by Rick R. Reed
He cocked his head. I felt my teeth begin to chatter, joining in perfectly with my shivers.
“Yes. We have to get out of this water. Come with me, please. At my place, you can take a hot shower. I’ll get warm clothes for you. Ruth will give you kisses.” I glanced back at her, waiting and watching on the shore. She barked once, twice, as though in encouragement.
I would give him kisses.
Jack looked toward her and smiled. “Okay.” His teeth, I noticed, were also chattering.
We waded quickly back to shore. Ruth trotted over to sniff at us. I knew she was thinking “You crazy humans,” although she was much too considerate to voice it. Besides, no one knew about my dog’s superpower but me.
Once we stepped out of the freezing river, I hugged Jack—hard. I wanted to transfer all the warmth in my body to him. I wanted him to physically feel just how much I cared. We stood on the shore just like that for several moments, one clinging to the other, shaking, suffused with cold and heedless of the traffic rushing by us just above on River Road.
I pulled away but snatched up Jack’s hand in my own. “I’m not letting you walk away from me again,” I whispered. I tugged, afraid he wouldn’t follow, but he came along willingly.
My worrier mind thought: Crisis averted, but for how long?
It didn’t matter. All I had was right now. If anything good or bad was going to happen, it could only happen in the present. The future would have to take care of itself.
“Come on, before all three of us freeze to death out here.” Despite the warmth I’d experienced as I stepped outside with Ruth, I really feared serious physical consequences if we didn’t make haste to get dry and warm.
“C’mon. Now.” I squeezed Jack’s hand, then let go so I could lead him up the riverbank. When we got to the top, there was no traffic, so I dashed across the road, grateful Jack offered no resistance.
Once inside my apartment, I pushed him into the tiny bathroom. There was so much I wanted to say, but physical needs took precedence. “Get yourself in the shower,” I said. “And start the water off barely warm, almost cold, and gradually increase the heat.” I knew nothing about frostbite or other such matters, but it just appealed to my common sense that a gradual approach to heat would work best and be less of a shock to his system. I wanted Jack to feel warm and cared for. So very cared for…
He complied. I worried that he wasn’t saying anything and that he was in a kind of shock. But as I said, we needed to deal with the physical before we could even begin looking at the emotional.
Jack closed the door behind him, and for a moment I panicked. Was there anything in there he could harm himself with? Razor blades? Sleeping pills? No, no, the strongest thing I had in my bathroom was aspirin and a little Nyquil left over from a bout with the flu I’d had last winter. My razor was the cartridge type.
When I heard the hiss of the shower running and the slide of the glass door on the tub opening and closing, I breathed out a sigh of relief. Then I panicked about the glass shower doors.
Stop it! I told myself, moving away from being directly outside. Let the man warm up, clean up. It’ll be okay. This last thought I had very little confidence in, but sometimes you had no choice but to trust that the right thing would simply happen.
I opened my dresser drawers and began pulling out clothes for Jack to don when he came out of the bathroom. I tried to be confident he would come out. Act as though it’s real and it will be, I told myself. I gathered up sweatpants, a thick long-sleeved T-shirt, and a fleece-lined hoodie and piled them on the bed. I rummaged around some more, finding a pair of flannel boxers and some thick wool socks. They looked so tempting, I had a selfish urge to put them on myself.
Ruth barked at me, and I wondered if it was an admonishment.
Still, the crisis with Jack had temporarily set aside my own cold. I sat down on the bed next to the pile of clothes and hugged myself, still shivering. Finally I did a more useful thing, forcing myself up from the bed and toward the thermostat on the wall. I turned the heat up to eighty. Too hot? Maybe. But not for the situation at hand.
I quickly stripped out of my own wet clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. Ruth came over to sniff them. From the closet, I pulled out jeans and an old flannel shirt that was so faded its reds, blues, and yellows almost ran together. Putting the shirt on was like giving myself a hug. I slid into my fleece-lined bedroom slippers and then sat on the edge of the bed, listening for the hiss of the shower to stop.
It did. I could hear Jack in the tiny bathroom. I got up from the bed and moved over to the kitchenette to make tea. I filled my electric kettle and flipped the switch. I pulled out two mugs and a couple of tea bags of Earl Grey. I searched the cupboard for cookies and found my guilty pleasure—a box of gingersnaps. I hurriedly poured some onto a plate.
When Jack emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, I was on the couch, with the two steaming mugs and the plate of cookies before me. I suppressed an urge to laugh at myself, because tea and cookies seemed like such a feeble counter to a suicide attempt.
But what else could I do? Sometimes tea and cookies—along with the concern of a friend—could be just enough.
Couldn’t it?
Maybe not. But for now, this was all I had in my arsenal.
Jack looked down at the cookies and then at me. A glimmer of a smile crossed his features and then vanished, making me think of the sun appearing, then quickly being obscured by a cloud. My heart wrenched at the sight of him, half-naked. He was painfully thin and as white as the sink in my kitchen. His ribs stuck out, and his poor belly was almost concave. His limbs were matchsticks. He looked like someone who might be starving. No wonder Maisie had been willing to spend money she could ill afford to get some meat on her son’s bones. That really was love.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said, because he’d probably noticed my staring.
I gave him a smile. “I put out some dry clothes for you on the bed.” I pointed to the stack. I got up and made myself busy with the tea bags, removing and discarding them in the trash can under the kitchen sink so I was occupied while Jack dressed himself. By the time I turned around, he was fully clothed and sitting on the couch.
Ruth had hopped up and aligned herself alongside his hip and thigh. Jack had his hand on her head and was gently stroking and massaging. Ruth must have been enjoying the attention, because her eyes were already at half mast.
“She likes you.”
“What’s not to like?” Jack asked.
I thought for a moment and told him, “Nothing.”
We sat in the quiet for a long time, sipping our tea. Neither of us touched the cookies. Outside, the sun had risen, scaring away most of the clouds we’d started off the morning with. There were patches of blue that I tried to interpret as symbols for hope.
I’d stopped him from drowning himself in the river. What now?
Talk. Just talk to him. But more importantly, listen.
Was it really that simple? I found myself shrugging in response to my own unvoiced notion. It’s what you have now, I told myself.
My nurturing side began to bug me as we sat in silence, the sunlight streaming in in broad slants, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. The deep inner nurturer, the mom part, started to nag and poke me. You need to say something, to do something. If you don’t, he might just up and jump into the river again.
It was all up to me to save him. His life was literally in my hands.
Before calmer, more reasonable thoughts began to prevail, Jack solved my dilemma. His first words startled me.
“I remembered.”
Of course I knew what he referred to, but I needed clarity, to know for sure. “About that night?”
He nodded. “And I don’t mean our date. I mean what came after.”
I swallowed hard. I could feel something new had crept into the room, this atmosphere of tension. My muscles tightened, my shoulders rose, my teeth clenching.
I managed to get out, unsure if this was a good idea or not, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” he said softly. He sipped his tea. “But I think I should. And I think you should know what happened after we parted ways that night.” He shrugged. “Maybe you deserve to know. Maybe you have a right because you’re so linked to that wonderful and then awful night.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I failed to stop myself from asking.
“Time will tell.” He set down his cup, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. “Would you think it was weird if I asked you to get off the couch?”
I answered honestly. “Yeah. That’s kind of weird.”
He chuckled, and the sound made my heart lift. He explained, “It’s just that, I don’t know why, this might be easier if I’m not looking at you.”
I stood. “Where should I go?”
“You could lie on the bed. Or sit on the floor. Whatever.”
I moved to the bed and did as he asked, lying flat on my back. I drew a couple of pillows up under my head. I heard him moving around and chanced a quick peek. He was lying down on the couch, his face against its back, with Ruth sandwiched in between him and the couch. She didn’t seem to mind the coziness.
“That’s better,” he said.
Again there was silence, but not for nearly as long. Jack began to speak.
“I came back. That night? After we said good night and had that wonderful kiss? I came back. I had walked all the way down Pike, and I remember thinking, ‘You idiot. You just blew a chance to spend the night with this super hot and super sweet guy. What’s the point? Go for it!’”
Jack chuckled, and I warmed a bit at the memory, but there was a sense of dread growing in my gut.
“Of course, by the time I got back up to Miner, where we’d parted ways, you were long gone. I could have kicked myself.” He snorted again, but the laugh was bitter. “Little did I know that soon enough, someone else would take care of that for me.”
The room went quiet once more as Jack let what he’d just said sink in. A cloud passed over the sun and decided to stay. The room grew darker.
“So I turned back around, figuring I’d give you a call once I got back to my place, a booty call, if you will. I wasn’t about to let go. I wanted you. Even if you had to get up early the next day for a flight. I didn’t care. I was selfish.
“So that was my plan. I was oblivious, single-minded, and determined as I made my way home. I tried to ignore the snow and the cold winds off the Sound that got colder as I walked. By the time I got to my building, I was shivering. Kind of like how I was shivering when you dragged me out of the river just now.
“To shorten my suffering—or so I thought—I took a little shortcut through an alley behind my apartment building. I should never have done it.”
He stopped talking, just quit. The silence hung in the air for so long I wondered if he’d say any more. I had an idea of what had happened in that alley, but I knew he needed to tell someone, to bring it out of his head and get it exposed to light so he could finally, finally begin to heal. I stiffened a little when I could hear him crying. He tried to do it softly, like maybe he didn’t want me to hear. I respected that, and despite my urge to rush in with comforting words or a hug, I stayed quiet. I stayed put.
Eventually the sniffles slowed and then died. He picked up where he’d left off. “Do you remember when we kissed?”
“Oh yes,” I allowed myself to say. I closed my eyes for just a moment, savoring the memory. Even though it sounds like hyperbole, exaggeration, or just plain impossible, I could still taste him on my lips.
“A car went by us,” Jack said simply. But it was anything but simple.
I searched my memory, and at first nothing came, but then, almost unbidden, the image of that old beater cruising by and someone sticking his head out of the window to call us fags emerged. I felt cold, as though the river water I’d just been in was somehow now inside me, filling me up.
“You remember?”
“Yes,” I said softly, feeling everything inside me tighten.
“They followed me down the hill, back up the hill. I guess they could have tailed you instead, but for whatever reason, I was their target that night.
“When I stepped into the alley, they were there. Waiting. The car was shut off. Otherwise I might have heard its damaged muffler. They simply stood there, in the dark, with the snow coming down. They were barely visible.
“My rational mind told me not to worry. Can you believe that? I told myself that they couldn’t be there for me, right? I was just being paranoid. So, although the fight-or-flee part of my brain urged me to flee in that instant when I saw the three of them, I didn’t. Logic, or propriety, or whatever you want to call it, took over. It told me I’d just look stupid if I turned tail and ran.
“Besides, the service door at the back of my building was only a few steps away. I could just hurry by them and be inside. Ten seconds? Fifteen?
“That was my plan. And my folly. Nobody believes something horrible can happen to them, not really, until it does.
“As I hurried by them, trying not to make eye contact, trying to pretend, really, that they weren’t even there, one of them grabbed my arm.”
Jack stopped again, and I wondered if the memory was too horrible. I opened my mouth to tell him he didn’t need to go on. We could save the rest of the story for later or even for someone else, like a therapist, if he wanted.
I didn’t want him to feel the hurt I knew was coming.
But he went on before I could speak. “You know what the eeriest thing was about the whole attack?”
Even though Jack couldn’t see me, I shook my head. A tear escaped from the corner of my eye and rolled down my face.
“The eerie thing was that they never spoke. Not to me. Not to each other. Not a word. They didn’t call me sweetheart, a fag, a queer, none of the slurs you might expect. One of them just shoved me against a wall face first. My cheek got scraped, and I remember thinking that’s gonna look bad. Then the three of them were on me. Punching, kicking. One even bit the arm I raised to deflect some of the blows. I still have the scar. Can you imagine? I was wearing a heavy wool coat, a sweater, and his teeth clamped down so hard—”
His voice broke, and his breathing quickened. I wanted to beg him to stop, to tell him the pain was long ago.
Except it wasn’t.
It was now.
“It was over,” Jack said, “in seconds. I mean, really, seconds. They beat the shit out of me until I was on the dirty alley bricks, where they could kick me more easily. What I don’t remember is when it ended or them going away. I wish I could. I wish I could see them deciding to leave me alone, but I can’t. Maybe someone came along and scared them off. Maybe, and I think this is probably true, they thought I was dead. What I doubt is that they decided to show me some mercy. No, I know they think what they gave me was exactly what I deserved. And if I died from their blows?” Jack sighed. “One less fag in the world. No loss.
“The next thing I remember is waking up to sunlight and snow. And pain. Such horrible, horrible pain. I didn’t know it then, of course, but ribs were broken. I had a concussion. Three of my fingers were fractured. I think that, maybe after I was out, they got something, maybe a tire iron, out of the car. The damage was so bad, it had to be more than fists and feet.
“I wanted to die. My mind was a blank, except for that hurt that was like another presence in the alley. I couldn’t move. I wanted to die.
“My neighbor, who had a pug just like Ruth, came out that morning and found me.”
He stopped. I didn’t question what I needed to do. I simply got up and crossed the room. I picked Ruth up and set her on the floor so I could push Jack closer to the back of the couch.
And then I lay down behind him, spoon style, my ass almost hanging off the couch. I wrapped my arms tightly around him, aligning the warmth of my whole body alongside the back of his. I whispered, “It’s over. It�
��s over. You’re here. And we’re here. Together.” I placed a gentle kiss on his earlobe and then buried my face in the nape of his neck.
We fell asleep like that. Me clutching Jack for dear life. Him sobbing into the couch cushions.
* * * *
The room had the wan light of dusk when we awakened. I woke to a close-up view of the fine hair on the back of Jack’s neck. I pushed closer to Jack, for the warmth exchanged between our two bodies. And we were very warm, probably due to the fact that I’d never bothered to turn the thermostat down.
Jack’s neck was shiny with sweat, but he was still asleep. He snored softly, and it reminded me of Ruth. I turned and saw her sitting near the door, glaring at me. There was a clock on the soffit above the sink, and I saw that it was almost five. We’d slept for hours, intertwined.
Jack, I knew, had to be exhausted. Giving voice to the memory that had literally shut him down for years had to have taken everything out of him. Heart, mind, body, and soul. I hoped his slumber was deep, soothing, and free of any of the awful images he’d just stirred up.
I slid quietly from the couch. Jack smacked his lips and drew his knees up to his chest. I waited by the couch, breathless, for him to wake, but he didn’t.
I hurriedly turned the thermostat down to seventy. I knew it would take a while for the oppressive and suffocating heat to dissipate, so I opened the door. As soon as I did, Ruth ran outside. It was okay. I occasionally let her out without a leash. As long as I stood on the porch and watched her, she seemed to have no interest in running out onto the road or exploring anywhere farther than the confines of our little kingdom here by the Ohio.
Like Dorothy, Ruth knew her heart’s desire extended no farther than her own backyard. I watched her dash down the stairs and then squat quickly at the bottom to pee. She wandered over to the yew bushes bordering Daisy’s front porch and sniffed and then bolted back up the stairs.
I stayed out even though Ruth had gone back inside. “Don’t wake him up,” I whispered, certain she would understand. And she did. She simply went to the fleece-covered dog bed I had at the foot of my own bed and curled up. Normally she’d have bugged me for her supper, but I believe she sensed that today was no ordinary day.