by T. J. Klune
Like now.
He swallows. “I aim to please,” he manages to say.
Sean laughs again. “Walk me home tonight, big guy?”
“Yessir,” Mike says. “I’ll be there.”
“Looking forward to it,” Sean says, and Mike believes him. He believes everything Sean tells him, because he’s Sean. Maybe the others are right. Maybe it’s time to see about something… more.
“Gotta get back,” Sean says. “Oscar’s starting to get that scowl on his face.”
That scowl means he’s had to serve a few tables and is getting annoyed. Oscar likes the kitchen. Oscar doesn’t like to be in the dining room.
“See you tonight,” Mike says.
“Yeah,” Sean says again, and it’s mocking but not mean. Sean Mellgard doesn’t have a mean bone in his entire body, even if he has to deal with someone like Mike. Mike’s a man of few words. Sean knows this, and he still wants this… this thing. Mike doesn’t know what’s wrong with Sean that he could still want Mike, but it doesn’t really matter. He’ll take whatever he can get.
Mike is smiling when he hears the click and the dial tone. He puts the phone back on its cradle and thinks that Sean is ready too.
There’s an itch on his right wrist. He looks down and there’s something fleeting that shoots through his mind, something he doesn’t quite understand—a number—but it’s gone before he can latch on to it. He scratches at the itch. There’s no bug bite or anything to explain the irritation. His wrist is unblemished and unmarked as always.
III
THE REST of the day is busy for Mike. He has the usual people who come in to casually browse (they are the ones who touch the titles on the shelves with vague interest and leave without buying a thing), the people who come in only to chat (“Everything okay?” they ask, and by the end of the day, Mike is really rather tired of the question), and the people who come in to buy (Pride and Prejudice, the Iliad, The End of the Affair, The Maltese Falcon, and the new Philip Marlowe mystery The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler—Mike hasn’t read that one yet).
It’s how it is most days. People come in and people go out. There are usually always at least one or two people in Bookworm, and he knows all of their names. All of their faces. Some come in on their lunch breaks. Others come in on their way to work. The elderly crowd comes in throughout the day. The ladies in the book club giggle at him when they appear, sometimes together and sometimes by themselves. They wear their brightly colored dresses, cinched at the waists. Their hair is done up in large buns or fat curls tight against their faces. They are the epitome of modern women, with their bright red nails and expertly applied lipstick.
When he isn’t being talked at, he is in the back, sorting through the shipment of new books, scanning over the manifest, trying to remember when he saw the delivery driver. He doesn’t think on it too hard, because there is his signature at the bottom of the invoice, clear as day. He tells himself he’s just getting older, and they say that memory is the first thing to go. There’s no date on the invoice next to his signature, but it must have been yesterday. He remembers yesterday being very busy, so it would be easy to have forgotten new books being delivered. No matter. The shipment was on time, and people are loving the new Chandler. It’s a good thing he thought to order more.
The afternoon passes quickly, and it’s half past five when he flips the sign on the door to Closed, the bell still tinkling slightly overhead as he sees his last customer out. He’s in his back office with the till from the register, depositing the money in the safe. It’s almost unnecessary, the safe, because nothing bad ever happens in Amorea. People don’t steal. People don’t break in anywhere. It’s why they all leave the doors to their homes and businesses unlocked. If someone needed something after hours, you could bet your fur there’d be a note and the payment left on the counter down to the cent.
Sure, they have a constable, but Willy Foreman is more apt to fall asleep in his old chair with his feet up on his desk than he is to solve any crimes. Not that there is any real crime to solve. People in Amorea don’t have to worry about that. It’s safe here. Everyone knows that.
It was a good day for sales, Mike thinks as he makes a note of the tally in the ledger he keeps in the safe. A little bit better than yesterday. That’s what he likes to see.
He puts the ledger back in the safe and spins the dial after closing the door. It’s locked now, and he stares at it for a moment, trying to remember a time when he’s ever heard of any type of crime in Amorea. He can’t remember a single instance.
It’s remarkable, really. Amorea really is one of the greatest places in the world.
IT’S GOING on six by the time he’s out of the bookstore. The sky is starting to streak a little pink and orange, and it’s cooler than it was earlier that afternoon. Most of the shops along Main Street are closing down. The dress shop. The men’s suit and clothing shop. The malt shop that serves the best chocolate shakes in Amorea, even though Oscar would beg to differ. Some of them stay open later on the weekend, when people feel like an evening out. The neon marquee of the theater is already lit up and flashing, the block lettering advertising From Here to Eternity. Sean mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe Mike could ask him if he wants to go see it.
Since the stores are closing, the sidewalk is a little more crowded than usual. The townsfolk greet Mike, the men tipping their hats at him, the women tittering like little birds as he passes them by. He grins easily at each of them, but no one stops him for a chat because they know where he’s headed. If they wanted to talk to him, they’d come by the bookstore during the day. They smile at him knowingly. It’s not much of a secret in Amorea where Mike goes in the evenings.
It only takes him five minutes to make his way down and across the street to the diner. Inside looks bustling, the tables filled as people eat an early dinner or smoke their cigarettes over cups of coffee that always seems to taste a little burnt, no matter what Oscar does to it. He can see two of Oscar’s girls inside, Wanda and Mary, working quickly and efficiently between the tables. They usually come in and work the dinner rush so Sean can start winding down to leave for the day. Oscar’s usually still in the kitchen, though he’s hired on Walter to help out so he could start leaving earlier in the day or even take a day or two off during the week. Or so he’s claimed. It isn’t uncommon to see Oscar there from open to close every single day, eyeing Walter like a hawk, critiquing every little thing he does until he’s certain Walter’s got it right.
Mike can’t see Sean, though. Which means he’s either in the kitchen or in the back office.
He pushes open the door to the diner and is immediately hit with the smell of eggs and grease and coffee and cigarette smoke. It’s a smell he’s used to, more so since he and Sean have become… him and Sean. They’ve been friends for a long time, until it started to be something more, and Mike has made sure to be there every day to walk Sean home. The women of Amorea think it is the sweetest thing they’ve ever seen. The men grin at the both of them, but keep their opinions to themselves, at least until they’re out of earshot. Then they show that men can gossip just as much, if not more, than the ladyfolk. Mike knows how remarkably invested everyone seems to be in Sean and him, but rather than feeling overwhelmed, he is comforted by it. Most of the time. Sometimes he just has to roll his eyes at those little laughs and the winks he gets whenever he comes into the diner.
Like now, for instance.
The bell overhead rings out, much louder than the one at Bookworm. The deafening wall of conversation cracks right up the middle as people crane their heads from the booths and the lunch counter to see who’s come in through the door. They smile and wave at him, calling out his name in greeting before turning back to their dinners and coffee. Mary and Wanda swirl up to him in a cloud of pink perfume, snapping bubble gum, and cigarette smoke, kissing him sweetly on either cheek before Oscar hollers at them from the kitchen to get back to work and do their damn jobs.
The din
er itself is narrow but long, with fifteen red vinyl booths and ten stools at the lunch counter. The floor is made up of linoleum that Mike is sure used to be a pristine white at some point, but now is stained a faint yellow due to age and smoke.
The walls are covered in Oscar’s crowning achievement (or so he calls it): photos of almost everyone in Amorea. People eating in the diner. People strolling the streets during Spring Fest. People having snowball fights on Longmark Hill, wrapped up in scarves and wool hats. People tilting their heads back and laughing as they sit on blankets at Honeychuck Park during the height of summer. Happy people, smiling people. Oscar may come across as a bit of a grouch, but he doesn’t fool Mike. He loves as much as anyone in Amorea does. It’s there plain as day in the photographs, of which he’s in a few, his usual scowl on his face.
There’s a handful of Mike up there too. Mike surrounded by townsfolk. Mike surrounded by friends.
It doesn’t matter, though, who else is in the picture, because in every picture of Mike, Sean’s right at his side. Just the way Mike likes him. Sean would probably tease the hell out of him for being so sentimental. “Sappy man,” he’d be sure to say, smiling that smile that’s only for Mike. “Sappy, sappy man.”
Mike grins ruefully at himself and salutes Oscar across the diner. Oscar’s usual glare softens just slightly as he tilts his head toward the back of the diner, where the office is. He taps the side of his head three times.
Mike frowns. He knows that sign, what Oscar’s telling him. He doesn’t dally, walking quickly through the diner. No one tries to stop him, not that he would have let them anyway. He’s out of the main dining room and down a small hallway in a matter of seconds, stopping in front of a closed door with a frosted glass window with black lettering that reads Office.
His knocks are firm but quiet.
“Come in,” a tired voice says.
He pushes open the door.
It’s darker in this room, the shade pulled down over the only window, the lights turned off. A small rusty metal fan sits on the desk, blowing the slightly stagnant air around the room as it oscillates left, then right.
There’s a man sitting on the chair behind the desk, head tilted back slightly, eyes closed. He’s taking deep, measured breaths, in for three seconds and then out for five. It’s something that Mike knows well, something he’s seen him do a handful of times before. It helps, sometimes, with the headaches. They are few and far between, but when they hit, they hit hard.
Sean’s not as pale as he sometimes gets, so it doesn’t seem to be one of the bad ones. The long column of his throat moves slightly as he swallows. He has a slight grimace on his face, the skin around his eyes crinkled up, making him look older than he actually is, older than he has any right to be. And at only twenty-three, Sean Mellgard doesn’t deserve to look like this, his face twisted in a moue of pain.
Mike still feels uneasy, sometimes, about his age. It was a point of contention between them. Sean didn’t let him get that far with it, though, eyes flashing, saying, “Now see here, Michael Frazier,” using his full name to show he meant business. “I don’t give a damn about that and neither should you. I know what I’m doing. I know what I want. I’m not a child, so don’t treat me like one.”
And that was that, though the guilt is still there sometimes, even if he is the only one who feels it. No one in Amorea bats an eye at them, and nothing malicious is whispered behind their backs, as far as he knows. It’s all on Mike. And he doesn’t care, not anymore, not really. Sure, there are those strange little moments where he has actual memories that are older than Sean is, but such thoughts often fade before he can even be bothered with them.
(He remembers the look of surprise and delight on Sean’s face when he told him about the memory thing, trying not to flush when Sean let his hands rest briefly against Mike’s arms, fingers trailing. “And what memories would these be?” Sean asked, smiling his little smile. “Memories older than me. You silly man, of course you have memories. Don’t we all?” And there went the flush he’d been trying to avoid, because no matter how hard he tried, he really couldn’t think of a time before Sean entered his life. He kept that to himself, because he didn’t want to seem like some romantic fool.)
So Mike is older and Sean is younger, and they mostly don’t care, not anymore. Because for every moment of doubt that Mike has, there’s always something more that fills him up, something so indisputably Sean.
Maybe Mike can’t remember a time when he didn’t know Sean.
And maybe he just doesn’t want to.
He lets Sean breathe. He waits, taking him in.
Sean’s short black hair is artfully messy, like he’s been running his hands through it all day, the ends curled. But given that he works with food, he doesn’t do that. It’s just how it always looks, sticking up at odd angles and still finding a way to curl around his ears. He’s as thin as Mike is strong, a mere wisp of a man, but Mike knows it’s a bit of a façade. There’s steel buried in those thin bones, in those spindly fingers. Sean doesn’t take shit from anyone, not that he has to. Not really, not in Amorea. But if he did, any person foolish enough to try would be cut to ribbons on that razor-sharp tongue. His bright green eyes would flash, the curve of his jaw set. He isn’t an angry person. Quite the opposite, really. But Sean Mellgard doesn’t allow anyone to walk over him and doesn’t have time for bullshit, least of all Mike’s. He tells him as much whenever Mike starts to get dour and broody, as he sometimes does.
He’s handsome, truly. Maybe the most handsome man Mike’s ever seen. He often finds himself staring at Sean for no reason at all, thinking to himself how that could be his, if only he would ask. It causes his heart to thump erratically in his chest, his breath to hitch just the slightest bit. And he could. He really, really could. Just ask. That’s it. But there’s something about it, something about this slow burn between the two of them that he thinks is necessary. He could push if he wanted to, push and take, but he thinks it’s better this way. Slow and steady before it consumes him.
Because there is no question about it. It will consume him completely and fully. It has only ever been Sean. It will only ever be Sean. There are times when he doesn’t understand, times when he can’t believe that he could have something so precious. But then Sean will get that look on his face, that look like he knows what Mike is thinking, knows that Mike’s being ridiculous in his own head, and will tell him to stop, to get over himself.
Mike loves him, more than he could ever say or show. But he’s not ready for that part of it. At least not yet.
And now’s not the time for it anyway. Because Sean is ill and breathing those measured breaths.
Mike waits.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
Sean says, “Hey there, big guy,” without opening his eyes, because he knows who it is. He always does.
“Hey,” Mike says softly.
Sean smiles, just a gentle curve. “One of those days,” he says.
“You okay earlier?” Mike asks. He hadn’t heard the strain in Sean’s voice when they spoke on the phone.
“Yeah. Just hit a little later on. You know how it is.”
He does. Maybe better than anyone. “You take your Ercaf?” Ergotamine tartrate, a new drug Doc had prescribed to him. Said it was the latest thing.
Sean shrugs. “Couple of hours ago. Takes a bit. It’s getting there. Not as bad as it sometimes is.”
“Good,” Mike says. He doesn’t like it when Sean hurts.
The smile widens just a tad as he opens his eyes. They’re not bloodshot, which is a good sign. It means Sean is being truthful about how bad it was. “Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he says. “We missed you this morning.”
“We?” Mike asks.
Sean says, “Yeah,” like it’s their joke, like it’s just between the two of them.
Mike shakes his head, because he knows Sean is trying to distract him. He steps around the desk until he’s standing beside Sean. Se
an only tilts his head back again and arches an eyebrow up at him, but Mike can hear him in his head, saying, Whatcha gonna do, big guy? He tries not to think about just how much he hears Sean in his head, because that’s just ridiculous and sentimental, and everyone knows Mike doesn’t do sentimental. Well, most everyone thinks that. Sean knows different, much to Mike’s dismay.
Mike raises his hands until his fingers are curled into Sean’s short hair, pressing gently against his scalp. He begins to massage, increasing the pressure as his fingers move over Sean’s head.
Sean groans, low and short, slumping down in the chair, eyes fluttering shut. Mike doesn’t know how much this helps, but Sean says, “Magic hands, Mike, I swear you’ve just got magic hands,” and he thinks maybe just the touching is enough. It’s something he rarely allows himself to do, touching Sean, because he’s worried that if he ever starts with any regularity, he won’t be able to stop.
Because touching Sean is nice. The weight of him, the heat of his skin, his scalp slightly oily from the smoke and the scent of the diner. Mike doesn’t care about stuff like that. He wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
Sean lets this go on for a few minutes more, but then sits up, forcing Mike to drop his hands. “That’s real good,” he says, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but Sean does have a bit more color to his cheeks and doesn’t look as peaked as he did when Mike first walked in.
“You should go back to Doc,” Mike said, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands now that he’s not touching Sean. He drops them to his sides and feels slightly awkward because of it. “See if there’s anything else he can do.”
Sean rolls his eyes. “He’ll just want to put me in some contraption that looks like one of those cheesy science fiction pictures you love so much. Where the aliens enslave mankind and make them wear a motorcycle helmet covered in wire and glitter.”