by Andy Finch
It was the truth, he wanted to say. The words were cocked and loaded on his tongue, but the nurturing side of his begs to keep them at bay. Ian had grown teeth while Draven was incapacitated. It was much unlike him; Draven had never seen it in the years they have dated. He needs to be brought back to the puppy he is. Not the hound holding Draven’s hand. So, Draven would let him whine and complain, let him show his emotions, not through gnashed teeth and chiseled brows.
“Sorry,” Draven says, but he isn’t sure if he means it or not. All he can do now is smile, no matter if his face refuses to mold or not. The itch from the IV needle still complains. The darkened vein around the insertion itches, too. A spasmed shake tries to warn of the reaction. It works, but only for a second. Draven goes back to his original thought about how much he hates hospitals, “I love you,” he says to try and stir his attention away from himself.
Ian doesn’t respond. A silence befalls them, reminding Draven of his short temper. It was these moments that made him appreciate Ian and his resilience, even if he would never openly admit it. Draven was a volcano, and Ian was Pompeii. Through the volcano’s destruction, a blanket of ash would spawn new seeds of love and prosperity. This was just another hurdle, another obstacle. Draven squeezes Ian’s palm. He doesn’t squeeze back.
A red Ford truck, riddled with mud and rotting paint, pulls through the hospital’s roundabout. Draven had forgotten for a moment what Geneva’s car looked like. She owned a truck, of course. She and her boyfriend (who Draven is drawing another blank of even though his name was just spoken) picked oysters and crawfish from the bank of the Mississippi in their free time. Hard work that would be overpriced at all the fancy restaurants downtown. They needed this hand-me-down truck.
From the passenger’s window, Draven sees Geneva’s boyfriend waving at the pair. He was like Draven, thick heavy black skin. Made resistant to the struggles of this city. He, like many others here, knew what it meant to love and to lose.
“Get in, losers,” Geneva’s boyfriend, Jaylen, motions with a lax finger for Ian and Draven to hop in. Draven remembers his name now, “Zydeco’s got a buffet goin’ on today.”
Zydeco’s? Zydeco’s. Draven pieces the name together. It was a restaurant on the west bank. They had a seafood buffet during lunch hours. He’s eaten there once or twice, right? He blinks hard. It was where he and Ian had a date once, right? The memories loom and foreshadow, but do not intervene. A pulse in his head reminds him of how ill food would make him feel. He needed a Zofran. And maybe some more morphine. Both, he decides.
“I’m not hungry,” Draven says as he shuffles across the faux leather seats. Noise from his stomach contradicts him, though. He was off the clear soup diet, but nothing seemed appetizing. Everything was mush. Mush and bile that would only make the day awful, “I’m tired.”
“Well, fuck you then,” Jaylen sneers back, his almond eyes twinkle with joy. Jaylen was a mesh of all other personalities sitting in this truck, and for that reason alone, Draven liked him, “How about Salvo’s? Their goddamn shrimp is bumpin’ right now.” Jaylen speaks through a cigarette.
Now, Salvo’s he knew. It was in Belle Chasse, a straight shot down from Zydeco’s, protected by an offshoot of the Mississippi River. In the last few years, Salvo’s had drawn more and more attention to the West Bank and what it has to offer than New Orleans. Draven would hope that the tourists stay on the opposite side of the Mississippi, though.
“I think you should eat something,” Ian adds his side of the not-so-argument. Those talons of bravery no longer jut from his personality. Draven likes this version of Ian. The soft, cuddly man who’d watch the world burn if only for his lover’s happiness, “I think it’ll help you feel better.”
“And fried food is supposed to do me good?” Draven lets a scowl of crossness sit on his distant features before letting them even out into a toying grin. Ian only rolls his eyes.
“Would you rather eat hospital jelly?”
“Good point.”
“It’s settled then,” Jaylen joins back in. The cigarette no longer found in between his lips. His breath is ashy, scratchy in his throat, “Take us to Salvo’s, babe,” a flick of his eyes finds Geneva. She rolls her eyes with a soft mumbled whatever, “You was in the paper today, Dray.”
“Don’t,” Ian barks, “We can talk about that later.”
“He deserves to know ‘bout the slander the city has given ‘im.” Jaylen says, turning to face forward now. There is something more to be said. The look of scrutiny sinks into his ebony skin. It gets swept away as his thoughts trail somewhere else.
“They do me dirty?” Draven asks. The faintest hint of a chuckle surrounds his words.
He can see it now. The paper wouldn’t even name him. It would say something about two crooks who stepped in at the wrong time. Maybe it would show one of his bad pictures. Maybe it didn’t even have a picture of him at all. Officer Johnson couldn’t have done anything, anyhow. The news just wanted something to latch onto for today’s paper. He would be forgotten soon enough as tomorrow’s paper tells of another shooting or another break-in. It was the same story, just with different faces.
“Extremely,” Geneva says from behind the wheel. Her hands reach for something as they turn out of the hospital. A big black box sits in her grasp. She reaches behind her and gives it to Draven, “We snatched this for you, too. See if they swiped that pic.”
He holds the power button; the device turns on with a chime. He clicks the photo album. A burst of color illuminates his face. There are pictures of Ian with his rainbow flag, and Geneva and Jaylen. A few murals that dot the less-than-scenic buildings downtown. A few of them pictured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some had Robert E. Lee. Half detailed the struggles of the city, the other half celebrated it. Draven clicks through the pictures, passing by Geneva’s mural from that dreadful day. He hesitates to click any further. His fingers move without his brain’s input. The next slide shows the black man, tears running down his cheeks, the officer pointing the gun right to his head.
“Is it there?” Geneva asks.
“You bet yer ass it is,” Draven says, “The news is gonna have their panties in a knot when we submit this.”
“I can hear them now,” Ian places his hand on Draven, “How they’ll complain about ‘that was taken out of context,’ or, ‘you didn’t picture the gun in that crook’s hands.’”
“He’s gotta point,” Jaylen wags his fingers in the air, “Nobody care about a black man’s struggles, Dray. It’s gonna hurt you more than you think.”
Draven sinks in his seat, blocking out the words the other three in this truck were saying to him. He focuses on the steady throb in his head. It migrates down his spine, filling his shoulder with that ache. The rest of his body feels the same. It thirsts for something. For relief. To be without pain. He brings a hand up and touches his shoulder, hissing through his teeth. The ache only intensifies. Not just in his shoulder. He feels the call all the way in his little toe.
He doesn’t get the chance to think about the pain. The sheer memory of morphine was enough to get him through the first car trip over the Crescent City Connection. They got off on Westwego, then find their way to Belle Chasse Highway. Salvo’s is packed. Full of people trying to get their fill of seafood before the crawfish season sets in, when the tourists and Lent practitioners would crawl out of their holes and steal all the good mudbugs.
They pick up a newspaper at the front. The headline says two shot, one killed in the 8th ward. Draven is given the chance to digest the writing over a shrimp po boy. It was here, in this dim-lit, booze smelling atmosphere, that he figures the pointlessness of his life. He was just one of the two shot in the paper. No name, no story, but there was an accusation.
“Officer Miles had chased the first suspect after a D.U.I went wrong. The second suspect pulled a weapon on them after being stopped.”
And the rest was history, huh? Draven snorts loud enough for the whole restaurant to catch wind. Ian
stops slurping the buttery juice flowing from his crab legs to peer over Draven’s shoulder to read the paper. He makes a noise to detest, to signal he was about to speak out against what was written in the twelve-point font, but the call from his crab legs was just too much to ignore.
In the not-so-distant past, Draven wouldn’t be here, moping in front of a pint of sweet tea and a buttery good po boy. Back then, he would have his camera on him, snapping pictures to send to the local blogs for food reviews. A man has to make money somehow. Now, he’s forgotten all about the camera abandoned in the back seat of that red Ford. The throb returns. He should whisper to Ian about heading home now, but he doesn’t want to seem rude in front of Geneva and Jaylen, especially when they were courteous enough to lend a ride back home.
“You gonna finish that?” Ian asks with a mouthful, pointing to the po boy with exactly two bites taken from it. The fries haven’t been touched either. Or the remoulade sauce.
“Go ahead,” Draven replies. His stomach hurts now. He wants to go home, “I’m done anyway.”
After another hour of enduring nausea as the other three finish eating, they finally gather back into the red Ford. The sun hangs high in the sky, causing his stomach to gurgle again with added aggression.
The rest of the car ride is silent. Or maybe Draven had continued to ignore the conversation flowing in the tight space. Or maybe he fell asleep. He agrees on the later when he wakes up.
“He’s healing,” Ian had said sometime during the ride, “Let him be.”
Draven blinks. He finds himself tethered to Ian’s hip outside their apartment complex. When he turns to look over his shoulder, he notices that the red truck was nowhere to be seen. Had he been dreaming again? Ian tugs him along, leading him through the lobby and to the elevator. There is still a reminiscent of nausea deep in his stomach, but it was overcome by the relief of being home.
The home was a dank old apartment built before Katrina hit. There used to be flowers all in the courtyard, but most of them had drowned in the hurricanes. There was a magnolia tree in the middle. Alone. Forgotten. Sometimes the children belonging to the couple in room 71 would play on the low swinging branches. Draven hasn’t seen them since last February, though.
“You look sick,” Ian says as the metal doors close around them, “I’m ordering an immediate bed rest when we get inside.”
The stuffiness of the elevator chokes and twists. Highlighting the strain both the incident and the hospital stay have put on Draven. His skin looked yellowy jaundice in this cheap lighting. He hopes Ian doesn’t notice, but he already has.
“Yessir, Doctor Ian,” Draven feels his eyes grow in weight. The doors to sleep were beginning to creak open, “Maybe we could—”
The innuendo was there. Ian rolls his eyes in an I-wouldn’t-dare-if-I-were-you kind of look.
“Don’t even ask,” Ian lowers his brow, “You are supposed to be resting, understand?”
Oh, but I’d feel so much better if we did. He’s still not over the interruption from his not-so-sane wet dream.
“Yessir, Doctor Ian,” Draven repeats, almost slurring his words. The throb in his body comes back. And just like that, that door full of dreams shuts. The ache locks up that door, “What day is today?”
“The third.”
“Of November?”
“What? No, silly,” Ian’s voice hits a high pitch, mixing in his added confusion, “It’s December, babe. You were in there for a while,” a somber hue besets him, “I missed you. Like… a lot.”
December. Draven doesn’t question that. It felt like December. The stale air, the mosquito-less nights, the dry soil beneath his feet. Winter was almost here. And with it came a whole new set of troubles.
The elevator dings as they reach their floor. Time blurs. In a blink of an eye, the sun sets behind the horizon and the day ends. Draven now finds himself seated in bed. Four new orange bottles of pills greet him on the nightstand as he dresses in the moonlight. Ian was missing, again. Perhaps he went to grab a snack. Dark lunch, he called it. Draven had tried to tell him how unhealthy it was to eat during bedtime. It passed through his ears like nothing. How he manages to eat so much and never gain a pound, Draven does not know.
He slides open the glass doors to the balcony while taking another morphine pill. He downs it with no water. It stings his throat as it dissolves somewhere between his mouth and his stomach. The moon rests fat in the darkness. She waves down at Draven before hiding behind a cloud. He sits on the wood beneath his feet, letting the chill embrace his near-nude form. His mind wanders, flying between ideas. One hint of a second, he’s engrossed in details of his life. How his career as a photographer might well be over. Then it switches to his hospital stay. How Morris somehow evaded all prying eyes when he came to check in on Draven. It switches again. He thinks of Ian. Again, and again, it switches. Finally, his mind locks on a topic. Morris.
“You should get some sleep,” He’d say right about now, “It’ll do you some good.”
Then Morris would pump the drug back into his system. Morphine. Draven already felt his pills beginning to kick in. He would resist the urge to sleep. His vision fades in and out. One moment the moon shines against his sun-kissed skin, the next it would shy away. He forces his eyelids to open. He sees a figure in the corner of his eye.
“Ian?” He asks the silhouette.
No answer. The croaks of frogs from the bayous ring in his ears, he hears them far away from his city-laden home. The world felt silent. The way the wind does not move the strips of life hanging from the magnolia trees, no flies or moths cling to his skin, no carcasses of lovebugs stomped into the wood. The crescendo of hush hits his ear. The icky feeling of blood pumping in his head mixed with the begins of tinnitus. His eyes dart around the courtyard, trying to find any form of life. Anything but the goddamn silhouette.
“Ian, this isn’t funny.”
The silhouette sits beside Draven, now. He refuses to look at the person hiding as a shadow. The shadow reaches out and touches Draven. He flinches.
“Here,” the silhouette says. From the darkness, a hand made up of marble extends to Draven. Three pills sit in the hidden palm, “These will help,”
The voice is familiar. Draven dares not say who it belongs to, though. His brain tells him not to accept the gift. It was poison, he knew it deep down. But his body craved it. His body needed it. His fingers carefully pick the three pills from the silhouette’s hands then places them in his mouth. He swallows them dry. This time they find their place in his stomach instead of sticking around in his throat.
“Morris?” He finally says.
“Mhm,” The silhouette lets the moonlight expose him. A honeyed curl hangs in his chiseled face, “You look tired.”
“Stop fucking saying that,” Draven swears, “How the fuck did you find me? Who really are you?”
He should be scared. He is scared, but his body refuses to show any symptom of fear. Fear was a weakness. And to show weakness in front of a predator was certain death. Morris, somehow sneaking into the balcony had coined him as a predator. Draven knew that now. Draven knew he was prey; prey staring into the hungry maw in front of him. The taste of death.
“You can call me Morris,” he smiles. His teeth shine almost threateningly in his jaw. The wrinkles in his eyes convey sleepiness as opposed to happiness. He was not a nurse, Draven decided. He was so much more, “I’m here to help.”
“I don’t want your help,” Draven barks back, “How did you get in here, anyways?”
“You took my help, even if you said you did not want it,” Morris says. His eyes flicker a cornflower blue in the moon’s glow, “Trust me.”
“I’ll fuckin’ call the police—” Draven makes the mistake of gnashing his own teeth, trying to portray that he was not prey.
“You won’t.”
The ache is gone without a moment’s notice. The throb has ceased. Draven’s body thanks him for quelling the pain, forgetting the adrenaline that sparke
d in the wake of fear. In turn, his nerves trigger ecstasy. The flood of feel-good chemicals flows from his veins into his brain. The silence had never been so alive.
“Just leave,” Draven says under his breath.
“I will,” Morris stands. His figure blocks the moon’s light from touching Draven, “You should get some sleep. It’s late.”
Draven tries to fight it. He tries and tries. When the word is spoken, his body obeys. His eyes sink into his skull, the rightfulness of sleep cuddles close. He cannot deny it. Before succumbing to the kisses of dreams, Draven swears he sees Morris smile. A quick, almost threatening, flash of tea-stained teeth.
Draven forces his eyes open once more. He’s inside and surrounded by warmth. His body lay constricted by the weight of Ian on top of him. Ian nudges his head into the crook of Draven’s neck, careful not to disturb the bandaging askew on his shoulder. Draven checks the nightstand. His four orange pill bottles mock him. The bottle of morphine sits closets to the bed. Its white cap nowhere to be seen.