Broken People

by Sam Lansky

  They told him he was ready to go home a day or two later. Noah came to pick him up, waiting quietly by the side of his bed. Sam could see the weight of this responsibility on his face, his ticking clock. Deep in Sam’s gut, he knew Noah was waiting for him to be well again so he could sever his ties with Sam, after what they had been through.

  Sam winced as they pulled the IV from his arm. He staggered to his feet, tucking the folds of his hospital gown around him. It had been days since he’d stood and his feet felt strange and meaty on the cold linoleum, like they didn’t belong there. Slowly he wobbled to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. His gown was bedraggled and his hair was matted but at least, he noticed, he was thinner than he’d been before he’d gotten sick. He studied his reflection.

  A few weeks later, when Noah asked him if they could talk, Sam wasn’t surprised. He had known this was coming. And it wasn’t like he had ever really believed that Noah was the guy, that they would have a future together, that this would be about something more profound than desire.

  “This all feels like a bit too much for me,” Noah said in one rushed breath, like he was hurrying to get the words out. “I don’t know that I can be what you need me to be.”

  “It’s okay,” Sam said.

  “We’ll see each other.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Noah said. “It’s all just been—kind of a lot, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “It has.” Something bright flickered in him for a moment, not because he was happy, but because he was getting closer to the truth. “But it’s always that way with me. Too much and not enough.”

  It had never been about Noah, anyway, not really. Sam understood that now. It had been about proving something to himself. He had used him, the way he used everyone. He had made it real, in his body, in the thing he hated most.

  I’ll show you how sick I can be.

  * * *

  Sam came back into his body. Jacob was singing again. He touched his fingers to his face. How strange this was, his ability to make things real. That he could will things into reality by believing them fiercely enough, that he could bend the world by the sheer force of his conviction. Wasn’t that what he’d done—both with Noah and with Charles, in their own ways? The guy he’d been so sure he would make sick and the guy he’d been so sure would make him sick, the symmetry of this. The way he made himself sick, emotionally and physically, to force people to stay, or to make them leave—or both at the same time, pulling them closer to him and pushing them away.

  There was something wrong with him. There always had been, something deep and intractable, something that he needed people to see and wanted urgently to hide, something that made him acutely lonely and desperate to connect, something that made him manifest sickness even as he pretended to be fighting to get better. He understood that now. But there was no anguish—only a deep sense of peace at beholding this now.

  This, she whispered. This is who you are. Your fear. Your shame. Your preoccupation with the way things look. Your need to make everything bad.

  I know, Sam said. I know that now.

  You are the stories you tell yourself about how there’s something wrong with you, she said. But she wasn’t hostile. She was sad.

  And her voice became the blinking white light over his left shoulder again that had been there the previous two nights, pulsating like a strobe, and in the strangest and quietest little way, it came to him, less like a realization and more like a memory, like running into an old friend who looks so different you don’t recognize them at first: the white light was her, the spirit. He felt her presence, her weight, her femininity—it was a her, there was no mistaking that—and he felt her curious familiarity. There was no big moment of epiphany. Sam had known her already—he just hadn’t recognized her—and her presence was as unimpeachable a fact as the air in his lungs.

  Hey, Sam said to her, and he felt her beam back at him, acknowledging him, too, in this moment of recognition. Together they drifted through space for a little while, just the two of them, in an easy quiet.

  And then deeper, deeper still, Sam descended, like he was disappearing into a darker corner of space, where the stars were brighter but the space between them was an inkier black, and as he felt this shift, he checked back in with his physical body, which he could still feel, lying on the floor of Buck’s living room, on the surface of reality, as far away as that now seemed. Sam wriggled his toes. There was a blanket pulled over him. But it was just a vessel that he had traveled out of, and now he was somewhere very far away.

  He didn’t want to lose track of it entirely. He put his hands on his hips and squeezed the soft flesh around his pelvic bone, gripping it between his fingers. From a thousand miles away, which was exactly the right amount of distance, it suddenly struck him that perhaps this body was worth loving for no other reason than because it was his. What a radical idea, Sam thought. I don’t think I’ve ever had a thought like that before. In this great detachment from his body, he felt suddenly tender toward it, as compassionate as he might have been toward a wounded animal.

  Why do you want to be sick? he said to it, with genuine curiosity, and then it was almost hilarious, the amount of angst he’d been in about his body. He could feel the heavy, fleshy ordinariness of it. Just a body like anyone else’s, a body that worked pretty well most of the time. What was it that made him hate it so much, anyway?

  And then he was falling.

  The air all rushed around him and everything collapsed. He was not in space. He was in his body—he felt it gasp—and he was infinitesimally small, the size of a single molecule, and he fell the distance from the crown of his head down to the base of his belly, very quickly and very far, a full theme-park-style drop. Down and down he plummeted into the deepest part of himself, somewhere in his core, and everything was blue-black, like he had fallen into a cave and was landing in the water, and through that water he descended deeper and deeper until he saw something that looked like the hull of a submarine. He couldn’t see the full size of it, only the one piece directly in front of him, which was gray metal, with a round porthole. He floated closer to it to look inside. And as he approached the window, he suddenly knew where he was.

  It was the room where he stored the belief that there was something wrong with him. It was as old as he was. It had been there forever, but he had never seen it before. It was astonishing to see this place up close, to know that it had always been, although it was his first time visiting it. But it was real.

  Up on the surface, he could feel his physical body twisting and gawping, and the version of him that was up on the surface was watching the version of himself that was down in the room, and Sam felt something tearing within him as he assumed the shape of these two parts of him—the narrator-self and the character-self, splitting into two discrete wholes, those two “I”s that existed simultaneously and independently of one another.

  Go! His character descended through the porthole and down into the room. It was white and sterile, with a long, orderly line of translucent plastic bins with flip-top lids. It was so well organized, so clinical. Sam had always believed that shame was a big dark ocean, a morass of emotion that couldn’t be ordered or reasoned through, a snarl of intersecting traumas. But in fact it was as tidy as a bank vault.

  His narrator couldn’t help but laugh a little bit at how incredible this was, to see it all up close. That elemental sense of brokenness, of being wrong, of being bad—it all lived right here in this room, like a filing cabinet, where Sam compiled the experiences that proved there was something wrong with him. All of the memories associated with the reinforcement of this belief were stored in this place. It was an evidence room.

  Floating above the first compartment, his narrator watched as his character looked down at it. Inside the compartment was a fine black powder, like silt in its texture. It was the Buck box. A
nd when his character opened it, Sam felt a rushing, like a hot gust of wind blowing in his face, and there was the shame of Buck’s rejection, his sense of not being good enough as he traveled through Buck’s rarefied world, and it all felt so unimportant now. Buck—Buck who was always getting used by younger men. Maybe Sam had done that to him, too, even if he hadn’t realized it. He’d taken advantage of him by coming along on this journey in the first place. That was his pattern, Sam’s narrator realized—he was always looking for some guy to rescue him and to make everything better. But here, the shame of that admission was neutralized. He felt it and let it go. I’m sorry, Buck, his character said, and the box was empty.

  Next his character turned to the second compartment, which, like the first, was partially filled with black powder. This box was for Brett, and as Sam’s character opened it, he remembered what it had felt like to stand in the apartment in Yorkville for the first time with Brett, looking around it so proudly—those walls that, for a time, belonged to them—and the glittering synths of some pop song he’d forgotten that he used to love, and then that look on Brett’s face the night Sam told him he was moving in with Charles, and he felt the full weight of it, how eager he had been to sell out his best friend, and he was ashamed but he knew that it was okay. He breathed in. He breathed out. I’m sorry, Brett, his character said, and the box was empty.

  And then his character opened the next box, which was a little bit fuller, and as the lid came off, he realized it was the Noah box, and this one hurt more: the way he’d looked the night they met, and the taste of his mouth, and the expression on his face that day in the airport, and the prick of a needle in Sam’s arm, and the hollowed-out shock in his eyes that day in the hospital. Maybe Noah had tried to love him and Sam just hadn’t known how to accept it. Maybe Sam had loved Noah because loving Noah was so much safer than loving himself. And Sam felt it, more acutely than ever before, the shame of what he had wanted from Noah, and that was okay, too. I’m sorry, Noah, his character said, and then that box was empty, too.

  The fourth box was full. His character opened the lid, eager to see what it contained. But as soon as it was open, he wanted to close it again, because it was the Charles box, and there was too much in there, too much.

  All the memories came surging through him, all of them at once. His narrator could touch them all, not moment by moment but everything at the same time, the frames so fast and mighty they were concurrent, all of these characters inhabiting all of these different scenes, all of the different bad people he had been in all the places he had gone, the version of him that was cruel and the version of him that was a liar and the version of him that was wounded and the version of him that was afraid and the version of him that wanted to be loved but didn’t know how to accept it. He hadn’t been prepared. And now he didn’t know how to stop it. His narrator wanted his character to close the box, to end this, but it was too late. Cobblestone streets. Billowing curtains. Breakfast in bed. Hollow of his chest. Sam’s body gasped and clawed at the floor.

  And there they were the first night they met, in that funny track jacket Charles was wearing that made him look like such a dork. And there they were in a taxi speeding back to Charles’s apartment and Sam had his fingers out the window, feeling the air of the city on a cool summer night. And there they were, sitting on Sam’s roof smoking cigarettes and Sam was telling him that he thought he was falling for him and Charles said, “Me, too.” And there they were in Sam’s bedroom and Sam was playing him songs he loved and Charles made a little “oh” noise when they got to his favorite verse in his favorite song and Charles had said later—what was it?—that it was then, in that moment, that he realized he was in love with Sam. And there they were watching Real Housewives together and Sam asked Charles what his tagline would be, and he said, “My personal time is the most precious commodity I trade,” and then turned his head toward the camera theatrically like he was flipping his hair, and Sam was laughing so hard he thought he would pee his pants. And there they were, screaming at each other until their voices went hoarse, a hundred times at once. And there they were, standing in their apartment for the last time, surveying the empty space they’d made.

  He felt all of these characters splitting and dispersing, moving across space and time, starting with the character down in the room and spreading to a dozen different places they had been, inhabiting each of them, the smell of the streets, the moisture in the air; he had characters in all of them at the same time. They had seen so much of the world together.

  There they were in Cartagena, wearing tropical-printed shirts under a sultry Amazon moon, in a villa overlooking the old city, where Sam slept on the couch after they fought until he felt Charles’s hands on his body in the middle of the night, and Sam followed him into bed, praying that the morning would be better. And then they were in Morocco, in a coastal town called Essaouira, where camels trundled gracelessly along the beach, but Charles slept funny on his back and woke up with stabbing pains, and so they were hurrying through the squalid alleyways to a chiropractor past beggars and street merchants hawking flip phones and spices, Charles murmuring in Arabic to him while Sam sat helplessly in the dark; and there they were making love in an ancient riad in the medina where rose petals were scattered everywhere, Sam’s belly swollen from sweet mint tea, but he hated the way he looked in all the photographs Charles took and Sam was snapping at him, and he was seeing the hurt on his face turn to anger and in that moment Sam hated himself even more than Charles did, and his narrator was wondering—why? Why was it so hard? And then they were in Paris, in the middle of the night, running through the streets of the Marais, laughing, their sneakered feet slapping the ground, and Sam was thinking, Please, let it stay this way, but by morning the magic had gone, just evaporated like mist.

  God, you took a lot of trips, his narrator said, and Sam thought about how spoiled he had been and for a minute all the characters felt lucky, so lucky to have had a life like that.

  It was everything, the whole relationship, the entire world, and all of the other characters he had been—it was right there, and his body was aching and grieving, keening and grasping, and his narrator was reacting to the pain in his body, in heavy sobs, his chest quaking, his limbs spasming. Why are you doing this? his narrator called down to his character, but he wasn’t listening to him now, too wonderstruck by all the memories to do it any differently.

  Charles—oh God, Sam had loved him so much. He had loved his pigeon-toed walk and the feeling of his fingers intertwined in his own, the way his voice sounded when he answered the phone, the appendectomy scar on his belly, how much he cared about his mother, his goofy white-boy dancing, the way he looked at Sam with worry when he knew Sam was sad. And his narrator wished, so desperately, that Sam had fought harder to keep him, this boy who loved him and whom he loved back.

  It was so clear now, down here, looking at all of it at once. The way Sam had tried to love Charles, when all the while, he had hated himself so much. The way he’d let all that money and stuff turn him into the worst version of himself. And these, the stories he’d gotten stuck in: the story he was writing, and the story he was living. And here, the story he’d been keeping inside himself.

  You have to clear it, she said, and Sam’s character looked down at the contents of the box, that silky black dust. He was ready to let it go.

  And then he wasn’t. Don’t let it go, his narrator said. And he knew that this box was everything that still kept him connected to Charles. It was the only thing keeping Sam connected to Charles now; it was all of the memories that reinforced the belief that there was something wrong with him, and it was maybe the most vital thing here. And if he let it go, Charles would be gone forever.

  And then she was there again, back over his shoulder. His narrator knew that she wanted him to let it go. I can’t, he shouted silently at her. I’m not ready.

  You are, she said. His narrator shook his head. Up on the
surface, he heard himself gasping for air. You have to let it go, she said. I can’t, his narrator said again. He felt her pressing against his fear and resistance but he didn’t care.

  What do you need to keep? she asked.

  Scrambling, his character looked around the room. He looked down at the black dust, but it was like a box full of sand. How could he sift through it, grain by grain? He had to let it all go. All of it at once.

  And then he saw it—the box that it came in. The container. That. That’s what I need to keep, his narrator said. I have to keep the container.

  Okay, she said.

  Up on the surface, in his physical body, Sam became aware that he had come to sit upright, cross-legged. He shook and wept. He touched his hands to his face. It was so wet with snot and tears and spit that it felt like amniotic fluid, like he was being born. Across from him, he could feel someone else sitting. Was it Jacob? It had to be. He was sitting so close to Sam that the heat of his body was radiating against him.

  Faintly, down in the room, Sam’s character could hear Jacob’s singsong voice in some ancient prayer. And then, on the surface, Sam’s narrator felt Jacob’s breath, deep and deliberate and faster than normal, as if he were giving birth. His inhalations came fast and hard, like he was trying to suck the air in through his teeth. It was distracting.

  Why is he doing that? Sam’s narrator wondered, irritated. But when he turned his attention back down to the room, he realized what was happening.

  Jacob was pulling on it. The contents of the container. The black dust. He was tugging at it with his breath. Sam felt the tension, the resistance, felt it dislodge from its cavity in the container and rise up out of the room. No, his narrator cried. I’m not ready. The blinking white light flashed faster and brighter. I’m sorry, Charles, he said. I’m really sorry.

  Together, his narrator and his character watched transfixed as it rose up into the room, suspended in midair, this cloud of shimmering black dust, and as it moved, it began to assemble shape, all these little bits of data, until it resembled a sleeve, and then a collar, and then a zipper, and as the pieces of it found each other like shavings of metal manipulated by magnets, it became what it was, and what it had always been.