Words

by John Inman

  Their laughter waned, and the two sat quietly for a minute, still stuffed, lethargically eyeing the other diners around them, absorbing the restaurant’s tranquil ambience. In the midst of their easy silence, Logan discreetly waved for the waiter to bring two more ales. After they were served and the empty glasses taken away, Logan was surprised when Milo stretched his arm across the table and laid his hand over his.

  He sat speechless, waiting to hear what Milo would say. When Milo finally spoke, Logan knew he had been carefully choosing his words. He spoke them so softly, Logan had to lean in to hear.

  “You’ve been on your own for a year, then,” Milo said, his eyes gentle. “That must have been a hard adjustment for you.”

  “You lost a lover too,” Logan said. “You know how it feels.”

  “No,” Milo said. “My lover left because we both wanted out of the relationship, not because he died. There’s a big difference.”

  It took Logan a moment to decide if this was a subject he wished to discuss. After all, he barely knew Milo. They had just met. But still, there was such an open, caring look in Milo’s gaze, Logan knew it wasn’t for any of the wrong reasons that Milo had broached the subject. He wasn’t prying. He was truly interested.

  Logan sipped at his beer, then wiped a splash of foam from his lip with his thumb. “Do you really want to talk about this?”

  Milo shrugged, looking a little guilty, but determined too. “I’d like to know how you survived. It couldn’t have been easy. I—I was just wondering how you came out of it still maintaining your core of goodness.”

  Logan stared in amused amazement. “My core of goodness? Is that what you said?”

  A lazy smile twisted Milo’s mouth, but the stubborn tilt of his head told Logan he wasn’t going to be deterred. “Yes. You have one, you know. It’s like an aura that shimmers around you. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone whose goodness defines them as much as yours does.”

  “Jesus.” Logan laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”

  Milo snickered, but his gaze remained obdurate. “If you don’t want to talk about it, tell me. But I think maybe you do. I think maybe you need to talk about it.”

  “Why?” Logan asked. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I would,” Milo said simply.

  Logan stared at the open expression on Milo’s face, at the plump line of his lips, moistened with beer, at his blondish curly streaks still tousled by the wind. He noticed for the first time that Milo’s earlobe was pierced, but he wore no earring. Logan wondered why.

  Logan heard himself speaking before he knew the words were coming. Before he heard them tumbling out. “The first few months were terrible,” he said. “But people can survive anything when they have to.”

  “Can they?” Milo asked kindly.

  “Yes,” Logan answered without hesitation. “If you want to survive at all. After a while, time begins to heal you. I’m all right now, but like I said, the first few months were… tough. I’d never lost anyone I had been involved with before. I’d never lost… a lover.”

  “I’d like to see a picture of him. You must have one on you.”

  Logan blinked in surprise, as if wondering how Milo could know such a thing. In a daze, Logan reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Flipping through it, he extracted a small snapshot, a little beat-up and wrinkled around the edges. He handed it over.

  Logan watched as Milo held the photo close to the candle burning on the table so he could see it in the restaurant’s dim light. It was Logan’s favorite picture of Jerry, taken on their first Christmas together. He was sitting at the foot of their Christmas tree in a white terry cloth robe, holding a cup of coffee, smiling up at the camera, his cheeks still rosy because they had only made love moments before. On pins and needles, Logan waited at the edge of his seat to see what Milo would say about it. But when he finished, he handed the photo back to Logan and sat back in his chair to take another sip of beer.

  Only after he had patted his lips dry with his napkin did Milo say, “He was beautiful.”

  And those three simple words stung Logan so deeply that he felt tears rising in his eyes.

  “He was,” he said, looking at the picture himself while his vision blurred and that old familiar ache settled in his chest. “It’s a funny thing,” he said, lifting his eyes to Milo’s yet again. “No one has ever loved me as much as Jerry did. I don’t think anyone ever will again.”

  Milo kindly shook his head. “You can’t know that.”

  “No,” Logan said. “But I feel it. Sometimes true happiness only comes along once in a lifetime. I think Jerry was mine. In fact, I know he was.”

  For the second time that night, Milo reached across the table and rested his fingertips on the back of Logan’s hand. “Sometimes we don’t know everything we think we know,” Milo softly said.

  To which Logan dragged a smile to his lips. “That sentence sucked. Thank God you write better than you talk.”

  Milo laughed, withdrawing his hand. He studied Logan’s face for a long moment. “You must be exhausted,” he said. “Would you like to walk home, or would you rather I flag a cab?”

  “I’d like to walk,” Logan said.

  Five minutes later, the bill paid and the evening breeze once again blowing through their hair, they strolled along the cobblestone path beside the water, going back the way they had come, heading for the city streets.

  The silence that followed them along was an undemanding one. It held no embarrassments or accusations; it seemed to fit with the stars overhead and the lazy way their arms sometimes brushed together as they walked.

  They strode along up the hill away from downtown toward Hillcrest where Logan’s apartment was located and where Milo had parked his car. When they broke the silence to speak, they only spoke of inconsequential things. About the trill of a bird they passed, singing a night song from the bushes at the edge of the sidewalk. About the way the air had cooled as the night deepened. About the delicate shape of the fingernail moon.

  When Logan’s apartment building came into sight and Milo led him up the walk to his front door, Milo said, “We’re friends now, Logan. I expect us to keep in touch.”

  “Yes,” Logan said, moved by the simplicity of Milo’s words. “So do I.”

  On Logan’s stoop, Milo turned and asked softly, “Can I kiss you good night?”

  Not trusting himself to speak, Logan simply nodded.

  Raising up on tiptoe, Milo laid his hands at Logan’s hips and gently touched his lips to Logan’s mouth. Logan closed his eyes at the sweetness of it, his own hands moving, unbidden by him, to draw Milo close.

  Slowly easing away from the kiss, Milo lowered himself from tiptoe and gazed up into Logan’s face.

  “Thank you,” he said softly, and he turned and walked away.

  Logan stood on his doorstep watching Milo go, not bothering to fish in his pocket for his key until Milo had turned the corner and disappeared from view.

  Only then did Logan quietly say, “Thank you.”

  Chapter Five

  WHAT A shithole.

  The motel stood at the side of a blacktopped road in the middle of nowhere. The road had once been an honest-to-God state-sanctioned two-lane highway with a designated number and everything. Thanks to an eight-lane interstate constructed several miles over and about twenty years back, it was now reduced to little more than a nameless, potholed macadam cow path meandering through the winter-seared Indiana backcountry.

  The Gateway Inn, once a popular low-budget stopover for travelers hastening between Ohio and Illinois, had only survived the transition by becoming even more low-budget. The single renovation that heralded the motel’s transition downward from semirespectable to downright dodgy came when the word Gateway on the sign had been painted over with a bold streak of black paint. Now the place was simply known as the Blackslash Inn. It was the preferred go-to joint among the local high schoolers for a long tradition of first fucks, a
venue for extramarital affairs perpetrated by their parents, an option for gay hookups between two farmers where they could blow each other in an actual bed instead of a hayloft without their wives wandering in to spoil the moment, and a cozy place where addicts could relax and gobble up the latest designer drugs without conking out and freezing to death on some back road in a parked car.

  The person in unit 6 knew all about the Blackslash Inn, having researched the establishment thoroughly. But no amount of research could have prepared anyone for just how seedy the place really was. For one thing, it would have been physically impossible to find a square inch of flat space anywhere in the tiny room that hadn’t been scorched by a burning cigarette. Toilet seat, dresser top, nightstand, fake bathroom marble encircling a rust-stained sink—they were all scarred at one time or another by a forgotten Lucky Strike or a hand-rolled joint left to smolder on the furnishings.

  The carpet was so threadbare as to be worn through in places all the way down to the concrete. The single window was painted shut. The wall heater barely worked. A hint of long-forgotten vomit scented the air. On the grungy floor behind the commode, the traveler spotted a used condom. In the nightstand drawer beside the Bible, which was the only thing in the room that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the day it rolled off the press, a discarded syringe rested. The bedspread boasted stains even a serial killer—and who should know better?—would find disgusting. The traveler, on the one night spent in the place, slept sitting up in a chair to avoid either bedbugs or scabies—or quite possibly some Hoosier-borne strain of flesh-eating bacteria that would nibble the meat off one’s bones before the sun rose in the morning. Although truthfully, the sun had been absent for days. Maybe in winter it avoided Indiana like the plague. If so, it certainly couldn’t be blamed.

  Yes, it was easy to conclude that this little section of Indiana was the asshole of the world. And nothing had happened to the traveler in the last twenty-four hours to alter that opinion.

  All this made it much more amazing that a fairly well-established book reviewer actually resided in the area. Only in the age of the World Wide Web could a rube who had a basic understanding of English and was literate enough to read a book now and then find it possible to carve out a name for himself as a literary critic. The ramshackle farmhouse this so-called critic lived in was twenty miles down a blacktop road, set back at the end of a rutted dirt lane that wove its way through a century-old forest of chestnuts and oaks and spindly little sassafras trees, the sweet scent of which one could smell on the brittle air even in the dead of winter. Those woods were currently barren and leafless, and as the locals might say while they chewed on a stick of hay and spit tobaccy juice into the wind, colder than the balls on a brass monkey. The traveler had scoped the farmhouse out the day before. Already wearing a woolen ski mask donned for the upcoming adventure, the guest in unit 6 gathered a few belongings from the crappy motel room and prepared to depart. A quick stop at the book reviewer’s homestead to sort a few things out, and then back to the real world. Thank Christ.

  The traveler peered through the motel room’s filthy front window. The unit was on the ground floor because all the units at the Blackslash Inn were on the ground floor. Sort of like the Bates Motel, if one could make a literary reference. Well, no. Actually the Bates Motel was the Waldorf compared to this dump. There were no other cars in the gravel lot. Apparently the weather was too cold even for the lowest of the low to come out and indulge their fantasies among the fleas and bedbugs. It was starting to snow again too, the traveler noticed, so it might be wise to get this show on the road. If a blizzard whipped through, it might make that winding, rutted lane leading up to the old farmhouse impassable. And wouldn’t that be a bummer. Ruin the whole trip, it would. Yes, indeedy. For a moment, while leaning to toss a bag into the back of a rented Taurus, the traveler was tempted to duck into the motel office and stick an ice pick in the proprietor’s neck, just for shits and giggles. But no. This was a mission. Important stuff needed doing. The serious act of righting wrongs should not be belittled by a recreational tangent, no matter how enjoyable it might be. If fun were required, one could go to Disneyland and visit Mickey.

  Besides, the traveler had another use planned for the ice pick currently resting in a coat pocket.

  After ducking out of the wind and quickly slamming the car door shut, the driver, with fingers already numbed by the cold, twisted the key in the ignition. If there was one thing to be said for this rental car, which reeked of exhaust fumes and pinged rather alarmingly when it topped sixty miles an hour, it did appear to be acclimated to cold weather. Tonight, even with the temperature dipping to eight degrees above zero, it started right up, just as it had the first time the traveler had turned the key at the Avis lot back at Indy International. Once the heater was set to high, the driver tucked frozen fingers into leather gloves and then adjusted the eye holes in the ski mask to offer a clear line of sight. With those things out of the way, the driver slipped the Taurus into Drive, and the car began crunching its way across the gravel parking lot. As the tires met blacktop, the traveler turned and headed east.

  The road was empty. Humming an ABBA tune—being fond of the oldies—the driver steered with one hand and dipped into a bag of candy corn with the other. Almost immediately the snow began to fall with a little more determination. The flakes got fat and fluffy and were really quite pretty as they came spinning out of the darkness to ricochet off the windshield. When the flakes began to accumulate, the driver activated the wipers to sweep them back out into the night and send them on their way.

  The road beneath the Taurus’s wheels began to whiten too, but the car came with a good set of snow tires, so there was no need to worry about it. The Avis agent had said there were snow chains in the trunk as well, although they had yet to be needed.

  While nibbling on the candy corn, the driver’s mind meandered where it chose. That was the good thing about being alone. No one barged into your headspace, interrupting your thoughts.

  It would be good when winter moved into spring. These cold-weather jobs were frankly uncomfortable. To put it literarily, this “winter of my discontent” bullshit was a wearying endeavor. It would be nice to feel the sun again, to hear the drone of insects, smell the scent of green grass and warm ocean breezes, hear a fucking bird tweet now and then.

  Thank God the traveler would soon be heading for the West Coast. It was familiar territory, the West Coast. San Francisco, LA, San Diego. All of them felt like home, and one of them actually was. Already a string of calls needed to be made there. Oh yes, a multitude of wrongs waited to be righted under the California sun. It seemed that cruelty positively flourished there. The traveler wondered why. Was it the very air of creativity that pervaded the California mindset, convincing everyone of their own artistic superiority? Hollywood might have something to do with that. The Dream Factory, Oscars, countless publishing houses, recording empires, the endless competition to be the greatest, the boldest, the most talented, the most popular, the most beautiful, the biggest seller.

  For every movie or song or book, a story must be told, words must be written. And for every story, a critic must step forward to either praise it or rip it to shreds. The process was inescapable. Among the critics, there were always those who tore at the heart of the one with the real talent, the one with the creative spark to string the words together to begin with. Did they do it out of jealousy? Did they do it because they had failed at the very thing they were now ridiculing? What was their guiding principal? Was it simply to belittle what they themselves were incapable of accomplishing?

  The more the lean traveler thought about it, the more tightly gloved fingers gripped the steering wheel. Humming faded away to silence, and eyes burned through the ski mask into the headlight-pierced darkness ahead. The driver’s grip on the steering wheel relaxed to relieve aching arms. Blinking back to the present, the traveler saw that the snow had increased, as had the icy wind. It buffeted the car now. The h
eater was going full blast, trying desperately to keep ahead of the cold. Swaths of white flakes slapped the windshield like countless little suicide bombers, smashing themselves to death on the glass, only to be swept aside by the wipers to make room for the next volley.

  The blacktop road was no longer black. Under the glare of headlights, it shone a startling white. The new snow was a couple of inches deep already. Pristine, with nary an automobile track to mar its alabaster perfection. Clearly this car was the first to travel on it since the latest flurries began.

  The driver leaned closer to the windshield, peering out now more intently, searching for the cutoff to the lane that veered off into the trees where the prey sat waiting without the vaguest idea what was about to happen to him. Perhaps he was at his desk, penning another steely review, smiling to himself at how artfully his cruel words fell across the page, how clever his readers would think him to see how adeptly he could mock. How remorselessly he could demean. The traveler wondered what the man would look like. An exhaustive online search had yielded his address, but there had been no photographs available. Merely a long string of biting reviews on his own personal blog and scattered through Amazon’s book section, where the damage could be even more devastating to writers’ sales. It seemed BooksOnWheels—for that was what he called himself—had a true gift for being cruel. He had made a name for himself by being snarky and actually pretty amusing with his biting, crushing wit, assuming of course that you weren’t the one it was aimed at.

  The reviewer’s real name was Edgar Price, the lean figure had learned. It was a nice name. It would look good on a tombstone. And at that thought, the traveler finally smiled.

  Just past the rise of a low hill, the turnoff appeared. Flashing by as suddenly as it did in the beam of headlights, it surprised the driver into applying the brakes a bit too hard, which sent the Taurus skidding. Successfully spinning the steering wheel in the opposite direction to correct the slide, the traveler breathed a sigh of relief when the car bumped to a stop with its back wheels off the macadam. Since the ground was frozen solid, and since there was no other traffic coming in either direction, the tires gripped the verge at a tap of the gas pedal. It carried the car safely across the empty road and onto the long potholed lane leading into the trees. The traveler drove slowly and carefully because the frozen potholes on the rutted path were really quite atrocious. The last thing the driver needed was to puncture the oil pan or break an axle. Especially as the car entered a forest of winter-stripped trees, which could easily send the cold plunging another ten degrees. Some of the old trees stretched their naked arms across the rustic lane from either side as if to hold hands overhead. In a warmer month, with greenery involved, it might be quite pretty. Of course, one would still have those fucking potholes to contend with.