by Caleb James
Charlie leaned forward, as though that might give him some visibility. It didn’t. He was torn between speeding up and crashing into a building or God knows what was out there, or stopping to face…. What is that? A massive white snake, its wide jaws lined with flat razor-sharp teeth, big enough to swallow a man, pressed against Liam’s window. Its claws—Snakes don’t have claws—tore at the metal door.
“Charlie, she found me! She’s going to eat me!”
“Tell me what to do.”
“I don’t know…. I’m sorry, Charlie. I promised your gran I would not harm you. I’m sorry.”
Charlie knew they were about to crash. You couldn’t drive blind in Manhattan without hitting something or someone. And this thing at Liam’s door wanted in. Its tongue sparked fire and poked the window. The glass blossomed with one, two, and three spiderweb cracks.
“Hell no!” Charlie slammed on the brakes. Whatever this thing was, it would not get Liam. He braced in the seat. His right arm shot out to protect Liam as the truck fishtailed and screeched to a halt.
Before them, the mist parted and fell away from the truck.
Charlie’s heart raced. He was ready to grab his ax and do battle with whatever that thing was, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around the bizarre scene through the windshield.
They were downtown. This ain’t downtown. Too green. He pictured all the parks in the city.
He ripped off his mask.
Not even Central Park had this much green, as far as he could see, and flowers, not just in beds but everywhere, purple, yellow, pink… periwinkle forget-me-nots in mounded clumps.
He turned to Liam and to the spiderwebbed window. The lizard was gone. “Where are we?”
Liam shook his head. He turned from Charlie to his ruined window, back to the sun-kissed meadows before them. “I don’t understand this. No!” He grabbed Charlie’s hand. “This was hers.”
“What was hers?” he asked.
“Shh! Don’t. Not here.”
“What?”
“Stop! No questions. Ask no questions, Charlie Fitzgerald. I cannot have done this.” Tears streamed down Liam’s cheeks. “I was to do you no harm, Charlie, and that is all I have done. You brought me back. You brought me home.”
Guilt-stricken, he stared at Charlie, studying him from the top of his head down to his booted foot, still pressed against the brake. He shivered and shook his head. “Perhaps the truck protects you. Please, you must pay heed and do as I say. I will get out now. I see that. This can’t be an accident. I’ve been brought back for a purpose. But you must leave the way you came, and go quickly. Good-bye, brave, kind, handsome Charlie.” He opened the engine door and peered out. “She’s truly gone. This was hers, and now…. She’s a beast in the mist. I mean, truly she was a beast here as well, only one that dressed in silks and diamonds.”
Charlie stared at Liam. His words of good-bye felt like someone had stolen all the air from his lungs. “Stay with me.”
“No, Charlie. Your gran knows. She will tell you it’s for the best. I’m not good.” Liam winced at the effect his words had. Now was no time for kindness. If he were ever going to do one right thing, it had to be now, and it would have to hurt. He averted his gaze and spoke. “May killed my parents and raised me a whore. That’s what you see. I am a vicious thing, unworthy of your affections. I will leave now and never forget your kindness. But trust me in this. I am not good, Charlie. Not for you… not for anyone.”
“No…. Liam. Stop.”
With the door open, Liam locked gazes with Charlie. He couldn’t stop himself. He wanted a final look at Charlie… his Charlie.
Charlie seized the moment, lunged across the space, grabbed Liam by the shoulders, and kissed him full on the lips.
Like a baby taking its first breath, Charlie was not prepared. His molecules sizzled with the contact, like bacon landing on a hot skillet.
Liam stiffened, but knowing the thing was done, he surrendered to the sweetest kiss of his life. Finally, slowly, he pulled back. With Charlie’s hands on either side of his face, his expression was unreadable. “You should not have done that, Charlie Fitzgerald. Go back as you came.” He broke from Charlie’s grasp and jumped from the truck.
Startled and dazed from the kiss, Charlie stumbled out. He raced around to Liam’s side, but he was gone. Liam!
Before him, the meadow stretched in all directions. He turned. “Liam!”
He glimpsed a broad river to the right and another far off to the left. “Liam!” Somehow he must have driven over one of the bridges and…. That’s impossible. Behind the truck he saw the mist, like a giant wave between the ground, the sky, and whatever lay on the other side. It was thick and alive. “Liam! Liam!”
A bell sounded and then another. Desperate, Charlie ran through the meadow. Liam! The faster he ran, the less clear things became. The meadow vanished. The bells chimed louder.
“Liam….”
He awoke. His pulse pounded in his ears. His breath came in short gasps, like he’d been running far and fast.
He tapped the Off on his cell’s alarm. On the screen was a missed call from Gran. He thought of Liam. The dream… the kiss… just a dream. Hope surged. But maybe I can make it something more than a dream.
He pressed Redial, and as he did, doubt crept in. It was 11:00 a.m. Gran knew he’d be sleeping till past noon. So why call? With a sickening dread, he knew.
“He left without a word,” she said. Before he could ask, she added, “No note, nothing. Just gone. I’m sorry, Charlie. But something about Liam Summer was not right.”
It felt like he’d been sucker punched. “Gran, he’d just lost everything he had in a fire. Cut the guy some slack.”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me, Charles Michael Fitzgerald!”
“I’m sorry, Gran. It’s just….”
“Yes, you have feelings for him. Best forget those, Charlie. Liam Summer is not the man for you. He’s not….”
“He’s not what?” And bits of the dream returned. Ask no questions here. The odd way Gran spoke to him, ordering him to answer her. “What aren’t you saying? Tell me.”
“Nothing. It’s best we not speak of him… ever. You did a handsome man a favor. He repaid you by leaving before anyone could get hurt. He did the right thing. You should do the same and put him out of your mind. It’s what comes from bringing home strays and wild things. You have a crush on a stranger, Charlie. It’s nothing more.”
“I can’t talk right now.” He didn’t want to speak in anger. So he told her he loved her, and he hung up.
“Crap! Crap, crap, crap.” He stared out at the water. Gone, no note, nothing. He felt disoriented by Gran’s blunt words, Liam’s disappearance, and the feel of the kiss. It was a dream. First the brush on his cheek and then the one he took in his dream. I must have known he would run. He looked out at the driveway and across at his parents’ house. He’d share none of this with them. Yes, they knew their youngest boy was gay, and while his sixteen-year-old’s declaration had been met with stony silence from his father, Mike, and tears from his mother, Kate, he’d never once brought home a guy for them to meet. Because frankly, the two he’d been with weren’t parentworthy. Gran’s words echoed. “Why not bring him to Staten Island?”
I should have. Yeah, and he’d still have run.
But why didn’t I? His gut twisted on the answer. “Because you’re chickenshit. They’d take one look at Liam and know I was into the guy… and what’s wrong with that?” I should have brought him here. Maybe he wouldn’t have run…. Maybe….
His cell rang. Maybe it’s him! His mom’s name popped on the caller ID. “Hi, dear. I see you’re up. I’ve got breakfast. You’re off today, right?”
He was, and a day off meant working on the nearly completed rehabilitation of their beachfront homestead. Today’s project, tile the powder room he and Dad had just Sheetrocked and taped. Normally he’d look forward to the afternoon with Dad and the accomplishment of ticking one
more project off the list. But not today. He felt wired and sad. Why am I so angry? Maybe slapping on thinset mortar and cutting slate tile with a wet saw was what he needed. Take his mind off…. It was a dream, for God’s sake. Get over it. But he couldn’t. Liam, why? Crap! Pull it together.
With his head wrapped around a day with Dad and a bucket of thinset, he headed into the bath and turned on the shower. God, I smell.
He took a long look at himself in the mirror, from the thick black stubble on his face, to the tired circles under his blue eyes, to the mess of his black hair, which should have been cut weeks ago. He shucked off his tee and peeled off thick socks that stuck to the bottoms of his feet from sweat and the heat of the fire. His fly was still open, and he remembered how he’d fallen asleep. Pervert. Because it had to be on his clothes, he caught a whiff of that delicious bakery smell from the fire. He kicked his pants and boxers into the hamper next to the sink, and standing naked in front of the steaming shower, he grew hard. Maybe it was the smell or the way the steam filled the room, like the dream.
Get a grip.
He stepped into the shower. Hot water cascaded over his skin. It mixed with the layers of sweat and soot. The cookie smell of the fire was everywhere. Liam! His erection was so hard it verged on pain. Just do it. He drew up precious memories. The one that brought him over the edge was the chaste kiss Liam had pressed on his cheek.
The orgasm buckled his knees, his toes curled, and he shot a hand against the slick tile wall to keep from falling. He stood motionless, head bowed, water racing down his back. You’ve got to find him. No…. Unable to move, his breath hot through his lips, he knew Liam’s running off in the night was not a sign of interest. He wasn’t one of Gran’s cats who’d brush against his leg and then scurry off with tail raised, hoping he’d pursue. The guy left because he probably remembered where he needed to go. Which isn’t with me. His mood plummeted. He grabbed the soap and washcloth and scrubbed every inch of his body. He rubbed till his skin turned pink. The delicious smell vanished down the drain. He doesn’t want you, man. You can jack off all you want, but he’s gone.
The problem was, the more he thought through the reasons why he had to stop obsessing about Liam, the worse it got. What the fuck. He threw on paint-spattered cargo pants, sneaks, a threadbare FDNY tee and crossed the drive to the house where he grew up.
Four years after Hurricane Sandy, the outside was near normal, although in order to get insurance, the house no longer had a basement, just steel-and-cement supports sunk deep into bedrock and meant to withstand a hundred-year flood.
Due to his and Dad’s efforts, the kitchen and upstairs bedrooms, the least damaged of all, were better than new. They’d gutted the main level down to the studs and filled Dumpster after Dumpster with ruined Sheetrock and hundred-year-old oak flooring too damaged by salt water to be saved. It was like a new house: clean wiring, new plumbing, the furnace, the ducts, the AC, the twenty-kilowatt propane generator, the roof… all new. The final piece—Mom’s dream powder room—was all that remained.
He stopped in the drive and gazed out at the water. Calm today, but there’d be another Sandy, and was living in a place that was so familiar and so beautiful worth the risk? He breathed salt air. The visibility was low, and mist like in his dream hung over gentle waves. Shake it off, shake it off.
He tried to block images of Liam as he entered the home, which smelled of bacon and biscuits. As though he were still eight and coming down before school, his place was set with orange juice, eggs, bacon, and two buttermilk biscuits. And that’s why my abs don’t look like his.
“Rough night?” Dad asked as Mom nudged the ketchup across the table.
“Long,” Charlie said. He poured his coffee and remembered Liam spooning ridiculous amounts of sugar into his tea.
“Want to talk about it?” Dad asked.
“Not much to say. Old tenement, probably arson. Bad all around.”
“We saw,” Dad commented. “You were on the news. Lots of people with no place to live.”
Charlie avoided Dad’s gaze. Living with a retired NYPD detective had its up and downs. This was the latter. Lying to his Dad never went well. Just as Gran would joke about the cats—Don’t be the toy—he and his brothers and sister, Annie, had a similar one for Dad—Don’t be the perp. So he clammed up and waited him out.
“I spoke to your Gran….”
And here it comes.
“She said you offered to take her to Mass tomorrow. That’s good of you, son. Maybe we should all go.”
He looked at Dad, his clothes smeared with light gray thinset. He’d been hard at work all morning. “That’s okay. I got this one. But not to curse anything, I’ve got the whole weekend off. I can’t remember the last time that happened. So I figured today with you, Mom, and the dynamic duo and tomorrow with Gran. And back in time for Sunday dinner.”
Dad’s gaze narrowed as Mom settled in her place at the other end of the table.
“And you, dear?” she asked. “What about you? No plans… no going out? Like you said, you don’t often get the weekend….”
“I’m good,” he said, used to the double-front interrogation tactics of his parents. But as he sat there, enjoying the warmth and familiarity of his folks and their resurrected home on pilings meant to withstand a hundred-year flood, he couldn’t rip his mind from Liam.
He focused on breakfast and turned the conversation to the project before them. As he did, an idea took root. It was all he could do to hold his tongue. He thought back through the night and the dream. The regret in his gut, the awful sense that something… someone who mattered had left. Why couldn’t I kiss him for real? Because I just met the guy. Because it would have been a total perv move. Yeah, like jacking off while thinking about him isn’t?
“Where are you, Charlie?” Mom asked.
“A bit fuzzy,” he admitted, knowing what he intended. I’ve got to find him.
“About the fire?”
“Ask no questions.” He snorted, and coffee went down the wrong pipe.
“What’s so funny?” Dad asked.
“Nothing. It was a long night…. So, anything left for me to do?” And he listened to Dad’s DIY update, ate his eggs, and tried not to despair over the millions of places violet-eyed Liam Summer could be.
Eight
WITH HER hood up, Alice Nevus turned onto the familiar block where she’d lived for five years with her brother Alex, her real mother—not the one asleep back in the Murray Hill apartment—and Alex’s fairy, Nimby. She stood and stared. Like a war zone, the seven-story redbrick building that had been their home was scorched, its windows either shattered or blackened from the fire. Yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the broad front stoop and stairs, and orange plastic barriers closed off either end of the block, with a double row of them in front of the building. A fire engine stood parked along the sidewalk beside a red-and-white van with a gold Fire Marshal emblem on the back window. Black-and-white police cruisers sat like bookends at the ends of the block.
A woman walking her miniature dachshund stopped next to Alice. “It was awful,” she commented.
“You live on this block?” Alice asked.
“No, I’m on Second, but it was scary. They say it was arson… a mother and two kids died.”
“I used to live there,” Alice said.
“Good thing you don’t anymore.”
“I guess.”
The woman looked at Alice, unable to see her face, just strands of blonde that had escaped the hood. “You okay?”
Alice nodded. “Sure. Guess I’m just curious. Why would someone set a fire where so many people live? What kind of person does that?”
“Hard to know,” the woman said as her dog sniffed Alice’s sneakers. “This city is filled with nutjobs…. It could be that. Someone who likes to see things burn. Or someone with a grudge, someone who’s going to make money from an insurance policy….”
“What is that smell?” Alice asked.
“What smell?”
“Like cookies.”
The woman sniffed. “I’m not catching it. But I’ve got horrible allergies, and the pollen has me totally blocked.”
Alice drank the delicious odor, much stronger here than when she’d first caught the whiff outside her bedroom window. She nodded. How come she can’t smell it? “Cute dog.”
“Thanks, and don’t think she doesn’t know it.”
“I’ve got to get a closer look.”
“I’d be careful. I think they’re still putting out hot spots.”
“Sure.” Keeping to the north side of the street, Alice approached her old home. Directly across from the building, she gazed at their shattered sixth-floor kitchen window. To the right was the teeny room she’d shared with Alex, and on the other side, the bigger bedroom, which had been for their crazy mother, Marilyn, who Alex would sometimes lock in at night to prevent her wandering the city. But things in the world of Alice and her brother Alex Nevus were not as they appeared. In truth, her mother, her real mother, did not have schizophrenia but had been driven barking mad by a trip between the human world and the fantastic realm Alice had been dragged to three years prior. Every day her rational mind struggled to make sense of the nonsensical. How she had another brother, Adam, she barely knew, who lived in that other world with her mother, who wasn’t crazy there, and her fairy father, Cedric. Not things one shared with schoolmates. Those who knew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she could count on the fingers of one hand.
The smell, like Chinatown cookies thick with almond paste, came from the ravaged building. Which makes no sense. Her belly churned, something about this familiar and dangerous. Her lips trembled. I need to see. I need to go inside. The woman with her dog had said it was arson. The news said the fire’s cause was under investigation. Something is wrong. She looked down the cordoned-off street littered with charred wood, shattered glass, a child’s blackened stuffed rabbit. People’s lives strewn like garbage.
Her fingers played over the cell phone in her pocket. She thought of Alex. As she did, a competing urge told her not to call. Why does this smell so good? Fighting with herself, she gripped her phone and pressed his number. Pain blossomed behind her eyes, like the start of a migraine.