Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  After a quick detour to the fridge, North entered the living room with an armful of beers. His father sat where he always sat; tonight, he was watching an old movie. North recognized Jimmy Stewart, and the setting looked like somewhere in California. North sat in the folding chair he had dragged in front of the TV, still in its place. He cracked open a beer, handed it to his father, and opened one of his own.

  “Is that Kim Novak?” North asked.

  His father grunted an assent.

  North tipped the beer back and chugged it. He settled the empty on the TV tray and opened the next one.

  “Vertigo,” his father said and then took a drink of his own beer.

  North went slower on the next one. His chin still stung like shit.

  “That piece of shit hit you?” David McKinney asked, his eyes still locked on Kim Novak.

  Touching the back of his hand to the split skin, North shook his head. But it was bad enough, hearing the question, and he pounded the rest of the beer back and stood.

  “Get the first aid kit from the hall closet,” his father said.

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “Little bit late.”

  So he brought back more beers and an ancient first aid kit, the white plastic yellowed with age. David McKinney stood, struggling for a moment to steady himself on his walker. The cannula running to his nose slipped, and he had to adjust that, and then he had to drag himself to stand next to North’s chair, his oxygen tank clanking against one leg of the walker.

  “Let’s just watch the movie.”

  North’s father only grunted and balanced the first aid kit on the walker’s frame. He dug through the contents, eventually emerging with a familiar white and green bottle, cotton balls, a flattened tube, and a bandage. He didn’t say anything; he just tugged on the back of North’s hair, and North tilted his head to present his chin. A familiar, stinging spray came first, and North gritted his teeth. Then cool numbness came in.

  “Bactine?”

  A grunt.

  “They don’t even make that stuff anymore. Why do you still have it?”

  “They make it. I saw it at CVS last week.” His father’s hands shook as he dabbed at the cut with the cotton balls. Then a calloused finger spread ointment, and David McKinney pressed the bandage into place. “Doesn’t need stitches.”

  “Thanks.”

  Another grunt, and then the plastic first aid kit dropped into North’s lap. David McKinney didn’t move, though. He loomed over North, staring down at him.

  “We got in a fight,” North said, the way he’d had to confess taking twenty bucks out of his mom’s purse once, only once, when he was nine.

  A sound of disgust worked in his father’s throat. “You’re always fighting. What’s one more fight?”

  “It was bad.”

  “I don’t want to hear about you fighting with your boyfriend. If I wanted to hear shit like that, I’d turn on those fucking queers on TV and just listen all day.”

  North’s eyes stung; he closed them for a second, drew in a breath clotted with cigar smoke, and shook himself. Every time. Every damn time. “I better go home.”

  “Sit your ass down.”

  Surprise, more than anything else, kept North in his seat. He looked up, and he saw fury working its way under David McKinney’s wasted features and sallow skin.

  “What—”

  “Uncle Ronnie asked you for one thing, North. One simple thing. And he tells me you’re avoiding him. He tells me you’re taking too long. He says you might even be trying to shitcan him. Is that the truth?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy.”

  “It’s not true. He wants me to find someone. It’s barely been a day. I’ll find him; I just need time.”

  “Since when do you need more than a day to find someone? What that man has done for you, you ought to be working yourself to the bone to do whatever he asks. Instead, you prance around with that little—”

  North was out of his seat before he realized he was standing, his face right up in his father’s. “Say one thing about Shaw. Say it.”

  David McKinney was trembling. The rage flush under his jaundiced skin made him look cartoonish. “I put up with a lot from you, North. All the shit you’ve pulled over the years. I held my head up when every man I knew laughed at me because of you. I put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food in your stomach, while you made me a joke. I won’t put up with this. Not after everything Ronnie’s done—”

  “Fuck Ronnie,” North said, his chest heaving, the two beers oiling the cogs so that some sort of heavy gearwork, usually frozen inside him, turned easily. “Fuck you. Fuck both of you.” He pushed past his father, heading for the porch.

  “Get your ass back here. Get back here this minute, North. I swear to Christ I’ll—”

  The screen door slammed shut, cutting off the rest. North was practically jogging as he hurried toward the GTO. He sat in the driver’s seat, the dash dark, jangling the keys in one hand. He was shaking, he realized. He wanted his father to come out. He wanted the fight to keep going. Then he could scream every awful thing he’d ever thought at his father, the way he had at Shaw. The jangle of the keys got louder. The bounce-crash against his hand was starting to hurt, and he had to keep blinking his eyes clear.

  David McKinney didn’t come out of the house, and after ten minutes, North started the car. He couldn’t go home. The thought of walking those dark rooms, of lying in the stillness, of the creaks and rumble of the building settling around him, made pressure build in his chest. Like being buried alive, that’s what it would be. He drove a few miles, the GTO jerky, almost unresponsive under his hands, and sat under the bright curtain of a security light outside a ZX gas station.

  Then he remembered Peter and Paul’s anniversary party, and he wiped his eyes and started laughing. Why the fuck was he being such a downer? Why the fuck was he being so miserable? Why couldn’t he just go out and have fun? He bought two six packs of 4 Hands Single Speed—something pale, something he thought Peter and Paul would like—and he got back in the car, and now the GTO seemed to drive just fine, and the city blurred, became a long, dark tunnel streaked with orange light, and North thought he was going to have fun.

  Chapter 31

  PETER AND PAUL lived on the top floor of a Clayton condo building. Not in a condo, North thought. He stood at the front desk, listening as the security guard called up because North wasn’t on the list. Not in a condo. They had the whole floor, and they looked out at the rest of the city like it was presents on Christmas, waiting for them to open it. Tucker came from money like that. Shaw came from money like that.

  North had opened the 4 Hands in the car—stupid, but sometimes, a guy does what he’s got to do—and now the security guard was doing this funny trick with the phone where he seemed to be sliding along the horizontal plane of North’s vision, and then North would blink and grab the particleboard lip of the desk and the guard would snap back into place.

  “You can go up now, Mr. McKinney,” the guard said. He was young and black. He had a critical edition of Wagner’s Ring cycle open on the desk, AirPods set next to it.

  North pointed to the book and gave a double thumbs up. “Twilight of the Gods,” he said.

  The guard grinned; North thought, distantly, that he probably had to deal with a dozen drunk assholes every night. “That’s right.”

  “I’m going to the top.”

  “That’s right, sir. Top floor.”

  “Top floor,” North shouted like a game show announcer.

  The kid—he was really just a kid—lost some of his grin.

  “It all comes crumbling down,” North said, still shouting as he made his way to the elevator. “Twilight of the Gods!”

  As the elevator rolled up smoothly, and the force felt liquid in North’s knees, he leaned against the support rail and thought maybe the kid would call security. But th
e kid was security. Could security call security? The thought made him laugh so hard that he slipped off the rail and landed on his ass, and then he just laughed harder.

  He’d been to Peter and Paul’s place before, forgotten—and now, as the door slid open—remembered that the elevator came straight to their apartment: no hallway, nothing. Just the elevator sliding open, and boom, you were in the foyer. The sounds of a party washed over North: laughter, conversation, the slow thump of the Lumineers, the clink of glasses. He pulled himself to his feet, collected the remaining bottles of 4 Hands—he thought vaguely that he had bought two six packs, but now he carried only one—and stepped out into the foyer. Peter was already there, and Paul emerged from the next room a moment later.

  They looked alike, the way so many couples do after years together. The way so many gay couples, especially, do. Both tall, both thin—not wiry with hidden muscle like Shaw, but thin from vegan diets and long hours at the computer. Both with dark hair in a side part, already snowed in at the temples. Peter wore a rust-colored sweater over a button-up. Paul wore navy.

  “North, hey,” Peter said.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Paul said.

  They stood side by side. They looked like they might be trying to do the same trick as the guard, sliding away, but North blinked and they got back into place. Standing like that, shoulder to shoulder, they looked like the Silicon Valley version of a shield wall.

  “What?” North said. “You don’t want me here?”

  “No, no,” Paul said.

  “No, no, no,” Peter said.

  “It’s just—you told us you and Shaw weren’t coming. And we’d already given the caterer a number, and we thought we could invite a few more people.”

  “Who?” The whole top floor of this building seemed like it was built at an angle; North had to catch himself on the wall, and he didn’t miss the look that Peter and Paul shared. “Who’d you—who’d you invite?”

  “North, where’s Shaw?”

  “Are you ok? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “Shaw?” North said.

  “Yeah, where’s Shaw?”

  “You know, Shaw could buy a place like this.”

  Another shared look. “Yeah,” Peter said. “That’d be fun.”

  “We could be neighbors,” Paul said.

  “He could. And he’d . . . and he wouldn’t buy a shitty one with the floor all janky.” North stumbled again; he caught something on the wall to keep himself upright, and it slid away from him. He heard it crash when it hit the floor.

  Paul covered his eyes and shook his head.

  “It’s ok,” Peter said, more to Paul than to North.

  “It’s not ok. It’s our anniversary, Peter. It’s not ok.”

  “Hey,” North said. “Hey, I don’t want to—I don’t want to be here if I’m not wanted.”

  “I think you should go.” Peter threw a glance over his shoulder and then looked back at North, his cheeks red. “I think it would be better—”

  “Who is it?” North said. He decided to brave the tricky floor, and he shoved off from the wall and launched himself toward them. He met some slight resistance—he thought maybe Paul was trying to grab his shirt—and then he stumbled past them and into the party proper. He scanned the crowd. Everybody kept trying that same trick, sliding away when he didn’t try hard enough to focus his eyes. Lots of bad dye jobs. Lots of press-on nails. Lots of purses and dresses and suits that came from boutiques. More money in one room, with all those press-on nails, than in all of Lindenwood Park.

  Tucker was out on the balcony, a glass in one hand. Someone was rubbing his back.

  “North, let’s get you some water and a place to lie down,” Peter said, trying to keep his hold on North’s elbow. “We’ve got a guest room—”

  “I want him out of here, Peter,” Paul was shrieking. “It’s our anniversary, and I want him out.”

  North got free of Peter. He had a glimpse of Peter falling backward, of a series of thumps, glass breaking. He saw, more than he felt, shock ripple through the crowd. It was like tossing a stone into water; the ripples swam away from him, and now every eyelash extension in the whole room was turned toward him.

  “’Scuse me,” North said again and again, picking a path across that treacherous, slippery floor. He had to grab a woman’s arm to steady himself, and her gasp was thin and high like a scream. “You’ve got nice hair,” he told her. “Like a tiger’s.”

  When he got to the balcony, Tucker had turned around and was watching him approach. He drank something that flashed like gold. Scotch, North guessed. Peter and Paul’s good stuff. The man next to him had dark hair in a perfect quiff, and he was handsome in a bored, almost exhausted kind of way, as though even standing still were too much effort.

  “You still know how to make an entrance,” Tucker said. The bruises and cuts were all gone; no sign remained on his perfect face of the blows North had landed. “Paul sounds like he’s going to scream down the roof.”

  “Can a security guard call for security?” North asked, fighting a giggle.

  “They can call the police,” Tucker said, his blue eyes rolling.

  “Hi, Tuck.”

  “Hi.”

  “Tucker,” the exhaustedly beautiful man said, “who is this?”

  “This is my ex-husband. North, meet Micah. Micah, North.”

  “Is this your boyfriend?” North said.

  Tucker studied North. Then, without looking at Micah, Tucker passed him the glass of scotch. “Micah, give me a few minutes alone, please.”

  Micah’s eyes grew huge and wounded. He huffed a few breaths. He shuffled his feet. He was working his shoulders like he had a python under his jacket. Tucker didn’t even look at him, and after a few more moments of the routine, Micah huffed again, snatched the glass, and stomped into the party. Then they were alone, the September air running over North’s cheeks like a handful of ice, the smell of the scotch wafting on Tucker’s breaths, the smell of Tucker, of the cologne North had bought him for his birthday.

  “Dolce and Gabbana,” North said.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Tucker’s mouth. “You remember.” His eyes cut down. “Are you going to drink all those yourself?”

  “What? Oh. No.” North set the six pack at his feet. He hammered off the caps using the balcony rail, and he passed one to Tucker. Their hands touched, and it had been months, but the touch climbed the back of North’s neck, lifting the hairs one by one.

  “Cheers.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Cheers.” Glass clinked.

  They drank in silence. Below them, the city wasn’t the way North had imagined it from the lobby. It wasn’t glittery and bright like a Christmas present. Most of the city flickered on and off like bad circuitry. To the east, a long, dark hole opened where Forest Park broke the flow of the city. North looked down from the rail, and that was like a long, dark hole too. He leaned farther, the iron rail meeting him at the waist, becoming a fulcrum as he lifted his Red Wings from the balcony. The cold air on his cheeks made his eyes water. He could find that perfect tipping point, his whole weight balanced perfectly on the rail. When a push could send him in either direction.

  “Ok,” Tucker said, a hand on the small of North’s back, forcing him back onto the balcony. “How wasted are you?”

  “Pretty wasted.”

  “You want to fight?”

  “No.”

  “Are you mad I’m on a date?”

  “With who? That embryo holding your scotch?”

  Tucker’s laughter was bright and huge, echoing along the empty balcony. “Jesus, North. He’s not that young.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s out of college.”

  “How old is he?”

  Tucker leaned on the rail next to North, their shoulders touching. “Twenty-three,” he finally said, and he still had the good grace to blush. “He dances.”

&nbs
p; “Of course.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. You always did like dancers, though.”

  Tucker laughed again. Then he clinked the bottom of his bottle against North’s. “I didn’t think you’d ever talk to me again.”

  “I’m really, really drunk.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you, you know. What I did . . . I just mean, I’d deserve it if you never talked to me again.”

  “I like talking to you. This side of you.”

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever talked to like this,” Tucker whispered. He was closer now, the heat from his shoulder countering that rush of September air. “You’re the only person who could ever get me to talk like this. Be myself.” He was staring out into the darkness cut out of the city below them. “Christ, North, I fucked things up so bad.”

  “Did you . . .” Even drunk, even buried this deep, North couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. “Was it because I’m an asshole?”

  “What?”

  “I’m an asshole. I yell. I say horrible things.” The whole world felt like it was sliding again, like North’s feet couldn’t stay planted, and he struggled to breathe through the words. “I was so mean to him, Tuck. I said the worst things I could say. He keeps scaring me, and sometimes it hurts, and then I wanted him to be scared for a little. I wanted him to hurt. And that’s such a shitty thing to do.”

  “North.”

  “Because I’m a shitty person.”

  “North, come on.”

  “I am. He’s so kind. He’s so good. And I’m shit. I treat him like shit because I’m shit.”

  Tucker’s breathing had changed, but North could only notice it from a distance. His posture had changed too, the length of his body pressed against North’s, his breath like a cat’s tickling the side of North’s neck, one arm sliding around North’s waist. North put his head on his arms; the long, black drop swam beneath him. If he blinked, it looked like the ocean at the bottom of a cliff.

  “Why’d I do that to him, Tuck? You . . . what you did, was it because I’m always a piece of shit?”

  “You’re not a piece of shit, love.”