Memento Amare

by G. D. Cox

  Clyde runs after the guy excuses himself to go to the restroom. He runs out of the bar and jumps into his car and speeds the fuck away with a deafening screech of wheels folks all the way in New York City can probably hear. He drives, drives and drives and drives and keeps on driving. He slams his hand on the steering wheel once, twice. He roars to a furious, lonely audience of one, like a caged animal whose claws are useless against its bitter, man-made prison. He slams his hand on the steering wheel again, panting, glaring out the windshield at the dark turmoil of night, his whole head pulsating with pain that makes his lips pull back from his gums.

  He swerves the car to a halt at the first liquor store he comes across. He purchases enough of the hard stuff to make even the grizzly, old geezer at the cash register lift a bushy eyebrow at him. He coops himself up in some random, seedy motel from which he calls for pizza deliveries or what-the-fuck-ever fast food is available in where-the-fuck-ever he is in this upside-down, forsaken country, and jesus, the amount of puking he does ought to be some kind of new Guinness world record. He wakes up one day on the icy, tiled floor of the bathroom with a splash of acrid vomit under his face, unable to recall how he got there. On another day, he staggers out of his motel room for some fresh air, with more dried puke and stains from Chinese takeout down his t-shirt, three days gone without a shower and he doesn't give two fucks about it. He doesn't see the point of changing his shirt or a shower if he's going to just drink and throw up some more.

  And no, no, this is not him turning into his goddamn old man. No, he's just ... he's just in a bad place right now. Just dealing with a bad thing that's happened to him. That's it. It's his goddamn right to drink if he wants to, his goddamn right to fight and he'll clobber the next guy who dares to tell him otherwise.

  When all the alcohol's gone, when his skull isn't smothered by cotton-wool panic and strobes of betrayal and disgust anymore, he's on the road again, hitting more bars again. Hitting more guys with fists hungry for blood, for pain. Sometimes he can't tell if it's their blood and pain he tempts, or his own. Sometimes he wishes their faces that he batters are his own face, his, his. He's possessed by a frenzy to hoard Pyrrhic victories, to drink and fight and get thrown out on his ass while alcohol deluges his veins, bloats that worthless, wrinkled thing in his head and fails to fill this void in his chest.

  That frenzy reaches its zenith in a most foul way, in the hiring of a young prostitute to give him a blowjob in his car in the agitated semi-darkness of a deserted alley between two squat buildings. He's almost at Denver by now, and he's thinking about not thinking about Cole again and no ... no, he is not getting hard at all while this random brunette is sucking with all she's got on his limp dick with chapped, red-stained lips.

  Those lips are the wrong lips. That's the problem. Those lips are the wrong lips because they don't feel like the warm, firm and yet somehow also soft and thrilling lips that had kissed him in a tenth-floor apartment in Brooklyn a lifetime ago. They don't feel like his lips, they don't feel like Cole's and -

  "Get off me," he forces out through gritted teeth, his eyes scrunched shut, his hands clenched rigid as iron and nowhere near her. "Please."

  Even with his eyes closed, he can tell she's befuddled as she retreats while staring at him.

  "I can - I can try again, really, I'll b-be better if you just gimme another chance," she mumbles in this frail, reedy voice, and his eyes snap open to see her balled up on the front passenger seat, staring at him like he's going to hit her if she doesn't satisfy him and fuck, she can't be more than twenty, what the fuck was he thinking? What the ever loving fuck is wrong with him?

  "No, just - just keep the money, okay? Just ... keep the money and go."

  He sounds damn frail and reedy himself, but maybe it's just all the blood leaving his slouched, cold body along with the rotten remnants of his decency, leaving behind only parching, helpless shame. She has big, green, ancient eyes that have probably and already seen too much in a single lifetime. He stares into them, because he doesn't deserve the privilege of hiding his face, his sins, not now.

  He clumsily tucks himself back into his jeans with shaking hands as she retreats farther out of the car. He stares at her again when she doesn't shut the door, when she kneels awkwardly on the outer edge of the seat in her spaghetti tank top and mini skirt and stares back at him.

  "Whatever it is that you're looking for," she murmurs, her eyes ancient and kind, "I hope you find it, too."

  After she shuts the front passenger door, after she leaves, he stares out the front passenger window at a dirt-grimed wall for a long, long time.

  He doesn't think about her, and he doesn't think about Cole when - with his skin scrubbed raw red under a hellfire-hot shower in yet another cheap, cruddy motel - he reaches Denver and drives on and on until he finds Melissa's house in the affluent suburb of Greenwood Village. He doesn't think about much of anything, really, as he gets out of the car on wobbly legs and leans against its black, steel frame. He stares at the picture-perfect, single family bungalow, at its picture-perfect, mowed front yard and iridescent, blossoming flower garden and Tartarian maple trees with their dense, round canopies and smooth-gray trunks lit by balmy afternoon sunlight.

  He stops thinking completely when the oak front door with its stained glass insert opens wide, when Melissa steps out onto the front porch appearing just like she did well over a decade (a lifetime, a lifetime) ago when they were still together, still lovers who tried so hard to be the bezoar to each other's loneliness. Her dark brown hair is still long, thick and wavy, tumbling down to the middle of her back. She still looks so damn beautiful in just an olive t-shirt and jeans, with those sweet, brown eyes and that sloped nose and those shapely lips that once always bowed up in an affectionate, forgiving smile for him.

  He feels a profound pang resonating through his chest as he looks at her, an errata of his heart that saps the strength from his hands, his legs. He feels absolutely nothing lower down his body, where a man would feel something for a woman who'd been his lover before. He feels absolutely nothing lower down, not a twinge, and he feels ... nothing about that.

  Melissa stops dead in her tracks when she sees him, when she finally recognizes him. A stocky man with a dark crew cut emerges into view behind her at the front door, and Clyde glances away swiftly, staring down at a multi-colored toddler tricycle tipped over on its side on the grass eight feet away in front of him. Oh, right, Melissa is a mother. She has a little boy now. She has a husband now.

  Clyde hears her saying something to her husband, something surely gentle and reassuring. He hears heavy footsteps going back into the house, hears the front door shutting.

  "Clyde?"

  He lifts his head and sees her sauntering down the tiled steps of the front porch, down a stone path leading to where he stands. God, she still sounds the same.

  "Clyde," she says, her brows furrowed. "Are you all right?"

  He stares at her, suddenly mute and numb and even more wobbly-kneed. He has no idea at all how to answer that question, not without lying to her face, not without pretending that he doesn't look the goddamn terrible mess that he knows he is.

  "Did something happen to Phelan? Is he all right?"

  It takes what feels like millennia for her questions to totally register. He gapes at her, and yeah, he probably looks like a dumbass but ... what the hell. What the hell, how does Melissa know about Cole? How does she know Cole that she's referring to him by his first name?

  "You ... you know Cole?" Clyde stammers, still gaping at her with wide, popping eyes.

  She looks flabbergasted by his question, blinking and then angling her head, replying, "Yes. Well, I know of him because -" She frowns with plain concern. "Clyde, the last time we spoke, you ... you called me to tell me about him. About your marriage to him."

  The words strike him like bullets. They fell him like an ax would a tree, and if he wasn't already propped up by the car, he would have dropped flat on his ass on the sidewalk. H
e sags against the car anyway, swallowing hard, swallowing again and letting his eyes flicker shut when Melissa reaches out to clasp his upper left arm. Her hand is so warm, so gentle. Her hand still feels the same upon his skin, like she never walked away from him, never left.

  "Hey. Hey, let's go sit down, okay?"

  Without opening his eyes, he nods. With her hand still on his upper arm, he lets her usher him to the house. He makes it to the front porch's steps before he can't walk anymore, can't go on anymore. His legs fold and he sits down on the third step, his arms linked around his shins. She sits down next to him with two feet of space between them, turned towards him, that expression of plain concern still gracing her face.

  "What happened?" she asks quietly. "You look ..."

  She trails into a silence that stretches thin across Clyde's nerves. He knows what a mess he is, what a wreck he is after weeks of being on the road and binge-drinking and fighting and being everything that he'd never permitted her to see of him while they were together. He's exposed here in more ways than one, like an x-ray of his skull blown up on a moon-bright wall. He can't hide from her either. He can't hide here from his sins either.

  He stares ahead at the stone path as he says, "I got ... I got some kinda amnesia. I don't remember anything about Cole. It's been weeks, months and I still - I still don't remember a thing about him."

  He hears her gasp, a sharp, sad sound. He stares ahead and doesn't look at her.

  "My god. I'm so sorry, Clyde. What happened?"

  He tells her what he can of the mission in Croenia, of that goddamn box that screwed with his brain and erased all his memories of Cole. He's still reeling from the knowledge that he'd called Melissa to tell her about Cole. About him and Cole being married. And he ... he still is, isn't he? Married to Cole. He's still married to Cole despite the fact that he ... that he left.

  "Where's Phelan now?"

  Phelan. She calls him Phelan. She calls him Phelan while he, the man legally recognized by the state of New York as the guy's husband, doesn't call him that.

  Clyde tightens his arms around his legs. He's still staring ahead as he mumbles, "Cole is - Phelan's still in NYC, I guess. I don't ... I don't know. I haven't spoken to him since leaving NYC."

  His dry, sore eyes stare at the stone path, but what he sees is Cole - Phelan standing statue-still in front of him in that fine, dark red blazer and fitted, white t-shirt. He sees his hand splayed across Phelan's heaving chest. Phelan, staring at him with those wide eyes as blue as a crush of diamonds from a blanched face. Phelan, still standing frozen to the spot like a staked scarecrow as he walks away and out the door of the ... their apartment, and not looking back once.

  When Melissa left him, she'd at least had the guts to wait until he came home and saw her packed bags, to say to his face that things were over between them. She'd done so with tears in her eyes, with a loving touch to his cheek and an equally loving, wistful smile. She'd given him that much.

  What had he given Phelan?

  A shove to the chest. An email sent with the click of a button. An email he couldn't even fucking sign with his name. He'd left Phelan without so much as a goodbye.

  Phelan, the man who'd been his handler in the GATF for eight years. His friend for almost as long. His ... his lover and husband (and not the other Clyde's, because there is no other Clyde, there is only him). The man who still remembers everything about them.

  Phelan.

  The man who never stopped loving him, even after he did.

  "You don't ... you don't remember why our relationship ended, do you?" Melissa murmurs. "You don't remember me telling you."

  He stares ahead, on and on, his arms even tighter around his legs. He shakes his head once, a jolt from side to side. He hears Melissa sigh, a faint sound weighty with lost years and possibilities.

  "Clyde, even while we were together ... I knew. That you're gay."

  He feels each word like the tightening of a noose around his neck. He grits his teeth so hard that they creak in his mouth. A muscle twitches in his lower jaw like a frog's electrocuted leg. He balls his hands into fists in front of his shins to stop them from quivering, but it doesn't work, not really.

  "I never doubted that you loved me. Never. But I ... I also knew that the love you felt for me wasn't the kind of love a man has when he's in love with a woman. I knew it. You did too. You told me that. You couldn't bear to acknowledge back then that what we had was ... a dead dream from the start. We both tried so hard to make things work, didn't we? You tried so hard to make the love we had that kind of love instead. And it hurt you. You were a tortured soul, Blondie, and I couldn't bear to see you hurt yourself like that anymore."

  Clyde's throat works in a very long, painful swallow. A wet heat is growing behind his eyes, and his head is hurting like crazy, like a pickax is dismantling the lobes of his brain one deep gouge at a time. Shit, it's another one of those goddamn headaches, the ones he's been suffering since leaving New York, since leaving Phelan and -

  So, vanilla or chocolate, sweetheart?

  The ache in his skull erupts like a hydrogen bomb as the vivid vision of Phelan with black, browline glasses, garbed in a navy sweater and jeans flashes before his eyes. Phelan's crinkled, blue eyes gaze at him from behind those glasses while they're standing in front of the gaily-colored counter of an ... ice cream parlor? Yeah, it looks like an ice cream parlor, what with the wide and narrow chalkboard menu hanging from the ceiling that's decorated with cartoon ice cream cones with smiling faces, a menu that lists an astounding selection of ice cream combos and condiments, and ... wait. Did he ... did he and Phelan go to an ice cream parlor in New York City together? On a ... date?

  Is this a memory?

  He hears Melissa say his name, but at the same time, he hears Phelan speak to him with that voice, that resonant, sublime voice, and Phelan is saying his name too, with that masterful deadpan face and -

  Oh, man. Did you just call me sweetheart in public? I cannot believe you.

  Maybe we should try the durian flavor, sweetheart.

  I cannot believe you. You have used up your quota of chick flick talk for the year, pal! And, durian? Really? Are you kidding me? I've read online reviews about this durian thing and they say it smells like a stinking dumpster full of old men's unwashed socks!

  Okay, we'll get two scoops of it.

  Unbelievable. You're eating them both. And don't think I'm gonna go near your mouth with your stinking dumpster breath.

  I guess your ear-to-ear smile is just you exercising the muscles of your face, then.

  He's sitting on a porch step beside Melissa in Denver and yet, he's also in New York City, although not in the ice cream parlor. He's now farther back in time to earlier that day, in an en suite bathroom in a tenth-floor apartment in Brooklyn, leaning against the marble vanity and watching Phelan taking his sweet time styling his hair with some mousse. He yearns so much to touch it now, to touch it in public, to caress the dark strands with his fingers and mess them up and know that he's the only one allowed to do so.

  Then they're back in that florid, whimsical ice cream parlor, ordering some jumbo ice cream platter with chocolate sauce and crushed cashew nuts and psychedelic-colored candy. Phelan is laughing at something he said, some silly joke about penguins and ice. Phelan's eyes are crinkling again, and those dark pink lips are quirking up too in that smile that only he ever sees, that smile that's his. Phelan's large, callused hand is a living weight on top of his on the table top and the way Phelan is gazing at him now, with all that love in those big, blue eyes like a crush of diamonds -

  Holy shit.

  Holy shit, this isn't some headache-induced hallucination. This is ... this is a memory.

  "Clyde? Clyde?"

  He feels Melissa's hand on his tense bicep. He peels open eyes he hadn't known he'd shut. He's clutching his aching head with both hands, his elbows on his raised knees, his shoulders and spine hunched. He feels Melissa's hand on him and her touch doesn't
corrode him, not like it used to, not anymore. He swallows down a hot coal in his throat. Sucks in a ragged breath. Squeezes his eyes shut once more when his sight goes even more blurry and hot.

  "Headache," he mutters, still clutching his head, still not looking at her.

  She doesn't move her hand away. He doesn't move it away. They sit there under a balmy, afternoon sun, with next to no space between them, with her hand squeezing his arm gently.

  He's the one who speaks once more, opening his eyes and lowering his arms to his lap.

  "'Were'. You said 'were'," he rasps as his head continues to throb with pain.

  The wet heat behind his eyes grows even more when he sees that she's blinking moisture out of hers, that she's smiling that wistful smile he thought he would never see again.

  "Yeah, Blondie. You were a tortured soul. Past tense."

  He stays where he is as she shifts even nearer to him, their upper arms pressed close, her head tilting to lay itself upon his shoulder. This near, he can smell the fresh fragrance of her hair, just like it was when he would nestle his face in it in the hush of a snow-stormy Minnesota autumn night and hide from the world (and from himself).

  "When you called me two years ago, the first thing you did was to apologize for what happened to us. I told you then, like I'm telling you now, I forgave you long before things ended. I knew you didn't mean to lie to me or anything like that. You didn't ... you didn't want to know that things were never going to work out for us. You didn't know yourself, Clyde. You were in a ... cage that I couldn't get you out of, that no one could. Except you. I couldn't even tell you that you were in it, much less show you the door so you could open it and walk out of it."

  Once more, Clyde thinks of Phelan (and he's always been thinking of Phelan, from the moment he walked out of their apartment). He thinks of that afternoon on the black, leather-bound couch in the living room after he'd gone for the brain scans in HQ's Medical, with that unfathomable gulf between them. (That he'd created, he did, not Cole, not even his amnesia.)