by Rick R. Reed
Hearing the same song, even just a piece of it, through two different instruments, voices, was eye-opening to Milt.
He found he could appreciate both. And there was no need to compare.
“You really can. Sing, I mean. Your voice is beautiful. Why that song, though?”
Billy looked up, smiled. “Ever since I’ve been in recovery, it’s kind of been my song. See, Milt, when I was a drunk, I didn’t think much of myself. I sure as shit had nothing or nobody to live for. Amazing grace is what we in the program call a higher power.” Billy nodded, as though assuring himself of the truth of his words.
“For a long time, I’ve been coasting along on amazing grace, not quite lost but not quite found.”
Billy peered into Milt’s eyes, his blue-eyed gaze intense. “But now I see.”
The gaze was too much for Milt. It hurt. He could see everything in it—Billy’s attraction to him, his vulnerability, his simple need.
He wanted to give in. He wanted to be the grantor of a wish.
But.
But.
He didn’t know.
It still felt like a betrayal.
And so he mustered up what he thought was all his will, all his courage. He mustered up his fierce loyalty for Corky, the man to whom he’d once pledged his heart forever—until death do them part.
And he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled for Ruby, who came bounding down the mountain. She’d learned well that high-pitched, piercing sound meant business.
“We’re gonna go home now, okay?” It was hard for Milt to get the words out. His heart was clogged with disappointment and regret. Yet he felt he was doing the right thing.
Billy held out a hand, beseeching. “Just try, Milt. One dinner. Some gnocchi and marinara. I know a great place.”
“Stop. Please.” And Milt turned away because he couldn’t bear to look at Billy. He started down the mountain, with Ruby leading the now-familiar way on the trail.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter 11
WHEN HE got home, Milt threw Corky’s orange mug in the trash.
He stared at it there for a moment, feeling a hot rush of shame, like he’d just committed a crime, murder maybe, and then decided he was being melodramatic. After a few minutes, he fished it back out and set it on the counter, like a too-bright accusation.
He started to feed Ruby her supper, then put her homemade food back in the fridge when he realized it was only a little after one thirty. Ruby didn’t seem to care that it was too early and let out a frustrated yip of disappointment when she saw Milt putting the food back. She might have been saying “What the hell are you doing?”
He turned on the TV, watched for a full half hour, then shut it off when he realized he didn’t even know what he was watching.
He tried to read a book (Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep), gave up, and then tried a magazine (Entertainment Weekly), gave up on that, and attempted to surf the web.
He shut down his laptop after a few moments. Maybe if he went outside, into the brilliant sunshine and pleasant warmth, he could relax, feel like he wasn’t running from himself. He remembered back home, as he still thought of it, and realized it was probably below freezing with snow on the ground and flakes of the stuff dancing in the air.
Ruby curled up at his feet, basking in the sun. Oh, to be a dog, with only the worries of where the next nap would take place and where the next meal would come from!
Milt prayed he’d come back in his next life in canine form, preferably looked after by a couple of doting gay men. That would be heaven, truly.
Milt considered heading over to the community pool for a swim, but even that seemed like too much effort, too much distraction.
Maybe he liked being miserable.
Maybe he liked torturing himself.
His rational mind told him that, in all honesty, Corky really wasn’t a factor in his not wanting to simply go out on a date with Billy. Not anymore. Sure, he had promised, in a way, to be forever faithful. But logic told him that death wiped out such vows.
No one would blame him for seeking love, companionship, new happiness. The point was, he, Milt, was alive. And Billy was right—he wasn’t that old. He shouldn’t be pretending he was, acting as though his life were over.
He still had a lot of good years left here in paradise. Why shouldn’t he, or why couldn’t he, allow himself to make the most of them? Why did he think he needed to figuratively be forever dressed in black, with widower written in permanent marker across his forehead?
That’s what he didn’t understand.
Maybe he was simply afraid of getting involved again, of allowing himself to feel something, of letting his heart be vulnerable once more. There had simply been too much pain when Corky died. Hell, too much pain with watching him die—its long, slow progression. He’d been like a ghost, fading, fading away.
When he’d upturned his life and memories and moved out to California, he’d thought he was starting anew.
Now he wondered. Was he really beginning fresh? Or was he frozen in time? Had he changed only the geography but not the interior? His soul?
He closed his eyes. The warm sun felt good, relaxing, and it did what Milt wanted—provided deliverance.
CORKY SAT at the head of a long rough-hewn table. Gathered around it were a bunch of guys who looked Corky’s age, as much as Milt could tell, because he couldn’t make out their faces. They seemed to shift and flicker in dark shadows that surrounded them like a cloud.
Corky, however, shimmered in brilliant golden light.
He smiled as he played his cards.
Milt watched for a while, saw it was canasta. Corky’s favorite game.
“C’mon, Gabe, it’s your move,” Corky said, seemingly in possession of his mental faculties.
Gabe, at the other end of the table, unfurled wings from his back and levitated off his seat.
Which struck Corky as so hilarious, he pounded a fist on the table, tears of mirth trickling from his eyes.
IT WAS dusky when Milt awoke. The featured colors this evening were purple, lavender, and orange.
Ruby’s head lay on his thigh, and she stared up at him with pleading eyes. Love? Well, maybe a little of that, but the more plausible answer was hunger.
“Oh God, kid, you need your supper,” Milt said, still groggy. Rubbing his eyes, he felt disoriented, as if he’d gained two hundred pounds during his nap, the slumber he never intended. It had taken him by surprise. He would have thought he was too keyed up to sleep.
He stretched, arms overhead, and looked around. There was a light on in Billy’s little trailer, a pale yellow glow against the waning winter sky.
Milt wondered what he was doing. Whether he’d truly given up on him. If he’d blown his opportunity. A kind of longing coursed through him.
But it was longing he didn’t have time to entertain, not with Ruby dashing back and forth between him and the back door, looking at him as though to say “Don’t you get what I’m trying to tell you? I’m hungry!”
“Yes, yes, I know, little girl.” Milt stood, feeling like the old man he thought he was. Lead flowed through his veins. His head was cloudy.
As he walked to the door, Ruby’s tail-wagging increased proportionately.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” he told her.
He thought he’d had a dream, something about Corky, but he couldn’t recall any images from it.
There was only a weird sense of peace—and Milt realized it was not for him, but for Corky.
AFTER HE’D eaten dinner—grilled rib eye and an arugula salad—Milt went to the window and peered outside, Ruby trailing close behind. He’d given her a steak too because he felt guilty about sleeping through her usual suppertime and for ignoring her. He was sure all was forgiven. She didn’t let him out of her sight for a second, though, lest he should produce another steak.
The sky had morphed from its multicolored display into a deep navy with stars.
Wh
at are you looking for? Maybe you’re checking up on Billy again, hmm? He shrugged, not wanting to admit the fact to himself. He forced himself away from the window. It only took a minute before he decided he needed just one more glance, just one more, and then he’d stop.
As he was about to pull away from the window a second time—because Billy’s trailer was totally dark—Milt spied him, whizzing by Milt’s own house on his bicycle. Milt watched his progress through the dark, staring after him until the reflector on the back of the bike disappeared into the dark, dark night.
Still restless, Milt sat down, picked up the remote, and aimed it at his TV. There was a rerun playing of an early Roseanne, when the show was still blue-collar and still good, and Milt watched for a few minutes the very realistic banter between the sister characters of Roseanne and Jackie, trying to engage with the show.
But it was useless.
His mind kept returning to Billy and their conversation on the mountain. Just let it go. Let him go. These thoughts repeated over and over, a litany, but they were like a few sandbags trying to hold back the rise of a flood in a storm. The thought of letting Billy go made Milt physically ill, and he wondered if his dramatic march off the mountain, along with his latest refusal of a date, had finally caused Billy to give up on him.
Milt couldn’t blame him.
Milt wondered where Billy was headed on his bike. A jealous part of him entertained the notion that he was heading out for a hookup, someone he’d met up with on Craigslist or one of those sites Milt could never bring himself to explore, like Adam4Adam. Or maybe he was using one of those apps, like Grindr, that puzzled Milt even more. He’d met his Corky the old-fashioned way—in the back room of a leather bar. They’d had oral sex to completion before they’d even learned each other’s names. Milt grinned at the memory. Perhaps things weren’t so different in gay male cruising today; they’d advanced only technologically.
Yet Milt, imagining Billy off to some salacious assignation, wasn’t as jealous as he would have expected.
And Milt realized that was because he didn’t believe for a moment that was what Billy was doing. A vain part of himself opined that it was too soon for Billy. He couldn’t possibly be hooking up, for heaven’s sake. Despite any resolve on his part to maybe not see Milt again—to move on—Billy still had to be pining for Milt, right? Perhaps a song in his repertoire today would be “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
Milt wanted to kick himself for the outlandish line of thought.
No, he really believed Billy wasn’t meeting up with a man, because he suspected he was headed out to the Rimrock Shopping Center down the road. Every week there were dozens of twelve-step group meetings at a little unassuming building called Sunny Dunes near Von’s supermarket.
Billy had told Milt he went there sometimes twice a day, for what he called “step study” or “round robin” and to meet with fellow recovering alcoholics. Milt wondered why he needed to go to so many meetings. Wasn’t Billy cured by now? In one of their conversations while hiking, Billy had told Milt he hadn’t taken a drink in years. Wasn’t there a time when one was safely out of danger of relapse? Milt shrugged. He’d never understood addiction, not in any real sense. Maybe that was because he’d had so little exposure.
He wondered what meetings were like. And as he wondered, he was heading toward the bedroom to slip out of his sweats and into a clean T-shirt and jeans, maybe a hoodie. These days, temperatures plunged after the sun went down.
You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s an invasion of privacy.
Milt realized he didn’t care. He was curious. And he attributed that curiosity to wanting to know Billy better.
He grabbed his wallet and car keys off the nightstand.
MILT SLID into the big room as quietly as he could. The meeting was already in progress and clearly very well attended. There were men and women of all ages, colors, shapes, and sizes sitting on folding chairs lining the walls. Some also sat in the center, at long buffet-style tables. Milt grabbed a seat near the door, doing a quick tally. There had to be at least fifty or sixty people in the room.
He’d had no idea there were so many afflicted people. And this was just one meeting in one night, in one city!
When Billy told him he attended AA meetings, Milt just assumed they were small, with just a handful of people in attendance.
But this was like a rally.
He crossed his legs as he listened to a redheaded woman with a fuchsia tank top and tattoos speak about her inability to stop relapsing. “I look at some of you guys, with so much clean time, and I want what you have, but I just can’t figure out how to do it.” She looked around the room, her gaze lighting briefly on Milt, which made heat rise to his cheeks. He wondered if she expected someone to offer guidance or perhaps a suggestion.
But everyone stayed silent.
She went on. “I guess someday it’ll come to me. What I need to do.” She shrugged. “For now, I guess I need to be satisfied with knowing that I’m willing—for God’s grace to come to me, to show me the path. And I’ll just keep coming to these meetings until something clicks.” She smiled, and Milt could see a much younger, woman, prettier, in that smile—a glimpse of innocence and what might have been. “Thanks, everybody. That’s all I got.”
Everyone clapped.
There was a brief silence, and then Milt looked up as a familiar voice said, “Hi, I’m an alcoholic named Billy.”
“Hi, Billy!” Milt found himself saying hi too.
Milt thought if he were a dog, his ears would have stood up at attention.
“I’m thinking about something I did once, back when I lived in Chicago. Someone gave me a butterfly kit as a gift. You guys know what that is? It’s for kids, so that shows you how this giver saw me.” He chuckled. “But it was actually really cool. A good experience. It let me raise a few butterflies from caterpillars on my own.”
Billy paused, thinking. “I raised a few from caterpillar to cocoon to full-fledged butterflies, but toward the end, when I was down to my last one, I had a little trouble. This little guy just looked worn-out, sickly, couldn’t lift his wings. I tried feeding him, poking him, prodding him, because, man, I have never been a patient guy.
“I thought he was gonna die. I remember it was a warm day, early spring, one of those days in Chicago when the temperature busts out into the sixties and you think you’re gonna die from the sheer pleasure of it after the long and dark winter. So I took him out into the backyard of my apartment building, thinking if he was dying, he could at least do it in the sunshine.” Billy smiled, and for a moment, Milt thought he’d spied him there in the back of the room, but then his gaze moved on.
“You’re all probably wondering what this story has to do with anything. And I’m getting to that. See, for me, what I got out of this experience was the surprise I got when I took him out. See, he wasn’t dying. It was just that his wings were very wet. When the sun warmed him up, it also dried his wings. In no time, I smiled as I watched him flutter off into the air.”
Billy paused. Milt could see he was fully immersed in the memory. Milt felt like he was too; he could see that butterfly.
“My point, and I do have one, is that the little butterfly taught me something. Maybe not that day, but looking back I can see how I learned a little more about surrender, about just letting things happen on their own time, not mine.
“Like a lot of you, I’m a control freak. I want to influence the outcome of everything.” He laughed. “Like right now. I know this guy and I really like him and I’ve been trying to get him to like me.” Billy smiled.
Milt’s skin prickled.
“And what I have to do is surrender. Things between us are gonna work out or they won’t—and right now, it’s looking like they won’t. He’s in a weird place and just not ready for the likes of me. Or anybody, really. But I know I just need to let go. As they say in these rooms, ‘let go and let God,’ and that’s what I need to do. Surrender my will and just ask for my hig
her power’s will to be revealed to me—whatever that is.
“One thing I know for sure, my higher power only wants me to have my highest and best good, right?” He nodded. “So I’m gonna try to surrender. Turn my will over. We’ll see how that goes.”
Milt caught the look of hope on Billy’s face, like something shining and fragile.
Vulnerable.
And it cut to Milt’s heart in an instant.
Milt stood and quietly slipped from the room as Billy’s thanks and the subsequent applause sounded.
Chapter 12
IT WAS so hard to meditate. Even though Billy knew it was a good thing to do, it was almost impossible to quiet his “monkey mind.” Yet he kept at it, making a time every morning to simply sit cross-legged on his bed. He’d set the timer on his phone for ten minutes, close his eyes, and try to relax and concentrate on nothing other than the slow in-and-out of his breathing. It seemed like such an easy task—just sit back and think of nothing. But Billy found it daunting.
He couldn’t deny it. He thought he had one of the busiest minds on the west coast, maybe even in all the continental United States. The world? Billy shrugged and thought of an old Perez Prado and Rosemary Clooney song he loved, “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.”
Billy had to chuckle. The song was appropriate for this morning. It was all about the pining of an unrequited lover for another—and about forcing him to make up his mind.
He sighed and basked for a moment in the clarity of the early morning sun. It was so delicious, he briefly considered simply flopping back on the bed and returning to sleep. At least in slumber, he could forget about his “problem” next door.