Miles

by Carriere, Adam Henry

  "Have you listened to all of these?"

  "Not yet. That's my Christmas project." We smiled at each other. "Want to help out with that, too?"

  "We didn't shovel the driveway yet."

  "That's what American technology is for. We have a snow-blower."

  He put a hand on my arm. "I know. Let's get up early tomorrow and take it out and do a bunch of driveways. We'll take turns so we don't get tired, and make a ton of money." His eyes sparkled at me, but I turned away from him and idly fiddled with my record player.

  "I think I've got a lot of money, now." The doorbell started ringing, another fine friendship moment broken by the bell. I looked at my Omega. Two hours for a pizza? I handed Felix a ten dollar bill from my jeans pocket, and said in an empty voice, "We didn't do my Mom and Dad's room yet."

  Felix put himself in my arms. I closed my eyes, fighting off another attack of tears, when my best friend whispered, "Tomorrow." He held my face in his hands for a moment, before going downstairs to get our sumptuous dinner.

  I knelt down and began picking out albums I wanted to listen to with Felix.

  *

  Felix asked, "What are you thinking about?"

  "Nothing, really."

  I wore my tartan robe and a pair of white socks. Felix wore its matching pajama top, which hung down below his underwear. He sat on the carpet, propped up on an oversized pillow against the couch. I lay next to him in front of the warm and colorful fireplace. His arm was draped over my chest while my head rested in his lap.

  "Who’re you trying to fool, bro? You’re always thinking about something."

  I placed my hand over his, pressing his palm over my breast. Felix slid his other hand beside my face. "I'm trying not to think in the first place."

  He lowered his voice, as if someone might hear him. "What are you feeling, then?"

  "I feel loved." The words came without hesitation or thought. So did his.

  "You are." I sat up slowly and moved beside Felix, pulling a blanket up over our legs. "Am I?"

  I nudged closer to him and touched his face with the side of my fingers. "More than I can probably say out loud."

  "Do you mean that?"

  I shifted around to face him, taking both of his hands in mine. "Sure I do. Doesn't it sound like I mean it?" Felix looked embarrassed as he nodded his head. "Why would you even ask that?"

  Felix pulled his hands out from mine, only to take them inside of his. "My Grandfather always says that people already have an answer in mind when they ask a question."

  "He's probably right. So?"

  "I know you meant what you said. You always do." Felix let go of my hands and looked away from me to the fire. "I just wanted you to say it again."

  I sensed something was wrong. Felix sounded afraid and defensive, nothing at all like his usual optimistic, playful self. His happiness made him such a source of strength for me. "Well, just for the record, I'll say it again." He tried to laugh me off, but it didn't work. "And again and again, until you finally believe me."

  "I believe you."

  "No, Felix. I mean, believe me, deep down, in your heart of hearts." I put my arm around his shoulders and drew my face close to his, making him finally look me in the eyes. I all but smiled at the worry I saw and felt in my fellow lone wolf. "You're my best friend, Felix." I watched his bottom lip begin to shake. "I love you." His eyes shut fast. I started to speak softly. "Do you hear me? I love you." I moved my lips closer to his. Excitement coursed through my body, as tension gripped Felix's. “I love you, OK?”

  "Sure,” he whispered. “But if you love me, will you tell me the truth, no matter what I ask you?" I could almost smell the alarm inside of Felix's voice. I leaned my forehead against his before sitting back beside him, regret seeping into the warm waters that only moments before were flooding throughout me.

  "You're my best friend." I crossed my arms over my chest and took a few deep breaths. "You left your family back in Florida just to be with me. Do you know what that means to me? Everything that's happened...the last few days, they seem less... horrible, now." I sensed the night was coming to an end. My voice shifted into neutral. "I love you, Felix. You can ask me anything you want."

  "You said you weren't in the car when your..." I could hear him swallow, "...your parents..."

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  I told him every detail of my family's Christmas Eve. He listened closely and unhappily, noting the leftover bruises that were still visible on my face.

  "Where did you go after they drove off?"

  I paused before telling him every detail of my trek to Irma's diner, and, afterwards, to Nicolasha's apartment. There was a lengthy pause before he spoke up again. We were sitting together under the same blanket, alone and half-naked, but, in the pit of my stomach, it felt like the Berlin Wall had been dropped down in between us.

  "You spent the night there?" I nodded. He looked at me in a strange way. I couldn't tell what he was feeling. "Did he give you that photo album upstairs?"

  My heart sank. I closed my eyes and my fists, trying to escape the chill that began to smother my heart. Felix must have run across Nicolasha's album while I showered. I shook my head slowly. "No. I brought it home the first time I went to his apartment." Stole the damn thing, actually. "I just never gave it back."

  I guess I never really tried, either.

  "Did you...sleep...together?"

  I took a long time before I nodded my head. Felix let out a pained breath through his mouth. Now I finally understood Uncle Alex's taste for unusual and exotic forms of liquid and narcotic restraint. I suddenly and completely regretted what I had said, and wanted to run clear out of the room, out into the snow, away, away from everything.

  "Why?" Felix sounded like he was fighting back tears. "Do you love him, too?"

  "No," I replied angrily, "it's not like that." My voice wound down to a peep. "It's not the same thing."

  "Did you say you loved him, too?"

  I stared at Felix as he fought for his breath while tears rolled down his cheeks. "No," I lied.

  "Did you...?" I shook my head. I reached for Felix, but my friend bolted up and stood by the bar with his back to me, trying to catch his breath while he talked and cried at the same time. "You're the best friend I've ever had. We're so different, though. I knew that on the first night you stayed over at my house." What was it, four, five weeks ago? It seemed to me like an eternity ago, right then. "But I didn't care. You were my friend, and that's all that mattered. I didn't care if you were different." Oh, different. Separate development for me. Apartheid for the androphiliac. "You say you love me, but I don't know what that means." Who the hell does? "I keep on wondering about what I really feel about you. I came here to be with you, but now..."

  I chortled through my closed teeth. "But what? I'm the same friend tonight that I was the first night we spent together, except we're both still wearing clothes, and I'm down a few family members." The statement was fired like a missile, and landed like one, to judge by how Felix spun around with anger, guilt, and sorrow all burning in his eyes. "Nothing's changed, Felix." Just the temperature of my soul, that's all. I tried to put some effort back into my voice. "We're still best friends, right?”

  He came back to the fireplace and knelt down beside me. I hesitated before reaching up to wipe a stray tear away from his lips, making him smile. "Will we still be friends after I leave?"

  Now I understood a little more. "You haven't left yet."

  "I will, when school ends for the summer."

  Six months, and my best friend would leave. "Do you know where you're going?"

  "Out west, someplace," Go west, young man. "I think New Mexico." I'd never been there. Uncle Alex told me it was gorgeous. Felix's voice took on another unusual edge. "Now Dad wants to be a horse rancher."

  I tried to lighten the mood somewhat. "That sounds a lot more fun than commercial real estate, Felix. Look at it from his point of view."

  Felix a
greed. "I'd rather rustle doggies than schmooze a bunch of filthy rich investors and lawyers any day."

  Lawyers. I liked Dad so much more when he was an officer and a gentleman. "Let's kill all the lawyers."

  We giggled together. Felix sat back down next to me. "What is that from? Richard II?"

  "Henry VI, dear boy." I mimicked our Mister James the Literature Fiend Granger's rich voice.

  "I can't believe you read Shakespeare in your spare time." Felix looked at me with respect, and then, affection, mixed with lonely fear. I knew that lonely fear look. I saw it every morning in the bathroom mirror. "Will you still love me after I leave? As a friend?"

  "As a best friend, you mean." A reflexive urge to reach up and kiss Felix mushroomed through me. The gesture came out in words, instead. "I love you now, Felix. I'll still love you after you leave. I just won't be able to say it to you in person. Not as often, anyway."

  Felix braced himself visibly before speaking again. "Would you keep loving me, as a best friend, if we...did what you and Mister Nicolas...did?"

  He spoke the simple little word "did" with the same awkward inflection all teenagers use as a tenderizer for a more explicit sexual description. So, hey, Paco, did you do it with Betty? You bet your ass we did it, Jack. We did it until my rocks hurt. I did it all over her face. I did it.

  The fire crackled in the background. I ran my finger along Felix's lower lip, but he didn't move away. Slowly and without interference, I began to unbutton his pajama top, while neither of us looked at the other. "Do you want to?"

  "I don't know," he whispered, "I don't know." He bit his lip. "I feel so afraid, and I shouldn't, because you're my best friend." He laughed uneasily. "Maybe that's why I'm acting like such an idiot tonight."

  I painted Felix's soft cheeks with the teardrops that dribbled out of him in the pause. "You're not an idiot at all. Believe it or not, I know exactly what you're feeling."

  "I thought we'd stay best friends if I...if we..."

  "We might not stay friends at all. Who knows?" I let out a tired laugh. "We might be dead before school ends."

  Dead. I decided I didn't want a wake. I wanted the defector priest to perform the service in Polish at the gravesite, and I wanted "His cares are now all ended" inscribed on my tombstone.

  "Did you ever think about it?" Felix kissed my fingers. He made my waist squirm beneath the blanket. Our eyes locked up, the same way they did the first day we met, sitting on Felix's bed making promises to each other neither of us really thought we'd have to keep. I was going to pretend he was talking about dying when he pressed my closed hand against his lips. "You know, with me?"

  I considered how honestly I would answer Felix's question. "At first. Yeah. The first night, definitely." I was the first friend to look away from the other.

  "What about after that?"

  "A little bit." Ha, try nearly every day. "The more we became buddies, the less I thought about it." The more I tried not to think about it, which hurt. A lot, as I recalled.

  "And now?" There was pressure and dismay in the soft tone of his voice, the same feelings I was aware of, deep inside again.

  "I don't know." I sounded as unconvinced as I felt.

  We sat in my family room's echoing stillness without touching or looking at each other, until the fire finally burned itself out.

  *

  My bedroom was freezing. I had forgotten that I closed the heat register when we were playing "Hazel". I left it that way. My heart needed company, and the cold would have to do. I switched on the radio in time to catch the beginning of Schumann's piano suite, Carnival.

  Felix climbed into my bed first. I followed, still wearing my robe. We laid side-by-side in the dark for the duration of the deeply sentimental piano composition, before he rolled to his side and faced the wall, away from me.

  The bedroom's chill began prodding my heart in the wrong direction. "I don't think I'm what you're really mad about. It's not us, either."

  "I'm not angry," Felix mumbled.

  "Oh, yeah? Maybe we're not so different, after all." I pulled my robe off and threw it across the room.

  I couldn't even hear Felix breathe. I thought about kissing the back of Felix's neck in apology, or cradling him in my arms like Nicolasha had done with me a few nights ago, but I didn't. Instead, I pretended to fall asleep, and listened hard while my best friend used his pillow to keep his sniffling to himself.

  I was actually happy someone else was doing the crying, for a change. I should have felt bad about that, but didn't.

  Mom and Pop Radio moved on to their next selection.

  * * *

  X I V

  You have such a February face.

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Lawrence the Laughing Lawyer was very businesslike and cordial. The office staff looked at me with over-solicitous pity. Dad's ex-partners each came out of their suites to say hello, shake my hand, ask how I was doing, and, of course, inquire if there was anything each of them could do.

  Such was the glory of being reduced to the role of poor, lonely orphan.

  The whole office, from the walls to the jewelry, seemed painted in a rainbow of conservative grays and blues to me. It always had. Felix and his trench coat fit right in. My blue jeans and hiking boots didn't. None of legal eagles made open notice of the fact I was wearing Dad's favorite greatcoat, a black tweed that would qualify me to play a vampire hunter in the next Hammer Film.

  Uncle Alex waited for me in Lawrence's dull "Better Homes and Garden"-approved office. He was alone. He did, however, look refreshed and alert. Maybe it was the bracing cold he loved so much. Felix stayed in the anteroom.

  Lawrence slid his large leather chair close to his tidy and empty desk, empty except for a single, open file, which he rested his hands over. "I'll try to be as brief as possible." He lit a short, unfiltered cigarette. "I'm sure none of us want to linger over this stuff." He cleared his throat with a smoker's cough and looked at me directly, without emotion. "You understand your parents arranged for me to look after their affairs, take care of things." I nodded and returned his vanilla stare. "We can have one of the other partners handle this, or any other matter, if either of you would prefer."

  Uncle Alex winced with impatience, and turned to me for my decision. I could picture Aunt Hilly grinding Lawrence's knees over the phone, making him agree to ask such an inane question. I smiled thinly. "They don't give family discounts, do they?"

  Lawrence smiled back. "No." The ice was broken. "Now, everything’s yours." He indicated me with his cigarette. "There aren't any wills, but nothing ends up in Probate Court or creates a tax issue, because you’re the only survivor. Your name is on the house, as you know, and it's going to be paid off out of the firm's bereavement annuity." My eyes widened. "It's one thing you won't have to worry about." He coughed again. Stop smoking, for God's sake! "You're listed on the bank accounts, so there's no problem there, unless you decide to run away in style."

  Uncle Alex gave me a humorous look that said, "That’s what I’d do!" I laughed to myself, even as a numbing sensation grew inside of me.

  "It's kind of funny." Lawrence's voice was sadly ironic. "Your dad put all those utility stocks in your name, alone, right after he said 'yes' to that New York firm."

  In a rare moment of emotional lucidity two anniversaries ago, Aunt Dutch had given Mom and Dad all her electric and gas company shares. I didn't know what they were worth, but I knew there were a lot of them. The whole family had come a long way from our decidedly working class, immigrant background in Roseland. I used to think it was funny we weren't happier as a result.

  "They're very conservative stocks. Our money man, Mister Nadell, could definitely do better with their cash value."

  "What do you think?"

  My lawyer cousin shrugged the shoulders of his light grey suit. "Utilities are slow and steady, but they get you there in the end. You can probably live on the checks until you're done with college." He gave me a quick, hard star
e. "You are planning on college, aren't you?"

  "My lit teacher sent a few of my poetry samples to some of his Ivy League friends back east. I guess they like them. They're interested in having me come visit them." Lawrence nodded approvingly. Uncle Alex rolled his eyes.

  "Good. Good." He flipped a number of pages in the file. "Now, your uncle and I spoke last night..."

  Uncle Alex was my Godfather, and agreed to be legal guardian. He would sell his Minnesota property, and move in with me. No mention was made of Veronica. Once I made plans for college, Lawrence and Uncle Alex would help me decide what to do with the house. The water level of the conversation kept getting closer to my face. I was underwater by the time Lawrence told me about Mom and Dad's substantial life insurance policies. The payoffs would be put into a sheltered trust that I could access for college, and anything else, once I was twenty one.

  "So I've got a lot of money now, huh?"

  Lawrence waved his cigarette in the air. "It's not all liquid cash, per se, but you'll have to go on a terrific drunk to end up as poor as our great-grandparents were."

  We both looked at Uncle Alex, a man well familiar with spectacular lost weekends.

  "You want my advice? Fuck the Ivy League. Go to the University of Hawaii."

  "Why?"

  "You won't have far to go to the beach when you skip classes."

  *

  Dad's office was decorated like a Captain's cabin on an important ship. It was one of his very few childish indulgences, besides the Stingray. I realized I loved them both, for what they were, and what they represented, and Dad, for breaking down and having them in the first place.