 4-SECURITY

BRIAN’S POV

we got to install microwave ovens,
custom kitchen deliveries,
we got to move these refrigerators,
we got to move these color TV's

Zeek Zirrolli patrolled the streets of New York City looking for work like a homeless man looks for food. The day you met him, he handed you a business card that looked like it’d been through the washing machine.

ZZ Top, Inc.
Zeek Zirrolli, President and CEO
You want it done? It’s done.

You looked at him like he was a moron.

“This is your business card?”

“Yes, sir.” He was proud of it.

“Don’t you have a new one? One that doesn’t look like a dog ate it?”

“No, sir. Not on me. I recycle ‘em. Saves me money.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that he was Gabe’s older brother and you were in a desperate situation, you would have given it back to him and told him to come back when he had a fresh one. But you couldn’t. You were between the proverbial rock and hard place.

So when the electrical system at Babylon proved to be no match for a bomb that had gone off almost two years ago, you were sufficiently impressed when Gabe wielded his cell phone on his second day of work and called his brother. Luckily, Zeek was just across town, unpacking and installing shelves for his little brother.

“Babycakes tells me that you need an electrician,” he told you after he gave you his raggedy business card.

“Babycakes?” Gabe looked like he wanted to crawl under your conference room table.

“Yeah, Babycakes. You know, my baby brother, here.” He pointed to Gabe at the table, who was turning eight shades of red at that very moment.

Gabe looked close to death, “Zeek, do you mind?”

Zeek reminded you of the Professor, only with rocks in his head instead of brains. You studied him for a minute or so, looked at his hands, rough, dirty, and callused, and decided he had a Gilligan-simplicity about him. That he was probably harmless. That he was one of those guys that constantly wore black t-shirts reading ‘SECURITY,’ even when he wasn’t securing anything. You imagined him having an entire closet full of them.

It wasn’t your imagination.

And Zeek had never met a stranger.

He fixed your problem at Babylon that day, and almost three thousand dollars later you had an upgraded electrical system that according to Zeek, “Based on my load calculations, you still have plenty of space in that box to add more shit. You’re set, man. You. Are. Set.”

“Load calculations? You can do math?” you inquired as you surveyed the finished product, albeit with no idea what you were supposed to be looking at. You flipped the switch and everything worked. That was about as far as your electrical knowledge was taking you.

“Nah, I can’t do math, man, but my calculator can.” He shook it in your face. “Kmart, man. Nine ninety-five. On sale. Nine-ninety five.”

When the lights were back on and the boys of Liberty Avenue were drinking and sinking into one another again, you wrote Zeek a check for three thousand nine dollars and ninety-five cents to cover the cost of his calculator and gave him a box of brand new, re-designed business cards that were all clean.

“Here, Popeye. Here’s a check and a little something for your trouble.” He opened the box and seemed amazed. Apparently he’d never actually seen business cards in a box before.

“I just print ‘em out on my printer, but it jams all the time, my printer, so this is real cool, man.”

“Please throw away the old ones. A man with a dingy business card is unrefined and pathetic.”

“Whatever you say, Boss Man. Whatever you say.”

“And you can stop repeating yourself at the end of every sentence. It’s highly annoying.”

“I’ll work on it, Boss Man. I’ll work on it.” You realized right then that you can lead a horse to water, but he’s still gonna tell you about it three times.

*********************
oh, that ain't workin'
that's the way you do it,
get your money for nothin'
get your chicks for free

Over the years, Zeek’s bounced for you, fixed electrical nightmares, unpacked and installed equipment, tended bar, and wired the security system at your humble abode, The Palace. He’s moved more furniture than Ethan Allen’s Labor Day Sale. Hell, the loft elevator broke one day, and Zeek had it fixed before any other technician could get his ass over there. And you were both high as kites at the time. You sat in the hallway eating Fritos, drinking tequila, smoking weed, and handing him tools when he asked for them.

You know more about small hand tools now than you ever wanted to know—powered and otherwise. You were content with your dildos, beads, cock rings, screwdriver, and a hammer. And lube. Lubricant was a tool as far as you were concerned.

By the time he’d gotten the elevator running again, you were out of pot. Zeek offered to score some for you that weekend when he was back in the city. You took him up on his offer, “I want good shit, Zeek. Not crap.”

“Don’t you worry, Boss Man. I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry.”

You figured if Zeek ever got busted buying drugs for you, they’d never be able to get back to you because you were pretty sure Zeek didn’t even know your real name. You were ‘Boss Man’ the day he met you, and you figured you’d be ‘Boss Man’ until you died.

Fine with you. You’d certainly been called worse.

He told you the story of why he calls Gabe ‘Babycakes’ while he was testing the elevator, watching it go up and down. Zeek’s very easy to entertain. “When Gabe was a baby, he thought that ‘Pattycake’ song was ‘Babycake,’ and he sang it every fucking minute. ‘Babycake, babycake-“

“Maybe he just didn’t know anyone named ‘Patty,’” You fell over on your side laughing. Zeek told you to lay off the tequila because that joke wasn’t even funny, it was just—

“Pathetic?”

“Yeah, man, pathetic. That’s like your favorite word. Everything with you is ‘pathetic this, and pathetic that.’”

“Whoa, that’s really pathetic. My obsession with the word ‘pathetic.’”

“Dude, you’re stoned out of your fucking mind.”

“No, not ‘dude.’ ‘Boss Man.’”

“All right, ‘Boss Man,’ you’re stoned out of your fucking mind.”

“Oh my god, I’m so pathetic.” You were laying on the floor in the doorway with your legs inside the loft and your upper body in the hall.

“And you say I repeat myself?”

“Hey, if you slam this door real hard right now, you’ll slice me in two pieces, like a magician.” He stood up, rolling his eyes at you, and dragged you by your legs back into your loft.

“Dude, you’re fucked up.”

“’Boss Man.’ ’Boss Man.’”

“I’m gonna leave now, and I’m gonna shut this door. Don’t drive home. Just sleep here tonight. Want me to cart your ass to the bed, or can you handle it?”

“I can handle it. I can handle everything, but, Zeek, I hafta tell you something: I seriously am that pathetic,” you said to him as he was putting on his jacket, shaking his head at you.

“Nah, man. You’re not pathetic. You’re just lonely.”

“I’m just lonely,” you repeated back to him. “Very. Fucking. Lonely.”

“Night, Boss Man.” He put the tequila out of your reach. “I’ll see you in a week or so or when something else breaks.”

“God, if anything else breaks, that’ll be so pathetic.”

“Take it easy, Boss Man. Take it easy,” he said to you as he stepped over you and walked out the door.

You fell asleep right where he left you, sprawled on your hardwood floor wearing an extra-large t-shirt that said: ‘SECURITY.’

*********************
not a present for your friends to open

The half-melted, filthy snow and ice crunched under your black boots as you made your way from your parking space into the loft on December 24, 2006. You’d spent that afternoon, after working the majority of the day, relaxing and surfing the net for your own personal Christmas present. When you opened the door to your loft, you realized that Santa had already come. There was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue on the bar with a bow and note:

Brian,
I was hoping I’d get to see you, but I guess it’s not timing out right.
I’m leaving town in a couple of hours, spending Christmas with friends
in Key West, if you can believe that. Anyway, I wanted to give you this.
Please give Gus and Jenny a hug for me. And Mel and Lindz.

Merry Christmas,
Justin

When you opened the note a check fell out and floated to the floor. You picked it up and stared at it. Five hundred dollars. The memo on the check said, to pay you back, it’s a start.

You didn’t want his money. You thought about tearing it up but then decided not to.

You didn’t even know why you were there, at the loft, except that you did. The festive Christmas décor at the house wasn’t for you; it was for Gus. You figured you should stay away from it, or it wouldn’t stand a chance of still being around whenever he arrived the next morning. So you hired someone to make the place merry and left for the entire month of December, living at the loft until the elves were coming after Christmas to get rid of everything. Your neighbors left cards in your doorway complimenting you on the yuletide splendor you’d created for the neighborhood.

You threw them in the fireplace.

The cards.

Not your neighbors.

It was your second Christmas without Justin. Seemed ridiculous to think of a Christmas without him considering you’d never thought of a Christmas with him, but it was snowing and you were standing in front of the window at nine thirty that evening smoking and laughing to yourself as the trick you were about to fuck talked to his sister on his cell phone.

Rudy.

His name was Rudolph, and you were going to fuck him on Christmas Eve. That and his unrelentingly, hot, holiday ass seemed to be a perfect match for your freshly lit cigarette. The self-pity mixed with a little whiskey made it feel like every other Christmas you could ever remember. You didn’t know why you let him tell you his name.

Rudy was full of holiday spirit and your cock when you bent him over a table and taught him the difference between naughty and nice. It didn’t take him long to realize which one you were. He was smarter than most. Probably why he’d been chosen to guide Santa’s sleigh.

You’d seen him around Babylon lately, dropping less-than-subtle hints about wanting to be one of the million your dick had served. It’d become a rite of passage for these club kids of late, to be chosen by you. Made you feel like a head of a fraternity that, as the 'brothers' got to know, wouldn’t have you as a member.

Because it wasn’t a matter of give and take with you. It was, quite simply, a matter of take.

Rudy was putting his jeans back on and insisted upon chatting you up, “You know, there’s a contest going on among us: ‘See how long Kinney will let you remain in his presence after he’s fucked you.’”

“That’s a ridiculous name for a contest. What’s the prize?”

“Don’t know. Notoriety, I guess. I hear the record so far is twelve minutes. We’ll, since July, anyway. We start over every six months.”

“How sporting of you. How much longer would you have to be in my face to make twelve minutes, thirty seconds?”

“A little under seven minutes.”

“Well, stop talking, and you can break the record.”

Rudy sat down on your sofa and looked at his watch. You poured yourself another shot of Johnnie Walker and drank it, the bottle dangling from your hand as you made your way to your bedroom. You cast a glance back over your shoulder, “Merry Christmas, Rudolph. Guess you always were Santa’s favorite.”

*********************
you’ll be doin’ all right, with your Christmas of white,
but I’ll have a blue, blue Christmas

You heard the door of the loft close and rolled over to stare out the window, your hand wandering between your legs. You felt yourself, still hard for him, Justin, not the misfit boy, and told yourself that you wouldn’t do this. Promised yourself as the whiskey burned through your body that you wouldn’t lay here, a victim of your own impending intoxication, and imagine him. Naked, tight, and so, so warm.

But you were lying to yourself and you knew it.

It’s only a lie if they make you lie.

He was making you lie, haunting you. Ghost of Whiskey-bearing, Note-Leaving, Blond Boy Past.

You stared at the gift he brought, your eyes fixating on the label:

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 4.1-DELETED SCENE-WHEELS

BRIAN’S POV
a newborn king to see

Gus was full of piss and vigor the next morning at the house, elated that Santa had indeed come. You spent the day playing with him and his new Matchbox racing set you’d bought him, complete with a green corvette. Gus spent the entire day declaring that he was you because he had one of your cars. You lost track of him at one point and found him upstairs, standing in front of the fireplace in your bedroom.

He was singing Jingle Bells and dancing.

“Gus, what are you doing up here?” To say that your bedroom wasn’t childproof would be a colossal understatement. You took your stash off the dresser and shoved it in a drawer.

“Watch me, Daddy. I’m singing!”

“I can see that.”

“And I’m waiting for Santa.” He performed some physical action which looked remotely like a jig.

“Santa’s already been here.”

“Nuh, uh. Not this chimney.” You didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a gas fireplace.

“Well, he only comes down one chimney per house. He won’t be back ‘till next year.”

“I wanna wait for him.” He launched into a butchered version of Up on the House Top complete with full-body spasms.

You tried again, “He won’t come down the chimney if you’re standing here. He doesn’t let people see him.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Nope. He’ll go right past us.”

“Shit.”

“Gus, don’t say words like that.”

“Why not? You do.”

“Tell you what, why don’t you come with me and see what Santa brought Daddy for Christmas?”

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

"Happy Holidays, Mr. Kinney. Today is Monday, December 25, 2006. The time is twelve fifty-eight p.m. The current temperature is forty-two degrees. Road advisories have been issued for your area due to snow accumulation. Please use caution and increase following distance. You may enter your destination now.”

“UNKNOWN.”

“Destination is unknown. Thank you.”

“Daddy, who is that?”

“That’s the car.”

“Your car talks, Daddy.”

“I know. Watch this.” You adjusted the lumbar support on his seat, and he busted out laughing.

“Daddy, the car’s touching me!”

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Did Santa bring you this car?”

“He sure did.”

“How did he get it down the chimney?”

“That’s a good question. I’ll have to think about that. Did you bring your cell phone?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

“Take it out and turn it on. Gonna show you something.” Gus pulled out his Spongebob Squarepants cell phone and turned it on. The car was instantly filled with cries of ‘I’m ready! I’m ready!’ "Okay, watch this. DIAL. GUS. CELL.”

”Dialing. Thank you.” His phone started ringing, playing the Spongebob Squarepants theme song.

“Daddy, you made my phone ring!”

“Answer it.”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Gus. This is your Dad.”

“I can hear you.”

“Are you having fun in my new car?” He took the phone away from his ear, stared at it, and then looked at you quizzically. “Go ahead, talk into it. Are you having fun in my new car?”

“Yes.” His voice reverberated in the car. “I can hear me, Daddy!”

“Say something else.”

“Um, ….. what should I say?”

“Tell me what you got for Christmas.”

“Um, I got a coat and chocolate candy and a race track with Daddy’s car. Where are we going?”

“What did Justin give you?”

“A shirt.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“It says, ‘I LOVE NEW YORK.’”

“Yeah, I love you york.”

“New York.”

“Yeah, New York…………Daddy, what’s New York?”

You explained to him that you live in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and that Justin lives in New York. And that he lives in Toronto. After a while, you felt like you just making his brain hurt. He stuffed his cell phone back in his pocket.

“Wanna go look at some stuff in the country? I think I might know where some horses are.”

“And reindeers? Do you know where the reindeers are?” He bounced up and down in his seat.

“The reindeer are with Santa. They live with him.”

“But don’t they go on bacation?”

“No, they just stay with Santa all the time. We might get lucky and see the horses out of your window if you pay attention.”

“Yeah, we might get lucky. Tell me if I don’t see them, Daddy.”

“I will.”

As you wove through the country, Gus asked you which fireplace Santa came down, the one in the living room or the one in your bedroom.

“The one in the living room.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he put your car in your fireplace and clogged it all up?”

“Yeah. Once you put a car down the chimney, that’s pretty much it.”

“Did it wake you up? When Santa put your car in the chimney?”

“No. He was very quiet.”

“Did you leave cookies for Santa?” Try whiskey and pot.

“I left carrots. Carrots don’t rot your teeth.”

“Santa likes cookies better.”

“The carrots were for the reindeer.”

“Yeah, for the reindeers. I think I see the horses!”

And he did. You both got out of the car for a few minutes and stood at the fence, counting the horses, naming them, “His name is Spongebob, and his name is Patrick, and his name is Mr. Crab.”

“What about the other one? There are four.”

“Um, I’m gonna name that one…….Justin.”

“Those are good names.” The two of you stood there for another ten minutes or so, until Gus announced he had to pee.

“Why didn’t you go before we left the house?”

“”Cause you didn’t tell me to.”

“All right.” You picked him up and carried him into the woods next to the pasture, “You’re gonna have to pee right here.”

“This isn’t a potty.”

“No, it’s a tree. Close enough. I’ll help you.” You helped him get situated. “Better hurry, it’s cold out here.”

He looked almost forlorn, “Daddy, I don’t want to pee on the tree.”

“Then pee in the snow. I was just trying to give you something to focus on.” You know. Like Lamaze.

“It’s okay if I pee in the snow?”

“Just this time because it’s an emergency.”

“Do you pee in the snow?”

“I’ve been known, too.” And various other a sundry places. Thank you very much.

“My penis is cold.”

“Just hurry up and you can make it all warm again.” He fell asleep on the way back after you showed him the miracle of heated seats.

”Incoming call. Justin. Cell.”

“ANSWER. PRIVATE.”

“Hey.”

“Hey. Did you get my present?”

“Sure did. Thank you. And Gus loves his t-shirt. And JR, too.”

“You wouldn’t believe how warm it is down here.”

“Yeah, I would.”

…..

…..

“Where are you going? I called the house and they said you took Gus and went on an adventure.”

“Yeah, he has the energy of a nuclear reactor today. Thought I’d take him for a ride, get him away from Jenny for a while before they kill each other.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

…..

…..

“Took him down to see some horses close to me. He’s asleep now.”

“Sounds like fun…… Well, I just called to wish you Merry Christmas and be sure you got my gift. Sorry I missed you yesterday.”

“Me, too.”

……

……

“Give Gus and Jenny a hug for me.”

“Will do. You gonna be down there for New Year’s, too?”

“Yeah. ‘Till January 2.”

“Okay, well have fun and be careful.”

“I will………I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay. Later……………ARCHIVE.”

”Conversation archived. Thank you.”


Lyrics taken from The Little Drummer Boy by K. Davis, H. Onorati, and H. Simeone.

 BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 6-COMPLIMENTARY

GABE ZIRROLLI’S POV

dude looks like a lady

He was late. Again. As usual. The one day of the week you ask him to be on time, and he was late. It was a good thing for him that it was wintertime because you were in no mood to deal with two hundred thawing chicken breasts, thank you very much. It’s not like you ask a lot of him.

Very often.

You had plenty to do to keep you busy while you waited for him, like counting the box of his grungy, disgusting business cards that you were collecting at the hostess stand. You looked up and scanned the restaurant every three minutes or so, checking beverage levels, redoing your seating chart as people were getting ready to leave. The key to running a profitable restaurant was maximizing the number of people at every available table and seating customers such that each server’s section was never too busy or too slow. Quite frankly, that takes talent.

And years of management experience.

And you had both.

During one of your three-minute-look-arounds, you saw Zeek standing outside the restaurant in his ‘PROPERTY OF THE F.B.I.’ t-shirt, running his mouth to a customer that’d just left. He was with that girl, Harper. She drove you up a fucking wall because she insisted on playing with her hair over her food.

That’s just wrong.

You’d given up trying to get Zeek to wear a plain t-shirt to work; it just wasn’t gonna happen. That became abundantly clear to you the day he showed up to unload the truck wearing one that said, ‘NYPD ANIMAL CONTROL’ on the front, and ‘RODENT UNIT,’ on the back. The two of you almost came to blows over that, but then Mama came out and told Zeek to wear it inside out and for both of you to shut the hell up about it.

So you did.

And then for Christmas that year, Zeek gave you a black one that said, ‘HONK IF YOU’RE ANAL.’ You use it to clean the mold in your shower…every other day.

Except Sundays.

“I fucking knew you were going to do that, man. You and your possessive-compulsive bullshit.”

“That’s obsessive compulsive, you Neanderthal.”

“Yeah, see, you’re even anal about what you call it, man.”

Today, Zeek was with Harper and somebody else, some guy you didn’t recognize. At least, you thought it was a guy. You couldn’t be sure. He was too far away and way too pretty. You went back to your routine of scanning the restaurant, counting Zeek’s business cards in your hand, trying not to get more pissed off. You were trying to give one of a your servers a hint to ask one of her tables if they needed another bottle of wine. They were drinking an expensive Riesling. You wanted to sell another bottle. You were about to walk over and sell it yourself because you knew you’d do a better job when you looked up and saw Zeek standing right in front of you. Harper and, yeah, that was a guy, were waiting to be seated right behind him. Zeek grabbed two menus and sat them without even looking at your seating chart.

Unacceptable.

And then he walked towards you with a huge smile on his face when he knew damn well you were pissed at him.

“What’d you do that for?” you asked him, trying to look congenial through your frustration. You were really good at that.

“Do what?”

“You know damn well what. Seat them without consulting with me first. That’s not where my next table for two was going to be.”

“Jesus, Gabe, there're like ten empty tables in here. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” Zeek looked over at Harper and her friend and waved.

Sometimes he’s such a moron.

They waved back.

Great. Morons begetting morons.

You turned your attention back to Zeek, his box of ‘business cards’ in your hand. You shook it at him as you talked, “Look, I’m not doing this anymore—"

“Doing what?” Fucking asks a question before you can even finish your damn sentence.

“I’ve told you forty-five times, Zeek, just because you fuck somebody doesn’t mean they get a free lunch. Your plethora of ‘spaghetti gift certificates’ are seriously hurting our profit margin. I mean, that girl Harper’s had more free lasagna here than Mama can make in a month.”

“Yeah, man, she’s hot.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “And who’s that guy who’s with her? I suppose he has one of your calling cards, too.”

“That’s Eggo.”

“Eggo? What the fuck kind of name is ‘Eggo?’”

Zeek gave you that smug laugh that made you want to smack him, “He had little waffle marks on his ass when I fucked him.”

“Oh Jesus, now I’ve heard everything.”

“Look here, Babycakes, Mama doesn’t care if I give my friends a coupon for a free lunch, so you need to chill the fuck out. You do it for your friends all the time.”

“Yes, my friends, Zeek, not my fuck buddies. Your dick is going to bankrupt us.”

Zeek told you it wasn’t really a coupon, it was just his business card, ones he was ready to ‘retire’ with ‘FREE LUNCH’ scrawled on the back, “How ‘bout if I just write ‘FREE DRINK?’ Can you keep your panties on if I do that?”

“’FREE DRINK. NO REFILLS.’”

“I’m not writing that, you asshole. This is how I network, man. It’s how I further my business relationships and enhance customer loyalty.” You wondered if Zeek had been reading from one of your textbooks again. His chest puffed out. “You know, word of mouth.”

“Word of cock is more like it. And for Christ’s sake, Zeek, you don’t even have a business. You’re a brute for hire. Just because you put ‘President and CEO’ on a business card, doesn’t mean you own a business.” You scanned the restaurant quickly. Had to stay on top of things. “And besides, normal people take someone out to dinner before they fuck them. They don’t fuck them and then comp them a meal afterwards.”

“Yeah, well, potato tomato.”

“You mean ‘potato, potata.’”

“Whateverthefuck you said, okay? You’re just jealous because I get way more tail that you do.”

“Well, at least people don’t fuck me for free lasagna.”

‘Yeah, well, maybe you’d get more takers if you tried it my way. If you didn’t discriminate.” That was Zeek’s way of admitting that he’d fuck anything that had a pulse and a smile, and not necessarily in that order.

”Boys, that's enough. Zeek, go unload the truck, and Gabe don’t talk shit to your brother in front of my entire restaurant.” Mama had overhead.

When you finally had time to sit down in your office at the end of the day and sort through all of your paperwork, you noticed that your business cards were upside down in their holder. You picked them up to turn them back over and realized that Zeek had written ‘TIGHT WAD’ on the back of all twenty-five of them. You threw them in the trash can and were all ready to staple your numerically-sorted purchase orders to their corresponding invoices when you couldn’t find your brand new stapler.

It was hanging from the ceiling.

*********************
so never judge a book by it’s cover
or who you gonna love by your lover

That night, just like pretty much every Friday night, you caught up with Zeek and some people he identified as ‘friends’ at whichever club was the hot spot that week. Lately, it was Mindset. Zeek was always easy to spot wherever you met up with him, something about that fluorescent glow of testosterone that was always preceding him. You spotted him in his ‘FDNY’ t-shirt. Zeek had never put out a fire in his life. He starts them.

“Whazzup little brother?”

“Fuck you. I would’ve been here sooner, but it took me ten minutes to find my fucking stapler.”

Zeek busted out laughing while simultaneously performing an innocuous hand gesture that landed a drink right in front you.

A Midori Sour.

Your favorite.

Zeek made a horrible face, “I don’t know how you can drink those fairy drinks, ‘Cakes. Don’t know how.”

“Last week you said it was a ‘candy-ass’ drink.’ Make up your mind.”

“’Candy-ass, fairy, same damn thing.”

“Yeah, well, I happen to be a card-carrying, candy-ass fairy, so I suppose that’s appropriate.”

“You got that right.” The music changed and Zeek directed your attention to Eggo and Harper slamming shots at the end of the bar. “Gonna go cut a rug with the Bobbsey twins. Welcome to join us.”

“No thanks.”

“More for me, Babycakes. More for me. I certainly don’t mind being the middle of a blond-sandwich.”

Zeek started to walk away from you and you called him back, “Hey, Meathead, hold it. Does that Harper girl know that you’re boning that Eggo kid?”

An evil smile spread across Zeek’s face, “She was there, man. She was right there, the whole time.”

“Good lord, Zeek.”

He slapped you on the back, “Hey, it’s impolite not to share, man. You oughta know that, Mr. Manners. Besides, there’s plenty of me to go around.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I can’t even decide who’s hotter. They’ve both got asses that won’t quit.”

“I’m sure it keeps you up at night.”

“Right again, little brother. Right. Again. You’re batting a thousand tonight.” As Zeek walked away, he tapped on the bar, getting the bartender’s attention, “Hey, hit Babycakes one more time. On him.”

You flipped him off.

Zeek.

Not the bartender.

*********************
If u didn't come 2 party,
don't bother knockin' on my door

You sipped your candy-ass, fairy liquid encore and watched Zeek handle Harper and Eggo like they were two trained tigers. If you asked Zeek, you were sure he’d tell you they were. You perused the club for someone more your speed, but wondered why you bothered considering Mindset wasn’t exactly a hang-out for affluent/independently wealthy, professional, educated, slim-but-not-emaciated, gay men who’d be interested in taking you home.

Shame, you thought. I’m neat, clean, smart, more or less well-hung, and I can cook like a banshee. A well-off, intellectual homosexual would be lucky to bag you.

You were a catch.

Your eyes wondered back to Zeek and what he’d caught for the evening. Throws in one line and gets back two fish. Figures. Story of his life. Thirty minutes later, the trio was heading towards you, the twins propped on either of Zeek’s arms. They’d obviously had too much to drink.

“Gonna take my friends home, ‘Cakes. Catch you later.”

Eggo stopped right in front of you and looked you right in the eye. You’d never seen such blue eyes on someone who obviously had no personal integrity. “Wanna come?”

You tried not to roll your eyes, “No thanks. I don’t fish in my brother’s pond.”

“Whoa. That was profound.” Harper burst into laughter at Eggo’s response.

“Yeah. I’m deep like that.”

Eggo gave you a seductive smile, “I’ll bet.” He smiled way too much. It was annoying.

Zeek yanked him by the arm, “Forget it, Eggo. You’re not Babycakes’ type.”

Eggo didn’t move. Just stood right in front of you, “Why not?”

“You’re broke, dude.”

Eggo winked at you. The nymph took flirting to a whole new level, “That’s what you think.”

*********************
get these mutts away from me
you know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore

The next day you nearly lost your shit when a homeless guy showed up with one of Zeek’s ‘coupons.’ He smelled. He was filthy. And there was no way in hell you were going to let him eat in your restaurant. But he was also irrationally persistent; he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and you didn’t want a scene, especially right at the start of the Saturday lunch rush. So you offered him takeout that someone had never picked up—Chicken Parmesan.

He refused.

When you tried to impress upon him that there was no way he was going to dine in your upstanding establishment when he smelled like a sewer, he finally spoke, “Wait.”

“No. I’m not gonna wait. You need to leave, or I’m calling the police.”

He shook his head at you, almost like it was a nervous tick, “No. Wait for Josie.”

Your frustration was winning out, “Sorry. No one here by that name.”

He shoved Zeek’s business card right under your nose, “Josie. Have to wait for Josie,” and then sat down in on a bench by the hostess stand. You’d had enough and broke down and called Zeek.

He picked up in the middle of the first ring, “Yo, ‘Cakes—"

“Where are you?” You knew Zeek could hear the irritation in your voice.

“At Mama’s, hooking her up with some free cable.” That was just perfect. That was all you need to top off the perfect week: your mother in jail for stealing cable. Mama’s was four blocks away from the restaurant.

“Well, I need you to get over here.” You whispered the rest, “Because there’s an absolutely vile, homeless man here with one of your cards and he won’t leave.”

“Oh shit.”

“You’re damn right, ‘Oh shit.’ You need to—"

“What’s he look like?”

“He looks gross. That’s what he looks like—“ You didn’t care if the guy heard you. He’d been staring blankly in the direction of the front door since he sat down.

“Dirty blonde hair, big brown eyes?”

You actually looked at the man closely. His hair was the epitome of dirty blond, “Yeah.”

“Fuck. Don’t let him leave, Gabe. I’m coming.”

“What? Don’t let him leave?”

Your words fell on deaf ears. Zeek had long since hung up on you.

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

when I was a little boy
and the devil would call my name

When you, Alan Harper, surfaced, when you rose to the top, you were looking for something. Something that you thought, that you hoped, you remembered. Your journey was and always would be hampered by the smell of life underneath the streets of New York City--the dark, damp smell of the human condition, of the overwhelming need to persevere. The stench of neglect. And decorated with Technicolor images of things that you hoped were memories.

But most of them weren’t.

Most of them were the byproducts of a sabotaged imagination, one that betrayed you under the guise of a constant, benevolent, yet misguided mission to guard you against the villainy of the world. A world that you feared knew what you were looking for.

And wanted to take it away from you.

There were days when you were positive of that, days when you could catalogue the photographs left in your head while the rest of the world was eating breakfast, when the resulting collage in your head seemed strangely void of fear. On those days, you wound upward through the tunnels underneath the city, squinting hard at the eventual streaks of light as you got closer to the street. On those days, you walked and concentrated on the comforting vision in your mind—the only uncorrupted picture of your family you had left.

Your sister.

You walked, unwelcome, knowing that the sidewalk resented your footsteps because you were no longer useful. You were a burden.

But a part of you knew that it hadn’t always been that way. There were random, faded flashes of bicycles and board games, sneaking up on your mother while she read the latest romance novel on the front porch, sitting beside Harper on a plaid couch while she tried to teach you how to crochet, her feet unwisely perched on the coffee table, against the rules.

But she was Josie back then.

She was Josie who pretended not to be afraid when you explained how you had to smother a stray cat that preferred your front porch because it was threatening you. She was Josie who accepted the job of hiding your exaggerated actions and rationalizing your philosophical deteriorations because it felt good, because it gave her a purpose.

And a purpose was something that you’d only have on a good day, like today.

*********************
if you’ll be my bodyguard
I will be your long, lost pal

Three hundred and fifty-seven footsteps and you smelled that smell that you remembered. That you associated with her. Garlic. Three hundred and sixty-eight and you were standing in front of the first of many gates you’d pass through today, the card you held in your hand having fallen on the floor the last time you saw her. You didn’t know how long ago.

The anger directed at you felt like progress. You weren’t invisible today. And when Zeek showed up to collect you, you started counting again.

From three hundred and sixty-eight.

“Alan, man, you have to take a shower before I’ll take you.” Squinting again in the sunlight. Four hundred and twelve.

“Okay.”

“And I’ll give you some clean clothes.”

Four hundred and thirty-nine. “Okay.”

……

……

“Look man, can you stop counting? That drives me nuts.”

I’m not counting out loud.

“Yes, you are.” Four hundred and seventy--, seventy--, seventy—two. “You sure as hell are.”

……

……

Five hundred and ele--

“You don’t have to count, man. I’ll help you get home.”

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV

these events may have had some effect
on the man with the girl by his side

Harper looked relieved when they knocked on the door. She opened it and wrapped her arms around a man who barely looked like a man. He was so pale. So lost. His clothes hung off of him. They were too big.

Zeek introduced you, “Alan, this is Eggo.”

“Hi, my name’s Jus—"

“His name’s Eggo,” Zeek repeated, almost a warning in his voice.

Alan spoke to you, “I like waffles.”

“Me, too. It’s nice to meet you.”

But Alan wasn’t even listening to you anymore. He was focused on Harper, “Want you to cut my hair.”

She smiled, “Already got my scissors out.” She walked over to her desk and picked them up. Alan sat on one of your milk crates and closed his eyes. You watched quietly as Harper’s fingers moved through his hair. It was almost if that was enough for him, to feel his hair falling around him. His head began to fall forward and you finally spoke, almost in a whisper,

“Harper, he’s falling asleep.”

She smiled again, “He always does.” She stopped cutting for a second and waited for his head to complete its descent and then resumed. The only noise in the room the snip of her scissors and the click of your mouse. Zeek sat at your computer, surfing the net in silence. You looked back at him and he raised his eyebrows for a second and smiled.

When Harper finished, she tapped Alan on the shoulder, “I’m done. You can get up.” He stood seeming almost disoriented and made his way to the futon. She sat beside him, and he laid down and put his head in her lap. You felt like you were observing something private and intimate, yet at the same time, you knew she didn’t want you to leave.

“Bad things are happening. Something bad is trying to come.” Alan mumbled into her lap.

She stroked his hair, “I know.”

“I’m trying not to, but they’re still happening. Every day.”

“It’s okay. They aren’t real.”

“They aren’t real.” He wasn’t agreeing with her, he was trying to convince himself. It was the last thing he said before he fell asleep, his head on her legs. You sat on a crate next to Zeek and watched them until Zeek’s hushed voice interrupted your viewing,

“I’m gonna go down the street and get some pizza and beer. He’ll be hungry when he wakes up.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No, I want you to stay here. Call my cell phone if he wakes up, but he probably won’t. I won’t be gone long.”

It made you nervous that Zeek was leaving, but you didn’t tell him, “Okay.”

You watched him leave and then moved your glance back to the two of them. Before they arrived, Harper told you that Alan had been the one who’d stolen your computer.

You looked at her dumbfounded, “What?”

“Just listen to me before you get upset. It’s complicated.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“My brother’s homeless. His name is Alan. He’s a year younger than me.

You’d stared at her like you didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, “I had to cancel my fucking show because of my computer being stolen.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. He’s fucked up, Justin. He suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.”

She’d had an expectant look on her face, awaiting your reaction. You didn’t really know what to say. “Shit. I don’t understand. Your family’s well-off. How can your brother be homeless? That makes no sense.”

She took a deep breath, glanced at the gray floor and then looked up at you again, “Justin, I wasn’t exactly honest with you about why I wanted to come back here, why I wanted to share this space with you. My brother’s lived in the tunnels for about three years.”

“The tunnels?”

She nodded, “Yeah. There’re intricate tunnels underneath the city where entire communities of homeless people live. A lot of them, once they end up way down there, don’t ever come back up. Alan does…….when he remembers me.”

“Holy fuck.”

“I had to come back here because he thinks this is where I am. When I left to go to that place that my dad got for me, it was a disaster. He came around and my dad was furious. He doesn’t believe that Alan’s sick; he thinks he’s just a quitter, a loser. My dad has a rather narrow view of the world sometimes.”

“So what if he came around there?”

“My dad doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to even acknowledge him as someone he knows, much less fathered. I was my father’s pride and joy until I told him that I wouldn’t turn Alan away. My dad basically threw me out.”

You told her you could relate to that.

“I’m pretty sure he stole your computer because he came by here and saw you here and not me. He doesn’t function in the rational world. He just doesn’t understand when things aren’t exactly like they were.” You were both quiet for a minute. “I wanted you, it’s important for you, to meet him so I can show him that you’re my friend, so he won’t mess with your stuff. If I just tell him, he won’t remember. He needs to see you. In a lot of ways, he’s like a little kid.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been apologizing for my brother all my life. I understand if you’re angry. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s just that he doesn’t steal for the same reasons that other people steal. He tries to make things like he remembers them. I never had a computer here. It probably confused him, made him frustrated.”

“Shit.” You felt like you should be really pissed or something, but then you glanced back at your brand new computer that was even better than the old one, and you just couldn’t be.

Harper told you that she hoped you still wanted to be her friend, “And to stay here. I really like working with you, Justin. I hope you don’t want to leave.”

You weren’t sure what to do. And then there was a knock at the door, and you saw the expression on Alan’s face when he saw Harper, a mixture of relief and an apologetic desperation.

It was an expression he would always wear.

*********************
for what it’s worth
it was worth all the while

When Zeek returned with the pizza, Alan started to wake up. The four of you sat on the floor in sort of a circle with the box on a crate in the middle. Zeek had forgotten to ask for paper plates. The four of you ate together and you listened as Harper tried to fill Alan in on what was going on in the world,

“Bush is still the president, and we’re still fighting in Iraq. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, Stitch killed people in Iraq.”

You figured Stitch was one of his friends. Zeek handed you a fresh beer.

“Stitch’s killed people in every war, Alan,” Harper reminded him.

“He likes to kill people.”

She nodded, “In your mind. He likes to kill people in your mind.”

“I know.”

She winked at him, “Just checking.” Alan laughed.

When the pizza was gone, you went with Zeek to the dumpster to throw everything away, “Harper tell you that she’s pretty sure he’s the one that broke in here?”

“Yeah, she told me.”

When you opened the door to your studio, Alan was helping Harper open up the futon. He laid down on it, and she laid down beside him. He mumbled to her until he fell asleep.

“Harper, do you care if I sketch the two of you?” you asked her. Her arm had looped over him, and there was a peaceful smile on her face.

“Not at all.”

Zeek watched you as you drew them, as he popped the top on the last beer, “You’re really good.”

“It’s not me. It’s the subject matter.”

“Harper tell you the whole story. How she and I met?”

Your eyes didn’t move from the picture forming in front of you, “No.”

Zeek lowered his voice, Harper having fallen asleep as well, “Buddy of mine, Reef, me and him were on our way here almost two years ago. Got a job painting a bunch of units in this building.”

“Mmm, hmm.”

“So we saw her and this fucked up, filthy guy in front of the building. He was screaming at her, kept saying, “’Just give it to me,’ or something like that. Reef and I thought he was going to attack her.”

“Did he?”

“Not before we jumped him.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, Reef was about to beat the shit of him, but then she started screaming, ‘Stop, he’s my brother,’ so he let up.

“He wasn’t trying to attack her, then?”

“Nah, he was just trying to get his point across. Whatever that was.”

“Oh.”

You’d completed the picture an hour later, save a few details you’d probably add later. You dated it and signed it, out of habit, your pencil stopping when you tried to think of what to name it.

You took the name from what you could see of Alan’s t-shirt, writing it in all capital letters in the lower left corner, “SECURITY.”

*********************
so take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

About a month later, Harper offered for you to piggyback on a small show she was in with a few other relatively unknown artists, “I asked the guy at the gallery, and he said ‘sure.’ It’s a pretty big place; they’ve got extra space to fill.”

“So he wants me because I can fill space?” You were half joking, and half not. You were both high, anyway. You didn’t really care.

“Well, I told him that you had this huge mural you were working on, and he said, ‘That would be perfect.’”

You looked over at the mural you were working on. Well, sort of working on. The inspiration behind it had died down the last couple of weeks. “I don’t even know when I’ll be done with it. I’m kind of losing interest in it.”

“Well, it looks done to me.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Well, maybe it is and you just don’t know it yet.”

You tilted your head sideways and looked at it, “It’s a big, black blob. I don’t even know what it is.”

Harper turned her head, blowing the smoke from her joint in the other direction, “You’ll know when it wants you to know.”

“Right. Whatever. You’re just personalizing an inanimate object, like you always do.”

“They personalize themselves, Justin.”

You rolled your eyes at her, lying on the futon so you could look at the picture from another angle. She told you not to let the blood rush to your head and took your joint away from you.

……

……

And then it came to you, “Holy shit, that’s what’s wrong with it. It’s upside down.” You got up and started to rotate it.

Harper got up, “Jesus, let me help you. You’ll drop it.”

You took a good, hard look at it once you and Harper had turned it one hundred and eighty degrees. What you thought was a solid black waste of your time was suddenly riddled with shadows and implications. You were ready to start finishing it right then, but Zeek was on his way over. The two of you hadn’t seen him since Alan’s visit. Instead of spending that Saturday evening drenched in paint, you spent it dining, drinking, and dancing. The three of you stumbled back to the studio sometime after one a.m. You were lying face down on the futon, staring at the picture you’d finish within three days, while Zeek fucked you.

When you came, there were colors mixing together in your head. Zeek came a few seconds later, “You’re tighter than a virgin on prom night, Eggo. You know that?”

……

……

“Don’t ever say that to me again.”

*********************
at night when the bars close down,
Brandy walks through a silent town,
and loves a man who's not around

The card on the basket of wine, fruit, and cheese that was waiting for you when you arrived at the gallery the night of your first show read:

Good luck tonight,
Brian

You’d told him about it a week before.

“It’s no big deal, really. It’s not even really my show. I’m just kind of going along for the ride.”

“Shit, I’d love to be there. I just wish I’d had more notice. I’m flying to Toronto with Michael to see the kids that afternoon.”

“That’s okay. Really, it’s no big deal.”

……

……

“Justin, I want to be there. I just can’t cancel on Gus.”

“And god forbid you cancel on Michael. You’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No kidding.”

……

…...

“I can’t make this one, but I’ll come up there………..if you want…..Soon.”

“Don’t worry about it. You can always come to the next one.”

…..

“Okay, sounds good.”

“I’ve got to run, Brian. I’ve got a lot to do today.”

“Sure.”

……

“Justin?”

“Huh?”

“I’m serious when I say I want to be there.”

“I know.”

“All right, then I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah. Later.”

*********************
I’m on my way,
can’t stop me now

You and Harper had arrived fashionably late with Zeek in tow. He hovered around the front of the gallery, worried that Alan would show up.

“You kids have fun schmoozing. I’ll be up here.”

Harper seemed to relax once Zeek got there. And admittedly, so did you. She held up one of the bottles of wine, “Oh good, we can drink this later.” The two of you stood in the gallery’s break room trying to find room in the fridge for the cheese.

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s top notch, whatever it is.” You’d tucked the card from Brian in your wallet.

“Guess we better go mingle, huh?”

“Guess so.”

You lost track of Harper as soon as she joined the milieu of people in the gallery’s foyer, being a social butterfly often seemed second nature to her. You wandered around looking at everyone else’s work before going over to your own. You had five pieces in the show: Security, two computer-generated pieces created on your old computer and recovered through an email you’d sent to Daphne, a two foot square painting that you’d done several months ago, and the mural. You were standing in front of it, trying to decide if it was actually finished, if you were even happy with it, when the young woman who’d handed you the gift basket upon your arrival walked up behind you. Her flowery perfume virtually accosted you as she put her hand in front of your face, a round, orange sticker stuck on the end of her index finger,

“Well, Mr. Taylor, would you like to do the honors?”

You turned around, “What?”

She walked around you, smiling, putting the orange sticker on the tag next to your painting:

Untitled
Justin Taylor.

“Congratulations, Mr. Taylor, this painting’s been sold.”

“It has?”

“First one out of the gate tonight,” her hand smooth over the sticker as she spoke, so matter-of-factly. “Before we’d even opened.”

The flowery woman turned on her heel to walk away from you, but your words stopped her, “Wait. How could it sell before you’d even opened?”

She returned, tucking her hair behind her ear, “Happens all the time. The owner has friends who come to private showings before we open to the public. Guess your painting caught someone’s eye…….and their wallet.”

“Wow. Guess so.”

“My, that’s a pity, isn’t it?”

*********************
color me your color, baby
color me your car,
color me your color, darling
I know who you are

Another voice coming from behind you. People sure liked to sneak up on you in this place. The man sporting the deep voice quickly moved to stand to your left. Thankfully, he smelled nothing like flowers; more like……something really good. He held his glass of red wine as if it was on display, as if he’d walked all the way to the back of the gallery just to show it to you, his eyes fixed on the mural, “I was ready to snatch this piece up.”

He smells brand new, you thought.

You turned your head to look closely at him, “You were?” He was a few inches taller than you, impeccably dressed, his black dress shirt tucked perfectly into his gray wool slacks.

“Absolutely, knew right where I was going to display it. I have the perfect spot for it.” He took his time with each word that came out of his mouth, seemed to treat them all individually like they weren’t all part of a sentence. His black belt and black shoes looked like it was their first night on the town. He seemed to study you as he spoke, “Over the sofa in my office. I really need something there,” he sipped his wine. You wondered why you didn’t have a glass. “Something exactly like this.”

The space around the two of you was vacant, almost as it people had been warned to stay away.

“I’m sorry. That it’s already been sold.” You wondered if you should suggest that he buy one of the other four pieces you had in the show, but he started talking again, almost as if he could read your mind, “I was drawn to this piece in particular because, well, it has such a quiet violence about it.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron? Quiet violence?”

“I don’t know. You painted it. You tell me.”

A hush hung in the air between you as you let your eyes wander over the whole painting before you replied, “I have violent feelings about it, but that’s not what I see when I look at it.”

“Ah, dissonance…..Perhaps that’s what you should call it.”

“No. It’s not about dissonance.”

“Could’ve fooled me, but then again, I’m not an artist.” Exactly, you thought. “I’m just a doctor.” He turned and looked you right in the eye.

“Oh.”

“A psychiatrist,” he said succinctly, “A psychiatrist with an unhealthy addiction to dissonant art.”

“I really don’t think it’s dissonant.”

He looked back at the painting, “Well, then, I’m off base. Won’t be the first time.” He turned again, extending his hand in your direction, “Daniel Cartwright.”

You shook it. He wore no rings, and he’d obviously had a manicure. Nobody's hands looked that perfect. His hand was warm and dry. And calm.

“Justin Taylor, nice to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

You felt like you were supposed to be ending the conversation as you both rotated to stare at the painting again, “Well, thank you, for taking such an interest in this piece. I’m sorry it’s been sold.”

His smile was kind and unassuming when you found yourself looking at his face again, “Well, if you’re interested, Mr. Taylor, I can think of a way you can make it up to me.”

“Justin.”

“Justin. Very well.”

You didn’t turn away from his steady gaze, “What did you have in mind?”


Lyrics taken from Aerosmith’s Dude, Looks Like a Lady, Prince’s 1999, Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, Loves Me Like a Rock, Hearts and Bones, Greenday’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), Looking Glass’ Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl, Heather Small’s Proud, and Blondie’s Call Me.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-  7-LATENCY

DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV

when the scent of her lingers
and temptation's strong

It was a mistake from the very beginning. And you knew it, but you told yourself at the time that it was harmless. Sitting in your posh office in New York City analyzing patients while they lay on your black leather couch underneath the mural you’d commissioned Justin to paint had somehow become some sick kind of torture.

It was a habit you’d adopted in your residency, a way to get through long days with barely-committed-to-the-therapeutic-process patients. Back then, your office never had a window, so you’d always choose a painting you liked to hang on the wall above your patient’s perch. It gave you a focal point while housewives droned on about their ungrateful children and their cheating husbands. Anytime a patient actually attempted to catch your eye, which, let’s face it, only the truly dedicated patients do, you could easily meet their glance before they ever realized you’d been a million miles away for the last fifteen minutes.

But this mural that Justin had painted, you found yourself unable to look away, sometimes even getting hard underneath your college-ruled white, never yellow, legal pad. When you engaged in psycho-analysis, you preferred a blank slate.

“Dr. Cartwright, are you all right today? You seem preoccupied.” The voice of your patient, one that was more astute than most.

You looked at your cleverly concealed timer: three minutes to go. This would ordinarily be the time when you’d begin summing up the session and laying the groundwork for the next one, but it was rather difficult to sum up what you hadn’t even heard. So you went with your old standby,

“You know, we’ve done some really important work today, but unfortunately, our time is up.” Then you’d smile your kind, benevolent doctor smile. The one you used to practice in the mirror during med school. “We’ll pick up here next time.”

Your patients always knew when their fifty minutes were up because you put the cap back on your pen and uncrossed your legs. And once Ms. Miller and her overly applied eye shadow left your office, you found yourself staring at the mural again. You were glad you’d cleared your afternoon.

You had problems of your own.

*******************
DR. JONATHON MASSEY’S POV

your eyes have died but you see more than I,
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky

Anytime you got a call from Daniel saying that he was at Mickey’s at a booth in the back, you knew it would mean the loss of at least three billable hours. You’d known him since your second year of residency, and now, almost thirteen years later, he was still exactly the same: an overly intelligent, handsome (but not more than you), masochistic man with a penchant to gravitate toward the troubled masses. You figured it was because he found them eerily familiar.

And today was no exception.

Daniel always ended up at Mickey’s when he was “spiraling” because it was essentially a straight man’s bar. And straight men were usually the last ones to visit a shrink, and therefore, the least likely to recognize one of New York’s prominent psychiatrists holding court with a harem of Bloody Marys—the only women he could truly ever love. It was against your policy to drink anything you couldn’t see through.

You had to walk through the saturating cigarette smoke of the pub’s patrons in order to get inside, and once you did, you saw him immediately. He always sat facing the door, another in his list of neuroses, stirring his drink with his celery stick, and staring at it like it was going to tell him the meaning of life any second.

You wished.

You looked at your watch when you sat down, shrink’s habit.

He greeted you with a forced smile on his face, “Thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome. But before you begin to lament, do you think I should buy those tassled loafers we saw last weekend when we were shopping?”

“Oh right, let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. Why are you wearing your evening cologne in the daytime?” Daniel was frighteningly attuned to all aromas and odors.

“I ran out of my day cologne.” Duh.

“Are you kidding me? I just got you that bottle for your birthday. What’re you doing, drinking it?” Masochistic and bitchy. Joy. You had your work cut out for you.

“Yes, I drank it—on the rocks no less.”

“You should buy those loafers.”

“You think so? You really like them?”

“No, I hate them, but you won’t shut up about it until you buy them, so just buy them. Who cares if you never wear them?”

“I think I have ‘shoe guilt,’ or something. Makes me feel like Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex and the City.”

“No, that’s me, unlucky in love. Hell, unlucky in life. My day has sucked.” The waitress arrived and you ordered a gin and tonic. Daniel asked for his third Bloody Mary. You shook your head at the waitress and told her to bring him Juan Valdez. Daniel never had the stomach to handle the ladies for very long.

“All right, start the clock. I’m listening,” you announced as his coffee arrived.

He stirred a shit load of cream into it and began his discourse with a sigh, “Have you ever felt like you loved someone so much, and they weren’t rejecting your love, but they really weren’t accepting it either? Like there’s all this love between the two of you but it just doesn’t mesh?”

“You mean like your love is ‘A positive’ and his is ‘O negative,’ or something?”

He nodded, “Yes, exactly.”

“Nope, never have. Maybe you need a love transfusion.”

“Fuck you.”

“Christ, what’s the problem? I thought you were spending your afternoon at the brownstone supervising the arrival of the easels, computers, and milk crates.”

“I’m not having milk crates in my home. I bought him a chair. A Herman Miller.”

“Whoa. This is serious.”

“You’re not helping.”

“Why are you here and not there?”

“I’m waiting for him to call me back. I took the afternoon off to help them.”

“Well, it’s only after two.”

“It’s not even that really—"

“Wait, them? Did you really give in to him?”

Daniel huffed, “It was the only way he’d accept my offer. He said she comes with him or forget it.”

“Why? Because of her crazy brother?”

“More or less. It’s complicated. He wouldn’t let her stay there by herself, and my second floor is twice as big as what they have now. And her brother’s not crazy, he’s sick. Schizophrenic.”

“He needs to be medicated.”

“Right Jon, you try telling that to a homeless guy. I told Harper I’d get him free meds, but she says he won’t take them. Anytime he has money or pills or liquor or anything on him, it just makes him a target.”

“Okay, so now you have Justin and Harper and occasionally her homeless brother moving into your second floor?”

“Harper’s there now with that muscular guy. He’s probably slamming furniture into my perfect walls as we speak.”

You finished your drink. “So why are you so fucking miserable?” You took the paper umbrella they should never have given him in a Bloody Mary and studied it, opening and closing it until it broke. “You wanted him underfoot and you got him.”

“Be careful what you wish for…” The waitress refilled his coffee.

“Let’s just cut through the shit, Daniel. Do you love him? Is that it?”

“I adore your bedside manner.”

“Answer me.”

Daniel stared at the dark wood paneling above your booth, “I’m trying not to love him because I can just tell he doesn’t love me.”

“Well, sometimes love takes time.”

“That’s not it. Not for him. He’s one of those people, Jon, one of those with an unbelievably pure heart.”

You rolled your eyes, “Not to mention a deep ass.”

“That wasn’t necessary.”

“And a mouth that sucks cock like a Hoover.”

“Cut it out………..Besides, I do most of the sucking.” There was a silence between the two of you as you surveyed your friend. If he was spending more time on his knees than his lover-of-late, he was a goner. Hook. Line. And sinker.

……

……

You shook your head, “You know, Daniel, you always do this, every single fucking time.”

“Do what?”

You’d lost count of how many times you’d had this conversation with him, “Superglue your heart to a young, conflicted soul like a goddamn barnacle.” Daniel leaned on his arm. “You ‘fall in love’ with some artistic, beautiful, young guy who is always upfront with you about what he wants, and then expend every ounce of your energy trying to turn the relationship into something it’s not.”

The sculptor from last summer who gave incredible hand jobs. The ‘performance artist’ who wooed him with his monologue from Nuts. God bless Barbra Streisand, but come on. And then the ‘extreme artist’ who poured paint on his ‘canvas’ (otherwise known as the sidewalk or the street) and then painted by running over it with his skateboard. That guy got on your fucking nerves.

“I can’t help it, Jon.”

You ignored his comment, “And you’re not in love, you’re fucking infatuated because he’s probably said your name once while you were fucking. Right?”

Daniel looked away from you, his jaw setting firm, “He’s never once said my name.”

“Well, there you go.” You felt a hole in your stomach because you knew you’d just hurt his feelings. Daniel could take such good care of everyone but himself. “You don’t think you deserve to be happy, so you do this on purpose.”

He fought with you, “It’s not like that. It’s different this time. I really care about him, Jonathon.”

“I know you do, but I don’t think he cares as much about you. The scales of Lady Love are not evenly balanced. And you overlook that, every time, because he’s young. You won’t ever admit that just maybe he does know—“

“Look, I’m not in denial. Don’t insult me. I know what this is. I know he doesn’t love me. It just doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.”
……

……

“Of course you do. It’s painful. That’s what you love, Daniel. You’re in love with pain, not him.” You waited for some sign of acceptance on his face. He usually always came around by the time you got to his masochistic need to be hurt. But you got nothing. The waitress refilled his coffee and offered to bring you another drink. You asked for water. He waited for her to walk away. You wondered why he bothered, the two of you had had this identical conversation at least ten times in here over the years. You were sure she knew it by heart.

You decided to try a different approach, taking a deep breath, “Let’s look at this a different way.” He looked hopeful for a brief second so you pressed on, “You are not Gepetto and he’s not Pinocchio. He doesn’t need you to make him a real boy—"

“You’re such an ass sometimes.”

“Sometimes an ass is what you need. He’s already a living, breathing person, not a puppet that exists for your amusement and affection, or even guidance. If he wants to remain just like he is—"

“Would you shut the fuck up with your metaphors?”

You hit a nerve.

“Got a better one? Got a way to keep this from happening every time you see what you think is an unfinished product? Because I’d love to hear it.”

…..

…..


He executed a perfect psychotherapeutic-change-of-subject, “That’s not even the worst of it.”

“Oh Christ, it gets worse?”

“I lost out on that painting of his that I’d put a deposit on. The one over at Frequency.”

“Lost out? Why’d your check bounce?” You laughed. Daniel’s checks hadn’t bounced since the day he was born.

“She gave me some bullshit excuse, but some asshole basically came in and bought it out from under me.”

“So, now we’ve even got Stromboli in the picture. This is priceless.”

“Give the goddamn fairy tale thing a rest.”

It was all becoming clear to you now, “That’s why you’re a fucking mess today. You’ve lost the artist and his art, your window into his damaged soul. You can’t win.”

“Thank you for pointing out the obvious, doctor. Will you take a check?”

“It’s so tragically poetic really, he won’t give you what you want, so you steal it by buying his paintings or commissioning him to let his soul bleed all over the wall of your office. So tell me, Dr. Freud, what deep truth did the strokes of this artist’s paintbrush reveal to you?”

“It’s not just that he doesn’t love me. I’m pretty sure……he’s in love with someone else.”

You looked at your watch. Whoa. You got it out of him with five minutes to spare.

*******************
JUSTIN’S POV

I'm not the kind of girl
who gives up just like that

You met Harper at your usual place, the coffee shop a couple of blocks away from what was about to be your former studio. The cinnamon piece of hard candy she had in her mouth clanked between her teeth as she took the key to Daniel’s place from you.

“Tell Zeek to be careful. Daniel’s afraid he’ll bump into his egg-shell white walls.”

“Oh, god, tell Daniel to chill. It’ll be fine.”

“Could you stop making that clanking noise? It drives me crazy, and you do it all the time.” She crunched the candy hard and the smell of cinnamon filled the small space between the two of you at your booth.

“Ever notice how you and I are always on the rag at the same time, Justin?”

“Make two copies of the key so I can give the original back to him.”

“God, you’re all business today. What’s your damage?”

“I’ve got a lot of little things to do today so I can get back and help you guys. And please tell Zeek that I want to be the one to move my own computer. We shouldn’t have waited until the last day of our lease to do this.”

“Why? Did you want to pick up and relocate when we were both in the middle of gigantic pieces? Break our flow?” The waitress came and offered you coffee. You took it. Harper refused, saying it was way too fucking hot for coffee. She wanted lemonade.

“Did you go by Daniel’s office and look at the mural? It’s finished.”

“Yes, I did. I went yesterday.”

“Well?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest, the piece spoke to me.”

Your eyes lit up, “It did?”

“Yes, it said, ‘Justin painted me because a very rich doctor is paying him butt loads of cash to exorcise his demons and subsequently let him in his ass.’” You flicked the balled up wrapper from her straw at her face.

“Would you please stop fucking around and tell me what you really think of the painting?”

Harper got a serious look on her face as she crossed her arms over her chest, “All right. I think it has a rather ‘quiet violence’ about it. Whatever that means.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

“Aw, Eggo, they can’t all be winners.”

“Go to hell.”

“You know, right before I went in, I saw Daniel’s last patient. He was hot, but probably too old for Daniel. He was at least twenty-five. Suppose he’ll fuck him, too?”

“Whaddya mean, ‘fuck him, too?’ I’m not his patient.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh, now, don’t get pissy with me or we’ll have to put you back in that straight jacket you love so much.” It wouldn’t surprise you at all if Harper had a straight jacket. It seemed like a natural part of her wardrobe.

“You know, I don’t see why you have to make fun of me. It’s an unhealthy compulsion with you, really.”

Her eyes opened wide as she laughed at you, “Oh, look who’s diagnosing people now, and just because he’s fucking a shrink.”

You shook your head at her, “You are so dead. Don’t ever ask me to critique anymore of your work—“

“Oh, take your Midol. You know, I can’t wait to get in that new space. We have a skylight! Can you believe it? Natural light.”

“You mean Daniel has a skylight.”

“Fine.”

……

……

Harper always made you nervous when she’d lean forward and stare at you with a twinkle in her eye, “So, did you top Daniel last night?”

“That’s none of your business.”

She took the rubber band from around her wrist and put her hair up, “None of my business? Since when? I can’t even count how many times you’ve watched Zeek fuck me…..and vice versa.”

“Six.”

“Aren’t you quite the statistician?”

“I try.”

“That’s fine. Don’t tell me. You’ll get trashed one night and it’ll all come pouring out of you. I’ll just wait. I’m very patient.” She rested her chin on her hands and batted her eyelashes at you, “So, think I should let Zeek fuck me up the ass? He wants to.”

You put your menu down. You’d lost your appetite. “I think that would fall into the category of a personal decision.”

“I know, but I want your advice. You love it.”

“Wow, that’s news: Homosexual Likes It Up the Ass.”

She smiled her biggest, most egregious smile at you, “I just figured if I wanted advice about it, I’d ask the expert. And by the way, your cell phone’s ringing.” You hadn’t even heard it. “It’s probably Daniel fretting because the mural is crooked.” Harper had this presumptuous habit of always identifying who she thought was on the phone. Course, she was usually right.

But not this time.

You looked down at the screen, 1 missed call. Brian.

Harper was starting to get up from the table, “I have to pee. If they come to take our order, I want a BLT on wheat, no mayo, with fruit instead of French fries.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

The table shifted as she got up, “And another lemonade.” You nodded. You were calling Brian back. When Harper returned from the bathroom, you told her you had to go. “That was Daniel?”

“Yeah, he wants me to meet him at his office…….and have lunch with him.”

“Fine. I’ll get mine to go then. But, you still have to help me decide about Zeek and the anal thing.”

“I hate to tell you this, but ‘Zeek and the Anal Thing’ sounds like the name of a dead punk rock band.”

“Oh my god, you’re right. Maybe that’s a sign that I shouldn’t do it.” Harper believed everything was a ‘sign.’

“Well, if you do decide to do it, don’t use my lube.”

Harper busted out laughing and told you, “Don’t worry, Eggo, I’m gonna get some that smells like strawberries.”

Now you’d never be able eat waffles or strawberries again.

Bitch.

***************
whatever Lola wants, Lola gets
and little man, little Lola wants you

After Harper paid for her sandwich, you walked outside with her and parted ways. Once you were sure she was far enough down the street, you ducked back inside the coffee shop and sat down to wait for Brian. You couldn’t believe he’d just called you out of the blue, especially considering you hadn’t seen him since you left, eighteen months ago. You couldn’t believe it’d been that long.

You felt something flip over inside you when you saw him get out of the cab; he looked better than you even remembered. You swallowed the lump in your throat when he strode into the coffee shop, took off his sunglasses, and looked right at you, a beautiful smile on his face. You smiled back.

He looked so fucking beautiful. For some reason, it was hard to imagine that he was there to see you, like you hadn’t been with him, fucked him, loved him for so many years. You instantly wished you’d dressed a little nicer as he sat down. The tips of your fingers tingled with an overwhelming urge to reach across the table and touch him.

But you didn’t.

The tone of his voice on the phone and when he’d greeted you, even the way he just seemed to gaze at you, was starting to make you hard. You tried to think about something else.

It didn’t work.

The familiar scent of his cologne drifted across the space between you, making the situation almost unbearable. You knew you were talking to him, making passable conversation, but the only thing he said that registered was, “I could stay somewhere for a while, if you want.”

He wanted you, after all this time. It felt so good, like such a relief. It felt like a dream.

It wasn’t until you stepped out in the hot summer sun that you were able to convince yourself that it wasn’t. He put his hand on the small of your back, guiding you through the faceless people on the sidewalk. You couldn’t feel the sun on your skin. You could only feel him, and then his hand was gone. He told you to lead and you walked in silence with him, praying that there was somewhere for the two of you to go on this street, this street that you walked down every day but suddenly couldn’t remember a damn thing about.

You were surprised when you found yourself standing in front of a hotel. You’d forgotten this, what it felt like to walk into a room with him, to be the one on his arm, how you used to take that for granted. His voice was soft, his hand on your shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

Maybe you should have felt cheap or easy or just ridiculous to be perched on a lavish sofa in a beautiful hotel waiting for him to buy a few hours for the two of you. But if that’s what it felt like, it’d never felt so good.

The elevator ride was quiet and private, the air seeming to thicken between you as you passed each floor. You were grateful that he virtually steered you to the room. You couldn’t hear what he was saying, your heart was beating so loudly.

***************
always someone marches brave
here beneath my skin

He stood in front of you after you put your bag down, his eyes resting quietly on your face, and you felt your hands start to wander up his body all by themselves. Brian wrapped his fingers around your wrists as your hands parked themselves around his neck. The excitement began to gather in your body as he began to lean down, when you knew he was going to kiss you. His lips were so soft, so perfect. He tasted like the answer to every question you’d ever had.

And you had so many.

But you ignored them because you had to. The blood was rushing through your body too fast, making it impossible to hold onto them.

It was mostly the way he was looking at you that made you feel like you were floating, his body seeming to respond to your touch even more than you remembered, flooding you with an overwhelming urge to please him. You felt his breath in your hair as you unbuttoned his shirt. He gasped when your fingers finally found his chest. And then, before you knew it, there were words coming out of your mouth,

“I miss you.”

You pressed your lips against him, letting them trace the outline of his pecs, listening to him moan as you invited his nipple into your mouth. It was always like this between you, you thought, no matter where you were—a hotel room in New York City six and a half years ago, the loft, the house in front of the fire, or right this very moment. This grateful intensity churning between the two of you, determined to be nurtured, yet completely willing and able to sustain itself. It was more powerful than both of you. And you knew you’d never stop craving it.

Or him.

You opened his pants and slid your hand inside, his smooth cock dampening your palm.

“Justin.”

His hands tightened around your arms as he said your name, his voice reverberating through your entire body, overwhelming you as you realized how much you’d missed just hearing him say it. You answered him as he held onto you, pushing into your hand,

“I know.”

“Christ.”

He started to come in your hand, quickly raising your face to his to kiss you, to push into you before it was over. You finished undressing him, smiling when he yanked his tie over his head, cast it aside, and moved toward you as you fell back onto the bed. You tore your pants off like they were tissue paper, the anticipation of his body weighing on yours stampeding through you like a herd of wild animals. One look at his face and you knew it was barreling through him, too. You reached for him as he lowered himself on top of you, the warmth of his skin somehow soothing the burn inside you. How one fire could eclipse another you’d never understand.

And you didn’t care, you just knew that you wanted it, wanted to show him what it meant to you to touch him, to put your hands on him, to feel him so heavy and all-encompassing. He kissed you, and your hunger for him commandeered your body, sent your fingers through his hair, heard him almost growl as his hand skimmed down your torso, pushing between your legs. The latent intimacy that had hibernated between the two of you for a year and a half began to shed its skin, bit by bit, until it was totally unmasked and in control. You arched into his hand, letting it pry you wide open for him.

He moved down your body, freeing your fingers from his hair, spreading your legs as he settled between them, the sounds coming from both of you mixing together in the chilling room.

“Brian.”

You closed your eyes as his mouth started to move down your inner thigh, wanting so badly to hold him, to kiss him, as he ran his nose down your cock and over your balls, as you wrapped your legs around his shoulders, your feet softly rubbing his back. He drew your scent inside him with a deep breath right before covering you with a wet warmth that scurried through you like a bolt of electricity. He forced your legs up, and you held them for him, his mouth soaking your cock again before his fingers parted you, exposing you so completely, so willingly. The part of you that loved him and needed him started rushing to the surface, battling to overtake you.

Since the first night you met him, Brian had always had this way of listening to your body as he touched you, a way of knowing seconds before you did what you needed. You held your breath as he rimmed you, dying for the moment when he’d invade your body with his tongue. You knew the second it was going to happen because you felt the tips of his fingers gentling circling your hole.

“Uh, god, yes,” you told him as the moist heat of his mouth pushed inside you. With every brush of his tongue, your ache for him began to choke you, making you beg for him like you wanted to, "Just fuck me. Please fuck me.”

The sight and the sound of him tearing the condom wrapper drenched you with an insatiable desire to have all of him all at once. He thrust inside of you in one smooth motion, as if he knew how loud the roaring was underneath your skin, as if he knew what had to be done.

He did.

“Oh god, Brian.”

He fought you as you tried to clamp your legs around his waist and you moaned as he spoke to you through his kiss,”Keep them spread. Just like that.”

Your feet slid on the bedspread as you wrapped your arms around him, as you did what he wanted. There was nothing more beautiful, more contagious than that raw, unrestrained fuck, than listening to Brian’s breathy grunts against your neck, than feeling him thick and warm inside you, all of him swarming over all of you with such determined intentions.

He fucked you with a quiet violence that made you want to scream.

You heard your voice pleading with him as you felt your orgasm racing for the exits, begged him to finish undressing you. You came watching your shirt fly over your head. He didn’t stop you when you grabbed him, squeezing him as your orgasm pulsed out of you; he held you, his arms tightening as he came never taking his eyes off your face. You were panting as he collapsed on top of you, the warmth of his body blanketing you as you tried to steel yourself to make the room stop spinning.

***************
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free

Everything became quiet as you held him, your hands rubbing up and down his back. You listened to the sounds of satisfaction spreading through his body, kissing the perfect curve between his neck and his shoulder. He hummed in your ear, “Mmm.”

You thought that maybe he was going to fall asleep, but then he was pulling out. You pulled the covers down, lying on the cool, white sheets, watching him as he laid down beside you. He reached for you in silence, pulling you against him, your face pressed snuggly against his chest, his long fingers gently combing through your hair.

You felt his low voice drift through his body, “You doing okay?”

You wanted to tell him that you were okay if okay meant finding small parts of him in everybody you met, everybody you fucked, everything you painted, everything you tried to hang onto. You wanted to tell him that New York was amazing, that you’d never been so achingly happy in your life, that the things you were experiencing would stay with you forever, and that you hoped that maybe somehow, he would, too.

Only you didn’t know when, and you didn’t know how, and even though he wasn’t asking you for an answer, you felt like you should have one.

Your silence in his arms was enough for him to go by, “It’s okay, Justin. This is okay.” He pressed his lips against your forehead and held you tighter.

You didn’t know how this could be okay, how anything that felt this good and hurt so bad could be okay. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you figured you had to trust him.

“Thanks.”

You thought that nothing could surpass the intense feelings you had for Brian when he was fucking you, but this, just being in his arms, feeling his chest rise and fall and his patient hands on your body, made you want to dissolve right then and there. His hold on you for that hour was what it’d always been, a protective shelter with open doors.

You stared at your fingers as they traced random paths on his chest until you felt his hand tighten on the back of your head. He kissed you with a peaceful, needy aggression. When you opened your eyes, they landed on the clock radio by the bed. 3:37 p.m. You had less than an hour and half to get to your studio, pack your computer, and move out. You had to go.

“I have to be somewhere.”

You thought you felt relief in Brian’s body when you were the one to make the break. You didn’t want him to have to do it. He watched you get dressed, fanning his hand on your back when you sat back down on the bed beside him. You made your apologies for not being able to stay longer. You didn’t know why you bothered, he clearly didn’t need them.

You both knew there was nothing to be sorry for when you kissed him good-bye.

And when you stepped off the elevator and into the hotel lobby all alone, you felt the sensation that had flooded you when you’d walked in here with him, the sensation of being desired and chosen by him, dissipate like cooling sweat on your skin. You fought the urge to run back upstairs and throw yourself in his arms, stepping out onto the hot sidewalk instead, the sun quickly burning the reluctant tears off of your face.

Lyrics taken from Elton John’s Sacrifice and Daniel, Blondie’s The Tide is High, Sarah Vaughn’s Whatever Lola Wants, k.d. lang’s Constant Craving, and Elton John’s Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.

 BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 8-ACCOMODATIONS-1/2

JUSTIN’S POV

an enchanted moment
and it sees me through

There was something cosmically evil about having to listen to Maya fuck her boyfriend, Brian, the night of the same day that you’d actually fucked your Brian. You tried turning up your television, wearing headphones, and putting your head inside your pillowcase. You even tried to jack off in sync with them, but that just made it worse.

“Brian.”

You ended up rummaging through your closet until you found it: one of Brian’s twenty thousand black shirts that you’d sort of stolen and kept in a Ziploc bag for moments such as this. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Brian had whispered in your ear that final night as you lay underneath him, “I know you took my shirt, Sunshine.”

“Shhh.”

“It took you five years to graduate from underwear theft to outerwear theft. Bravo.”

“I left you my posse shirt.”

“I’d rather have your posse panties.”

You’d walked commando through the airport that night hoping that no one decided to search you.
****************
there are worse things I could do,
than go with a boy or two

When Harper showed up at your door the next morning, you had your duffle bag in your hand. Walking anywhere with Harper was annoying because she either walked ahead of you or constantly tapped you with her arm. When you got to Daniel’s, to your new studio, he was long gone. Daniel started his sessions at six twenty in the morning for what he called his ‘commuter patients.’ You called and left him a message: ”Hey. Listen, my roommate’s boyfriend is staying with us for the week, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay here, just for the week. If it’s not, just let me know and I’ll make other arrangements.” He called you back forty-five minutes later and said it was fine.

Harper mumbled under her breath as she unpacked her supplies, “Like he was gonna say ‘no.’”

“Don’t start.”

She made a production out of zipping her lip.

The two of you got quiet about half an hour later having unpacked enough stuff to actually get to work. You sat down at your computer and e-doodled. Harper was humming to herself, a sign that she was flowing. After nothing was coming to you, you went out front on Daniel’s stoop and smoked a cigarette.

You stared down at your sneakers and thought of Brian’s shoes from the day before, how they were perfectly polished, black and shiny. How there wasn’t a hair out of place on his head. Seeing him in that suit had stirred up something inside you. Something vulnerable, something that felt brand new even though it wasn’t. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but you wanted it to go either go away or channel through you, and it wouldn’t. It insisted on staying put.

I’ll see you in your dreams.

****************
heart and soul,
I fell in love with you heart and soul

Daniel came home from work that afternoon with his arms full of groceries. “I thought I’d cook dinner.”

You helped him put the groceries away, “Sounds good.”

“So how was your first day in your new studio?” he wanted to know.

“Fine. I think Harper made a lot more progress than I did, but it was fine.”

“My day was like that, too. Not one breakthrough.”

You laughed, “It’s a little bit of a stretch, art to psychiatry. Don’t you think?”

“Not really. Getting people to see the parts of themselves that they hide is an art. I’m over-simplifying, but…” The phone rang and interrupted him. “Can you get that? My hands are wet.”

“Sure.” It was his answering service. You handed him the phone, “It’s your service.”

“Shit.” He took the phone from you, “Yes, this is Dr. Cartwright. Okay. Okay. I’ll call in some Atavan, and I’ll follow up with her tomorrow. Thanks.” He disappeared into his office to make the call and returned to the kitchen, taking the broccoli out of your hands.

“Everything okay?”

“Delayed breakthrough. Happens sometimes. A side effect of psycho-analysis.”

“Oh.” You started cutting up carrots for salad and he asked you if you washed them, “I rinsed them off.”

“Give them to me. Carrots are filthy. Here, chop the tomatoes.” You switched with him and started cutting a tomato. You kept waiting for him to give you his opinion about how the tomato should be chopped, but he didn’t. He just scrubbed the carrots. When he finished and starting chopping them, you started laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“Didn’t you ever see that episode of Frasier where Niles is chopping vegetables or something in the kitchen to the tune of Heart and Soul?”

“Of course.”

“You remind me of Niles. I just realized that.”

“Yes, but in the end, Niles got the girl.” You stared at him as he went back to the carrots

……

……

You could tell by the vigor with which he was chopping them that there was something bothering him. Nobody chopped carrots with that much intensity. You didn’t have to be a shrink to see that. So you asked him,

“What’s bothering you?”

He turned off the water and turned to you, wet carrot in hand, “I’m in love with you.” Your stomach dropped into your sneakers.

“Daniel.”

He laughed when you said his name, “And I know you don’t love me. That’s one of the few times I’ve even heard you say my name.”

You laid your knife on the cutting board, “I’ve never lied to you.”

“I know. I lied to myself. That’s a hundred times worse, believe me.” He walked into the dining room and started laying out silverware and plates with purpose.

You broke lettuce into a big bowl and asked him, “You want me to leave?”

“No…I should, but I don’t.”

You walked into the dining room and sat the completed bowl of salad on the table, “I’m going outside. I need a cigarette.”

When you came back in, Daniel was sitting on the sofa in the living room flipping through the most recent issue of American Home.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” you asked him, sitting down at the table.

He got up from the couch and came over to sit down, “I was waiting for you.”

The two of you ate salad in silence.

****************
it's enough for this wide-eyed wanderer
that we got this far

You were about halfway through with your salad when you got the courage to break the silence between the two of you, “Why did you offer me this space if you knew you felt this way?”

“I suppose because I’m a masochist.”

“Well, I can’t stay here.”

“Yes, you can. You’re not going back to that rat hole. That place is disgusting—"

I want you safe.

……

……

“I don’t think we should fuck anymore.”

He took a sip of his wine, “I agree.” But you knew he didn’t.

……

……

“Daniel, I’m sorry. I feel like shit.”

“Don’t.”

“Right. It’s just-- I never meant for this to happen.”

“I’m going to heat up some chicken.” He got up from the table and started moving around the kitchen. You got up and leaned in the doorway.

“Daniel, I’m serious.”

“I know you are.” He put the chicken in the oven. “Come here.” You followed him into the living room where you both sat on the sofa. You felt like you should uncross your arms, but they just wouldn’t. Daniel straightened his arm along the back of the sofa and rested his fingers on your shoulder, “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Part of the reason I fell so hard for you is because you’re so honest, so uncomplicated. I’ve known this for a while, that it wasn’t going to work out, I just couldn’t—"

“You think I’m uncomplicated?”

Daniel looked you right in the eye, “Yes. I think you’re uncomplicated. I think you feel things in their purest form. You probably always have. You’re young, but it’s not completely a product of your age.”

“I’m not—"

“Let me finish. There’s nothing worse than loving someone who doesn’t love you. Than trying to think of what you can do, what you can say, to change that. It’s all-consuming. Hopefully, you’ll never have to experience it.”

Your arms suddenly uncrossed, “I know exactly how that feels.”

Look, I told you, I’m not your lover, I’m not your partner, I’m not even your friend. You’re not anything to me.

Daniel smiled at you, his kind doctor smile, the same one he’d sported the night you met him—and a dead giveaway that he was about to change the subject, “You know, several of my patients have commented on your mural in my office. They really seem to like it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they often ask me what it means or if it has a name.”

“Which it doesn’t.”

“That’s what I tell them. I tell them it means whatever they want it to mean.”

“What do you think it means?" you asked, resting your elbow on the back of the sofa.

He patted you on the shoulder, “I charge for that.”

You cut your eyes at him, and he laughed at you as he walked over to the television and popped in a tape, “Frasier. I’ve got the whole series on tape.”

You got comfortable on the sofa and within ten minutes, you were both laughing, “You know, it’s completely immaterial whether or not Niles gets the girl—"

“Because he’s gay,” Daniel added.

“Exactly.”

The chicken burned.

****************
and it seems to me you lived your life
like a candle in the wind

Harper was usually at the studio around nine in the morning. She let herself in and wandered into Daniel’s guest room where you were pulling on your clothes. She stood in the doorway, ignoring the fact that you were bitching at her about privacy.

“We have to go back today. Before lunch.”

You knew what she meant, “We do? Why today?”

“Full moon last night.”

“Oh. Wow. I never put that together.”

“Let’s just go have breakfast somewhere or something. I don’t feel like working.”

You could tell by the look on her face that she was serious. Her mood always changed so drastically on the days she knew she was going to see Alan. As the two of you walked to the coffee shop, she didn’t walk too fast or bump your arm or anything. She was a million miles away, almost stepping in front of moving car as you went to cross the street.

“Harper, watch where you’re going.” She didn’t eat much at the coffee shop, mostly just pushed her food around her plate, “Are you okay?”

She twirled her hair between her index and middle finger and sighed, “Yeah.”

“You’re worried? That he won’t show?”

“Yeah. He always has, just like clockwork, but I always worry. Something could’ve happened to him since the last time I saw him, and I wouldn’t even know.”

“I’m sure he’s okay.” It seemed like a really stupid thing to say, since it was basically a lie. You weren’t sure of anything.

The two of you walked back to your old studio. Once you got there, Harper announced, “Well, I guess now we just wait.” She sat down, leaning back against the graffiti-covered wall across from the door. You could see the new occupant of your old place inside. He was setting up a projector or something. Harper’s toes flexed in her sandals as she told you she meant to paint her toenails last night, but she forgot. “God, they need it.” You offered her a cigarette, “Too hot to smoke.”

Harper suggested that you take turns naming all of the places you’d ever had sex to kill time. You won by a landslide in five minutes.

“You’ve had sex in an elevator?” she asked incredulously.

“Several. There’s an elevator in Brian’s building.”

“And in a diner?”

“Anyplace there’s a bathroom, you can pretty much figure we’ve fucked there.”

“Next time, we’ll make it harder. You’ll have to name them in alphabetical order.”

The Adonis, alley, annex of the GLC, Babylon, backroom, bathroom, baths, bed, chair, closet, corvette, Debbie’s, desk, diner, elevator, floor, Gravel Pit, hotels, Jeep, Kinnetik, kitchen, Lindsay’s, loft, mansion, office, shower, VIP lounge……

“I’m ready. I can do it now.”

“Go.”

“The Adonis, alley, annex of the GLC, Babylon, backroom, Alan.”

“You fucked up.”

“No, here he comes.” You pointed to him walking toward the two of you. You couldn’t believe she was right. He was just like clockwork. “Can you explain to me how he knows there was a full moon when he doesn’t even know what day it is?”

“It was always a big deal to my mom when we were kids, and I think he can feel it. He’s very in tune with things like that.” Harper got up off the ground and started walking toward him, “Hey.”

He smiled, “Josie.” They hugged when they got to each other. You noticed Alan’s fingernails. They were really long. Harper told him he needed a bath. “Duh.”

She pulled him by the hand over to the sidewalk in front of the studio, “Okay, but first we have to talk.”

He laughed, “Am I in trouble already?” He seemed more lucid today than usual. Alan looked at you and sort of smiled. “Hey, Waffle.”

“Hey.”

Harper held his hand as she talked to him, “This isn’t my studio anymore. I’ve moved.”

Alan’s face immediately tensed, “With Dad? You moved back in with Dad?” He started to pull away from her. Now, you knew why she was holding on to him.

She pointed to you and laughed, “No, with Waffle. We’re going to take you and show you where it is, so don’t come here anymore looking for me.”

Alan looked in the window at the man inside, “Who’s that?”

“He’s the new renter.” Just then the guy looked out the window, straight at Harper. Two seconds later, the door opened. He looked like a cross between Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace. He was kind of hot.

Alan seemed to panic as he came face to face with the man, “I’m not going to bother you.”

“Can I help you?”

Harper stood in front of Alan, and extended her hand, “Hi, I’m Harper. My friend and I used to rent this space.”

“Okay. Is there something I can do for you?” He had on this brown suede jacket shirt thing that you wanted to steal when he wasn’t looking. His jacket and his hair were almost the exact same color.

“This is my brother, Alan.” He tried to look at Alan, but Alan wouldn’t meet his eyes. Harper continued, “He’s a drifter, and every once in a while, he’d come here to see me. So, today I’m just showing him that I don’t work here anymore, so he’ll understand, and he won’t bother you.”

“I won’t bother you,” Alan said to the cement.

The guy’s face seemed to soften, “I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.” He nodded at you and you sort of waved.

Harper was smiling like she was a cruise director or something, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Sam. We don’t need to hang around or anything, so we’re gonna go. Thanks for not being a dick about all of this.”

Sam kind of laughed, “I’m not usually a dick, so, um, thanks, I guess.”

Harper looked embarrassed. It dawned on you that that was the first time you’d ever seen her blush, “Yeah, well, okay. We gotta go.” She backed up into Alan and stepped on his foot.

“Ow.”

Harper pushed him a little, like he was the only reason she couldn’t get moving, “Come on, let’s go.”

You looked at Sam as Harper started walking away, “Um, bye. Nice to meet you, Sam.”

Sam looked right through you like you were transparent, “It was nice to meet you, Harper…..Come back sometime when you can stay longer.”

****************
but I know what I'm needing
and I don't want to waste more time

Sam, it turns out, was a documentary filmmaker, and according to Harper, “He’s so fucking amazing, Justin. You just wouldn’t believe how raw and honest his work is.”

“Oh, I’d believe it.”

“And he wants to make a documentary about the homeless. He wants Alan to take him to the tunnels.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I told him no way. First of all, he’d never get his camera back, and second of all, I explained to him how they don’t exactly want visitors down there.”

It seemed like a pretty scary idea to you. “So, he changed his mind? He’s not going to do it?”

Harper shrugged, “I don’t know. We kind of quit talking about it and started—"

“Fucking?”

Harper grinned, “Yeah.”

You were seeing less and less of Harper since the two of you had met Sam a month ago, but she seemed deliriously happy. You’d gone out with them a couple of times, but you were feeling more and more like the third wheel. Daniel had joined you the last time, the four of you having dinner at a snooty restaurant that he liked. The two of you felt like you were there by yourselves; Harper and Sam were completely wrapped up in each other. Daniel commented on their public display of affection as he reviewed the desert menu, “If we got up and left right now, they wouldn’t even notice. Will you split this chocolate thing with me?”

“Sure.” The two of you ate dark, decadent chocolate cake minutes later. “She is his dessert menu.” Daniel agreed. You parted ways with them outside the restaurant, turning back and looking at them before you and Daniel turned the corner. They were making out against a building.

Daniel’s hands were in his pockets as he walked, “Kids, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you home and take a cab back.”

“Okay.” The next day was Saturday and Daniel asked you if you were going to come to the studio. “Maybe. Depends how I feel in the morning.”

“Well, I won’t be there. Jonathon and I are going shopping.”

“You two are always shopping.”

“It’s Jonathon’s anti-drug. It’s how he shakes off the week. So, if you come, you’ll have the place to yourself. We’ll be antiquing, so we’ll be gone all day, trust me.”

“Okay, thanks.”

The next day you went to your studio at about ten in the morning and started a brand new canvas. There were visions of hard fucks, brick walls and cold, darkened alleys dancing in your head.

****************
you see, I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue

The mural was finished a month later. It was the first vertical mural that you’d ever painted. You spent a lot of your time on a ladder while you were working on it and painted a lot of it at night. Daniel would often stand outside the door to your studio around eleven o’clock and tell you to have a good night; he was going to bed.

“There’s leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry, Justin.”

“Thanks.”

“And I started a pot of coffee for you.”

“Okay.”

Daniel refused to let you walk home when you’d finish around three in the morning, so you usually just slept in his guest room, and went home the next day. For some reason, your muse had become a night owl. You called Harper the night it was done and asked her to come over and take a look at it.

“Justin, it’s one in the morning.” You’d looked at your watch.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m just so done. I had no idea what time it was.”

“It’s okay. I’ll come by tomorrow, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

When you saw Harper the next day, you apologized for calling her in the middle of the night.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like we were asleep.”

“I figured.” Harper was pacing back and forth in front of the mural. “Why’d you answer the phone if you were fucking?”

“Because it was you and it was the middle of the night. You scared me, you ding bat.”

“Oh, right.”

She finally stopped pacing, “Whoa.”

“Whoa? What does ‘whoa’ mean?”

“Whoa means whoa.”

“That’s so helpful.” Harper lay down on the floor and stared at it. Her hair fanned on the linoleum. “Do you want me to get you a pillow?”

“No, smart ass. I want to know which of these figures is you.”

“Neither.”

“Bull shit.”

“Well, then I’m probably the shorter one, Einstein.” You lay down beside her on the floor, stuffing your hands behind your head.

“What are you calling it?”

You turned your head and looked at her, ”Three a.m.”

“Hmm, I’ve never seen two guys fuck in an alley while wearing tuxedos. This is a first.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure they’re fucking.”

“Well, then, what are they doing?”

You had to think about it. You weren’t exactly sure.

“I think they’re dancing.”

“To what? What are they dancing to?” she wanted to know.

“I have no idea. I can’t hear it.”

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

and it was late in the evening

The Sunday night before Labor Day in 2007, you invited Justin to stay over and watch movies. You ordered a bunch of appetizers from a local restaurant and the two of you watched Bette Davis. Jonathon called in the middle of your marathon to see what you were up to, and when you told him, he said, “You two are the biggest fags I know. Have fun.”

After you were both sufficiently fed and mostly drunk, you ended up watching Psycho, the old one. You kept looking over at Justin because he kept gasping. You stopped the movie at one point because he had to piss. He made you pull back the shower curtain in the bathroom before he’d even go in there.

“Don’t leave me in here by myself.” When you escorted him back to the sofa and told him that maybe you shouldn’t watch the rest of it, Justin refused, saying he needed ‘closure.’ You rolled your eyes. As soon as the credits ran, he looked at you, “I’m not sleeping by myself.”

You realized that he was a little drunker than you thought when you had to help him up the stairs. He yanked his sweat pants off and climbed into bed, “There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to sleep.”

“Justin, it’s just a movie about a guy with some issues about his mother. That’s all.”

He pulled the covers up over his head, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t want to talk about it……Shit, it’s even darker under here.” His blond head re-emerged, “I can’t believe you made me watch that.”

“I didn’t make you.” You rolled over to go to sleep and were about to drift off when he tapped you on the shoulder. “What?”

“Do you think Norman Bates was gay?”

“I think Norman Bates was extremely disturbed. Being a homosexual was the least of his problems.”

“True.”

……

……

“Daniel, I can’t sleep.”

You rolled back over, “Do you want me to turn a light on or something? Read you a story? Get you some warm milk?”

“Milk would be good.” You started to get out of bed, “Wait, no. Don’t leave me…….Can I just have some Valium or something?”

You laughed as you got back under the covers, “No. You’re drunk. Bad idea.”

“Shit.”

……

……

“Okay, tell me a story.”

You sighed, “Okay. Once upon a time there was this very, very talented artist named Justin Taylor, and he had a huge secret that nobody knew.”

“He was secretly, independently wealthy?” he asked you, scrunching his pillow.

“No, he was a chicken shit. The end.”

“You know, doctors are supposed to have compassion for people who are suffering. It’s part of your Hypocritical Oath or some shit.”

“Hippocratic, not hypocritical.”

“Whatever, you’re just not very hippocratical either. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I could sing you a lullaby.” Obviously, you were joking.

“Okay, sing Yellow Submarine. That’s what my mom used to sing to me when I was little because I loved that movie. We should’ve watched that movie instead of—"

“That’s not even a lullaby.”

“Sing it,” he demanded, closing his eyes.

“Fine…..In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea, and he told us of his life In the land of submarines….

He was asleep before you got to the chorus. Jonathon was right. You were the two biggest fags on the planet.

****************
the arc of a love affair,
rainbows in the high desert air

Someone was walking up your stairs at nine o’clock the next morning. It took you a minute to shake off the fuzz from the night before and realize that it had to be Harper. You could tell she was walking toward Justin’s bedroom because you could hear her humming in the hall. She’d checked the studio for him first. You whispered, “He’s in here,” and then she was standing in your doorway.

She took one look at the two of you in bed together and her eyes grew twice as big, “Uh oh.”

“It’s not what you think. We stayed up late watching scary movies. He was spooked.”

She came in and sat on your bed, “Well, wake him up. I’ve got to talk to him.” You shook Justin a little and he snored and turned over.

“Sorry. He’s out cold.”

Harper looked around your bedroom and then her nervous eyes rested back on your face, “All right, well, you can tell him when he wakes up.”

“Tell him what?” She wasn’t making any sense.

“That I’m getting married.”

You shook Justin harder, “Hey, wake up.”

****************
the bride was contagious
she burned like a bride

Harper’s wedding invitations left something to be desired:

Josie Harper and Sam Collins
request the honor of your presence
at their wedding.

Not this full moon, but the next one.

P.S. Wear whatever you want.
RSVP to harperandsam@gmail.com

You couldn’t wait to get started on this mural, and neither could Stitch, “The days will go by so much faster when we’re working on this. And everybody will see it because of where we’re going to put it. Right smack on that wall that everybody sees. You’re gonna be famous, Alley-oop.” You were just glad that Stitch was excited about something. It was a lot better than when he was fighting off demons.

When Stitch had returned from the first Gulf War, he came home to an empty house. His wife and daughter and everything they owned were gone with no explanation. “Not even a letter. She didn’t even leave me a letter.” Instead, she left a man who fought for her freedom with none of his own. The house was in his name, the mortgage was overdue, and Stitch, who earned his nickname from being shot and injured more than anyone else in his platoon, had nothing left inside him to pull himself back up. “At least if they were dead, I’d know that they’re dead.” When Stitch came back home from the war, death seemed to be the only thing he could handle. “But even if I don’t know where she is,” Stitch would explain about his daughter, “I’m not gonna kill myself. She’d find out someday, and then, I’d be just like my wife, another bad example.”

For months after he got home, Stitch wandered the streets. “I thought I was looking for work, but I wasn’t.” He was looking for a new family. When you met him, Stitch hadn’t seen the sun in months. “Don’t need anything they got up there,” he told you the day he offered to share his small space with you. “Got everything I need right here—people I can trust and a place to sleep.” Stitch let you stay with him in return for being his link to the upstairs, for fetching anything he needed. “People’ll give you anything you want, Al. You’ve got the face of a baby.”

And it was that face and your harmless affect that charmed many a woman out of spare change and most men out of more. You knew that sometimes they were just paying you to go away, and there were plenty of times you would, even empty-handed, if your father was working on the line you were begging on. A few years after your mother died, your father brought you and Josie to New York City, ostensibly because of a new job. But when you arrived, you realized that there was no job, just a man glad to be away from a dead woman’s nosy family and two children who knew no one, including their father. Eventually he went to work and you and Josie went to school, but the two of you clung to each other and the memories of your mom. They very obviously belonged only to you and her. Your father made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want them.

Your father had a way that had developed into a habit of making things perfectly clear. When the guidance counselor at your junior high called the apartment every few nights for months, he made it perfectly clear that, “If you have something to say to me about my son, you can say it right now, on the phone.” Your counselor and your teachers and eventually the principal wanted a face-to-face meeting with your father,

“We’d like to sit down and talk about your son, about his progress, about some of the struggles he’s been having.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my son.”

The letters that came home with you were thrown in the trash. “Dad, you’re supposed to sign that, so I can bring that back.”

“You don’t need to be evaluated. I’m not signing anything.”

“Please, Dad. They’re just gonna send home another one tomorrow if I don’t bring it back.”

“What did I just say?”

“They say they’re just trying to help me. You know, ‘cause of what happened to Mom.”

Your father froze as if you’d threatened him, “Nothing happened to your mother. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with you. You don’t see them calling here about your sister, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, do the math, Alan. Straighten up. This shit is a waste of my time.”

Without your father’s permission, the school wasn’t allowed to help you. Back then, you wondered how soon after your mother died your father stopped loving you. Now, as you roam the lines looking for a kind face or an easy opportunity, you wonder if he knows that you’re up there at least once a week, wandering around his stomping ground.

Tomorrow, on your way to see Josie, you’d collect as much money as you possibly could to add to what you’d already saved. Then on your way home, showered and looking much more presentable, you’d buy as much spray paint as you could for Stitch. People were always so much nicer to you on your way home from seeing Josie, than on your way there. Once a woman’s briefcase had fallen open and blown the contents all over the sidewalk. She bought you a cup of coffee and actually sat with you in a coffee shop after you helped her pick everything up. She smelled like lilies and nine of her fingernails were perfectly polished, the tenth having broken when she tried to catch her things from blowing everywhere. She thanked you again for your help and put five dollars on the table before she left. You waited until she was long gone down the sidewalk before you stole it.

The first lesson you’d ever learned living on the streets was that money is the only equalizer.

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

I wanna kiss the bride

You knew something was up on the day of Harper’s wedding. Justin was more nervous than the bride and his anxiety was only heightened by Jonathon’s contribution to the event--‘a man of the cloth’ who’d fallen asleep on your sofa after stating, “Wake me up ten minutes before the ceremony, ‘kay?”

“Jonathon, where did you find this guy?” Justin demanded, an apron over his tux. You didn’t even know why Justin was in the kitchen. The food was catered. Everything was ready.

Jonathon answered him from the doorway, “He’s sort of one of my patients.”

“What?”

“He’s fine, Justin, he’s not crazy. He just has some issues with his mother.”

“Oh great, Harper’s being married by Norman Bates. That is just fucking perfect, Jonathon. Just fucking perfect.”

You yanked Justin back into the kitchen, “Calm down. He’s just pulling your leg. He’s not one of his patients.”

Justin whispered at you over his shoulder while he rearranged little sandwiches, “He better not be. I’ve worked too hard to make this day perfect.”

“I’m gonna stick a valium up your ass if you don’t stop stressing. You’d think this was your wedding day.”

“Well, she has no family except Alan, no close girlfriends, no mother. I am the wedding party, Daniel, or haven’t you noticed?”

“I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed,” you remarked, backing out of ground zero. “I’m going to check on the real bride.” The door swung shut before the cocktail weenie that Harper had insisted on because, ‘Oh my god, they’re so cute,’ hit you.

You looked outside on your way to the stairs, and saw Alan and Sam and Jonathon standing on the deck talking. Alan had cleaned up well in the tux you rented him, and he and Sam looked like they were getting along. When you got to the top of the stairs, you knocked on the guest room that Harper was dressing in, “Harper, I brought the ginger ale you asked for.”

She opened the door and you were almost taken aback with how beautiful she looked in her dress. She took the glass from you and sat down on the bench in front of the vanity, sipping it and taking deep breaths. You closed the door behind you as you stepped into the room, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“You’re a shrink. That’s what you do, right?”

You laughed at her spunk, “Yeah. That’s what I do. But I’m wondering, not as a shrink, but as your friend, how pregnant you are.”

Harper stared at you in the mirror, “Well, aren’t you intuitive?”

“Not really. Most women don’t vomit when the caterer arrives for their wedding or refuse champagne at their rehearsal dinner.”

“Pregnant enough. Sam knows. He’s happy.”

“Does Justin know?”

Harper laughed, “God, no. You see what a nervous Nelly he is. I’ll tell him after the honeymoon.”

“Fair enough. Are you happy about it?”

Harper turned around to face you, “Unbelievably. I can’t wait to have this baby. It just happened a little sooner than I planned.”

You smiled, “Well, congratulations. And you look beautiful.”

“Well, that’s good because I feel like shit.”

You both laughed, and then you asked her, “You about ready to go? I need to know so I can rouse the minister.”

“That guy is a spaz. I know it’s driving Justin crazy that I’m having such a shotgun wedding.”

“He’ll get over it, as long as we don’t run out of food and the florist quits arguing with him.”

“I know. I already went in there and told him to let Justin have his way. It’s not worth it. I hope he doesn’t stop and bitch somebody out while he’s walking me down the aisle.”

“He won’t.” You looked at your watch, “Fifteen minutes to three.”

“Sam’s here?”

“Yeah, he was actually early.”

“Well, that’s probably a good sign.”

You left her alone, walking into their studio transformed into a chapel of sorts, making sure everything was ready. The small room was filled with various friends from the art community, Tess, Harper’s previous studio-neighbor, Maya, and a few from your social circle who’d gotten to know Harper through her shows. Her father didn’t even now about the wedding, much less get an invitation. You went back downstairs to gather everyone, including Justin.

“Remind Jonathon that he’s in charge of the music,” he told you.

“He knows. Let’s go.”

At five minutes after three, the room stood as Harper walked down the aisle on Justin’s arm to the traditional wedding march playing over the speakers. Jonathon came and stood beside you when he was finished with the music. The minister looked awfully perky; his cat nap must’ve done the trick. Harper whispered something to Justin that made him smile, and the minister asked, “Who gives this woman to be married?”

Justin looked at Harper and said, “I do,” and let her go. Harper and Sam had decided that they didn’t want anyone standing with them when they took their vows, so Justin walked to his seat.

When the minister uttered the words, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace,” the entire congregation turned toward the voice coming from the other end of the aisle.

“Time out, man.”

It was Zeek.

Harper smiled when she saw who was standing there. Justin, on the other hand, had a much different reaction, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Justin,” you whispered.

“Well, I’ve left him five hundred messages.”

Zeek walked down the aisle in his black suit, stopping in front of Harper, “Who’s this?” He pointed to Sam.

Harper grinned; she seemed genuinely glad to see him, “Zeek, this is Sam. Sam, this is Zeek.”

“Hello.”

“Hey, man.” And then Zeek turned to Justin, “You like this guy, man?”

“Yeah, I like him.”

Zeek shrugged his shoulders, “Well, okay. Go for it.” The couple started to turn back around again, but stopped when Zeek’s hand was on Sam’s arm, “But you better take good care of her, man, or I will kick your—“

“Zeek.” Suddenly Justin had once again found his manners.

Zeek ignored him, “Mark my words, man. Mark. My. Words.”

Sam, seemingly only mildly flustered, told him, “I love her. You don’t need to worry.”

“Carry on, everybody. Sorry ‘bout the interruption.” Zeek walked over and sat next to Justin, “She looks good, huh, Eggo?”

“Yeah, she looks beautiful.”

****************
JUSTIN’S POV

the mother and child reunion is only a motion away

Seven months and three weeks after Harper’s wedding, the end of May 2008, you sat in the waiting room outside Harper’s hospital room and pretended, for the sake of the other visitors in your vicinity, that you didn’t know the woman who was screaming her head off down the hall. Several people mumbled to one another that they hoped it wasn’t their daughter, aunt, sister, etc. You hid behind your most recent issue of Art Forum and prayed for the whole thing to just be over, and also:

Dear God,
Thank you for not making me a girl.
Amen.

You sent Daniel, who’d insisted on being there because ‘this hospital is always understaffed,’ to the cafeteria to get you something cold to drink. Hearing Harper scream was making you sweat. He returned with bottles of water and juice just as Sam emerged from Harper’s room and plopped down into a chair beside you.

“Well?” you asked him.

“It’s a girl.”

Daniel repeated, “It’s a girl,” like he was trying to convince himself or something. Harper had sworn since her sixth month that it was a girl. You weren’t the least bit surprised. That baby would’ve had a lot of nerve being anything else.

“Is that her screaming?” you asked Sam.

Sam nodded, exhausted, “Like mother, like daughter.”

The next night you dropped by Harper’s room to meet Amelia Jocelyn Harper-Collins in person. She looked just like Harper, only with dark brown hair and brown eyes like Sam. She was tiny, just over six pounds, but she made up for it with a set of lungs that would’ve made an opera singer green with envy. You held Amelia in your arms, and she pooped immediately.

“Oh look, she’s classy, Harper. Just like you.”

“Aw, she can’t help it. She’s just a little stinker.”

“She’s adorable. Absolutely adorable,” you told her, looking at Amelia’s tiny feet. “I can’t believe how much hair she has.”

“Yep, Sam says she’s a looker.”

“He’s right. She’s precious.” Amelia squawked. “That’s right, I said you were precious.”

“Oh my god, you’re worse than Sam with the baby talk.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

“He went home to get some sleep. He was cranky.”

The two of you talked for another twenty minutes or so, and it was nice just to be with her; she’d become so scarce since the wedding and had stopped spending much time in the studio, claiming she was too tired to be creative. You’d missed her. Alan had come by a few times and you took him in, fed him, and often just let him sleep on the futon in your studio while you painted. He asked you if she was going to come back, going to work here anymore.

“I think so. She just has other priorities right now.”

“I miss her,” he told you. “Is she happy?”

“Yeah, she’s practically blissed out most of the time.”

Once, Daniel had come home early and told you to invite Alan to stay for dinner when he woke up. The three of you ate in Daniel’s dining room. Daniel had had a particularly difficult day, having to hospitalize a patient that wasn’t able to cope anymore. He’d handled the admittance procedures, called it a day, and came home to cook. Cooking was Daniel’s anti-drug.

Alan asked him, “You feel like it’s your fault? That your patient is suicidal?”

“No, I know it’s not my fault; I just feel extremely helpless. I just don’t know what to do for them right now,” Daniel replied, concealing even the gender of his patient.



……

……

“Do you shock your patients?”

Daniel gave Alan a quizzical look, “Not usually. ECT is very controversial. I’ve seen some patients really improve after shock therapy, but not very many.”

“I think the shocking killed my mother.”

Daniel looked at you for verification. Alan wasn’t always rational, but tonight he seemed like he knew what he was talking about. You shrugged your shoulders. You didn’t know anything about Harper’s mother, except that she had been dead for years.

“Tell me why you think that,” Daniel asked him, and Alan began to reveal the images that he had of his mother. The conversation almost excluded you, Alan seeming like he’d waited years to tell someone these things. Daniel listened, and you cleared the table and brought out ice cream for dessert. They talked for almost two hours, and at the end, Alan seemed almost relieved. Daniel convinced him to spend the night, worried that just talking about these things was going to be too much for him. Alan didn’t object; he was exhausted. He fell asleep on Daniel’s sofa before you could even offer him the guest room.

Daniel talked quietly as the two of you cleaned up the kitchen, “There’s severe mental illness on both sides of his family. His paternal grandmother died in a mental institution, and his mother committed suicide. His mother’s brother, an uncle he never knew, hung himself in his backyard.” Daniel shook his head, “That kid never had a chance.”

“You gave him one tonight,” you told him. “Maybe just getting it out will do something for him.”

“I hope so. God, this has been a shitty day.” He told you goodnight and disappeared up the stairs.

You stayed that night in your room at Daniel’s so that Alan wouldn’t have to leave before dawn. Daniel woke you up at 5:30 a.m.

Alan was gone.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 9-ASSOCIATIONS-1/2

DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV

to resume old acquaintances

“You know, I’ve asked him forty times not to flick his cigarettes in my garden,” you mumbled into the phone as you tried to stand inconspicuously to the right of your front door.

“Oh please, it’s not a garden, it’s a rosebush,” Jonathon said, adding that the crickets were chirping so loud that he could hear them over the phone. You told him to be quiet. “Why? Can you hear what they’re saying?” he wanted to know.

“No, of course not. I just see better when you’re quiet.”

…..

“Whatever. You called me.” Jonathon was at some sort of psycho-pharmaceutical conference in Toronto that you knew he was only attending because he had an almost mystical attraction to drug reps. “Look, if you’re going to keep me on the phone, at least give me the play-by-play. Don’t make me work so hard.”

Jonathon had given you so much shit about putting virtually-sheer curtains on the windows on either side of the front door when you bought this place, but tonight you were patting yourself on the back for your brilliant window treatment decision. You resumed your description of what was unfolding in front of you, “Everything on this guy is long.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Not that, you perv. His fingers, his hair--sort of. Hell, his legs are so long he could kick my door down without even getting out of his long limousine.”

“He’s in a limo?” Jonathon was listening now.

“Well, he was in it, but now he’s not...holy… fucking… shit.”

“What? What? Holy fucking shit, what?”

“The man is oozing sex all over my sidewalk.”

“Get the fuck out.”

Jonathon continued to ramble and you continued to watch.

The man who’d emerged from the limousine had to be close to your age. You couldn’t decide if you’d prefer him a little younger or a little older, or if you’d just prefer him, period. Justin certainly did. It wasn’t anything overt that made you think that, just more of a familiarity between them that made you almost ashamed for not looking away. You mumbled something to Jonathon who responded,

“What? I can’t understand you. Speak up.”

“I said, his shoes are as expensive as yours. His clothes, more so.” Jonathon was a man who preferred to classify things by comparison.

“I hope you have the light off. I hope you’re not standing there in plain-hidden sight.” You’d never appreciated the dimmer on your foyer light more than at that very moment. Your hesitancy gave you away, “That light’s not the only thing that’s dim.” He can’t go half a minute without drawing an analogy, a comparison, or just getting on your nerves.

“And there’s product in his hair.”

Jonathon mocked you, “Product. Christ, you’re so sterile, sometimes.”

“Well, there has to be because the wind is blowing and his hair isn’t.” Jonathon laughed, and kept firing questions at you. He wanted to know every little detail. God, he’s so nosy, you thought.

You quit listening to him, too busy recording the details on your mental legal pad. This man, you thought, didn’t even look like Justin’s type; he was obviously steeped in wealth. He wore it like underwear, like an afterthought. He moved with ease even though he was obviously a little nervous.

And you wondered why.

The juxtaposition of the two of them standing there on your sidewalk gave you pause. Justin was doing that thing that he’d done the night you met him. He was giving off that air of confidence, of certainty, even though he stood there in almost unraveling jeans that fell too long on his sneakers. Why Justin would want this man--that you could understand. Why he’d want Justin, though, became more of a puzzle as you lurked in the shadows. You told Jonathon as much, and he seemed incredulous, “You can’t understand why an older, wealthy man would be interested in someone like Justin? Is that what you just said?” Over the years, there’d been times in your conversations with Jonathon that you became aware that he was suddenly on the clock with you. That was precisely one of those moments. “Do we really need to have this conversation? I hope you have insurance.” You sighed into the phone. “Been a long time since you looked in the mirror, Dan?

Yeah, but this guy’s really tall, you thought.

“You should start charging yourself. You’d be a gazillionaire.”

Had Jonathon been one of those strip-mall shrinks who needed a slogan in the Yellow Pages to attract the herd, it would’ve read: Dr. Jonathon Massey, Psycho-analytic Psychiatry……..Adding insult to injury for fifteen years….and counting.

Were you really like this guy? Did the air move out of your way when you took a step forward? Was your self-confidence that ubiquitous? Were you just as addicted to comparisons as Jonathon?

Was Jonathon still on the phone?

Apparently.

You watched Justin until he disappeared inside the limo. The windows were tinted. The curtain went down on your peep show.

****************
JUSTIN’S POV

when you walked into the room
there was voo doo in the vibes

The cool air of that New York City evening transformed into a warmth that you were almost leery of when you slipped inside the limousine. You glanced down at the clothes you had on and felt distinctly like there must be cameras somewhere filming the Candid Camera version of Cinderfella. When you looked back up, Brian was smiling at you, his hand moving to rest on your thigh. You watched his fingers drape over your leg and thought they felt heavy. But not as heavy as the cloak of false pretense that Brian was wearing. There’d never been a moment in Brian’s life, you were certain, when his presence somewhere didn’t have an underlying meaning or motivation. When you smiled back, he squeezed your leg. You wrapped your fingers over his hand in an attempt to hold on to something.

Before you lost it.

It was never in Brian’s nature to be vague, and you felt more comfortable as he began to give a destination to the driver. You didn’t know why he was really here, but watching him boss someone around made you feel safer than you thought you should; yet you couldn’t remember where he’d just asked to be taken. When the limousine stopped in front of a nice, expensive hotel, your mind tried to stay one step ahead of him and failed, “You want to fuck?” you asked him, your face turning red immediately afterwards when you realized that you’d actually said those words to the chauffeur as he was opening the door for you and not to Brian. The chauffeur was kind enough to ignore the offer.

Once you were both on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, Brian touched the small of your back just as he had the last time you stood on a New York City sidewalk with him, “It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but I thought we’d have dinner first.” His eyebrow barely went up.

“Oh,” and Brian was holding the door open for you. The realization hit you so fast as you stepped into the bright lobby, that you stopped on a dime and Brian stopped himself from running into you, “But wait, look at me……look at you,” you gestured from yourself to him. “I mean, I’m not dressed.”

Brian’s arm found its way around your shoulders as he leant down and spoke to the top of your head, “Let me tell you a secret.”

“What?”

“There are two tiers of social acceptance when you have money.”

You looked up at him like he was high, “Huh?”

“The first tier is when you want people to know you have money, so you dress for where you want to be and not where you are.”

“Okay,” you said, not really understanding what the fuck he was talking about as he propelled you towards a nice restaurant in the hotel.

“The second is when you dress for where you are because where you are is where people want to be.”

“So, I take it The Gap is where people want to be?” you asked, wondering if you were wearing Gap jeans or not. You couldn’t recall at the moment.

Brian took the opportunity to feign a gaze at your ass, “I think you mean Abercrombie and Fitch.

“Right.”

Brian pulled your chair out for you, and you felt, well, weird, like maybe this was a dream. Only it couldn’t be because the wine was too good. You made small talk about what you were going to order, and when the waiter returned, Brian took your menu out of your hand and ordered for you before you could even open your mouth, “He’ll have the twelve ounce filet, medium, baked potato, butter, no sour cream, House Vinaigrette on the salad. I’ll have the same only steamed vegetables instead of a baked potato, and I’d like my filet very medium rare.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Whoa, that was efficient,” you remarked.

He ignored your comment, “You look good.”

……

“Thanks. So do you.”

……

……

“So tell me what you’re up to.”

……

“Are you staying in town tonight?” It was like you were playing tennis with each other but on different courts.

“I can.”

……

……

And in a ten-second delay that coincided with the delivery of your salad and the loss of your appetite, you suddenly felt the smile, the kindness, in his voice.

“Justin, I didn’t come here to fuck.”

And then dread.

The dread of knowing you’d been right since the moment he called forty-five minutes ago and told you he was in town. The dread of realizing that you were about to be, well, dumped.

You tried to stuff the feeling somewhere inconspicuous but it seemed to begin residing in the pitch of your voice, “You didn’t?” You thought about everything you’d done for yourself, everything you’d accomplished since you set foot in New York, how you were a fool to think you could have both Brian and a life, to have ever walked away from what you had, what you could’ve had with him. How the trepidation you’d felt the times you’d broken it off with him never felt like this. You’d never been dumped before, never felt like he didn’t want you. Never.

“You’re making me nervous as hell,” you said, the words finally emerging from the mosh pit in your brain and tumbling out of your mouth.

The waiter picked that moment to come refill your wine glasses. You watched the dark liquid rise in your glass, and then in Brian’s. Brian was staring at you as if to say, ‘Just a second.’ Whatever it was, was so bad that he couldn’t say it in front of the—

“Justin, I came because I wanted to see you.”

****************
I’ve got a girl in Paris,
I’ve got a girl in Rome,
I’ve even got a girl in the Vatican Dome

“Could you pass me the bread?” you asked, pressing your napkin into your lap. You realized you hadn’t eaten all day.

“Sure.”

You buttered your roll a little too deliberately, and half of it fell on your plate as you asked, “You have business here tomorrow or something?”

“Or something.”

……

……

You wished your wine glass felt more substantial in your hand. “Awfully tan for November.”

He smiled, “Cabo.”

“Cabo? Working or fucking?”

His expression on his face seemed to open a little, like he was glad you were interested, “A lot of the former, a little of the latter.” Your steak arrived and the waiter went to take your salad away and you stopped him. You weren’t done with it. “Kinnetic is working on a print and website campaign for Centauro. It’s a Destination Management Company.” He spoke of Kinnetic, the name you’d given his company, almost as if it wasn’t his.

Destination Management.

“More wine, sir?” the waiter asked him before leaving.

“Please,” Brian replied.

“May I please have some water?” you asked.

“Certainly, sir.”

“The wine isn’t to your liking?” Brian asked as the waiter walked away. “I can order something else.”

“No, it’s delicious. It’s perfect. I just want some water.”

Brian nodded, and then continued the conversation, “So what about you?”

He confused you for a second, “What about me?”

“What are you doing more of? The former or the latter?”

The waiter sat ice water down in front of both of you. “Anything else right now, gentlemen?”

“No. No, thank you.” Your server walked away and you looked up. Brian’s hands were clasped in front of his face. He was waiting for your answer. You weren’t sure if you were being seduced or interviewed, or worse, maybe neither.

You swallowed your potato, “The former, I suppose.” You made him smile. “And a little of the latter.”

……

“The man in the window?”

“Huh?”

“The man in the window. Is he the latter?”

You’d stood outside Daniel’s place for ten minutes waiting for Brian; you had no idea Daniel had been in the window.

“No.”

“Hmm. I’d pictured you living in more of a hovel.”

“That’s where I work. That’s my studio.” Brian looked like if he wasn’t being so polite, he might not believe you. “It has a skylight so it has really good light and lots of space.”

“Sounds nice.”

“And it’s on the second floor.”

You had no idea why you said that.

****************
you're thinkin' maybe if you said goodbye
you'll understand the reason why

The conversation stalled, which in retrospect you know was because you were both eating. It gave you time to chew your food and notice things about Brian. He’d just had a manicure, you could tell. And you thought that he must have shaved in the middle of the day because his face looked so smooth. You were running out of food to occupy yourself with, and you were so hungry, you could have eaten another steak. His leg brushed yours under the table.

“Sorry,” you said, tucking your feet under your chair.

“That was my fault.”

But what struck you more than anything was that he seemed relaxed. Happy? Satisfied? “Are you dumping me?”

“What?”

“Don’t be Captain Cryptic, just tell me. Are you moving on?” The speed with which the words were coming out of your mouth shocked you, and they were your words. “I mean, you know, just rip off the band-aid.”

He seemed to study you before he answered, like you were a new species on Animal Planet or something, “There’s no band-aid.”

It was your turn not to believe him, “There’s not?”

He almost laughed, “No. No band-aid.”

“Oh.”

“But there is dessert. If you want it,” he said, handing you the dessert menu.

Since when did being nervous make you ravenous? “No, I’m fine……But if you want to—"

“I’m fine.”

You were both fine.

****************
speculate who had been damaged the most

A chill cut through your clothes as you stood outside the hotel with Brian, trying to warm yourself with the smoke of your cigarette. You were buzzing a little, the two of you having finished off almost two bottles of an Alexander Valley Merlot. Brian sucked on his cigarette the way he always did when there was something on his mind.

You wondered what he’d come here not to tell you.

You wondered why he didn’t take you upstairs and fuck you senseless.

You wondered if you should make the first move, but there was something about the look on his face that seemed to indicate otherwise. And if Brian came here in a limo, dressed to kill, bought you an absurdly expensive dinner, and didn’t even show any interest having you for dessert that could only mean one thing, “Are you dying? I mean, the cancer’s not back, is it?” You didn’t mean for your concern to sound like an accusation.

“Why the fuck does everyone always think I’m dying?”

“Sorry…so, you’re not? Sick, I mean?”

Brian sighed as he stared across the street, “No, I’m not dying. And I’ve been trying to figure out all day how to tell you this, and I don’t have a clue—"

“Tell me what?” Another chill, and your cigarette was still a piece of shit.

Brian leaned against the stone wall of the hotel and looked at you, “Hobbes is dead. He was killed this morning.”

Your eyebrows went up farther than you thought possible, “What? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Construction accident. He fell out of a lift,” Brian waved his hand in the air as if acting out the next part of his sentence, “It was really windy, I guess.”

“He died—"

“Instantly.”

“Whoa.”

For some reason, you found comfort in staring at your sneakers.

“I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone but me,” Brian said, putting his hand on your shoulder like he barely knew you, “And I didn’t want you to be alone.” You felt horrible and not because Chris was dead, but because Brian had been lugging this news around with him all day. You’d seen what things like this did to him, and you immediately wanted to take his discomfort away. Seeing Brian uncomfortable in his own skin was an unbearable sight, and you’d only witnessed it a few times in your life. Both of your cigarettes had been discarded sometime during that exchange, and you stepped forward to shorten the distance between you. It was the first time that night that you felt like you belonged that close to him.

Your hand rested on his upper arm, “It’s okay. It’s all right.” Brian looked at you like your concern for him was a sticky film he needed to peel off. “It’s just hard to believe.”

“Never in a million years did I think that someday I’d be standing on a street in New York City having this conversation with you.”

“Me neither.”

Brian glanced up at the hotel, “I can stay. We can get a room…or you can home with me for a few days. I’ve got tickets on a flight back tonight.”

He wasn’t going to leave; that old feeling of being almost vigilantly guarded by him was one you hadn’t felt in years. And after all that time and way too much wine, it felt really good.

“Can we take the limo to the airport?” you asked him.

“Nah, I thought we’d take a Greyhound.”

****************
BRIAN’S POV

no I would not give you false hope
on this strange and mournful day

Back in the limo, you hit the intercom for your driver as he was heading for the airport, “Don’t. Just keep going.”

“Keep going, sir?”

“To Pittsburgh.” You looked at Justin, although his body was revealing more to you at that moment, slumped hard against you, his eyes haunted with a quiet stillness that seemed so foreign and yet so familiar at the same time. “Take us home.” For the first time since you’d told him, you saw his body relax a little. You gave his shoulder a squeeze.

Through the years, so many of Justin’s demons had been brimming on the surface that you often took it for granted that you could see them, touch them, give them advice they weren’t going to take. You shook your head, lost in your thoughts about candy-pink shirts and concealed weapons.

Looking at him now, you weren’t sure if he’d matured or the demons had just gotten smarter.

“When’s the funeral again?” he asked as the driver pulled onto the interstate.

“Friday morning.”

It was Wednesday night, November 12, 2008. You took your plane tickets out of your jacket pocket and dropped them into your briefcase lodged beside you. Justin watched you as they disappeared from his view and then went back to staring out the window, ‘I didn’t say we couldn’t fly back.”

“Better this way.”

You couldn’t imagine dragging him out of the warmth of the limo to go through security, to have to suffer through obnoxious airline passengers. The tickets were bought at the last minute and your seats weren’t even together. It’d been the best you could do at the time.

He yawned a few times and you told him, “If you’re tired, lie down.” He glanced up at you for a few seconds, and you brought your face to his, holding the back of his head as you kissed him. You felt weightless when your mouths touched, all of the blood in your limbs racing to get back to your heart. There was an implicit need for the moment to be more than it was, but you both ignored it, content to let the tenuous connection between you strengthen on its own.

His eyes opened briefly when he felt your hand slide underneath his shirt and then closed again as if his body remembered the path your palm always took. When he felt your fingertips brush the waistband of his pants, he lifted his hips, rising into your hand. The inside of the car was so quiet that you could enjoy the sound of his body rustling against yours.

“Please,” he whispered into your mouth, moaning softly as you opened his pants, his damp underwear making you smile. You thanked the inventor of tinted windows and chauffeurs as you pushed them halfway down his thighs. He pressed his cock into your hand, “God, get me off.”

You took your time; it was going to be a long ride home.

He held onto you like the lovesick teenager he no longer was, his fingers twisting in your hair as your hand passed over the head of his cock. You squeezed, and he said your name like he was feeding you each letter one by one. He ran his hand down your arm, covering your hand with his, and pressed it down the length of his dick. Your other hand clasped the back of his head to keep him falling as he showed you what he wanted.

As if you needed to be told.

Eventually, he came in your hand, folding himself into your lap as you covered him with your recently purchased, almost black jacket from the 2008 Prada Fall Collection, whose theme that year had been Shrouded Success. Your right hand snugged back between his warm legs.

Talk about the lap of luxury.

****************
’cause it’s only in your heart
this thing that makes you want to
start it all again

The night that Justin got hurt, you sat on a bench in the hospital corridor unable to stop the tears from streaming down your face. That night, as you rode with him back to Pittsburgh, his body eventually curled on the seat, his head in your lap, you thought about how grateful you were that tonight you could be with him, that you could touch him, and then it struck you that seven years after that incident, he still looked like a boy when he closed his eyes. Your hand brushed lightly through his hair, your fingers skimming over his scar.

Jennifer called your cell phone after not getting an answer on Justin's and you spoke to her in a hushed voice, "Hey. He's asleep. I couldn't reach his phone."

"Is he okay?"

"I guess so; he hasn't really said much since I told him."

"I thought you'd be back here by now."

"We opted not to fly. We're driving back." You glanced down to be sure you weren’t disturbing him. He’d had enough wine, apparently. Jennifer wasn’t saying anything in that way that she sometimes does. “What’s wrong?”

She sighed, “I did something stupid.”

“What?”

“Only because-- I just felt like I should.”

“I’m lost. Help me out.”

“I called Craig. You know, to tell him. I thought, like an idiot, that he’d want to know… that Chris Hobbes is dead.”

“And?”

…..

“He said, ‘Who?’”

“I suppose you set him straight, so to speak.”

“The conversation just went downhill from there.”

“Jennifer, I meant what I said before. I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“I don’t want you to have to.”

“Sever your ties with him. You might as well do it now. It’s only going to be harder later.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any reason not to. Molly’s old enough to make her own decisions now.”

“Just do it. And when you’re all done, let me know, and I’ll take you bowling.”

“No way. You’ll kill me. You’re probably really, really good.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had lots of practice.”

****************
he wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown

You woke Justin up about when you were about thirty minutes from the loft, amazed that he’d slept for so long. He was disoriented, almost forgetting where he was.

The only light on in the loft when you got inside was the low one over the sink, and he glanced around, commenting on the look of the place and then walked over to your table where you had mock-ups strewn about, “You’re working out of the loft?”

“Sometimes. I can concentrate here. I often work at Kinnetic in the morning, and then finish out my afternoon here.”

Justin glanced in the direction of the bedroom, “It seems so much emptier than I remember it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not here very much.”

“Oh.”

You weren’t sure if he’d want to go to bed after sleeping for so long, but then he walked toward the bedroom, so you followed him. He stood in front of your closet as if analyzing what was inside as you hung up your jacket and loosened your tie. “You okay?” you asked him, your voice quiet as if he was still asleep. He almost seemed like he was.

“Yeah.”

You turned back toward him and reached for him, feeling that if you didn’t, he might fall. Pulling him toward you gently, your fingers toyed with the hem of one of his five thousand cotton shirts, “You sure?”

“I wanna get in bed,” he said, almost to your chest.

You leaned over and tossed the covers back, and he sat down, lying back and watching you as you shed the rest of your clothes. He moved over a little as you slid under the covers, and you stared at him for a few seconds before you started undressing him. He bent his knees so you could untie his shoes, his hand rubbing your upper back. His clothes off, he joined you under the covers, pressing himself against you. You’d wanted to make love to him for the last six or so hours, that and fucking seeming like two things that suddenly couldn’t be more different. You wrapped him in your arms, and he hooked his leg over yours, your hand eventually skimming up and down it as the soft moans coming from both of you filled the room.

The only two things that sell, sex and death, and you had front row center for both that night.

His skin was soft and warm like it always was, and the look on his face was one you’d seen before. You closed your eyes as you kissed him and tried to ignore the flashes of blue skating behind your eyelids. And you weren’t a fool. Sometimes sex is lust and desire and sometimes its familiarity and comfort. For some reason, your mind told you to fight this notion, but your body wouldn’t listen. It felt familiar enough to know that it was a calm before an unknown storm. You whispered into his ear, “Open your eyes,” and looked to see if he knew what was coming.

He told you he loved you and closed them again, a small, peaceful smile on his face, a hint of nothing.

And in some other place far away from you, you could see him standing, surrounded as always by the brightest light, so bright now that it was blinding him.

“I love you, too,” you told him, your right hand cupping his ass as you inched inside him, incapable of picking up the pace. The last time you’d fucked him, you wouldn’t let him cling to you like he was now, his legs wound tightly around your waist.

You filled him over and over again trying to fuck away the emptiness.

****************
easy time will determine
if these consolations
will be their reward

Jennifer came over that next morning to see Justin, and you dressed as if you were going to the office.

“You’re going to work?” he asked you.

“Just for a little bit. Got a couple things to do. Give you some time with your mom. I’ll call you when I’m done and see if you’re ready for lunch.”

He glanced down the black trash bag in your hand, “Why are you taking out the trash? There’s nothing in it.”

You thought fast on your feet, “Documents in here. Financial. They have to be shredded. It’s the law.”

Justin looked at you like you were an idiot, “So buy a shredder.”

The kiss you were trying to give him turned into a hug, although Jennifer had already turned away, “I won’t be gone long.”

****************
I’m too sexy for Milan,
too sexy for Milan,
New York and Japan

"Good morning, Mr. Kinney. Today is Thursday, November 13, 2008. The time is eleven-o-eight a.m. The current temperature is fifty-two degrees under partly cloudy skies. You may enter your destination now.”

“TAYLOR ELECTRONICS.”

"Thank you. Taylor Electronics is entered as your destination. Have a safe trip.”

“MESSAGES.”

At this time, there are two new messages available. Press--"

“ONE.”

"Today, three fifty-three a.m. Brian, it’s Rube. Listen, um, there was sort of an incident here at the club tonight, but don’t panic or—“

Shit.

“--it’s no big deal…..it’s just that somehow a girl got into the backroom last night before anybody realized—"

Dumb asses. Tits might have been a clue.

“—I mean, it was really kind of funny because she was actually sucking some guy off-"

Christ.

“—see she had a baseball cap on, and the guy had his hand on her head while she was, you know, blowing him and he sort of pushed her hat off, and then all this long, brown hair came flowing down, and then there was sort of this mass exodus from the backroom. Brian, you have never seen so many screaming queens in your life—“

I’ll bet.

“—um okay, but the thing is, that wasn’t really the incident. It was sort of what happened afterward. Okay, well anyway, I’ve attached the files from your security camera so you can see for yourself. It’s really late, gotta go.”

“SAVE. TWO.”

”Thank you. Today, three fifty-nine a.m. Brian, it’s Rube, again. Listen, um, please don’t fire me. I love my job.”

“SAVE. UPLOAD ATTACHMENTS.”

“Uploading attachments. Thank you.

“Files have been cleaned and uploaded.”

“PLAY ATTACHMENTS.”

“Playing. Thank you.”

……

……

Oh my god, that son of a bitch.

“STOP. RE-CUE. ENHANCE AUDIO.”

“Thank you. File is re-cued. Audio is enhanced.”

“PLAY ATTACHMENTS.”

“Playing. Thank you.”

“……Come on in, babe.”

“Is this your office? It’s really nice.”

“Nah, this is Boss Man’s office.”

“Oh.”

“…but he let’s me use it whenever I want. Come over here, where it’s comfortable….What’s your name again?”

“Julie.”

“Julie. Pretty name. And what exactly were you doing in the backroom?”

“I think you saw what I was doing.” Christ, stop giggling. And stop touching him.

“Hmmm, yeah, that feels good. Just wondering why you’d even go back there in the first place.”

“Curious, I guess. Always wondered what goes on.”

“Boss Man doesn’t like broads in the back. Against the rules.”

“Maybe your ‘Boss Man’ needs to loosen up a little.” I hate to tell you this bitch, I think you’re about to be loosened up. “Sounds like he’s a little uptight.”

“His club. His rules.”

“What’re your rules?”

……

……

“Can’t say I have any rules.” That’s the understatement of the century.

“So, I’m not in trouble with you, just with your boss, who’s not here?” Bat those eyelashes any harder and they’ll fall off.

“Yeah, you’re definitely not in trouble with me.”

“Not yet….God, I love these pillows. They’re so soft.” Get her license or get a lawyer, Lover Boy. “Ooh, you’re heavy…..and a good kisser.”

“I’ll show you what else I’m good—”

“STOP. ARCHIVE IN.”

“Archiving. Please specify location.”

“ZEEK. PERSONNEL FILE.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t locate that file—”

“CREATE FILE. ZEEK. PERSONNEL.”

“Thank you. File created and archived. Mr. Kinney, you are one mile from your destination. Have a productive--.”

“DIAL. ZEEK. CELL.”

“Thank you. Dialing. Zeek. Cell.”

****************
there’s a new kid in town
……

…..

“Yo, Boss Man, you must have a crystal ball or somethin’; I was just about to call you.”

“Imagine that.”

“I’m at your house, man, and I can’t remember where you put the key.”

“I left all of those instructions with Cynthia. Did you go by Kinnetic first, like I told you to?”

“Yeah, man, but I can’t hear nothin’ when she’s talkin’ to me. She’s too damn pretty. Too. Damn. Pretty.”

“The key is behind the loose brick on the side of the front steps.”

“Loose brick. Loose brick…Found it, man. Hey, you want me to fix that loose brick for you?”

“So now you lay bricks at my house and chicks in my office?”

…..

…..

“Aw, man, I knew Rube wouldn’t keep his big mouth shut. It wasn’t like that, man. She was all talkin’ about ‘discrimination’ and shit, so I had to--”

“Show her that you don’t discriminate?”

……

“Well, yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it.”

“I saw where you put it, Zeek. When I asked you to bounce for me last night, I assure you that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Aw, man, and that girl could bounce, too. Damn, she was hot. And I mean HOT. And no panties, man. Not even a thong, man. Nothin’.”

“Zeek, listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m listening, Boss Man. What’s wrong with your lock?”

“It sticks. Lift up a little.”

“That’s what she said, man. That’s what she said.”

“Zeek—"

“Want me to fix this lock for you?”

”Mr. Kinney, you have arrived at your destin—”

Shut the fuck up.

“No, I don’t want you to fix my lock. I want you and your mojo to stay the hell out of my office.”

“You need to update your lingo, man. Now where are those paintings?”

“Go to the top of the stairs, make a left, third door down is a guest room. They’re in that closet.”

“And you want which one where?”

“The larger one at Zeal and the small one where you were laying pipe last night. And don’t forget that my new refrigerator is coming today—"

“Dude’s pulling up right now…Gotta go, man…………….Damn, he’s hot.”

“Zeek!”

****************
but today the way I play the game is not the same

The bell on the door of Taylor Electronics rang obnoxiously as you walked inside where you were immediately greeted by someone you assumed was the manager. He was wearing an actual dress shirt as opposed to the other employees who were in uniform. It was white, but dingy, with tiny holes from the million different places he’d pinned his name tag, Rob

“Good morning, sir? What can I do for you?”

“Well, Rob, I’m in the market for several wide screen plasma televisions. I own several clubs and restaurants and need something impressive for my bar areas.”

“I think we can help you.”

“Well, I hope so because I really make a point of supporting local owned businesses, so I’d like to do that business here.”

“We certainly appreciate that.” Rob masked his excitement about as well as a Cocker Spaniel can.

“But you know, this is going to be a rather substantial purchase. I’d prefer to deal directly with the owner. Is he or she around?”

“Oh, absolutely. Mr. Taylor’s here. I’ll get him for you.”

“Thank you very much.” You wandered over to the plasma television display and waited, jingling your keys in the pocket of your dark gray suit pants.

You didn’t have to wait long.

****************
every man's got his patience
and here's where mine ends

The smile on Craig’s face faded the instant you turned around. “Craig, good to see you again.” You extended your hand. He ignored it.

“What do you want?”

“I came to refresh your memory. Rob, could you excuse us? Perhaps we could talk in your office.” Craig’s office was as unattractive as he was. The obvious sheen on your suit only made him look shabbier. He stood behind his desk and didn’t offer you a seat. You pulled that morning’s newspaper clipping out of your jacket pocket, “Had a conversation with Jennifer yesterday. She informed me that you don’t remember this man.” You tried to hand him the article with Hobbes’s picture, but he wouldn’t take it, so you held it up in front of his face instead. “Amnesia acting up again?”

“Get that out of my face.”

“Look familiar, now?”

“I know who that is. And I know he’s dead.”

“That he is.” You laid the clipping on his desk and continued, “Died a rather sudden, violent death. Similar to the one Justin almost had seven years ago.”

“I don’t need you to remind me what happened to my son because of you.”

“Now, see that’s where you wrong.” Ordinarily, you’d begin an authoritative pace at this point, but Craig’s office was woefully inadequate for that. “You do need me to remind you because I’m the one that watched over him until he got out of the hospital, took care of him, even listened to him wake up screaming almost every night for more than two years.”

“You ‘took care of him’ because you wanted him to ‘take care of you,’ you mother fucker.”

“That’s certainly not very Christian of you.” You sat down, finally, and got comfortable, “And you know, Craig, I have a son. And I can assure you, father to father, that if anyone ever threatened my son and attempted to kill him, there’d be hell to pay. And that, quite frankly, is what I’ve never understood about you. It’s a visceral instinct to protect your children, and yet you don’t have it. You choose to blame him for who he is and the circumstances that have befallen him. Parents make sacrifices for their children, Craig, every day. And sometimes one of those sacrifices is learning to love them despite the fact that they’re nothing you wanted them to be.”

“I want you to leave. Get out of my store.”

You ignored him. “There’s one more thing I want to talk to you about, and then I’ll be going back home to be with your son, or, as you call him, ‘the abomination.’”

Craig stood at those words and said, “Get. Out.”

“Sit down.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“Go right ahead. The chief of police is practically my immediate family. Knock yourself out.” He sat down. “Jennifer tells me that you’re restricting where Molly can go to school.”

“There are plenty of excellent Christian universities for her to choose from, and that’s none of your fucking business.”

You sighed, “See, the thing is, Craig, where Molly goes to school is going to be up to Molly. Not you and your tight purse strings. I’ve already set up a trust to pay for her education. She won’t need a dime of your money.”

“You—"

“You can thank me later. So, now that that’s done, there’s really no need for you to have any contact with Jennifer, Molly, or Justin, unless you’re interested in being a positive father figure for them. If not, then I expect you to stay the hell away from all three of them. They have no need for anything but your affection, which, from what I’ve been told, is in rather short supply.” You stood when you were finished; you’d concluded your business with Craig Taylor for today.

“Don’t threaten me.”

“It’s not a threat, Craig. It’s a challenge, one that I seriously doubt you’re man enough to meet. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend time with Justin. He’s in town…for the funeral. Amazing to me how much class he has when he clearly got so little from you.”

You swung open Craig’s office door and stepped back onto the showroom floor. Craig was right behind you, “Rob, make sure that man never comes in here again.”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor.”

“Have a productive day, Craig,” you told him as the bell squawked over your head. You drove your car behind Taylor Electronics, got out, and threw the black trash bag in their dumpster.

You had no use for that tux or that scarf anymore.

****************
DAPHNE’S POV

however do you need me

The night of your prom seven years ago should have been a happy one. Your memories of getting ready, doing your hair, wiggling into your peach dress, waiting not-very-patiently for Justin to arrive should make you feel good. They shouldn’t be followed by images of white and black soiled with red, of Brian in tears and hoarse from screaming. And you should’ve done something when you were waiting outside the girl’s bathroom in the hotel hallway, when Chris and his friend told you what a pretty fag hag you made. Had you known what kind of violence he would be capable of less than an hour later, you would’ve done something, would’ve told someone, would’ve kept your eyes open and warned Justin to be careful.

But you thought you’d lost your brand new lip gloss and besides, you’d heard it all before.

You received two phone calls yesterday, but only one that you knew of—from Brian, letting you know that he’d send you a ticket if you could come home. The second came after you were on your way to the airport. That one you’d find out about in about an hour after setting foot back in Pittsburgh.

When you arrived at the loft, Justin was there, alone with his mother. He seemed surprised to see you. When you hugged him, he held on for longer than usual. Med school kept you busy; you should’ve made more time for him instead of hearing about his life through Maya, once removed. But he seemed happy, and you figured if he wasn’t, he’d let you know. Anytime you’d assumed anything about Justin, the world had a way of auto-correcting you. Someday, you’d learn that lesson.

Jennifer departed and left the two of you alone, and you immediately looked for signs that Justin wasn’t okay, but you came up empty. Or rather, he seemed empty. Or blank. Or something.

But yet he responded when you sat down beside him and reached for his hand and let him know that you were there for him. “Thanks, Daph. It means a lot to me that you came all this way.”

“Anytime.”

Without being pressed, he told you what he knew, reciting details like they came from a police report. And then, “He’s survived by his wife and their son. Ryan. He’s not even a year old.” He looked around the loft, “I had the paper, the obituary. I don’t know where I put it.”

“Are you surviving?”

“I’m going to the funeral tomorrow. Emmett showed up with a suit for me this morning. I don’t have anything here to wear.”

“I suppose Brian put him up to that?”

“I’m sure. But if I change my mind, he won’t care. It seems like every time I see him, he’s twice as rich as before.”

“Must be nice.”

Justin’s eyes glanced around the loft and then landed back on your face, ”Yeah, it is.”

“Hmm.”

“I just have to see them put him in the ground. I don’t know why. I just feel like I have to.”

“I’d like to go with you. I don’t suppose it would hurt me to see that either.”

You listened to the second call you’d received yesterday when Brian came home with lunch and a case of cold beer. It was a reporter asking for your reaction to Hobbes death. You hung up the phone, forgetting to delete the message.

You told Brian about it a few hours later. It took him by surprise.

****************
baby, gonna get my soul free

The cemetery was packed. The dead leaves along the narrow road blew onto the grass as Brian’s driver came to a stop. The funeral procession had been much longer than you’d anticipated, although you weren’t a part of it, and was sprinkled with more police than you were expecting to see along the way. When you remarked that the place seemed overrun, Justin replied,

“Hobbes’s dad was a bigwig in the construction industry. These people are probably out here for him, not Chris. It’s just a weird show of support.”

As you turned a corner on the cemetery’s property, you noticed that the car that had been behind you since the three of you left the loft turned as well. You leaned forward and told him, “Brian, I think we’re being followed.”

“What?”

“There’s a gray Honda Prelude that’s been behind us since we left the loft. It just stopped when we did.”

Brian’s hand moved from Justin’s shoulder to the back of the seat as he turned around, “Fuck.” Before you could stop him, he was opening the door.

Justin tried to stop him, “Brian, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Back in a minute,” and he slammed the door.

Watching Brian’s body tense as he spoke to the occupants of the mysterious car made you nervous, but you smiled through it. Justin didn’t turn around. When Brian’s arm started waving and pointing, as if he was directing traffic, you told Justin, “He’s coming back.”

“Good.”

“It’s the press,” Brian said, getting back into the car.

“What does the press want with us?” you asked Brian.

“They wouldn’t tell me. I told them to get the fuck off our tail.” You gave Brian a look that he knew was a question, Have you told Justin about the phone call I got? Brian looked back with ‘no’ as his answer and then, “Justin, I think it’s better if you stay in the car.”

“Why?”

“Don’t trust those people.”

Justin seemed almost relieved, “That’s fine. Just have him pull over there and we’ll just watch from the limo.” The driver made his way to a parking space several hundred feet away from Chris’s plot. Justin turned in his seat and stared out the window.

From what you could see from your vantage point, there were plenty of Pittsburgh’s finest on hand and definitely Chris’s wife standing closest to the casket with a baby in her arms. He was crying. You stared down at your black dress and your black shoes and then fiddled with the rings on your fingers.

When the casket had been lowered, mourners began to make their way back to their cars, with the exception of Chris’s immediately family. Once they finally started walking away, Justin told Brian he wanted to get out.

“What for?”

“Just move. I’m getting out.” Brian opened his door and indicated that he was going with him, and Justin told him ‘no,’ that he wanted to do this by himself. You rolled down your window and looked at Brian, who was leaning against the limo. The two of you watched in silence as Justin walked towards Chris’s resting place.

“God, I want to smoke,” he told you.

“Me, too.”

“A med student who wants to smoke? How ironic.” You both laughed.

A glance at Justin and he just seemed to be standing there over Chris’s grave with a determined look on his face. Brian startled you when he tapped your arm, pointing to someone walking toward Justin, “Fuck.”

“Shit, Brian, that’s his wife.”

The baby, no longer crying, was in her arms.

****************
BRIAN’S POV

and the course of a lifetime runs
over and over again

Chris’s wife was as tall as Justin with almost the exact same hair color. She took purposeful steps toward her husband’s grave and toward Justin and so did you.

And again, just like seven years ago, a Hobbes beat you to him.

You didn’t even realize how fast you were running as you approached them, when Justin stopped you by holding out his hand. You held yourself back and watched as she stood firm in front of him, the dirt you’d kicked up running clinging to the hem of your pants.

The mysterious gray car, one row over, drove away.

****************
JUSTIN’S POV

I want a shot at redemption

Chris Hobbes wasn’t being buried alone; he was being buried alongside an eighteen year old kid who could barely even remember knowing him at all. And it should have been that kid’s decision when he’d go down; it should have been something he’d had time to prepare for. But as you stood there over his grave, you couldn’t remember ever being prepared for anything, not for meeting Brian, not for being shunned by your father or pitied by your mother, not for losing so much of your connection to those years when things were supposed to be simpler. You fought not to have that hopeful, determined kid buried alive, an identity that you didn’t even recognize being taken away from you.

This kid, it seemed, was known to everyone but you. And you were torn between wanting to know him and wanting to let him go. Maybe if you stood there long enough, staring at the fresh dirt, this decision would be made for you. And if something inside of you could push you one way or another, you’d have been glad to go, but there was nothing but the roar of a still silence.

And it was temporarily broken by the approach of two opposing forces.

You thought you recognized her, Mary or Millie or something, the young woman coming toward you. She’d gone to school with you? As she came closer, you held your hand up to hold Brian back. The silence was paying attention.

“I know who you are,” she said to you, stopping a few feet in front of you with her son on her hip. “You’re Justin Taylor.”

“You’re Chris’ wife?”

“Meredith. You don’t remember me?”

“I’m not sure. I think I do.” The grass began to feel firm under your feet.

“I suppose you’re here for a reason?”

“Look, I don’t mean to intrude. I just want to put this behind me—"

“To keep harassing us. You and your friend—"

“I’m sorry, I should’ve waited until tomorrow or -- Keep harassing you?”

“There’s no need for it anymore, okay? He’s dead. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I had nothing to do with it. It was his idea. He can—could—be very single-minded when his temper flared.”

“I never thought you had anything to do with it.”

“Then why not leave us alone? It’s no wonder this happened to Chris; he was exhausted having to chaperone me everywhere I went, worrying about Ryan. I was going to quit my job and just stay home with him, but that just made us sitting ducks.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—"

“Bullshit, you and your psycho friend, Cody, have been stalking Chris since that night you shoved a pistol in his mouth. Don’t think I don’t know about—"

You glanced over at Brian who looked away, fighting to keep his hands in his pockets. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t even live—" you tried to tell her.

“Just so you know, I’m taking out a restraining order against you—" Brian stepped forward a little as Meredith closed the space between the two of you. “I’m not afraid of you. My husband’s dead. I’m not going to end up like him.”

“Meredith, I haven’t done anything. I swear.” She looked at you like she didn’t believe you. The reins that were holding Brian back had finally broken, and he was standing beside you. He put his hand on your shoulder as you told her, “I’m sorry if Cody’s been bothering you. I made my peace with Chris; I was just here trying to make it with myself.”

“Justin, let’s go,” Brian said, pulling you with an arm around your shoulder.

You looked back over your shoulder as you let him lead you away, “I’m sorry for your loss, Meredith, whether you believe me or not. I truly am.”

****************
then it came
that I was put to blame
for every story told about me

After the funeral, your lunch with Daphne, Brian, and your mother at the country club was winding down as you asked Brian for a cigarette.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked.

You told him ‘no,’ but it came out as more of a warning. You stood outside kicking dead leaves around on the sidewalk in your shiny shoes, welcoming the hard brick of the club’s main building underneath your back. Minutes passed and the door opened, revealing Daphne and your mother laughing with each other as they stepped outside.

“Where are you going?” you asked them.

Your mother was happy to answer you, “Brian said the limo could take us to the mall.” She practically cooed at the chauffeur as he held the door for her, “Ooh, you’re so polite.”

“It’s his job, mother.”

Daphne kissed you on the cheek, “Call me later.”

“Yeah, have fun at the mall.” You stepped on your cigarette and walked back inside.

Brian raised his eyebrows as you sat back down at the table, “All right?”

“Would you stop asking me that?” You sat down and finished your water before you asked, “You sent them away, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“How are we supposed to get home?”

“Walk?”

“Walk? That far in my new shoes?”

Brian shrugged, “I sense your need to punish yourself.”

****************
don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard

The light wind seemed to be blowing the two of you down the street, propelling your bodies forward, if not the conversation. It was overcast, and you wondered if it was going to rain. Occasionally, Brian would turn his head in your direction and smile at you, but mostly, he was just quiet, jealous you were sure of whatever was up your ass.

You stopped at an intersection to wait for a WALK signal, and Brian finally spoke, “Million and a half for your thoughts.”

“Jesus, you’re such a dork.”

“If I’m paying for these thoughts, they need to be a little more substantial.” You shook your head at him as the two of you crossed the street.

“I just don’t understand, I guess.”

“Understand what?” he asked, sounding grateful that you were talking to him.

“I don’t understand how I can feel so defined by something I can barely remember.”

Brian thought about that for a second and said, “We’re all defined by things we can barely remember.”

“But what if remembering it would change how I define myself? Maybe I’m not who I’m supposed to be.”

……

“You’re exactly who you’re supposed to be. We all are.”

“That’s a romantic notion that can never be proven.”

“How can you prove existence if existence in itself is the proof?” he asked, rhetorically, poking his tongue in his cheek. “You should’ve stayed in college and gotten this out of your system in Philosophy 101.”

You abandoned the abstract, “He’s dead, and I should feel free, but I don’t. I feel more trapped than ever.” Brian put his arm around you and you pushed it off, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t tell you that you’re wrong? You are free. You’ve always been free. You’re the freest fucking person I know.”

“Don’t pity me—" You stopped in front of a storefront. “The bookstore. It’s gone.”

“Been gone for almost two years.”

“Shit, I didn’t even know.” Brian tried to keep going, but your feet wouldn’t move. “And don’t fuck me like you feel sorry for me, like you’re worried sick about me. I’m not—"

“—a tight, little virgin anymore?” he asked you.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Brian threw up his hands in defense, “Nothing. Christ, I was trying to make you laugh, so you’d stop torturing yourself with existential melodrama.”

“How come when you’re emphatic about something, you’re just right, and when I am, it’s melodrama?”

“Because I’m Brian Kinney, for fuck’s sake?”

****************
BRIAN’S POV

well, I left her to just roam the city
thinkin’ it would ease the pain

As the two of you began walking again, you wondered if he remembered when he couldn’t walk down this street, when just getting him from point A to point B occupied entire weekends of your lives, when your absence from the loft for more than a few hours sent him into a tailspin. But to be fair, his progress had always surprised you, even when you had to fight him to want to progress at all.

You turned a corner, and he asked you, “Did I ever tell you what Cody’s father does? What their family business is?”

“No.”

“His father refurbishes construction equipment.”

……

……

Some of this angst was starting to make sense to you now, “Justin, I think you’re reaching.”

“I don’t. You didn’t know him like I did.”

“Obviously.”

“You didn’t know how much he got off on violence. What the fuck was I thinking?”

“Look—"

“I’m such an idiot, Brian, such a fucking idiot, thinking that all of that retribution crap he was spewing was for me. It had nothing to do with me; he was just using me to scratch his violent itch.” When it came to Justin, you almost always found yourself fighting the wrong enemy. You held the door to your building open for him. “God, I have to get these fucking shoes off.”

He took the stairs two at a time, impatient as he waited for you to unlock the door. You watched from the kitchen as he went into the bedroom, stripped off his suit and then walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Out of habit, you turned to glance at your answering machine before you followed him.

You had seventeen new messages.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 9-ASSOCIATIONS-2/2
 ****************
so please, believe in me
when I say I’m spinning round, round, round, round

You heard the shower start as you removed the drive from the machine, swapping it for a new one. You reset the machine and tucked the old drive in your briefcase. You knocked on the bathroom door and when he didn’t answer, you opened it. You watched him soaping himself with fury until he turned and saw you.

“Will you let me do that for you?” you asked.

“Yeah,” he said, tossing the soap on the shower floor in frustration. “Fuck it.”

You undressed and returned, your suit thrown on the bed in a heap with his. He leaned against the wall, staring up at you as you stood under the water, “Justin, this is my fault, okay? We should’ve stayed in New York or I shouldn’t have come up—"

“Do not start that martyr bullshit with me, Brian. Everything shitty that happens to me is not your fucking fault.” His voice cracked, “Ninety-nine percent of it is my fault.”

“No fair. I want more than one percent. You totally gypped me.”

He laughed, even though he didn’t want to, “Don’t try to make me feel better. I don’t want to.”

“Feet don’t hurt enough?” you teased him, kicking his ankle.

“I thought you were gonna wash me.”

“Nope.”

“No?”

You shook your head as you turned him around to face the wall, “First, I’m gonna fuck some sense into you. Then, I’m going to wash you.”

“Does that really work?” he asked, his fingers spread wide on the tile.

“It’s gotten you this far.”

That night you watched him sleep, thoroughly fucked out, his small body somehow taking up almost the entire bed. You barely slept, expecting him to wake up screaming any minute.

****************
paranoia strikes deep in the heartland

When you woke Saturday morning, you slid out from underneath him and into a pair of jeans. He felt you leave the bed and mumbled, “Where you going?”

You sat down beside him, running your hand through his crazy-looking hair, “You smoked all my goddamn cigarettes yesterday.”

“Sorry,” he yawned into his pillow.

“You want breakfast? I’ll pick something up. There’s nothing to eat here.”

“Waffles,” he said, pulling the covers over his head, “And hurry up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My ass is sore.”

“I have no idea what that has to do with waffles.”

“Me neither.”

The air was heavy with the prospect of impending rain as you walked to your car.

"Good morning, Mr. Kinney. Today is Saturday, November 15, 2008. The time is nine twelve a.m. The current temperature is fifty-one degrees under mostly cloudy skies. You may enter your destination now.”

“DINER.”

"Thank you. Diner is entered as your destination. Have a safe trip.”

“DIAL. DINER.”

“Thank you. Dialing. Diner.”

“Liberty Diner.”

“Deb, it’s me.”

“Hey, you doing okay? I feel terrible after that thing in your office—"

“Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, could you box up breakfast for Justin? Eggs, bacon, waffles instead of pancakes. I’ll be by in a few minutes.”

“Sure. Anything for Sunshine. You want the usual? Orange juice and dry, whole wheat toast?”

“That’s fine. Is Carl up yet this morning?”

“Is he ever.”

“I didn’t need that, Deb.” You could hear her cackling in the background. “I’ll call him.”

“Gotta go. Betty just dropped a case of tumblers. Shit.”

You swapped the flash drive in your car with the one from the answering machine in the loft and let it play:

“SCAN MESSAGES.”

”At this time, there are seventeen new messages available. Press or say—"

“ONE.”

”Yesterday, eleven twelve a.m. Justin, hey. I knew you’d be there. I knew you'd needed to finish this –"

“TWO.”

”Yesterday, eleven fifteen a.m. Justin, now that you’re back in town, whaddya say we make a real statement—"

“THREE.”

”Yesterday, eleven twenty three a.m. Justin –"

“FOUR.”

”Yesterday, eleven forty-seven a.m. Justin, must be nice to eat at that country club. That place is crawling with the enemy—"

“FIVE.”

”Yesterday, eleven fifty-four a.m.. Justin –"

“SIX.”

”Yesterday, twelve twelve p.m. Justin, I hope your boyfriend understands--"

“STOP.”

You called Carl and asked him to meet you at the diner immediately. He was standing outside when you arrived.

“What’s the problem?”

You handed him the drive, “Plug this into a USB port and listen to it. It’s that guy Cody what’s-his-name leaving message after message for Justin during and after Hobbes’s funeral yesterday. And I’m pretty sure he called Daphne, too, the day Hobbes was killed. She saved the message. I’ll get it for you.”

“Should I know this ‘Cody?’”

“He fancies himself the head of this gay vigilante group. They used to call it ‘The Pink Posse.’”

“Are those the kids that terrorized straight people a few years ago?”

You nodded, “Yeah. This guy’s a fucking whack job. He’s got a ton of firearms, too. Justin suspects, and I don’t know if he’s right, but he suspects that Cody might have had something to do with Chris’s death.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I wish I was. Look, I’ve got to run.” Suddenly, the thought of Justin alone at the loft didn’t sit well with you. You called Justin as you rode home with his breakfast and kept him talking until you walked in the door.

****************
JUSTIN’S POV

on the last leg of the journey
they started a long time ago

For some reason, Brian didn’t object when you ate your breakfast in bed, pushing the syrupy waffles all over the white Styrofoam container. When you offered him a forkful of eggs and a strip of bacon, he took it.

That did it.

“All right, what’s wrong with you?” you asked him, the last half of the bacon strip still in his hand.

He spoke to the bacon and not to you, “Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You never eat cholesterol unless something’s bothering you.”

……

“You have to go back.”

You stared at him, “I know. I wasn’t planning on staying here forever.”

“No, I mean, you have to go back tonight.”

“Why?” you asked, ignoring the syrup dripping off your fork. Was this going to be the one hundred sixty-seventh time he kicked you out?

Brian turned his head and looked at you, a gravity on his face you hadn’t seen in years, “Because I’m worried about you.” You felt the frustration rising inside you, but you pushed it down, years of being with Brian having taught you that that was the wrong way to approach him when he was like this. “Cody left seventeen messages on the machine here yesterday while we were at the funeral and the country club.”

“What?”

“And every one of them is fucked.”

“Shit.” And then Brian asked you if you were happy in New York. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s an adventure, and I’ve made some really good friends,” you answered, unable to think about Harper and Amelia and everyone else at the moment, your mind still trying to figure out this Cody bullshit. “Look, I know why he’s doing this. He thinks I didn’t finish something I started.”

Brian’s jaw was setting firm, “Hobbes is dead, Justin. I think that oughta finish it, not start it.”

“You’re pissed at me,” you said, sitting your empty breakfast container on the nightstand.

“No, I’m scared. Scared that something is going to happen to you. Again. And if that happened—"

“That’s not gonna happen. I’m almost twenty-six years old, Brian.”

“You think he cares how fucking old you are? He followed us yesterday, Justin. He knew everything we did, every place we went.”

Perhaps if we hadn’t driven around town in a limo, you thought. “Well, I’m not afraid anymore. And not because Hobbes is dead, but because I’m not.”

“Well, it sure isn’t for lack of trying,” Brian snarked and you slapped him on the back. “And see, you’re still violent.”

……

The curtains in Brian’s bedroom were still closed, allowing only glimpses of sunshine to come through now and then, and at that moment one of them cast a brightened streak down his long back. You followed it with your hand, “Don’t you think if I can survive Hobbes and a fucking bomb that I can take care of myself?”

“Justin, I have more faith in you than I do in me or the rest of the world, but I can’t control the violent inclinations of a nut case.”

You weren’t sure you’d ever heard Brian admit that he couldn’t control something. It freaked you out. “You’re really afraid.”

“There is something working under all that blond hair.” He made a fist and knocked on your head. “Sometimes I think you have Obstinate Personality Disorder.”

“Well, if I do, I caught it from you.”

Brian smiled, “And you’re quite welcome. Don’t say I never gave you—"

“Shut up.”

You kissed him, your hand resting on the side of his face, and it seemed to surprise him for a minute before you felt him relax and enjoy it. He rolled onto his back and sat up, “Come here.” You crawled into his lap, and he pulled your hips to his, whispering in your ear, “Thought your ass was sore.”

“My ass has been sore since the night I met you. I’m used to it.”

“Then have at,” he told you, handing you the condom. You put it on for him, slicking his cock. He moaned as you took him, his hands tightening around your hips. “No longer a virgin, but just as tight.”

“Don’t talk dirty to me; I’ll come.”

You rode Brian slowly, and he pulled your face to his, kissing you as he bemoaned, “Little tease.”

“Shh.”

“Fuck, this is nice.” Your fingers stretched out along the back of his neck and he tilted his head back, resting on them as you fucked. You ran your lips down his neck, eventually lying against him, watching the sun striping the dark sheets as it tried to reach you. Brian’s nipple was hard beneath your fingers and you covered it with your hand, pressing against his chest. He kissed the top of your head and held you tighter, his left hand wandering down to your ass. “If I knew waffles would make you this amorous, I’d have taken a cooking class.”

“It’s not the waffles, you dumb ass.”

“It’s not?” he asked, and you could feel him smile.

“It’s you.”

“Oh.”

……

……

You pressed down hard on Brian when he came, smiling as his nails dug into your skin, as you came all over his chest. Brian reached to pull the sheet up around you as you sagged back against him, combing your hair with his fingers as you dozed off for a few minutes while he was still inside you. Your eyes fluttered open now and then, running your hand over his bicep as he held you.

……

……

“You know, I’m so proud of you, Sunshine. Making it on your own in the big city.”

“You are?”

He lifted your right hand off his chest and wrapped your fingers into a fist and then opened them again, mimicking one of the exercises he used to help you with so many years ago. His thumb ran over the palm of your hand, “Takes a lot of guts to follow your dream.”

“Brian, I love it there. I absolutely love it.” An excitement began to creep back into your body as you spoke of your life in New York, “Everything there seems so true, so gritty, so fiercely alive. It sounds stupid, but that’s a part of me.”

“That’s not stupid.”

“But then, when I see you, I don’t understand why I love it so much… because I love you.”

“It’s okay to love more than one thing. From what I’ve read, love shouldn’t limit you; it should help you grow. Or at least that’s what lesbians say.”

You laughed, “Well, then it must be true.”

“Must be.”

……

The sun moved through the sky as you made love the rest of the day, and when it was finally in your eyes, you knew it was almost five o’clock, almost time to go. If you were going to go back tonight, it was time to figure something out, time to manage your destination.

Two hours later, you were standing at the Pittsburgh bus station with Brian with nothing on you but a new sketch pad you stopped to get and two mechanical pencils. He kissed you good-bye and you waved to him from the window as the bus pulled away. You opened your sketch pad when you couldn’t see him anymore, smiling at the young woman sitting beside you as you tried to get comfortable.

The first thing you drew was Brian lying on his bed on his stomach, his fingers digging into the sheets as you fucked him a few hours ago.

The second thing you drew made you famous.

And when you set foot back in your studio the next day, your paintbrush hit the ground running.


Lyrics taken from Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, the Atlantic Rhythm Section’s So Into You, Lou Bega’s Most Expensive Girl, Pablo Cruise’s Love Will Find a Way, Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones and Mother and Child Reunion, America’s Only in Your Heart, Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away and Hearts and Bones, Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy, The Eagles’s New Kid in Town, George Michael’s Freedom ‘90 and I Want Your Sex, Sol II Sol’s Back to Life, George Michael’s Soul Free, Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion and You Can Call Me Al, America’s I Need You, Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, America’s Daisy Jane, America’s Tin Man, Paul Simon’s Have a Good Time and Hearts and Bones.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 11- IMPRESSIONS

BRIAN’S POV

well, I was born in a small town
and I can breathe in a small town

The Rockford was located in a small, unincorporated place in Coos County, New Hampshire, known as Dixville Notch. The first time Nate told you that the two of you were having lunch at Zeal. You choked on your food, “Please. You’re joking.”

“I’m not. That’s where I grew up. Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Eighteen hundred and twenty feet above sea level, on the forty-fifth parallel, halfway between the North Pole and the equator.”

“I guess that’s the real definition of ‘Middle America’ then, huh?” Nate laughed at that, pointing his fork at you. Nate was one of those fork-pokers when he talked. Sometimes when you got tired of listening to him, you’d just watch him conduct a fork symphony in the air. That day the fork-estra was playing Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, but that was probably because there was a new, really effeminate waiter at Zeal that day. “So, are condoms the main export of Dixville?”

Nate got a serious look on his face, one that you would only appreciate years later, “No. Figurines.”

“Figurines?” you asked, horrified. His fork had stopped playing.

Nate responded after thanking twinkle-toes for the bottle of wine, “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re the boss,” you said, your eyes following the wait-fairy as he waltzed to the next table.

*********************
there’s got to be a morning after…

That Friday morning, the sun filtered into your room at The Rockford reflecting off of the endless mounds of snow that the night before, in the dark, you actually thought were beautiful. But that morning, as the rays of sunlight penetrated your skull with the precision of a Craftsman Variable Speed Electric Drill, you decided that all sunshine, even the one lying on top of you sound asleep and drooling, was, at that moment, insufferable.

Of course, you could’ve remedied the situation by getting up and closing the curtains, but the blond brick sharing your bed made that rather impossible. Justin felt like a growth on top of you that smelled really good and just seemed to kiss you at random times.

“Get off me,” you whispered, with as much affection in your voice as you possibly could. After all, sooner or later, he’d need to suck you off.

“Get yourself off,” he mumbled back, turning his head away from the window.

You tried again in your regular voice, “Justin, move. I have to piss.”

He turned his head back around, his sleepy face forming into some sort of dopey smile, “You give me a kiss.”

You stared at him in his nocturnal state and decided that, because of the way his hair stuck up, he looked like a baby duck when he woke up in the morning. Well, the back of one. You pushed him off of you and stumbled to the bathroom, kicking the seat up. It bounced right back down because it had one of those squishy things on it that went woosh when you sat on them, and in the case of this one, also distributed an air freshener called Woodland Watering Hole. The entire rest room smelled like pine trees fucking. You tried to ignore it, closing your eyes as you stood over the toilet, enjoying the warmth of hours of urine flowing out of you.
……

……

“Good morning,” a voice announced from behind you.

“Fuck, you scared me, Justin.”

“I gotta pee, too.” Justin had to piss with his left hand since he insisted on wrapping his right arm around your waist, leaning his head on your chest. You had no choice in the close quarters but to put your arm around him.

Every married couple pisses like this, right?

As your dual streams of relief echoed in the small bathroom, Justin began to wake up and noticed the ring on his finger, “Oh my god, Brian, we did it raw.”

“Yes, Sunshine. There is a Santa Claus.”

……

……

Urinating was apparently as much activity as Justin could stand at that moment, and after you flushed, he laid against you as you leaned against the mint-green wall of the bathroom. It was the first time you could remember the two of you making out while your neck was being stabbed by a window sill. When the kissing stopped, Justin laid his head against your chest, facing the mirror.

“Oh my god, what is that?” he asked, meaning the freakish woodland creature candle holder staring back at him from the bathroom counter.

“I believe that’s what they call a gnome,” you told him, as you suddenly noticed the plethora of them adorning the bathroom. The light switches were little gnome-reliefs drawn to look like they were hanging from the switch, and there was an eight and a half by eleven painting of one over the toilet, his blue pants draped over his little gnome footwear as he sat in an outhouse with the door wide open reading the Monitor, the local daily newspaper.

“Well, it’s creepy. I don’t want to look at it,” he said. You rolled your eyes, reaching over to turn it around, but then it faced the mirror and there were, as Justin immediately brought to your attention, “Two of them. Now it’s like there’s two of them.” You turned it again, making it face the wall. And unbeknownst to him as the two of you exited the bathroom, the gnome holding the soap in the shower gave Justin the evil eye.

*********************
the way you love me is frightening

The two of you flopped back into your bed, simultaneously averting your eyes from the state of your sheets. “So, um, what do you want to do today?” you asked, subtly pointing to your cock.

“Oh, I don’t know. Fuck, eat, sleep?”

“This is why I married you,” you told him, climbing on top of him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you said kissing him. “It was a major factor in my selection process.”

“Hmm, I was a little more selective. I married you for your money…and a lifetime supply of free drugs.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

He reached between your legs, wrapping his warm hand around your cock, “This is a hard bargain.” You kissed him. “So, why don’t you drive it?”

Within maybe a minute, the gnome on the mantle was getting an eyeful…and an earful.

“Make me come,” Justin whispered, his pressing hands wandering against your ass, “Make me.”

You changed your angle just slightly, but didn’t speed up, “You wanna come?” you asked him, propped higher above his body.

You were hitting the right spot, but, “Harder, please.” He spread his hands on your chest, “Brian, do it.” You pulled almost all the way out as he held his breath. You savored the moment, felt like you were hanging off of the side of a jagged rock with choppy water below you. He watched you, licking his lips.

You slammed into him so hard the picture above the bed fell off the wall, slid behind the bed frame and broke.

“Fuck! What was that?” he screamed, clutching you in fear. Clutching all of you. All of you.

“Oh shit, fuck, goddamnit,” you moaned as you came inside him, “You squeezed the fuck out of my dick.”

“I’m sorry. It scared me,” he apologized, still shaking. He rubbed your back, trying to sooth you.

You fell on top of him, panting, “S’okay. It felt kinda good actually, in a ‘holy fuck, what the hell’ kinda way.” It was the second time since he’d come home that you’d fucked him and ejaculated in fear. You pushed that thought back to wherever the hell it came from.

“I can’t believe we broke that picture,” he said, as the two of you tried to peer over the end of the bed to survey the damage.

“Yeah, well, that’s why they call this unsafe sex.”

********************
the way you sip your tea

You joined Justin under the spray after you called downstairs to make a reservation for lunch. You’d convinced him that it was time to get in the shower when you told him, “Your ass no longer tastes like candied walnuts.”

……

“I’m so ready for lunch,” he said, moving the soap over your chest.

“You’re always ready for lunch,” you replied, grabbing the shampoo before he saw the naked, soapy gnome on the label reading Moments with Melody and washing his hair while he prattled on about what he was going to have. In your haste to leave Pittsburgh, you’d forgotten your designer shampoo. This stuff smelled like sandalwood, which was a nice break from pine.

“—probably a salad and a sandwich. And a Bloody Mary. I could really go for a Bloody Mary.”

“Okay.”

“Or maybe soup and a sandwich.”

“Okay.”

“Or maybe soup, salad, and half a sandwich.”

“Sounds good.”

“What’re you gonna have?”

“I tend to make that decision in the moment.”

“You’ll have a salad. You always have a salad.”

“Okay, I’ll have a salad,” you surrendered.

“But you should try their soup. You really should. The lobster bisque. Let’s try the lobster bisque.”

“You’re gonna get a mouthful of ‘Brian bisque’ in a minute if you don’t stop this inane conversation.”

“Really?”

********************
that don’t impress me much

Walking down to brunch should’ve been a rather benign affair, but Justin kept tapping your arm and telling you that he could’ve sworn he’d just seen Jude Law get in the secret elevator. “Brian, I swear. I did. It was him.”

“Right.”

“Do you think Nate would tell us if there were famous celebrities here?”

You thought about it and shook your head and as you propelled him down the staircase, “Nope, Nate’s an upstanding guy. He wouldn’t have made it in this business if he couldn’t be discreet.”

“There is nothing discreet about this place, Brian. It reminds me of Debbie’s house, only on crack.”

“Well, that may be, but we are in Dixville, New Hampshire, so show a little respect.”

Justin stopped on the never-ending stairs, “Is that why you wanted to come here?”

You pulled his arm to get him walking again and lied, “No, don’t be silly.”

“Well, dicks or not, I keep expecting Uncle Fester to come around the corner any minute to change one of these eight hundred thousand light bulbs.”

“That would never happen. That’s Lurch’s job. Everybody knows that.”

Justin laughed and ended up a few steps ahead of you on the staircase, which was fine with you because it gave you an opportunity to marvel at the tight, smooth, black pants he had on and his long sleeve, white shirt that almost showed off his nipples. You didn’t think you’d ever seen him in that incredibly fuckable ensemble before, and you had to will away your public display of erection.

I’m gonna tell them to turn over our room while we’re having lunch, Justin, and get a newspaper,” you told him as the two of you walked into the lobby. “Fuck, I left my reading glasses in the room.”

“No, you didn’t. I’ve got your glasses.”

“Oh.” It surprised you.

“I’ll go tell them. I’ll get your paper.”

You’d read the New York Times every day since a week after he left six years ago. “I don’t want to read it online. I want the actual paper.”

“I know. You want to touch it.” You watched him walk to the front desk. Something about the precocious swing of his hips and the tone of his voice told you to stay close by.

*********************
and leave a spray of diamonds in its wake

Justin approached the front desk as you hung back, “Excuse me.”

“Yes, sir?” The manager, Dave? Dave. Right.

Leader of The Chipmunks.

“My name is Justin Taylor. I’m in room two nineteen. We’d like our room turned over while we’re at lunch.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Plus, we broke a painting that was over our bed.”

“Oh, dear.”

“It was an accident. We’ll pay for it.”

“Who broke one of my paintings, Dave?” A woman’s voice from the back.

“Don’t worry about it, sir. We’ll take care of it.” And then, the woman emerged, shoulder length dark hair, dark eyes, plump, pleasantly—sort of. She was a strikingly beautiful woman whose mass you hardly noticed because you couldn’t stop looking at her face.

“Mr. Taylor, this is Sarah Melody, the artist,” Dave paused and glanced at Sarah, “Of that painting. That you broke.”

“Oh, Justin Taylor.” They shook hands. You moved to the far end of the counter, picked up a travel brochure, and pretended to read it. “I apologize that we broke one of your paintings. It fell off the wall. I’m pretty sure the picture is fine. I think the frame is just broken.”

“Young man, I frame my own pictures. The frame is part of the picture.”

“Oh. Well, I’m so sorry. We’ll gladly pay for it,” Justin offered.

“That painting costs fifteen hundred dollars.”

Oh shit.

Justin’s eyes fell out of his head, “Fifteen hundred dollars? Are you crazy?”

Oh fuck.

Sarah seemed to bristle at the implication, as if, perhaps, she really was crazy, “No, I’m not crazy. It’s an original. Not a reproduction.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Justin balked. You put your brochure down and moved a little closer to him. The guy skiing on the front wasn't that hot. “I’ll have you know that I’m an artist. I work in New York City, and I know what kind of art sells for that kind of money and that picture is not worth fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Young man, who are you to tell me what my art is worth? You don’t even know who I am.”

And then it dawned on you who she was--Nate’s wife--your client’s wife whom you’d heard about, but never met. You always thought of her as Sarah Cooper, not Sarah Melody. An impending sense of doom began to permeate your body.

You put on your best ‘to please the client’ smile as you interrupted their cat fight, putting your arm around Justin’s shoulder, “Sarah, we’re very sorry about this. If it’s fifteen hundred, that’s—"

“No, Brian.” He pushed your arm off of him. “I don’t care if you’re the Thomas Kincaid of the ski-lodge art world, you’re gouging us. We didn’t mean to break your painting. If it was worth that much, you should’ve secured it to the wall. I’m sure you’ve insured it. Here’s a hundred bucks for the deductible.” He threw two fifties on the counter in front of her and turned to the manager, “May I have today’s New York Times, please?”

“Certainly. Here you go, sir.”

Justin took the paper being offered to him, “Thank you. Our room will be ready after lunch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.” He turned to you, handing you your paper with a thwap against your stomach, “Here’s your paper, Brian.” Sarah stared at the two fifties on the counter and then at him as he turned on his heels and walked toward the dining room.

You looked at her, cleared your throat a little, pointed in Justin’s direction and smiled, “Um, he’s got my glasses. Have a nice day.”

Sarah glanced down at the guest register which was an actual register, on paper, in a book, mind you, and then looked back up at you and smiled as if the whole exchange with Justin hadn’t just happened, “Oh, I will, Mr. Kinney. You do the same.” And then she turned to Dave as if you weren’t even there, “David, when you go to lunch, be sure to put the register in the fire-proof file cabinet in case the place burns down while you’re gone.”

Dave responded as if she told him that every single day, “I will, ma’am. Don’t worry.” You and Dave watched Sarah as she disappeared into the back again.

You waited until she was well out of earshot before you asked, “Expecting the place to burn down?”

“No, sir, but, frankly, nothing that happens here is a surprise to me.” The look in his eye gave you the creeps. He turned and looked in the direction that Sarah had gone, “She doesn’t exactly walk, she seems to float, wouldn’t you agree?”

It was true. She did.

********************
hey, now, you’re an all star

It took about ten minutes for the dining room to prepare the table you wanted by the window, so the two of you sat in the bar. Justin downed a Bloody Mary, with a straw, no less, and you sucked gratefully on a cigarette and flipped through your paper while both of you ignored the awkward silence hanging between you. Justin's reaction to the fact that Sarah Melody was really Sarah Cooper was really Sarah Rockford seemed to be sinking in. And then he handed you your glasses out of nowhere. There were no pockets in the pants or shirt he was wearing; you had no idea where he stashed them or the cash he’d thrown on the front desk, but were a bit afraid of the answer. He took the crossword puzzle from you and asked, “Hey, what’s a six-letter word for ‘idiot?’”

“Justin?”

……

“I didn’t know she was Nate’s wife, Brian. I’m sorry, okay?”

The host came and escorted the two of you to your table. Lunch was kind of quiet at first. The waiter came. You ordered. You read your paper. He kicked his shoe off and put his socked foot on your thigh.

“What’re you doing?” He had on some really nice socks, you thought, as you rubbed the top of his foot. They were black and snug and made his feet look really small and sexy. It dawned on you as you fondled it that people probably thought you were jerking off under the table. “These are really soft socks.”

“My mom gave them to me. They’re some sort of micro-fiber or something. Give me a section of the paper.” He rubbed his toe against your cock.

“No. You won’t read it; you’ll just chat at me while you look at it.”

“Yes, I will read it. I can be quiet.”

You handed him the Art section and started counting how many seconds until he started talking to you again. He didn’t. He mostly just mumbled to himself: “Interesting…I think I’ve been there before… Hmm, I think I know him…Oh my god that is so not true. Unbelievable.”

The waiter brought champagne to your table, compliments of the hotel, “I’m told it’s your honeymoon.”

“It is,” Justin smiled as he wiggled his toes in your lap again. He looked so happy to talk to someone who wouldn’t tell him to shut up.

“And that I should apologize for Sarah,” the waiter continued. “She’s menopausal.” He popped the cork and poured. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you very much,” Justin told him, a very happy smile spreading over his face.

“Justin, please wait until you have food in your stomach before you drink that,” you told him, pushing the basket of bread toward him.

“Hell, no.” He raised his glass. “A toast: to free honeymoons and menopausal artists.”

“And bread,” you added.

“And bread.”

“Here, here,” your glasses clinked together. He drank his whole glass and refilled.

He pressed his foot into your crotch and wiggled his eyebrows, “Unzip your pants, Mr. Kinney.”

“Hell, no, Mr. Tay—"

“Oh come on, you know these tight socks are making you crazy,” he crooned, batting his eyelashes at you. You ignored him; there was no way you were prepared to admit that to him in this dining room. He moved on to another subject before you’d even finished your thought, “Hey, if I was a famous person, and I was gonna stay here, I’d stay here under an assumed name.”

“Congratulations.”

“So, maybe, Jude Law is staying here under an assumed name.”

“I doubt it.”

“I am sort of famous, actually. I should think of an assumed name in case I need one,” he pondered, picking his bread apart instead of eating it.

“How about ‘Violent Femme?’” you proposed.

“Nope, won’t work. They’re already famous, duh,” he chastised you, clearly not seeing the resemblance.

“’Bionic Twat?’”

“’Wait, how about Bionic Bottom.’”

“No, twat.”

“Bottom.”

“Twat.”

“Bottom.”

“Bottom?”

“Twat…Shit! You tricked me.”

“’Bionic Twat’ it is, then. Excellent choice.”

He was about to throw a piece of bread at you when your salads arrived, “Can I get you gentlemen anything else right now?”

“A lot more bread,” you told him, pushing the empty basket to the edge of your table. Justin reactivated his roaming foot and asked for more champagne. You rolled your eyes at him and went back to reading your paper.

……

……

A few minutes later you were interrupted again by Justin’s whispered voice, “Brian Kinney, unzip your pants.”

You folded the corner of your paper down and stared at him over your glasses, “Bionic Twat, eat some bread.” He did, while he was laughing, and almost choked on it. “Jesus, Justin. Take it easy.”

You were ready to give him the Heimlich, but he sucked down his champagne to wash it down and kept right on laughing. “Ohmygod, are you pisssssed at me?”

“No.” You rolled your lips in to keep from laughing.

“Because I was a cunt to that bitch?” The fact that he thought he was whispering certain parts of his sentences was really cracking you up.

You leaned across the table, “No, sweetheart, I’m not pissed at you. You’re always a cunt when it comes to art.”

He leaned forward and got right in your face, too, smiling, like it was the first time he’d seen you all day, “Am I really?”

“Yes.”

“But that wasn’t art, Brian. That was shit. Fifteen-hundred-dollar-shit.”

“Exactly. That’s my point.”

……

His eyes got really big, “Oh my god, you’re right. I’m a total cunt.” You kissed him, mostly to try to shut him up. “Mmm, you just kissed a cunt.”

“Eat your sandwich.”

“I wanna get you off with my toes.”

“No. Eat your sandwich,” you repeated.

“Old man.”

“Slut nut.”

“Ooh, that’s gonna be my assumed-"

“Gentlemen, how’s lunch?”

“It’s delicious,” Justin told him and then asked for another bowl of soup, the other ‘ham of his half sandwich,’ and more champagne. You shook your head when he was asking for more champagne. The waiter looked at you, trying not laugh.

“Can I get you anything else, sir?”

You put your hand firmly on Justin’s foot and squeezed, “An annulment.”

********************
when I'm out walking I strut my stuff,
yeah, I'm so strung out

Getting Justin back up the never-ending staircase at The Rockford and back to your room proved more challenging than you’d anticipated. It was hard enough to keep him from tipping over the railing when he saw something below that caught his fancy. “Ohmygod, he’s hot,” he told you, pointing to someone walking by with a mop bucket, “You know, in a custodial sort of way.”

“I’m sure he appreciated that,” you told him, gluing your hand to the small of his back so you could keep him upright.

As you walked down the hallway to your room, Justin stopped every few feet to sit on one of the antique chairs and benches lining the hallway. “Ohmygod, this one is too squishy….this one is too small….I mean, it’s very, very pretty and stylish, and I'm sure it's worth a small fortune, but it's just not functional. And this one—"

“Come on, Goldilocks. That’s enough.”

An older couple passed you in the hallway, you smiled at them and Justin attempted to say hello, but it came out, “H-ahhh Ohmygod, excuse me. I burped.”

“Gee, they needed that clarification,” you told him, unlocking the door to your room and holding it open for him. Your bed had been made, an extra set of sheets were left on the embroidered bench at the end of the bed, and there were two little chocolate candies on your pillow shaped liked forest critters.

“Oh, yum, Chocolate Chipmunks,” Justin said, popping both of them into his mouth at the same time. “Mmm, they’re minty.”

“It's conceivable that you just ate Theodore.”

*********************
she said don't give me no lines
and keep your hands to yourself

You adjourned to the pine-scented wonderland that was your bathroom to take a much needed piss, and when you returned, Justin was standing up on the bed trying to pull the new painting they’d hung in your room off the wall. He managed to get if off rather easily, falling back on the bed with it in his lap.

“Look at this piece of crap, Brian,” he laughed as you broke his fall, “And it’s still not bolted to the wall!”

“Jesus, Justin, you’re lucky you didn’t break that over your head.”

He held it up for you, “Look at the back. Is there a big price tag from Wal-Mart or something? Forty-nine ninety-five?” He fell back on the bed dissolving into a fit of laughter. You tried to take it from him and he grabbed it back, “No wait, wait. I have to see the title.” He handed it to you, covering his eyes with both hands, “No, just let me guess. The Chalet, right?

Am I right?”

You looked at the title on the gold nameplate on the front of the painting, “Winter Chalet. So close, but yet so far.”

He laid back, throwing his arms back on the bed, “I’m a fucking genius. A total, fucking genius. You didn’t know you married a genius, did you?”

“I had a hunch.” You opened the door to your room and sat the painting outside in the hall.

“What’re you doing?”

“Removing the incentive for your bad behavior.”

“Somebody might steal it. It’s sooooooo valuable. I’ll bet she made all of these dumb-ass gnome figures on the mantel, too.” You turned around and he was off the bed, picking them up one by one and looking at the bottom of them. “Ha! ‘Sarah Melody, 1972.’ I knew it. These are so fucking tacky.” He acted like he was going to drop one. You grabbed it out of his hand.

“All right. That’s enough.” You picked up all four of them and sat them outside the door, too.

“Whoops. You’re no fun.”

“You’re an accident trying to find a place to happen.” You picked up the phone and called the front desk. “Hi. This is Brian Kinney in two nineteen. You might want to come and pick up the artwork outside our door. We won’t be needing it……….Yes, the artwork……….Yes, thank you.” When you put the phone down and turned around, Justin was standing up on the bed again. If he jumped, his head was going to go through the ceiling.

“Now the room looks weird. It’s too empty.”

“Only because you’re standing on the bed. I assure you, if you come down here, everything looks quite normal.”

“Come and get me.” You grabbed the waistband of his black pants and yanked him over to the edge of the bed. “Whoa!” he yelled, his knees bouncing when they hit the mattress.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Fuck me with my socks on?”

Making love to him while he was on his back was nothing new, but doing it while his very soft, very expensive socks rubbed your ass, well, that was delicious.

********************
you and me ain’t no movie stars,
what we are, is what we are

You found your glasses all by yourself after you fucked him, grabbed your laptop, and climbed back into bed next to him.

“Brian, god, I’m so drunk.” The soft cotton of his white shirt felt nice against your thigh. You ran your fingers through his hair as you brought up your email. He snuggled down, his face against your leg.

“Yes, you are.”

“I love when you fuck me like that.”

“Happy to help.”

“I love doing it raw.”

“Certainly kicks it up a notch.” His hand looped over your thigh.

“I love when you pull my hair.”

“You told me to.”

“I love when you do what I tell you to do.”

“Justin?”

“Huh?”

“Is there anything you don’t love?”

……

“Nope. I love everything. I love you. I love champagne. I love this bed. I love—"

“I love you, too, Justin. Go to sleep.”

“I’m not sleepy. I’m just drunk.”

“Okay.”

“I wanna fuck you.”

He kissed the side of your leg for a few seconds in an attempt at clumsy seduction and started snoring, his drunk snore. It’s like no other. You booted your laptop but answering email and chatting with Cynthia didn’t take very long, so you checked in with Gabe at Zeal and Ruben at Babylon to make sure that things had gone well for them this week, that they were ready for a profitable weekend. Everyone in your kingdom was doing their job, so you shut down your laptop and turned your attention back to Justin.

He felt you lie down next to him and laid his head against your shoulder as you pulled the comforter up over both of you, stealing a glance under the covers at the rise and fall of the gentle curves of his body, his tight, white long-sleeve shirt clinging to him, stopping above his beautiful ass. You stared at him, so pure on these white sheets, and thought about when you first met him, how even after all this time, he still seemed that pure to you. How you’ve never thought of yourself that way, not even for a minute.

You wondered why that was because there plenty of things about him that you knew weren’t pure at all—things he’d done with you and to you, plenty of things he’d been involved in over the years that’d tainted him just like anyone else, the marks of violence and the evidence of pain, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn’t—but you rarely saw any of these things when you looked at him. It was like they just didn’t exist, and it bothered you that you were either too blind or too unwilling to see what should’ve been, what was, right in front of you.

You supposed it was because you loved him.

But he loved you, too, and he didn’t see you that way. He never had.

Why?

You stared at the blank wall over your bed, the wallpaper faded where the broken painting had been. It had been an ugly painting, and you hadn’t even noticed it until it fell off the wall and broke, but Justin had. He’d noticed it, judged it, and valued it, all without saying a word. And when it broke, he wasn’t the least bit afraid to call it what it was:

”Look at this piece of crap, Brian.”

You held him, watching the afternoon sun come through the window and fall right on the wall where the painting had been, brightening and fading everything all at the same time, the sunshine letting you see everything and yet, at the same time, making everything fade away as you closed your eyes...

********************
the way you haunt my dreams

Ibiza. Fucking Ibiza.

You were so tired of being here. So tired of sitting on this beach, right on the fucking sand, in your suit, with your knees bent—a place to rest your chin. You glanced at your hands wrapped around your shins. You’d lost your ring?

But you were still just watching him. And he was still completely naked. And there was a game going on today. Baseball?

Softball.

And your father was the coach. And the pitcher.

“Go long, Sonny Boy,” he yelled to Justin as his right arm drew back throw the ball. Justin grinned, excited, and took off running down the beach, sand flying everywhere. He’d glance back at your father every few steps, his hands outstretched to catch the ball that had yet to be thrown.

He seemed to run like that for miles, but you knew that wasn’t true because you could still see him. He never got any smaller.

And then, as the ball was thrown, you saw him.

Chris.

At bat.

The bat in motion.

The smile on Justin’s face.

“Justin!”

You felt yourself get up, start to run—

and run—

and run.

Your leg muscles seizing as you got to the water’s edge and fell forward, your hands pressing into your knees. He wasn’t there.

He was gone.

……

And then you saw them, Ethan, Debbie, Daphne, Jennifer, and Craig, back where you’d just been sitting, standing around his sandy, makeshift grave.

Justin’s sandy, makeshift grave; a white, wooden cross sticking out of the mound of sand.

And Cody. Giving the eulogy, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today to join this man—“

It wasn’t a funeral.

It was a wedding.

Your wedding.

And then your father was there, standing next to you in the water in his tuxedo. You knew he was dead when he spoke to you, “Son, you’re bleeding.”

He must be wrong, but he was right. It was pouring out of you. You looked down at the foamy, rose-colored water pooling over your favorite black shoes and that’s when you heard it.

The explosion.

Your father gripped you, holding you firm where you stood in the bloody water watching sand and flesh blanket the beach. The burning scent of sorrow stung your eyes as your head rested on your his shoulder. You sobbed and shook and he held you,

“It’s okay, Sonny Boy. It’s okay. I’m here.”

********************
we share a bed, some popcorn and T.V.

You woke up and sprinted to the bathroom, slamming the door and vomiting in the toilet, breathing in the pine-sol. Your head rested on the back of your hands as you laid there on the mint green porcelain, your eyes drying as the cool air swirled around your nude body. And then you heard him on the other side of the bathroom door,

“Ohmygod, Brian. Are you okay? What’s wrong?...Brian, what’s wrong?”

“It’s okay, Justin. I’m just sick.”

“From lunch? Lunch made you sick?”

You heard the doorknob turn, “No, don’t come in here. Go back to bed. It’s just something I ate.”

“But I’m worried.”

“It’s okay. Just go back to bed.”

When you came out a few minutes later, Justin was curled up in bed watching a black and white episode of Bewitched. He offered you the space on the bed in front of him, commenting, “Come on, lay down. This is the one with the sexy Darrin.”

You snorted as you laid down beside him, “There’s no such thing as a ‘sexy Darrin.’”

“There is when I’m drunk,” he said, wrapping his arm around you.

to be continued…


Lyrics taken from John Cougar Mellencamp’s Small Town, Maureen McGovern’s The Morning After from the soundtrack of The Poseidon Adventure, Amii Stewart’s Knock on Wood, George and Ira Gershwin’s They Can’t Take Away From Me, Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much, Paul Simon’s St. Judy’s Comet, Smashmouth’s All Star, The Violent Femmes’s Blister in the Sun, Georgia Satellites' Keep Your Hands to Yourself, Alice Cooper’s You and Me, George and Ira Gershwin’s They Can’t Take Away From Me again, and Alice Cooper’s You and Me again.

And my apologies to the town and people of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 12- CONTEXT

JUSTIN’S POV

it comes down to reality

When you opened your eyes in the darkened room, it took you a minute to remember where you were…and why you had a headache. The absence of anything on the mantel reminded you that you shouldn’t take Brian’s left arm flung over your chest for granted. Indeed, you were probably fortunate not to be observing his sleeping form from outside The Rockford, where, if memory served, you probably belonged.

And trying to figure out what sexy Darrin from Bewitched had to do with any of this was only making your headache worse. Or maybe you were still drunk; perhaps that explained the visions of gnome-like creatures doing an infuriated River Dance in your head.

Either way, lying underneath the weight of Brian’s arm and feeling his steady breath on your neck was sort of making everything better. Turning your head to the right, you noticed a figurine that Brian had forgotten as he’d sanitized your room, the one he’d been using as an ashtray. The gnome glared at you, as if holding you personally responsible for forcing him to dance alone. You tried not to stare at him, eventually just flipping him off. And then you turned your head slowly to the left to glance at Brian’s face; he didn’t look pissed, he looked peaceful and beautiful, and as your eyes swept down his body, much, much sexier than any Darrin. You closed your eyes again. That was the image you wanted behind them.

You were a married man. A married man. The concept seemed to be just sinking in. After years in New York trying to discover yourself, you’d come home and in less than two weeks, gotten hitched. And although your very recent past was with Brian and all that had happened since you’d returned, your mind was never far away from the city.

********************
you act like you were just born tonight
face down in a memory but feeling all right

As you rode the bus back to New York that Saturday in November 2008, you made a decision not to over-explain your absence to Daniel or Harper or anyone. Simply put, you were tired of being defined by tragedy. Daniel’s only question for you when you arrived back at your studio Sunday morning, almost tingling with inspiration, was, “That man, he’s your lover?”

Had Daniel not wanted to be that man, you might’ve taken that opportunity to further define yourself for him, but, as it was, you knew that any sympathy he felt for you would feel like something more to him.

So instead you stood on the stairs, anxious to have the studio all to your to yourself for the entire day, and responded, “Yeah, he is.”

Daniel stepped backwards, as if backing into the kitchen, both hands on his coffee cup and nodded, “Well, he’s a lucky man.”

So am I, you thought as you walked to the second floor.

Every blank canvas in your studio seemed to perk up when you walked into the room, closing the door behind you.

********************
sail on silver girl,
sail on by

Daniel wasn’t around for very much longer that day, his departure announced by a quiet knock on your door. When you opened it, he was in tears. “My mother, my mother has died. I have to go. I’ll be gone for probably at least a week—“

“Daniel, I’m so sorry. Oh god,” you said as you hugged him. “Where are you going?”

“Silver Springs, Maryland. That’s where she is, where she was, the home she lived in.”

“Okay.”

“Stay here, look after the place. I don’t have time to stop the mail, the paper, the—"

“Sure. Don't worry about it. Just go.”

As you walked downstairs with him, Jonathon was in the foyer. He was crying, too. He put his arm around Daniel’s shoulders and led him to the waiting cab. You walked behind them with Daniel’s suitcase. Your wave to them as they drove away was unreturned.

You would find out after Daniel returned that both his mother and Jonathon’s were in that home together, that the death of Emma Cartwright was destroying Sandra Massey. Losing her best friend was more than the eighty-six year old woman could take. Jonathon’s tears that day were foreshadowing. Sandra would die four months later after refusing to come live with Jonathon; she chose to keep her memories company.

********************
and the course of a lifetime runs
over and over again

Harper had been scarce now that Amelia was a toddler and unable to sleep quietly through her mother’s creative notions. You missed having her there, her and Amelia; the baby’s presence had meant that the two of you had to work in silence. You began to feel calm and centered when Harper would arrive with the baby carrier. It always meant an afternoon of peace, quiet, and inspiration. The dark tones germane to most of Harper’s work began to morph into pastels, into shades of innocence tinted with pink.

Harper would often take a break in the afternoon just to walk down the street, to do something that didn’t have anything to do with being a mother for a few minutes, and you were left alone with Amelia. The first time she woke up while in your care, she smiled at you, giggled, and burped. You rocked her carrier, and she fell back to sleep. The second time she woke up, she shit everywhere. When Harper returned, you feigned ignorance.

“Is Uncle Eggo allergic to dirty diapers?” Harper asked to Amelia in her baby voice as she changed her on the futon.

Amelia waved her little hand in the air and said, “Ah…ah!” as if confirming her mother’s suspicions.

So when Daniel left to bury his mother, you were truly alone, alone with your thoughts of Brian, of Chris, of Meredith and her son. Brian had more or less deposited you in bed after your post-funeral shower that day. Your brush, thick with paint, ran over the canvas with the ease and predictability of Brian’s hands over your body. He’d made love to you so slowly that day, as if he was patiently waiting for you to join him wherever he was. The safety you felt in his arms almost made you feel guilty. Brian had a way of fucking you so deliberately when words seem to fail him.

And not that you didn’t often return the favor, it was just that fucking wasn’t art to you. It was filling a need, expressing affection, a very, very nice way of making hours and hours seem like seconds.

Art was something that fought you, that struggled to be understood on its own terms, to define itself. There was no struggle when you and Brian made love; the two of you anticipated and met each other’s every need. You moved together flawlessly. Fucking Brian was like a dance; the music might change, but nothing else ever did.

You were sitting on the front steps of Daniel’s brownstone finishing a cigarette, contemplating the unpredictability of life, when you saw him walking toward you. Alan.

“What’s up? Full moon’s not ‘til the twenty-seventh.” You couldn’t be a friend of Harper’s and just not naturally come to know these things.

“Thought I’d mix it up a bit,” Alan joked with you, joining you on the steps. “Josie here?”

You offered him a cigarette and he took it, “No. I think she’s on an unofficial leave of absence now that Amelia’s crawling everywhere.”

“Dr. Dan?”

You laughed, “No,” and then you spoke before thinking, “His mother died yesterday.” You regretted the words as soon as you’d said them. Harper always made a point of protecting Alan from things, even memories.

A cloud came over Alan’s face, “Oh god. Poor guy.” He seemed genuinely concerned for Daniel; the sorrow you saw on his face was only for him. “I really needed her,” he said, as if he was talking to the sky.

“You can come in and take a shower. It’s okay.”

Alan smiled and laughed a little, “I needed her for more than that,” but he followed you inside anyway, taking you up on your offer. You made soup and sandwiches for the two of you while he showered and changed. He always looked like a completely different guy once he’d bathed. And he was much easier to talk to when he didn’t smell.

********************
two disappointed believers
two people playing the game

It always struck you that for someone who was homeless and lived how he did, Alan seemed to have manners and for the most part, was a pretty polite guy. The only time you’d ever seen him behave in a way that concerned you was when he was with Harper.

He came downstairs with wet hair and thanked you for lunch as he sat down at the table across from you.

“It’s no problem. And I can make more, if you’re still hungry.”

Alan remarked that peanut butter and jelly was his favorite, and then, “I like that picture you’re painting. It’s really interesting.” It wasn’t uncommon for Alan to venture into the studio when he came over, almost like he was collecting pieces of his imagination as he looked over Harper’s work. But Harper didn’t have anything in progress in the studio that day, so he must’ve looked at yours.

“Thanks.”

“Is it you? In the cemetery?”

“Yeah.”

It was you. Probably the most realistic likeness you’d ever painted, albeit more of you as a young boy than the man you now were. You weren’t usually your own subject. Up until that day, no one had seen the painting you’d been working on; you’d started locking your studio, not that Daniel would’ve ever intruded. That wasn’t his style. You hadn’t wanted anyone to see it because you’d have to explain it. And explaining it made it feel too real. But Alan didn’t know your past and didn’t want anything from you beyond a shower and a meal, so you didn’t avoid the subject when he kept bringing it up, “The headstone is so much bigger than you. Sort of like a reverse-perspective.”

“I know.”

“And the long shadow cast over you, the perspective’s fucked up on that, too. It’s like you don’t know whose point of view that painting is supposed to be. Makes you stare at it a lot trying to figure it out—“

“Alan, can I ask you something?” you said, practically interrupting him.

“Sure.”

“Are you really crazy? I mean, mentally ill; you know what I mean.”

“Are you?”

The question struck you as odd, but somehow justified. “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think I am either. I’m just supposed to be.”

“Supposed to be?” you asked, bringing the bread, peanut butter and jelly back to the table to make more sandwiches. Something inside told you that if you kept feeding him, he’d keep talking. There was more Debbie in you than you liked to admit.

Alan gave you a funny look, as if he was sizing you up, deciding if he could trust you, “From what I can remember, I had a rough time of it when my mother killed herself.”

“Well, that’s understandable. Anybody would, especially a little kid.”

Alan stacked two more sandwiches on his plate and cut them both at the same time, “I became what they like to call a ‘problem child.’” The way he said it, made you laugh. Alan laughed, too. “My grades fell, my teachers were worried about me. The school system started to battle with my Dad to have me evaluated.”

“Your teachers knew about you mother?”

“And that I found her. Once that information gets into your file in the school system, everybody knows.”

“Shit.”

“The funny thing is that my father would’ve jerked me at out of school and left me at home if it was legal, but he couldn’t. And he refused to let the school evaluate me, so he took me to my mother’s doctor instead. It was his way of rebelling or something.”

“And your mother’s doctor--?”

“Said I was crazy. Everyone in that hospital hated my father and felt like he was responsible for her death because he made her leave the hospital when she wasn’t well. I told the doctor that my father didn’t want me evaluated, and somehow a convenient diagnosis got in my records.”

“Alan, that is seriously fucked up.”

“There was a method to their madness, if not to mine. I started getting special services. Smaller classes, tutors, therapy, meds, you name it. As far as I was concerned, my life got a lot better, except that it made Josie’s maternal instincts come roaring out of her before she was even thirteen. Once I was ‘sick,’ it was like she made it her personal mission to take care of me, and she’s only a year older than me, but that didn’t stop her. She was hell bent on being a mother I could count on.”

“And was she?”

“She did what she could, tried to protect me from my Dad, who became angrier and angrier at me every time he thought about me being ‘sick’ like my mother. I dropped out of school in my junior year and disappeared. The rest, I guess, is history.”

“So you’re not crazy, then? Do you want some more milk?” Never had you thought those two questions would find themselves in the same utterance.

“Sure. I guess I’m not. I’m just extremely reluctant to live up to other people’s expectations. Every adult I ever met was more interested in diagnosing me than getting to know me.”

“But Harper believes that you’re really sick. She says your behavior is erratic, that you can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality.”

“More fun that way. Reality sucks.”

“It’s fun to lead her on?”

“No, it’s kind to let her be who she wants to be. Our lives were shit when we were little, and the only thing that ever seemed to make Josie happy was taking care of me. It’s who she is, who she wants to be.”

“Her denial runs that deep?”

“Doesn’t everybody’s, Eggo?”

********************
the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

“You know, this is really weird for me,” you told Alan after the two of you had gone upstairs. He was laying on the futon, no doubt getting ready to fall asleep like he always did and watching you paint. You never minded painting in front of Alan; he seemed to blend in like furniture.

“What’s really weird?”

“It’s just that you’ve always been such a tragic figure to me; it’s hard for me to see you any other way.”

“Yeah, well that’s true for everybody. We all see everybody through our own filter.”

“I guess you’re right,” you said to him as he got up and started looking through Harper’s desk. “Are you looking for something?”

“Did Josie keep any of Amelia’s baby clothes here? The real little ones?”

“Why?”

“I just need a couple things.”

“Why?”

Alan seemed to get agitated as you questioned him, finally sitting on the chair in front of Harper’s desk, “There’s a girl, a woman, I know who just had a baby, and she needs stuff. She doesn’t have anything.”

You opened the bottom drawer of Harper’s desk where she kept extra clothes for Amelia, “There’s stuff in here. Don’t you think you should ask her first?”

“She won’t mind,” Alan said, working his way through the drawer of pink, white, and lavender things until he found something that he thought would work. He took two pairs of pajamas and a pair of little white socks with lace on them.

“Don’t take those. Those are Amelia’s favorite socks.” The idea that an infant had a favorite pair of socks was preposterous, but they were her favorite.

“They don’t fit her anymore do they? They look like they’re for a newborn.”

He was right, “Yeah, you’re right. They don’t fit her anymore.”

“This is all I need,” he said, closing the drawer.

The question was bubbling inside you, and you finally got it out, “Is this your baby?”

Alan laughed, “God, no. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve fucked somebody?” You shook your head; you obviously had no idea. “It’s someone in our community; she just had it last night.”

“She had it in a hospital?”

Alan shook his head and his put the clothes into his coat pocket, “No, she had it with us.” And then his voice became agitated again, “And don’t tell me that we should’ve taken her to a hospital.”

“You should’ve—"

“She didn’t want to go.” He sat back down on the futon defeated, “None of them will go because they say they’ll help them get on their feet, but they don’t. They take their children away and the women end up back on the street.”

“You can’t raise a child in an abandoned subway tunnel,” you told him, your anger beginning to show. This was ridiculous.

“We never do. They never live. The mother’s have no milk. The baby will be dead in a few days. I just wanted her to have something so she could see how pretty her daughter is before—“

“Alan.”

“They don’t want to give their children away. They won’t. It’s just the way it goes. Besides, most of the babies would never live anyway; they’re addicted to drugs.” He got up to leave and you didn’t stop him, “So just let it go. This is the best thing I can do for her right now. I want her to see her baby like the pretty girl she is, so that’s how she’ll remember her.”

You looked back at your painting of the cemetery and thought of that little baby in Amelia’s clothes, “What’s her name?”

“The mother’s name is Tracy, but that’s not her real name. I don’t know her real name. Don’t need to know it. Thanks for lunch and letting me use the shower and all.”

“No, I mean the baby. What’s the baby’s name?”

“It’s better if they don’t name them. It just makes it worse for everyone.”

You stood in Daniel’s doorway, watching Alan walk down the street, how he kept his head down the entire time. You couldn’t shake the image in your mind of Alan in the stench underneath the streets trying so desperately to give this woman a memory she could hang onto.

He and Harper are more alike than he thinks, you thought as you went back inside.

********************
what is the point of this story?
what information pertains?
the thought that life could be better
is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains

Daniel returned from his mother’s funeral and put his nose to the grindstone. He spoke at conference after conference, stayed in his office until way past his usual bedtime reading and taking notes, started coming home later and later, the fault of his bigger patient load. Jonathon told you it was self-inflicted, “It’s the way he deals with everything. He lets something else consume him. He’ll settle down in a few months.”

But he didn’t. He began to volunteer his services to local Assisted Living communities that were woefully short staffed. He told you that at those places, he was mostly just a highly-educated listener. “Those people don’t need my skills, they need human interaction.”

You wanted to tell him that you thought he did to, but in Daniel’s very quiet way, there always seemed to be something slightly angry buried beneath his skin. You were afraid to scratch it for fear of setting it free. Denial and avoidance weren’t new concepts to you; you’d fallen in love with both of them years ago.

But what fueled that denial and avoidance?

That was more of a mystery to you, one whose answer had to lie within you because you could feel it down there somewhere, feel your fingers stretching and stretching as it was always just out of reach.

In the two years that followed your return to the city, you tried to find the answer to that question everywhere. And instead of an answer to that question, you found answers to ones that you didn’t even realize you were asking:

That Harper married Sam because she was pregnant and prays everyday for her marriage to work, even though she doesn’t believe in god.

That Zeek was only good for two things: fucking and disappearing.

That the day that Maya broke up with her boyfriend, Brian, was one of the happiest days of your life, but you’d never tell her that. Never. Until she started dating a guy named Larry, and you broke down and begged for her to stop ignoring Brian’s repeated, apologetic phone calls and take him back.

That Alan chose the life he led under the city because it gave him some sort of purpose, because he wanted to define his own circumstances, and, perhaps, because it served as some sort of necessary shield for him from the rest of the world.

That Jonathon shopped when he was unhappy, and ecstatic, and bored, and under the weather, and, once, even when he was horny. And sometimes when Daniel was busier and busier, he took you with him and made you pick out clothes that he thought more suited your ‘current station in life.’ Jonathon’s denial lived in his wallet.

That working out of the home of one of New York’s most respected psychiatrists and art lovers gave you an instant connection to galleries, collectors, and influential people. More than once, Daniel had dined with a friend who just happened to know a friend who had a daughter who ran a gallery in SoHo…Chelsea…Manhattan, and that these contacts actually landed the mayor of New York City at one of your shows. And one of your paintings, fancied by his wife, is now hanging in his house.

That Amelia would never learn your name because her mother told her you were ‘the waffle man, the waffle man, do you know the waffle man?’ And Amelia loves waffles with ‘surp.’ And you.

That everyone you’d grown to love and care about in the city seemed to be living for some purpose or someone. And as you worked late one night trying to finish a piece that you just wanted to be done with, you heard Daniel’s crush-of-late through the walls of your studio, “Daniel”.

That you missed hearing your name whispered and moaned like that. A lot. You went downstairs to Daniel’s study, staring at one of your paintings above his desk, picked up the phone, and called him.

Brian answered quickly, right in the middle of the deep breath you were taking. You said what you wanted to say, what you needed to say, and hung up before he could answer you. When he called right back, you jumped in your chair.

Daniel wandered downstairs a few minutes later as you laid on the sofa in the living room thinking about what Brian had just said, “Who was that?” he asked you, taking two bottles of water out of the fridge.

“Sorry, that was Brian. I used your phone; my cell is dead.”

Daniel sat on the edge of the sofa, “That’s fine. When my phone rings this late at night, it’s usually because of a patient.”

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about that.” You looked at the clock; it was almost eleven thirty.

“Everything okay? You look a little numb.”

You ran your fingers through your hair, “Yeah, I’m okay… It’s just that… I’m going home.”


Lyrics taken from Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, Rosanne Cash’s Seven Year Ache, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon’s Train in the Distance, Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, and Paul Simon’s Train in the Distance.

 BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 13-SEGUE

JUSTIN’S POV

and I really have enjoyed my stay,
but I must be moving on

“You know, I remember the first night I met you,” Daniel said to you from his end of the sofa on your last Saturday night in New York. He was drinking a cordial of some sort from a glass that was no doubt more expensive than what was in it.

“Yeah,” you said and smiled as you jiggled the ice in yours. Daniel made a pretty decent vodka tonic. The two of you and Jonathon, Harper, Sam, and Amelia had just had dinner together at a restaurant in the Village. ‘The Last Supper,’ Harper had dubbed it as she’d ordered a Shirley Temple for Amelia.

Jonathon waited patiently as your waitress fetched the drink for Amelia, and Sam told her, “Might as well make it another round. I’m going to be drunk as hell by the time we ever actually get this toast off the ground.”

Jonathon changed the subject, “Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to bestow our going away gift upon you.” He reached under the table and handed you a beautifully wrapped box, a cube around nine inches wide.

“What is this?” you asked.

“Open it,” Harper said with a smile that scared you.

“I’m not responsible for this gift,” Daniel added. “This was not my idea.”

Harper distracted Amelia by tucking the ever-present strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear, “I wish you’d let me put a barrette in your hair, ‘Melia.”

Amelia pushed Harper’s hand away with a dramatic flourish, almost knocking her incoming beverage out of your waitress’s hand, “No. No, Mommy. No ‘bret.” And then she rubbed her eyes; she was getting tired. Her eyes always looked darker when she was sleepy; her red dress starting to sparkle brighter than they were; she was a beautiful little girl even at the glorious age of two and a half. You opened the gift, trying not to destroy the gorgeous wrapping job Jonathon had done. He had a bizarre conglomeration of talents. Amelia asked for the bow and you gave it to her. It occupied her for the next twenty minutes because she insisted on wearing it on her head, “I’m a present,” she announced to the table as the bow slid off of her hair and onto her plate.

Once the paper was gone, you could see the writing on the box: Rolodix. “What the hell is this?” you asked.

“Just open it, Justin,” Jonathon chided you.

You pulled it out of the box. Well, it was a Rolodex. One with, um, bonus features.

Harper began to explain, probably because of the wary look on your face, “I helped Jonathon put this together. It’s all of our contacts, galleries, our addresses, everything you’ll need to continue your career—"

Jonathon chimed in an annoyingly upbeat tone, “And randomly throughout it, there are pictures of naked men.”

“And our pictures,” Harper added, “but we’re not naked.”

You spun the Rolodix quickly and were treated to a collage of various nude men spinning in front of your face like a pornographic kaleidoscope, “Uh, thank you?”

Daniel added with more than a hint of sarcasm, “Supposedly it makes your workday go by so much faster.”

“Or harder,” Jonathon added with an evil grin.

“We just don’t want you to forget us, Eggo. That’s all,” Harper added.

“I promise you I won’t.”

Once the last round of drinks arrived, Jonathon cleared his throat and raised his glass, “To Justin. May the rest of your life be as beautiful as the paintings you’ve so graciously sold us.”

Laughter rang out at the table as every glass clanked together. Daniel rolled his eyes at you as if he couldn’t believe that everyone waited for that. He’d been unusually quiet all evening.

Harper excused herself to use the restroom after trying unsuccessfully to convince Amelia to join her. Amelia refused, ignoring Harper when she said, “You’re wearing underwear, Amelia, not a diaper. Don’t forget that.”

“Justin, my panties are pink and lellow,” Amelia told you, frustrated that they were covered by her dress and her tights such that she wasn’t able to prove it you.

Harper shook her head at her headstrong daughter and wove through the tables toward the bathroom, her brown leather purse that she’d been carrying since the day you met her dangling from her fingers. Sam watched her go, and it gave you a sense of déjà vu as you watched his eyes follow her ass ‘til it disappeared. His attentive stare reminded you of Brian.

Amelia broke your daze by dropping her fork on the floor as your waitress was approaching with the dessert tray. Daniel and Jonathon started shaking their heads at each other before she was even halfway to the table, which meant that they’d definitely order dessert. There was something about a post-sugar angst that always remained irresistible to the two of them. After they ordered, Daniel rested his forehead on his palm and stared at the table as if he was ashamed of himself for wanting ‘something chocolate.’

The conversation turned to something socio-political-economical after that, as it always did when Sam was around anybody who had the ability to converse. He liked to expound a lot. Sam was in mid-sentence, “All I’m saying is—,” when Harper returned to the table.

She picked Amelia’s little black coat up off the back of an empty chair and motioned to her husband and daughter, “Come on. Put your coat on Amelia. It’s time to go.”

Sam seemed miffed by the timing, “Can’t we stay a little longer? ‘Melia’s fine. She took a good nap today.”

“No, we need to go,” Harper responded in a voice that settled the issue. You got up and followed them out the door, leaving Daniel and Jonathon completely engrossed in their new pastime: who can name the most varieties of cheese?

*****************
when your girl has left you out on the pavement

You told Jonathon and Daniel that you’d be right back, but they were oblivious to your actions, their cheese game getting very intense very quickly. It wasn’t until you stepped outside of the restaurant into the biting cold air that you realized why Harper had exited so rapidly. Sam was leaning into her, his hand on her shoulder,

“So, this means you’re not?”

She replied, “That’s what they taught me in sex ed, Sam. So, I guess not.” He took Amelia’s hand and walked away with her, letting her run on the sidewalk and pretend to play hopscotch with herself. Amelia was determined to learn how to hop on one foot. Harper turned to you as you were lighting up, an attempt to keep yourself warm. She took your cigarette away from you, claiming it as she spoke, “I don’t suppose you have a tampon on you.”

“Sorry, just used my last one,” you replied as you lit your own cigarette.

“Yeah, well, that’s what sucks about being friends with gay men. They won’t go to the bathroom with you and they never have anything you need.” The crisp air stilled between the two of you for a few seconds as you stared at her face. Smoking was the only quiet thing that Harper could do with her mouth.

“You thought you were pregnant?”

“Apparently, I’m not.”

You couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Harper could be hard to read sometimes.

……

……

“I suck at goodbyes, Justin.” That’s why she was testy all of a sudden. “Fuck, I’m going to miss you,” she added, blowing her smoke in the other direction so she didn’t have to look at your face, “Really going to miss you.”

“Me, too.”

“I feel like you’re the second brother I’ll never see.”

“Please tell Alan goodbye for me. That I’ll miss him.”

“I will.”

“You’re going to stay in our space, right?” Somehow you felt more comfortable leaving knowing that. You weren’t exactly sure why.

“Yeah, Daniel almost threw a fit when I started looking for another space, so I guess so.”

“I’m glad. Sometimes he needs company.”

“I know.”

Amelia hopped past the two of you, her black patent leather shoes smacking the sidewalk as she counted to herself, “One, two three, five and nine and ten!”

“And Amelia, I’m really going to miss her.”

Harper glanced back at her daughter, “And she’s going to miss you. She tells me every single day that you’re the one who painted that tea party mural on the wall in her room.” You smiled. “When we were leaving to come here tonight, Sam picked her up, only to realize that she’d stuffed one of her play waffles and a plastic slice of pizza in her panties. She wanted to give them to you.”

“She’s crafty.”

“Yeah, Sam told her, ‘We don’t carry presents in our panties, ‘Melia.’ I laughed so hard, I almost fell down the stairs. Then Amelia says to him, ‘But it’s a waffle for Waffle,’ and he replied, ‘Justin doesn’t want what’s in your panties.’”

“Truer words were never spoken.”

Harper laughed, “I know. That’s what I told him…Sometimes he’s very prophetic, like that…Shame Maya couldn’t be here tonight.”

“She’s meeting Brian’s parents in Connecticut.”

“Going to the chapel, huh?” she asked.

“Looks that way.”

“Well, good for her…Seems like a lot of ‘Brians’ are getting lucky this week.” You weren’t sure if she was being literal or metaphorical, but with Harper it was usually both.

……

……

And then she stepped on her cigarette and leaned in to hug you, whispering in your ear, “Don’t stop painting. Don’t let your muse get fat and happy.”

“I won’t.”

The two of you stood hugging on the street for a few seconds. When she pulled away, she smiled at you and said, “Just remember, the only difference between good art and love—“

“Is that art lasts longer.”

*****************
maybe you'll get a replacement
there's plenty like me to be found

So Daniel was reminding you of the night he met you, his fingers tapping randomly against his glass as he stared at the liquor inside it, “Do you remember?”

“Of course.”

“You know, what I remember most is how you thought I wanted you to sleep with me because I wasn’t able to buy your painting that night.”

You laughed and blushed a little, but the room was fairly dim, so he probably didn’t notice. “That was because you said I could ‘make it up to you.’”

“And when you came back here with Jonathon and I to that get-together I was having that night, I’ll never forget the look on your face when I was giving you the tour and we got to my bedroom—“

“Don’t embarrass me—"

“I couldn’t tell if you wanted to sleep with me or you thought that’s what I expected.” Now Daniel was laughing, too.

“Can we not talk about this?” you asked, but you couldn’t stop smiling. It had been pretty funny.

“I thought to myself, ‘God, this guy must get randomly propositioned all the time. He doesn’t miss a beat.’”

“Yeah, well I do. I’m not exactly used to subtlety in that department.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that it was your boyfriend who was always randomly propositioning you.”

“You’d understand if you knew him…It’s sort of how he expresses affection.” And anger. And jealousy. And sadness. And everything.

He’d made you think of the night you called Brian four months ago to ask to come home. Brian had sounded so grateful, so relieved; it made you feel guilty that you weren’t there right then so he could just fuck you and feel better. Sometimes you felt like it was truly his only real release. You blinked out of your daydream, listening to Daniel again,

“—and then when I asked you if I could commission you to paint a mural for my office, you look so surprised. That I was really interested in your art.”

“You were interested in more than that; you just thought that was your way in.”

……

……

“Yeah, well, I should learn my lesson. Art lasts longer.” Daniel glanced around his living room at the examples displayed everywhere. “And it even keeps you company.” He set down his empty glass and lengthened his arm along the back of the sofa, his index finger pointing at the box on the coffee table, “Sorry about the crude gift.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s fun… and useful.”

“Like you.”

“Huh?”

“Like you. It’s been so much fun having you here, and you’ve been useful, too, helping me out, looking after the place, I mean…I’m going to miss that.” Daniel’s words seemed to slow down as they rose in his throat, almost surprising you when they actually came out.

Now it was your turn to stare at your drink, your fingers shining with condensation, “I’m going to miss you, too. And I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me…what you’ve given me.” You paused for a second before continuing, “And I’m sorry I let things get mucked up in the beginning.”

“Don’t be. Sometimes two cars are just meant to crash, no matter what path they take.” The two of you simultaneously stared at the fire burning in the fireplace as if you’d been cued. “And I’ve thought about it, we’re not suited for each other, even if you weren’t with someone else.”

That surprised you. “We’re not?”

“I’d smother you to death. I’d never be able to let you go live away from me for all these years, not knowing where you were, what you were doing.” He shook his head, “I’m not cut out for that…Probably too insecure.” You sat your glass on the table as he finished his thought, “It takes a strong man to live without the person he loves for five years.”

“Six.”

“Right. Six. Even better….So, have you found a workspace yet in Pennsylvania?”

“No, not exactly. Well, not officially, rather. The art school that I sort of attended is offering me a place on their faculty, and that would include my own space.”

“Justin, that’s fantastic. You’re going do it?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“What would you be teaching?”

“Sort of a seminar class on graphic art versus traditional disciplines. It’s not an actual class or anything, feels more like a workshop to me.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

*****************
you can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough

The afternoon sun was right in your eyes as you finished packing up your studio that Tuesday afternoon. When Daniel arrived home, he spoke to you from the doorway on his tiptoes because you were practically hidden by boxes, “So, I guess this is it, huh?”

You surveyed the sea of cardboard you’d created, “Yeah, I guess so. And listen, everything’s labeled with my name and address, so there shouldn’t be any problem when the movers get here.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll make sure they take care of it.” Daniel wandered over to one of the boxes, examining your address, “West Virginia?”

“Yeah, Brian’s house…our house, I guess, is in West Virginia. He works in Pittsburgh.”

“Hmm. Didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, it’s this big mansion, basically.”

“Wow.”

You gave your studio one more once over before letting Daniel know, “Gotta go home and pack now, and I promised Maya we’d go out to dinner.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow and you haven’t packed your apartment?”

“I have almost nothing there. I’ll just stuff it all in this really big duffle bag.”

“You know, for a guy who’s close to thirty, you sure travel light.”

You laughed, “Force of habit. Long story.”

*****************
and I hope that you're still out there and you're like you used to be

Everyone offered to go with you to the airport that Wednesday, but you politely refused. There were only so many goodbyes one person can take. And as you walked through the airport that day, you felt a another shiver of déjà vu once again, your solitary walk through the terminal reminding you of the one you’d made six years ago when you left Pittsburgh.

So that no matter who you’re ever with, I’ll always be there.

Only this time, you weren’t overcome with heartache from leaving Brian, you were anxious to be with him again. You’d changed a lot in six years, grown up a lot, and Brian had seen some of it, glimpses of it during passionate encounters that the two of you had over the years. But he hadn’t seen all of it, the incident with Cody bringing out the protector in him and a fiercely independent streak in you. Only once had you and Brian spoken specifically about that day, a few weeks after you’d returned to the city, and for whatever reason, the conversation disintegrated into an argument that you didn’t feel like having. You sort of remember deliberately reminding Brian that you were in New York for yourself, not because he felt you should be there. It was stupid, just one of those spats that frustrated people have sometimes, but the sadness in his voice that he tried to hide the next couple of times you spoke to him started to make you ache—to go home and fix things, to do something to make that despondent tone go away.

It’s only time.

Six years ago, when you started this journey, it felt like so much more than time. It felt like heartbreak, like endless longing, as if the two of you, even though you were in different states, were still together, only trapped on either side of a soundproof wall that once in a while became transparent. It wouldn’t be the first time that Brian had watched you through a window. Perhaps, he was just better at it than you were.

But all along, Brian had been right; it was only time, and like money, it spent like crazy, both of you feeling like your pockets were full of it. Half of the time when you pulled a dollar out of your pocket, you expected to see Brian’s face on it instead of George Washington’s.

In Kinney we trust.

You laughed at your ridiculous imagination, as if Brian’s face would ever be on a one dollar bill.

Your imagination morphed into reality when they called your flight, “Flight six forty-seven, New York to Pittsburgh, now boarding…”

A tiny jolt of excitement shot through your entire body as you lined up with a crowd of mostly businessmen, eventually taking your rightful seat with them in first class. The coach seat you’d initially purchased was fine with you, but Brian strongly encouraged you to upgrade immediately. You weren’t even living with him yet, and the red carpet was already tickling the bottoms of your feet.

*****************
as if I didn't know my own bed

As you rode in the cab to the house in West Virginia, the sun was setting against a persistent skyline of thick, gray clouds. Going from New York to Pittsburgh to the outskirts of West Virginia had planted a mosaic of images in your head on some sort of continuum from busy and hectic to almost serene. Miles and miles of nothing but undeveloped land welcomed you home as you took a deep breath and smiled.

You’d made the right decision.

Brian had overnighted you a key to the house that Monday morning, but you had to call him and let him know you were home already because it wouldn’t turn. The irony of having come that far only to not be able to get in the door wasn’t lost on you.

When you stepped inside the house, you were immediately struck by the echo you weren’t expecting. The dark interior of the place seemed awfully empty, but as you wandered around on the ground floor, you saw that it wasn’t empty; it was just huge. The cleaning lady had probably come that morning because you couldn’t find a trash can with trash in it or a fleck of dust anywhere.

Brian would be home in twenty six minutes.

You walked upstairs carefully, your bag on one shoulder and your head raised eyeing the wrought iron light fixtures that hung over the foyer. There was only one door open on the second floor; it was Brian’s bedroom.

It too was dark, decorated with a myriad of shades of dark blue, only much more ornate than anything you’d ever seen in the loft. Your black duffle bag looked out of place when you propped it in a chair next to the bed. Indeed, the chair almost looked offended.

There was a gas fireplace at the foot of Brian’s bed and recent pictures of Mel, Lindsay, and the kids on the mantle. There wasn’t a picture of you. The Christmas card you’d sent him a couple of months ago was there however, along with the one you’d sent him the year before that. His bed was made and very different from the one at the loft. This one had a black wrought iron bed frame and was much higher off the ground, suiting a tall man like Brian much better. You ran your hand over the embroidered designs on the bedspread, enjoying the way they rippled underneath your fingers. You stepped into the bathroom and your senses were already smelling Brian’s cologne, his after shave, his body after he’d showered, before you’d even drawn a breath in the spacious room. There was more that you could look at, more that you could touch, but you began to feel like you were snooping, so you left your bag in the haughty chair and went back downstairs to the living room to wait for Brian.

The living room struck you as stepped through the doorway because it was so different from the last time you’d been here, the hardwood floor that the two of you made love on now covered with a beautiful oriental rug replete with autumn tones. Although Brian had kept a lot of the whites and off-whites he’d used at the loft, they were layered with hues of pumpkin and gold and even a deep burgundy that made the room feel warm and welcoming and wealthy. And in the midst of all of that elegance, fanned proudly on the coffee table, were the latest issues of every men’s magazine you could think of. You sat on the sofa and picked one up, rarely a clothed man inside.

Except you, when your picture fell out.

It was a picture that someone had taken of the two of you at your abandoned rehearsal dinner. Brian was in the shot smiling down at you. You wondered if he still had that jacket; the two of you had fucked quite ferociously after you’d called off your wedding, and seeing Brian in that jacket again was beginning to make your pants tight. You tucked the picture back inside the magazine it’d fallen out of and picked up another one to read while waiting for him.

Ten minutes.

You tried to read an article entitled, Seven Brand New Ways to Please Your Man—Tonight!, but when the article suggested that your partner might enjoy your mouth ‘someplace that you’ve probably never thought of!’, you tossed it back on the table. Clearly, Brian wasn’t buying those magazine for the articles.

Two minutes earlier than you’d expected, you saw headlights coming down the road, and you stood by the window to see if it was him. You were clutching your hand to your chest, unknowingly pressing against your heart as if to silence it, as you watched his car turn into the driveway. The garage door groaned as he raised it, but his car stopped several feet before pulling in.

He’d seen you in the window.

You watched with pleasure as his long legs emerged from the car, a slim briefcase in his right hand, and walked down the sidewalk to the front door. He pushed it open as you pulled, smiling as you almost made him fall through the entrance.

You apologized to the lapel of his black overcoat as he wrapped his arms around you, his right hand moving off of you only long enough to slam the door.


to be continued…


Lyrics taken from Supertramp’s Goodbye Stranger, ABC’s The Look of Love, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road twice, Steve Winwood’s Back In the High Life, and Paul Simon’s Graceland.