by Gregory Ashe
In the end, it took both Jadon and Shaw to get him up the steps. Shaw was stronger than he looked, and Jadon didn’t have all those pretty muscles for show, but North was still queasy and sweating by the time they helped him sit on Shaw’s bed. Shaw eased off the sling, and Jadon passed him another of the pain pills. North lay back, closed his eyes for a while, and waited for the nausea to subside.
When he opened his eyes, he stared at the posters of two tween heartthrobs who were being made to kiss. “That is coming down right fucking now.”
“No! Ian and Paul have overcome every obstacle that the cis, het world of acting has imposed on them. They’re finally happy!”
Part of it was the pain. Part of it was the weakness and nausea. Part of it was feeling so damn helpless. Instead of letting it go, instead of rolling with the joke, North turned it into a fight. And the fight turned into Shaw hurrying out of the room, one hand over his eyes, his head down.
Jadon had taken a chair in the corner of the room. He was rubbing his jaw.
“Well? Get the fuck out.”
Sighing, Jadon shook his head. “Do you have any idea how scared he’s been for the last week? I honestly don’t think he’s slept more than a couple of hours at a time.” With a note of dry amusement, he added, “The timestamps in my text history will prove it.”
“Yeah, it’s been a shit week. Go fuck yourself.”
Jadon stretched out his long legs.
“What the fuck don’t you understand, you stupid ass-eating, jailbait-loving, nipples-poking-out idiot motherfucker?”
Downstairs, The Cure cut off. Friday night was over, it seemed.
The corner of Jadon’s mouth twitched. “My nipples?”
The chuckle hurt, physically, but it built into a laugh, and then North felt wildly on the verge of tears, and he had to press a pillow over his face and gulp in air and the smell of Shaw’s hair before he started sobbing. After a while, he threw the pillow to the side.
“It’s these meds,” he said to the ceiling. “My head is so fucked up.”
“I know. And Shaw knows. But it would probably help if you apologized.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to go. This is my first day off in I don’t know how long, and tomorrow, I’ve got to go back to picking up the pieces. Literally, in this case. You wouldn’t believe the damage a train can do.”
“I saw it.”
“Yeah, I guess you did.” Jadon was quiet. “Do you want to hear about it?”
“I guess.”
“You pretty much figured out all of it. We found that brown Ford from the security camera, and we found the motel where he’d been staying. His name was Jevon Jennings. From Naperville; his parents are still there. Nice family, from what we can tell. They took good care of him. He had all the advantages. He’d been to see a therapist a year ago. The parents and the therapist agreed that Jevon was exhibiting behavior that was worrisome. He recommended a psychiatrist because it seemed like it could have been some kind of psychotic disorder. But Jevon refused to go, and he was an adult, so they couldn’t make him.”
“Or he was just a greedy, selfish asshole. People kill people all the time. They don’t need to have a mental illness to do it.”
“And the stereotype of the mentally ill as violent is inaccurate and has produced a huge stigma that keeps people from seeking help.” That was Shaw’s voice, and it came from the hall with a worried, and slightly defensive, undertone.
“We’ll never know now,” Jadon said. North heard him stand, and Jadon’s steps moved toward the door. “When your sorry butt needs to get down the stairs, give me a call.”
“Jadon?”
Jadon made a noise.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re all right, you know?”
“Thanks so much.”
“So why can’t you hold on to a boyfriend?”
“Jeez.”
“You got those weird shrunken balls from ’roids?”
“Goodbye, North.”
North stared at the ceiling. The texture in the plaster had wave shapes in it. Jadon’s steps moved away. The front door opened. The front door shut.
“Get your ass in here,” North bellowed.
Shaw slunk into the room, one hand twisting the hem of his tee: pink today, and with sequined, mile-high letters that spelled MOIST.
“Over here.”
Shaw stopped halfway across the room.
“Here, goddamn it.”
This time, he made it all the way to the bed.
North patted the mattress next to him.
A tiny shake of the head.
North patted the bed harder. The springs made a sound like a bass drum.
Shaw kicked off the bunny slippers he’d worn to the hospital and climbed onto the bed. He lay down next to North. He was stiff as a board. He smelled like tangerines and honey and sweat, and North wanted to tell him that he smelled like summer. Like picnics and lying in the shade under green leaves. The words kept slipping away. Instead, he petted Shaw’s hair.
“I’m sorry. This stuff I’m on makes me want to crawl out of my skin.”
“It’s ok.” Some of the tension in his body melted. “Do you want something to eat?”
“My stomach’s still kind of funny.”
“Do you want soup?”
“Not right now.”
“A popsicle?”
North smoothed the coppery patch of hair, kissed Shaw’s forehead, and managed to get his good arm around his shoulders. He drew him into a snuggle.
“This is nice,” Shaw whispered.
Light dappled the ceiling. It was reflecting off something in the room—knowing Shaw, North guessed a wizard’s crystal ball, or a Judy Garland statuette in a glass-bead skirt, or a jade dong, all equally likely—and it shifted and flowed. Between the watery orbs of light, dark patches bloomed. North had gone snorkeling in Hawaii. A few times, actually. The grit of the sand against his skin. The shocking roughness of stone against the sole of his foot. This same sense of weightlessness and the vast pull of the tide, out to somewhere else, out to a great darkness.
Shaw shushed him and wiped his forehead. “You’re ok. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Do you think we are the past?” It was like someone else talking, someone who’d been quiet for a long time.
“Like, is part of me made up of the same molecules that made up Cleopatra? Definitely. Probably the boob part. And the eyeshadow.”
North’s chest was heavy, each breath a mountain.
“Yes,” Shaw said. “I think we’re the past. Part of us is, anyway.”
“I don’t want to be the past. I want to be the future. The future is bright and shiny.” He smacked his lips. “It’s like the sun and a rainbow smushing in front of a unicorn. That’s what I want to be.”
“Good God.” Shaw laughed quietly, stroking North’s forehead. “Whatever they’ve got you on, I like it.”
“You don’t care what anyone thinks about you. You are who you are. That’s one of the things I love about you; I wish I were like that.”
“I care. I think everyone cares a little. I just handle it differently.”
He said more, but the darkness roared in again.
When North surfaced again, the leaves were singing in the trees.
“I’m going to take such good care of you,” Shaw was saying in that same whisper. “I’m going to make sure your sling fits right. I’m going to get a long spoon to scratch inside your cast when your leg itches. And when you get bored, I’ll put on my stage adaptation of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ I’ll do it as many times as you want. I’ll do it ten times a day. And I can do celebrity impersonations like that Frank guy you watch when you think I’m not home and then you turn the TV off fast and sit on the remote.”
“You don’t know any celebrities except drag queens and that boy who works on the road
crew you always throw wood for.”
“His name is Robbie, and it’s not my fault he’s cute.”
“You had to go to the Save a Lot fourteen times one day when they were patching that section of Gravois.”
“And I do too know celebrities. I can do a great celebrity impersonation of Grandma Moses. We met one time. She was kind of a bore, actually. All she wanted to talk about was this Danish farm boy she’d known during the war.”
“Grandma Moses died before you were born.” North wasn’t sure about that because the meds were making things foggy, but he held onto it like a fact.
“Oh, I know. I was meditating with Master Hermes. And he said I’ve got these great—” When Shaw spoke again, his voice was carefully even: “—crystals that will help, and then there was this thing on the linoleum that I thought was a shoe scuff, but then a little while later, I realized it was actually Grandma Moses, and that’s when I met her.”
“Is it possible to self-smother? I mean, if I have something heavy and lots of pillows and I’m very motivated?” North licked chapped lips. “Asking for a friend.”
Through the opioid haze, it took a moment for North to recognize the silence and the faint tremors. That deep-water lethargy made his movements slow, but he found the side of Shaw’s face and ran his hand along it. More stubble than usual. The coppery patch kept slipping away from North’s touch. Shaw’s tears were hot where they slid along the heel of North’s hands, and then Shaw turned his head, eyes still closed, and kissed North’s palm.
“God, North,” he said in a ragged voice. “You were alone. You were with that psycho, and he almost killed you, and you were alone. What if you’d died?”
Shaw started crying harder, so North kissed his forehead again and hauled him up a few inches, his whole body protesting with the effort. Shaw curled into his chest, his tears dampening the tee, leaving hot spots that faded to chill, wet stains.
“Don’t say psycho,” North said. “It perpetuates the stereotype of the mentally ill as violent.”
But that didn’t get a laugh. Head resting on North’s chest, Shaw ran the flat of his hand across North’s belly. “If I’d been there, the two of us, we could have stopped him. You wouldn’t be hurt. You wouldn’t have almost died. This is my fault. My fault because I didn’t go with you to your dad’s because he scares me and because—”
“Come up here a minute.”
“—and because—huh?”
“Scoot up here. I need to tell you something.”
Shaw raised himself on an elbow and shifted up a few inches. “I’m serious, North. I know this is my fault. I’m taking responsibility for it. After everything I’ve put you through—”
Finger to his lips for silence, North beckoned him closer. Shaw’s brows drew together. He leaned in.
North bit him on the shoulder, right at the base of the neck where the tee had pulled askew.
“Holy Buddha!”
“Don’t say stupid things.”
“There’s blood. I’m bleeding.” Shaw held up his fingers as evidence.
“Then don’t say stupid things.”
“I’m—I’m going to shave your balls.”
“Great. They need a trim.”
“I’m going to wait until you’re really doped up, and then I’m going to shave your balls. And tattoo them. I’m going to tattoo something all over them.”
“Something nice, please. Something you won’t mind seeing over and over again. Really close up.”
“I’m going to put a map of the Bermuda Triangle on there. Because that’s where your balls are going to be if you ever bite me again.”
North bit him again, just in the right spot, just hard enough that the noise Shaw made was distressed and protesting and a surrender all at the same time.
“You were saying?”
Shaw’s pupils were blown. His breathing came fast, and he licked his lips twice.
“Something about my balls,” North prompted as he guided Shaw’s hand between his legs. “I’m an invalid. I’m going to need a lot of help for the next couple months.”
“You have to ask nice. I’m going to be taking care of you. I could throw away all your yogurt. I could cut you off from ice cream entirely. I could make you drink that tea that gives you lady cramps. So you have to be nice to me, and you have to ask nice when you want me to do things for you.”
“No, I don’t. Whatever I want, remember?”
Shaw made that noise again, protest and surrender all at the same time, and then rubbed the flat of his hand against the mesh shorts. His movements were gentle, tentative. After a few minutes, he slowed and looked up.
“Sorry,” North said, his face heating.
“It’s the meds,” Shaw said. “And your body is worn out. As long as it feels good, I don’t care if you don’t—”
“No, please, before I lose whatever dignity I have left. Just come up here and cuddle for a while.”
So Shaw did. And North petted his hair again. And at some point, as the haze was settling over him again, he whispered, “I need you.”
“Oh, like, it’s time to go to the bathroom?”
North managed to shake his head once. “I need you. I’m tired of pretending I don’t.” Something like darkness roared in on him. When it cleared, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he asked, “Is that ok? If you want someone who isn’t so needy—”
Shaw stretched up and kissed him.
Downstairs, the front door opened, and steps rang out in the entry hall. The door closed. The sound of the deadbolt going home ran through the house like a gunshot. Then the stairs creaked under new weight.
“Hello?” Shaw called, moving to the edge of the bed. “Who’s there?”
“Shaw?” Tucker asked, steps moving faster. The bedroom door opened, offering North a view of Tucker and, behind him, the landing and the stairs. Tucker looked good: eyes bright, color high, in a baby blue polo and khaki shorts. “I thought you guys were at the hospital.”
“We came home today. North insisted. Even though the doctors wanted to keep him.”
“They want to bleed more money out of me.”
“He broke a clipboard.
“That assmunch shouldn’t have been shoving it under my nose. Yeah, buddy, I can fucking read. I see what the goddamn form says.”
“He stole a pen.”
“I didn’t steal a pen.”
“It got stuck in his cast, so he took it with him when we left, and he didn’t pay for it or anything, which technically is stealing.”
“Mother of God. Tucker, do you have a gun or something so I can blow my brains out?”
Tucker had watched all of this with an odd smile. He threw a quick look over his shoulder and said, “I just came to get my stuff. I thought I’d be out of here before, well, this.”
“You don’t have to hurry,” Shaw said. “If you need a place while you finish getting things back to normal—”
“No,” North and Tucker said at almost the exact same time, with almost the exact same intensity.
“God, no,” North added.
“Thanks, though,” Tucker said with a quiet laugh. He played with the front of his shirt. Then he said, “Could I talk to you, North? Just for a minute?”
“Tuck, these meds are making me loopy as shit. If you want round ten thousand, let’s do it another time, all right?”
“I promise I’ll be quick. I’m—I’m not happy with how our last conversation went.”
North rubbed his eyes.
“Please?”
When Shaw squeezed his calf, North grunted. “Fine.”
“I’ll go warm up the soup,” Shaw said, sliding off the bed.
“No fucking soup. I want a hamburger. Or a steak. Or both. I need red meat.”
Shaw rolled his eyes as he headed for the door, and Tucker mirrored the expression. As Shaw passed out into the hallway, Tucker shut the door. He moved a chair c
loser to the bed, sat, and then raised himself up again to pull his shorts down. He had great legs, thighs and calves, always had, and they were on good display today.
“Mick—North—I’m sorry about last time we talked.”
“You mean when you literally ripped my shirt off me? No worries. Vicodin isn’t only for broken legs and sprained shoulders. It does pretty well for crazy ex-husbands who claw up your back.”
“I was emotional. That day at my parents’ house, I thought—I thought you were telling me something. And then the next day you showed up and asked me to sign those divorce papers. I didn’t understand.” He cleared his throat. “I was hurting. I am hurting. And I wanted to say I’m sorry for how I acted.”
Shaw must have put on music. Dolly was downstairs, singing about wildflowers.
“Yeah, well, I was in a bad place that day. At your parents’, I mean. We shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have given you that impression. That was on me.”
“That sounds like the beginning of another round of the divorce speech.”
North smoothed the bedding. He made himself look up at Tucker and meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Tucker. I’m glad we were able to have this—in a weird way, it helped me deal with a lot of stuff I should have dealt with. But it didn’t change how I feel.”
“I quit my job.” Tucker made a strange sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I mean, they were probably going to fire me anyway, but I quit. And I’ve been good about going to therapy. And I know I’m drinking again, but Dr. Farr and I discovered that alcohol abuse isn’t the problem, it’s—”
“Tuck, that’s ok. If you’re making those changes, I’m proud of you. But we’re done. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth, and we both need to accept it.”
“You can’t fix things with me,” Tucker said, voice thick, “but you can fix things with Shaw. Is that it?”
“Maybe we could fix things. I don’t know. But I don’t want to, Tuck. I’ve moved on, and I’m trying to fix something else now. You should move on too. We’re both free. No living in the past. No regrets.”
“No regrets.” He sucked in a wet breath and wiped his face, although his cheeks were dry. “I like that.”
As Tucker stood, a question made its way through the fog, and North asked, “Tuck, did they ever figure out that money?”