Broken People

by Sam Lansky

  It was the black leather jacket that Charles used to wear.

  On the surface Sam wept, rocking back and forth, pouring out his grief in sound.

  And then as Jacob pulled in another big breath, the jacket dissolved again and it was just a pile of ash, and with one final, deliberate breath, like slurping an oyster from its shell, the whole thing tugged loose and Sam felt him pull it up and out of the room, and up it came out of Sam’s mouth, the hot black energy of all that pain, and it was gone.

  It was just gone.

  Down in the room, Sam’s character looked at the container. As promised, it was still there, but there was nothing inside. It was empty.

  Sam’s character and his narrator looked at each other. His narrator raised his palm in greeting to his character, and these two parts embraced and became one.

  And then, just as swiftly as he had fallen, Sam felt himself ascend back up to the surface, shooting upward with dizzying velocity, traveling the length of his body like it was a thousand miles long, and everything was full of celestial light, like he was changing right there and then, in an instant, like his cells were regenerating, like he was being filled up and split open and turned over a thousand times, and then he opened his eyes and he was back there on the floor of Buck’s house, lying in the dark.

  It was eerily silent. Sam blinked. He felt her shift through him and out of him.

  * * *

  It was over.

  Sam’s body vibrated with the energy of what had just happened. He moved one finger, then two. He shook out his feet.

  “Sam?” He heard Jacob whisper. “Are you still experiencing effects?”

  “No,” Sam whispered. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes. His face was coated in snot.

  “Are you ready to close the ceremony?”

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “Buck?”

  Sam had forgotten all about Buck. Suddenly he felt him beside him. Buck rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “You okay, buddy?” he said softly.

  Sam nodded. And then it was all too much again. He didn’t know what he was feeling—everything, maybe, all the anguish and joy and relief. It all lived there inside him for a minute, all of it at once. He curled up on his side in a fetal position and leaned into Buck, smelling the smoky musk of his cologne, twisting up his shirt in his hand, and Sam nestled his head in his collar and cried.

  When he stopped crying a few minutes later, he rolled over and lay on his back, breathing fast, then slow. Then he sat up. Jacob looked at him expectantly. Sam felt his hands clasp in front of his body. He bowed his head.

  “Thank you, spirit,” Jacob said.

  And Sam whispered, Thank you.

  “Thank you for the gift of your medicine.”

  Thank you. When Sam looked up, the light of a candle was illuminating the tower of selenite by his feet, making it sparkle.

  Jacob looked at Sam. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  Sam thought about it for a long moment, trying to find exactly the right word.

  “Better,” he said.

  AFTER

  Part Three

  12

  Integration

  “There’s something different about you,” Brett said. He looked suspiciously at Sam. “Did you get Botox?”

  Sam laughed. “No.” He furrowed his brow. “Why, do you think I need it?”

  “Open your mouth,” Brett said. Sam obliged. “Did you bleach your teeth?”

  “I have not altered my physical appearance in any way since the last time you saw me.”

  Brett shook his head. “No, you definitely fucked with something. You look so...” He groaned. “Healthy. Oh God. Is that just how people look out in California? You have that weird, smooth, glowy quality. Like a lifestyle influencer, or a person who takes a lot of supplements.”

  “I did go to yoga this morning,” Sam said. “Namaste.”

  “Shit,” Brett said. “I have to get out of New York.”

  They were having breakfast at a diner in Murray Hill. Sam had flown in to spend a few days working out of his office in New York. Mostly, though, he had wanted to see Brett.

  “So what’s been going on?” Brett said, picking at his corned beef hash. “I feel like I’ve hardly heard from you the last couple months. You’ve barely been tweeting.”

  “I dunno,” Sam said. “I’ve been trying to spend less of my life staring at screens. Not in, like, a smug ‘I don’t even own a TV!’ kind of way, just in a, like, my life is out here kind of way.” He motioned around the restaurant. “I’ve even fallen behind on Housewives.”

  “LA has ruined you.” Brett cocked his head, studying Sam as though he were an alien. “Are you, like...good, though?”

  Sam settled back in his seat. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m good. I’m really happy.”

  Brett pointed at him, circling his finger like he was making a bull’s-eye. “This is fucking weird.”

  “Brett,” Sam said. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Let’s see,” Brett said. “Well, obviously I took the news of Britney canceling her Vegas residency pretty hard, so that was a whole thing. Oh—you know how my apartment is right by the UN? I was fucking this hot ambassador I met on Grindr and then one day he just—poof!—disappeared. So I looked it up and I think his country just, like, doesn’t exist anymore? I don’t know. Maybe he got extradited. But to where? And—let’s see, what else—yesterday a guy sat down next to me on the 6 train with a giant plastic garbage bag in his lap, and whatever was in the bag was moving. I think it was a raccoon. Or maybe a small child.”

  Sam was laughing. “I miss living here.”

  “You hated living here.”

  “I know. But I have so many tools now that I didn’t have before.”

  “There are plenty of tools left in New York.” Brett set down his knife and fork. “Speaking of, I saw Charles the other night.”

  “Oh?” Sam said. “Where?”

  “I was DJing at Le Bain and he came in with a bunch of rich kids.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Oh, fine,” Brett said. “You know I always thought Charles was—well, you know.”

  “You never thought he was that interesting.”

  Brett considered it. “I guess the only truly interesting thing about Charles was how much he loved you.” He pointed his fork at Sam. “That made him interesting.”

  “Did he love me that much?”

  “Ugh, of course,” Brett said. “And you were just such a fucking nightmare. All you talked about was furniture and how much you hated his friends.” He paused. “Are you gonna see him while you’re here?”

  Sam shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Liar. You lied about getting Botox and you’re lying about this!”

  “I’m not!” Sam said. “I just don’t think about him that much anymore.”

  “She’s moved on.”

  “I guess,” Sam said. “Or something.”

  “Let me know how you did it,” Brett said, scowling. “I’m going to need your help. Unless there’s a coup in Eastern Europe and my ambassador comes home to me.” He mock swooned.

  “Brett,” Sam said. He cleared his throat. “You like your place, right?”

  Brett looked momentarily uneasy. “What do you mean?” He blanched. “Oh God, are you here to tell me my building’s going condo?”

  “No! I just—” Sam looked down at his plate. “Sometimes I miss our apartment. And living with you. I feel like I cut it short. You know?”

  Brett waved his fork dismissively. “Please! I’ve done much more impulsive things for dick. All good things must come to an end and all that.”

  “Right, well—I’m sorry. If that put you out.” Sam looked at his friend. He had needed to get this ou
t, to have this moment of honest reckoning, but now that he was here, Brett seemed so unbothered by it, it made him wonder if it had even been necessary. But then Brett straightened in his seat and looked Sam in the eyes.

  “It’s nice of you to say,” Brett said. “But I like living in a studio. There’s nobody to judge the boys I bring home. Well, except my doorman. Who probably thinks I’m a complete dumpster.” He paused. “Anyway, when you’re ready to drop the skincare regimen, let me know.”

  * * *

  After breakfast, Sam decided to walk uptown. He didn’t have a specific destination in mind, nor did he need one: the city was like that. In other cities, you moved through the streets as a means of getting to where you needed to go; in New York, the act of traveling through the city was its own worthwhile activity. He had only been gone for two years but it had been transformed already: old buildings that used to house bodegas and dive bars torn down and replaced with pharmacies and banks. Things could change so quickly, or maybe he just noticed different things now.

  As he walked, the way the sunlight cascaded down in beams between buildings, all that light and shadow, made him think about Jacob, as he so often did, even now, two months after the ceremony. He closed his eyes and he was there again, in the guest bedroom of Buck’s house, the first morning after it was over. The way it felt to stretch out his fingers and tighten them into fists, then hug himself. The way his body, which had always felt like a cage, suddenly felt a little more like a home. The way the hot water, when he stepped into the shower, made him laugh as it hit his skin. His skin. The way it felt to have a body.

  Drying his hair with a towel that morning, Sam stepped in front of the mirror. He closed his eyes. He said a little prayer. Please, let me love the person looking back at me. Please, let that part of me be healed. He opened his eyes and looked at his naked body, as he had so many times before.

  Some surface-level disappointment passed through him. It was still all wrong. There were the same hips that had been there yesterday, too wide. There was his belly, still round. There were his ribs, which stuck out like they belonged on the body of someone who was skinny, although he was not. There were his thighs, thick. It was all still there. He disliked it just as much as he ever had.

  But as he looked at himself more closely, registering it, he waited for it—all of that chatter—to crystallize, to stick to him. Instead it just sort of dispersed. He looked at his body again. It was all so unremarkable, so no-big-deal. It was as if the tough cord that had connected that conversation to a more substantial sense of worth had been severed overnight. The pit in Sam’s stomach that always formed when he looked at himself this way, and the choirs of inner monologue that began the moment he did were silent.

  It was the first time he could remember that the way he looked had nothing to do with his value as a person. And it was strange to look at all his faults, acknowledge them and feel next to nothing about them—no shame, no discomfort, no self-consciousness. They just were.

  Over breakfast that first morning, Sam told Buck and Jacob about what he had seen and felt down in the room. Jacob was dressed like a professor again. “It sounds so Jungian,” he said. His expression was sphinxlike, but his eyes were playful.

  “Did you know what you were doing down there, pulling it out of me?” Sam asked. “Except it wasn’t you, though, right? You were just, like, the conduit. It was her.”

  Jacob didn’t say anything.

  Sam turned to Buck. “What happened for you, Buck?” he said, realizing suddenly that he had no idea whether Buck had experienced anything like what he had—or anything at all—and, stranger still, Sam realized that he cared, deeply, about whether Buck had found the healing that he, too, had sought. Did you care this much yesterday? he asked himself, and as much as he tried, he couldn’t remember.

  Buck turned his head to one side and a little half smile flickered across his face. “I don’t know if I can describe it the way you can,” he said. “So much of what I saw was beyond words, I guess.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  Buck shook his head. He laughed. “I don’t know,” he said, and he laughed again. “I don’t know. I felt...” He looked down. “I felt young and strong,” he said finally. “I wasn’t ashamed. She forgave me. And she connected me to everything. Does that make sense?”

  “Does it make sense to you?” Jacob asked.

  Buck nodded.

  “Then that’s all that matters.”

  Sam wanted to press Buck for more details, but he also knew that maybe it wasn’t something that could be put into words.

  Outside the house, in the driveway, the three men said goodbye. Sam hugged Jacob tightly, thanking him, promising to keep in touch.

  “Be careful with your integration,” Jacob said. “Drink a lot of water. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t look at screens. Breathe.”

  Sam nodded. “I will,” he said.

  And then Jacob slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and walked through the gate, out onto the street, and Sam and Buck watched through the open door as he got into the Uber that would take him back to the airport, and for a second it was almost comical how normal he looked, just like anybody else, like any average traveler returning from a business trip, or headed somewhere completely ordinary. And then the car carrying the shaman sped away and he was gone.

  Sam turned to Buck, his own bag at his feet. He gathered himself as best he could. “Buck,” he said. “Thank you. For this. Whatever it turns out to be.”

  “Oh, don’t mention it,” Buck said. “Thanks for coming on the journey with me.”

  “I’m serious!” Sam said. “This—this whole thing—was just...” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “I feel really lucky.”

  Buck smiled, and he went crinkly around the eyes. “I can’t imagine having done this with anyone else,” he said.

  And Sam wrapped his arms around Buck and squeezed him as fiercely as he could, and the gratitude was swelling within him, so buoyant it was almost suffocating, and there was no tension anymore, no awkwardness, no mystery of what existed between them to be solved. “I love you,” Sam said.

  “Love you, too, buddy,” Buck said.

  A few hours later, after Sam was home, he checked his phone to find a text from Buck. It said, I figured it out. Beneath it was a photograph of a handwritten note on a piece of stationery. Sam zoomed in so he could read it.

  Scrawled in all caps, it read: THE FUNDAMENTAL AWARENESS OF BEING WORTHY OF LOVE.

  Yes, Sam thought. Exactly like that.

  He found himself noticing things that felt different, and in the beginning each one felt like an epiphany. The next night, dressing up for a cocktail party at Soho House, Sam found his favorite suit was a little snug, but it didn’t bother him the way it should have—the way it always had before. And at the party, Sam ran into a television producer he’d been on a few dates with a year earlier; the guy had ghosted him, but Sam didn’t care, and when the guy extended his hand for a handshake, Sam pulled him in for a hug instead. “It’s so great to see you,” Sam said, and it really was; he heard the warmth in his voice, the generosity of it, where he would have otherwise been chilly, or even ashamed, as though the ghosting had had anything to do with Sam, which he understood now, in a way that he never had before, it did not.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” the producer said, warily, as though Sam was behaving strangely, which, to be fair, he was.

  They chatted for a minute, and then Sam excused himself to the restroom, and when he returned he saw the producer standing in a cluster of people, and Sam stood next to him for a moment, waiting for the producer to acknowledge him or introduce him to his friends, but that didn’t happen.

  Finally, Sam said, “Hey,” and the producer turned and smiled faintly at him, then turned his back to continue his conversation, tacitly dismissing Sam, and for a split second Sam fel
t a pang of something—all those familiar waves of rejection, anxiety and embarrassment—but then they passed, and so he shrugged and walked outside to get some air. It was the sort of subtle social slight that would have kneecapped him even a week earlier, triggering every bit of unworthiness and unbelonging that lived in him, but it didn’t bother him anymore. How weird, Sam thought.

  He wove past a pack of willowy male models, one of them impossibly tall and muscular with vaguely Scandinavian features, and his eyes brushed past Sam as if he wasn’t there, and once again, Sam saw the outline of a dozen little thoughts, thoughts he’d had a thousand times, rapid-fire and so familiar that he had actually stopped noticing them, so integral were they to his consciousness: I should look like that. I don’t look like that. I am bad because I don’t look like that. I am not enough. But he didn’t think the thoughts; he only saw their shape, like tracing something he knew from memory but could no longer see, and instead of settling somewhere in his brain, they just disappeared.

  Instead, there was a louder thought, a thought Sam had never had before: that is just another person existing in his body. And it was true. That was all he was. It was so simple that it was almost maddening. How had it taken him so long to understand that? And more to the point, how much energy had he wasted trying to negotiate that insecurity with himself a thousand times a day—every time he walked down the street or opened Instagram? What could he do with that energy if he used it for something other than hating himself?

  He stood on the balcony for a long minute, looking out at the Hollywood Hills. It was a cold night; he hugged his arms around himself, feeling the warmth of his body, feeling grateful for it. Then he heard his name.