Q*pid

by Xavier Mayne

  Fox nodded. “It was really good. Thank you.”

  “It’s nice to have someone to cook for.”

  “As long as your furniture can take it. I recall something about how I’m supposed to demolish your bed now?” Fox grinned slyly.

  “Or, how about we go into the other room and crack open that bootleg bourbon you brought?”

  “Oh, so now I don’t even get to see your bed?”

  Drew shook his head. “You are a very strange man.”

  “Don’t forget, we’re the same. Scientifically speaking, of course.”

  “Then we each get half the bottle,” Drew said, plucking the bourbon out of the shopping bag. He reached up for glasses.

  “Nah, forget the glasses,” Fox said. “Pouring it over and over again would only make us feel like drunks.”

  Drew considered the bottle in his hand. “I guess proof this high would sterilize the bottle.” He looked up at Fox. “Though if we really are the same person, I guess it wouldn’t matter if we swap a little spit on the mouth of the bottle.”

  “My thought exactly, of course.” Fox stood, clearly none the worse for having had two beers and a half bottle of red wine. “Can I help you clean up first?”

  Drew picked up the stew pot and put it into the fridge. “Cleanup’s done,” he announced with a smile.

  “I admire the efficiency,” Fox said as he walked with Drew into the front room. He sat on the chair next to the sofa.

  Drew plopped himself down on the sofa, twisted the cork out of the bottle of bourbon, and took a sniff. “Ah, that’s the stuff.” He took a swig, nearly choked, then held the bottle out to Fox.

  Fox, who was no more than five feet away, apparently decided that was entirely too large a gap to bridge by reaching out, so he got up and sat next to Drew on the sofa. He took the bottle from him and took an equally large swig, which was met by an equally desperate cough. “Wow. That’s some strong stuff,” he said once he had swallowed and started breathing again. He handed the bottle back to Drew.

  THUMP.

  The noise, Fox thought, seemed to have come through the ceiling.

  Thump.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was not in bed.

  Where, then, was he?

  He sat up and looked around. This was not his condo. It was—

  Drew’s apartment. And he had been sprawled out on Drew’s couch. And, now that his eyes were starting to focus through the bourbon-induced fog, he discovered he had been sprawled out on Drew himself, who lay softly snoring on the same couch where Fox had been lying.

  Fuck.

  It had been a long, long time since Fox had drunk enough to end up passed out on someone’s couch. And he had never been so drunk that he had actually passed out on someone.

  Apparently drinking unlicensed bootleg hooch came with some unexpected side effects. Like a splitting headache and a dry mouth. Oh, and falling asleep literally on top of another guy.

  Fucking fuck.

  Fox got to his feet slowly so as not to wake Drew. He found his shoes—he had apparently kicked them off at some point, landing them under the coffee table—and stepped quietly to the door. He checked to be sure the door would lock when he closed it and slipped out, shutting it quietly but firmly behind him.

  He took a deep breath of the cool night air and tried to remember where he had left his car.

  Oh, that’s right. In the spot where Drew had posted that ridiculous, thoughtful sign. He walked around the side of the building to the parking area and found his car waiting for him, snugly under the cover of the carport. The lights inside gradually rose as he approached, and the door unlocked, which he found oddly comforting.

  Normally he enjoyed the moment of silence that descended when he shut the car door and could take a breath and revel in the well-insulated hush of precision engineering. Thanks to the high-proof bourbon, though, there was no peace here. His head pounded, his ears rang, tiny lights flashed at the margins of his vision—all reminders that he had gotten drunk like a frat boy and passed out on a buddy’s couch.

  No, you passed out on a buddy.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply the leather-scented air. “Get it together, man,” he scolded himself. He started the car, backed out of his parking space, and steered out onto the boulevard toward home.

  Rolling down the windows, he gulped at the passing air, hoping every time that the next breath would ease the tightness in his chest. But relief eluded him as he threaded through downtown. Desperate, he veered across two empty lanes to take an on-ramp for the freeway that ran directly out of the city. He needed space; he needed air; he needed to get away. The digital speedometer on the heads-up display ticked up steadily until it hit three digits.

  A half hour later, the highway spooled out before and behind him into the darkness. All around him was a barren expanse of rural emptiness. The next town was more than twenty miles away, so he knew the tiny, winding road he took off the highway would not lead him anywhere but to the loneliness of the night.

  He twisted and turned through a landscape that only existed inside the glare of his headlights, springing into being under the bright white lights and passing back into nothingness as they looked into the next curve. Fox gripped the steering wheel tightly, his torso pushing back against the g-forces that threatened to toss him from his seat, first one way and then the other. Finally the road leveled out, and he was among fields empty save the occasional gathering of large, old trees.

  He was alone.

  He took his foot off the accelerator and let the car coast for a while, then pulled off the road when his speed had dropped to a walking pace. When the purr of the engine died away, the heavy silence closed in around him. Without thinking, he opened the door and stepped out, breathing laboriously, as if he’d finished a race. He stood for a long moment and leaned against the car.

  From the maelstrom of half-formed thoughts, he pulled just one he could hold on to: he was a man with a goal. That goal had been his North Star for years, his every waking moment dedicated to the analytical pursuit of the woman he would marry and start the next phase of his life with. He had worked toward that goal with every bit of the singularity of purpose he brought to his career (and everything else he did in life). He’d established a schedule, committing to a date with a different woman every Friday and Saturday night, adding in at least one weekday per week and a Sunday afternoon during the warmer months, and he had kept to it religiously. There were days when he was exhausted from a tough week at work and would have preferred to run ten miles, then collapse in front of the television with a beer, but instead he went out to dinner and was charming and gallant. He’d agonized once about cancelling a date because of the flu, and only when he nearly passed out while tying his necktie did he actually make the call.

  He hadn’t had a date in a week.

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  He shut the car door, locked it, and walked a few yards into the open field he’d parked next to. The ground was relatively level, which was good considering he couldn’t see his own feet, much less the landscape over which he walked. Then he stopped. He was in utter silence, in utter darkness, and utterly alone.

  He looked up.

  A million tiny lights were so bright it was like he’d never seen them before. The sky was vast, seeming to extend all the way down to where he stood, wrapping him in stars. It was breathtaking, infinite.

  He felt very small.

  Looking from horizon to horizon, he felt a curious sensation of falling upward toward the sky, as if he could throw himself off the surface of this planet that had for twenty-eight years offered him success but no love and rise to join the vast emptiness above. He somehow knew, in that moment, that the stars themselves would welcome him.

  It was a ridiculous thought, but in thinking it he no longer felt quite so alone. He imagined standing here, gazing up at the heavens, holding the hand of a beautiful woman who would gasp and stagger and be overwhelmed
right into his arms. But somehow that thought left him feeling a little… empty?

  “Christ, Fox, you’re really off your game,” he admonished himself. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  What, indeed?

  Chapter TEN

  HE KNEW what he was in for, but Fox reached blindly out toward his ringing phone, fumbled the rude instrument into his hand, and answered the call anyway. Better get this over with.

  “Are you in bed again?” Chad’s question crackled directly into Fox’s aching brain stem.

  “Obviously, asshole,” Fox grumbled, squinting against the bare hint of sunlight that protruded through his tightly drawn blinds.

  “Did she roll you? Hit you with something heavy and make off with your watch collection? You look pretty fucking rough, man.”

  “Are you so domesticated that you’ve forgotten what a hangover looks like? Asshole.”

  Chad leaned close to the camera. “There’s hungover and then there’s whatever the hell happened to you.”

  “Whatever.” Fox dropped the phone, giving Chad a view of his ceiling.

  Chad laughed. “I’m proud of you. I was worried when you gave up your table last night—thanks, by the way, it was totally awesome—but you got right back on that horse.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You, going out last night even after you said you didn’t have a date. I knew you’d get back on your game.”

  “I didn’t go out last night.”

  “You stayed home alone and got that drunk? Holy balls.”

  Fox sighed in frustration as he picked up the phone again. “I had dinner at a friend’s house. We started drinking bourbon after dinner. I got a little drunk. That’s it.”

  Chad frowned. “How many friends do you have that you’ve never told me about?”

  “One. I have one fucking friend, Chad. The same guy I had dinner with last weekend.”

  “Told you,” came a voice from the lump next to Chad.

  “Mia told you what?” Fox asked. “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing,” Chad answered unconvincingly.

  The covers flew back, revealing Mia’s tousled mane and her face with its sly grin. “I told him you were going to be seeing that guy again. I think it’s sweet.” She yawned and pulled the covers back over her head.

  “I’m not ‘seeing’ him. We’re friends. We had dinner. Twice. That’s it. That’s all.”

  “Mm-hmm” came her reply from under the covers. Chad, uncharacteristically, glowered at the Mia-shaped lump next to him.

  Fox grunted angrily. “Well, it’s been great talking to you both—”

  “Wait, hold on,” Chad broke in. “Do you have plans for the morning?”

  “Um, we do,” Mia said, whipping the covers back off.

  “I’m going to be nursing a hangover,” Fox said with arch courtesy. “I’m sure you two will have a nice time shopping for tea cozies or whatever.”

  “No, you’re going to have breakfast with me. At the diner, in an hour.”

  “Chad,” Mia said, “we have to—”

  “I have to have breakfast with my friend,” Chad interrupted, his voice low and serious.

  In all the time Chad and Mia had been together, Fox had never heard him speak to her that way. From the look on her face, she was as surprised as he was.

  “That’s okay, buddy,” Fox said, trying to keep the peace. “You guys have plans—”

  “No, we have plans. You and me. Be at the diner in an hour.” Chad nodded firmly into the camera, then ended the call.

  Fox sat and stared at his phone for a moment, shocked at what he’d witnessed. Then he set his phone back down and got out of bed. He padded naked across the room, glancing back at the phone a couple of times, still unable to believe what Chad had said. He didn’t like to think of himself as the cause of friction in their marriage, but the truth was that he was touched that Chad felt so strongly about seeing him. Unless, of course, it meant he really was hitting bottom, and Chad felt it was an emergency.

  He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He didn’t, so far as he could tell, look like a complete basket case. But maybe Chad saw something more damning. Maybe he saw what Fox felt like on the inside.

  A shower woke him up but did little to lift his spirits. Fox was not a man who spent a lot of time—any time at all, really—reflecting on his emotional state, plumbing the depths of his feelings. But this morning what he felt inside, what he could not keep from feeling, was the emptiness of standing under the stars alone. For the first time in his life, he felt like he might end up exactly that: alone.

  He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths, the only technique he’d retained from his company’s stress-reduction workshop. When he opened his eyes, he managed to bury his angst under the morning grooming ritual he could execute without any conscious thought at all. A few minutes later, moisturized, trimmed, and coiffed, he went to get dressed.

  Sunday morning at the diner had been a ritual for Fox and his buddies for years, until one by one matrimony peeled the gang away—once taking two who had discovered they were more than buddies—until finally it was just Chad and Fox. Then it was just Fox. That first Sunday, the day after Chad and Mia’s wedding, he had actually gotten all the way to the diner’s door before realizing no one would be there. Except him. Alone.

  He hadn’t been back since.

  By force of ancient, forgotten habit, he pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a weathered polo shirt, slipped on a pair of well-worn loafers, and grabbed his keys and wallet. As each floor whooshed past the elevator car, he tried to remember what it had been like to do this every week. It wasn’t, he’d realized by the time he reached the underground levels, at all like his routines when it came to dating. It never felt like a chore to shake off whatever wreckage the night before had left pounding in his head and make his way to the large booth—then smaller booth, then booth for two—at the diner. They had all been younger then.

  Though his car had never been to the Riverside Diner, it seemed to know the way, and soon Fox pulled it smoothly into the space he’d always preferred at the far end of the parking lot, where it was unlikely to get dinged by kids throwing open the doors of an SUV, desperate for pancakes. He locked his car and walked across the lot.

  THE SYRUP-AND-BACON smell of the diner took him back instantly across the years to when this was a frequent haunt. And just as his car had ineluctably conveyed him here, he was drawn to the table that Chad and he had established as theirs during the year or more that they had been the sole surviving pair. He plopped himself down, the tacky-yet-slick vinyl upholstery grabbing at his jeans as he settled in.

  “Coffee?”

  He looked up to find the same waitress who had always greeted him, with the same question delivered in the same “whatever” tone of voice, every time he’d come to the diner. Her hair was still a strident blonde, though now there was a streak of silver that had escaped the colorist’s clutches.

  “Thanks,” he said, and she smiled at him, a warmth coming over her features.

  “Been a while, huh?” she asked.

  “It has,” he said.

  She glanced up. “Ah, here he is. I’m glad you two are still together. You were always such a cute couple.” She poured Chad a cup of coffee as well, then walked down the line of booths to top up other patrons.

  Fox was aghast. “What the—”

  “Foxy,” Chad cried, holding his arms wide. Shaking off his shock at what the waitress had said, Fox got to his feet and gave Chad a warm, back-slapping grip. Chad, however, went for the full wrap, embracing him with both arms strongly pressed into his back.

  “Hey… Chad,” Fox said awkwardly. “You okay, buddy?” It was the kind of supplicating hug that portended a story of a death in the family or a hairsbreadth escape from some tragedy.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” Chad replied before finally releasing his hold. “How are you?” He slid into the booth, eyebr
ows up while he waited for the answer to what he seemed to consider a very important question.

  “Fine,” Fox lied.

  “Bullshit,” Chad retorted.

  “What the fuck, asshole?” Fox reached across the table and slugged Chad on the arm for emphasis.

  “I know you, buddy. There’s something seriously askew in your personhood, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “I do mind. What you’re saying is completely ridiculous. You took one psych class in college, and ever since you’ve been making shit up.”

  “You can’t fool me. And we will sit here for as long as it takes. You will eat as many stacks of pancakes as it takes for you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Don’t you threaten me with carbs,” Fox warned.

  “I will pursue the nuclear option if that’s what it takes,” Chad replied with great seriousness.

  “What’ll it be?” the waitress asked, having materialized silently at their table.

  Before Fox could speak Chad pointed at him and said, “He’ll have the Lumberjack platter over hard, with bacon, pancakes, and sweet-potato hash browns.”

  The waitresses nodded while scribbling on her pad.

  “You’re going to have to eat half of that,” Fox groused.

  “Hell no,” Chad answered with a laugh. He looked up at the waitress. “Make that two.”

  She nodded and walked back toward the kitchen.

  “What the fuck?” Fox blurted. “You can eat that kind of thing because you’re married and you don’t care how fat you get.”

  “I can eat that kind of thing because Mia and I have sex all the damn time. She’s got some moves that burn the calories, man. You, on the other hand….” Chad made a not-very-subtle wanking motion with his hand.

  “I, on the other hand, still remember where the gym is. You seem to have forgotten that when you traded your six-pack for the kind you drink to forget you’re pinned to the couch all weekend binge-watching Girls.”