The picture held his attention briefly. He passed it on his way to retrieve a jacket from the stool in the corner. He needed air and motion.
*
After an hour of aimless driving, he exited the freeway and headed downtown, though he hadn’t planned to. At home, the walls and floor and ceiling spied on his every move. He wasn’t ready to return to the apartment’s espionage.
Downtown he found a bar. Unlike the trendier establishments he'd visited with Kit, this place was darker than the diffusely lit rooms Matt associated with effective and flattering lighting, it was gloom-ridden. Drunks leaned against one another at the bar, sharing secrets and lies, neither party particularly concerned as their expressions were placeholders, something to wear while they waited to share their own stories, so they could believe themselves relevant to the conversation. Connected. The thumping house music had been popular two decades before and had long since passed into cliché. Matt considered the place sad, but he found what he was looking for between the filthy walls. He found Kit or what was left of him.
The residue…Kit… seemed more solid now, the features more sharply defined. The plum color had deepened giving the apparition a sad quality. It stood behind a young, unattractive kid who peered at Matt from the corners of his unappealing eyes. Matt couldn’t imagine wanting such a guy, but Kit was at his back, and it had to mean something, so Matt took his drink across the bar, and he sat beside the ugly kid.
And the kid said, ““Hello,” and Matt said, “Hey,” and he asked, "How's it going?"
Late that night he returned to his apartment and dropped his keys in the bowl beside the door. In the bedroom, he sat on the end of the bed and gazed at the picture in the silver frame. Beside it rested Matt’s most valued keepsake of Kit: his phone.
The service had long since been disconnected, but Matt kept it charged. Many of his memories of Kit included the device. It was as much a part of his partner as were his eyes, nose, and feet. Whenever Matt had been driving to dinner or to a party or just motored around the lakes to the north of town enjoying the scenery, Kit would sit in the passenger seat, talking to friends, texting with friends, posting updates on his social media pages, or simply following their route on a map application.
Connecting. Connected. Every day.
He lifted Kit’s phone to look at the blank screen, and then he stopped because it hurt. He set the phone down.
In the days after the wasp, he’d scrolled through every app and every message. He’d spent hours with the phone. With it he’d been able to follow and relive the last days, the final seconds of Kit’s life. Matt knew where Kit had eaten lunch that day, and when he’d left the gym–two hours before checking in at the park. He knew the name of the song that had been playing when the stinger pierced Kit’s neck.
His last tweet read: chilly but beautiful day in the park. Wish M (He always called him M) were here. Kit’s every undertaking, and so many of his thoughts, were catalogued, and were now archived on the phone. Texts to friends revealed his joys and frustrations, expressing emotions he’d never voiced to Matt.
He imagined that if Kit were capable of sending messages from the other side of life, they would come through such a device. But there had been no cryptic communications, only the odd, misty residue, and it told him nothing.
*
A week later, Matt experienced a moment of dread after waking in a strange room. The place wasn’t squalid nor in any obvious way threatening, but the quaint décor, all pastels and floral prints like the bedroom of a well-off grandmother, was unfamiliar, and his hangover migraine interfered with his attempts to piece together the series of events that had brought him there. He’d never blacked out from drinking before and a needle of suspicion – Someone drugged me – stirred the stew of misery in his skull.
A diminutive man, easily two decades his senior, entered the room holding a tray. He smiled and whispered, “Good morning,” and set the tray – coffee and toast, a glass bowl of strawberry preserves that looked like congealed blood – on the table beside the bed. He asked how Matt was feeling, and he made a joke about road kill. The old guy patted his chest with a tiny hand and laughed. As Matt sipped his coffee, the man described the events of the previous night.
They were humiliating.
Matt had been stumbling around a club, searching every corner and niche, even crawling on the floor as if he’d lost something precious. His face grew hot as the older gentleman hit the highlights of Matt’s embarrassing performance.
He went on to explain the coin he and his friends had tossed to decide which one of them would take responsibility for Matt’s safety.
“I lost,” the guy said in a friendly manner that made it impossible for Matt to take offense. “And for the record,” he said, “my name is Philip, not Kit.”
He apologized to Philip and then thanked him and then apologized again, and when Philip laughed off his shamed mumblings, Matt thought the little old man might have the kindest face he’d ever seen. Philip patted his chest again and told him, “Eat up and after that grab a shower. I’ll drive you back to the club for your car.”
“Don’t bother. Really. I’ll call a cab.”
“No trouble. I insist.”
During the drive, Philip packed away his good humor and became earnest. He told Matt that he’d been clean and sober for eighteen years, recalling the frequency with which he’d once found himself waking in strange beds, and cars, and in the alleys behind clubs. After giving Matt a card with his phone number on it, Philip insisted Matt call him when he was ready to face his addiction.
The old guy was being presumptuous, and Matt thought to explain his situation, but it was easier to nod and thank him than it was to explain.
Besides Philip wasn’t wholly mistaken. In the days since first seeing the specter in the parking lot of the coffee shop, Matt had fucked a dozen men, and though he’d never been prudish in his sexual views, this was a level of promiscuity he found unconscionable. He couldn’t deny some level of compulsion in his actions, but it wasn’t a disease
He promised himself that it would end now, right here in the passenger seat of Philip’s Buick. Whether the apparition was genuinely a part of Kit or some mental flotsam that declined either to vaporize or coalesce, Matt committed himself to refusing its influence. He promised himself to turn away the next time he saw it.
And he broke that promise eight hours later.
*
Matt sat across the table from a man he wished he hadn't called. The restaurant was a sleek, culinary clone job, no different than fifty other mid-scale hipster troughs. The menu featured kale and quinoa and truffle oil, and the earthy tone of the menu copy assured diners their meals were locally sourced, free range, organic, and hand crafted. Matt turned the menu over, cursorily examining the design elements. Dull. Uninspired.
The man across the table was named Gavin, and though Gavin was a good guy, perhaps a bit too nice to be even the least bit interesting, Matt wanted to be elsewhere. He felt an emptiness about the evening and it made him nervous, put him on edge.
Kit hadn't appeared on the night Matt had met Gavin, and he hadn’t appeared tonight, and Matt wondered what that might mean.
Nothing, he told himself. It meant nothing.
This was his first real date since Kit had died. Gavin’s eyes were chocolate brown. His narrow features managed to come off as refined, rather than severe, and Matt found him extremely handsome, but he didn’t find Gavin exciting, though he accepted this as a failing in himself not his date. I should have stayed home. Gavin wore a snug gray shirt that suggested the good body beneath. Black slacks. Comfortable but expensive shoes. Nice but not overdone. Not like he was trying to impress. He was quick with conversation, spoke easily, casually. No arrogance.
Matt acknowledged he was stripping away the surface looking for Gavin’s raw image, hoping to find problems, but no obvious flaw was revealed. It’s too soon.
Gavin talked about his wife, and how her
death two years before had shocked him out of the closet, and while the event was devastating, and while he could never claim to be grateful for such a horrible incident, he had, in its aftermath discovered a more comfortable self. He’d turned his passions toward men, and he hadn’t been with a woman since.
It was in the immediate aftermath of this story that Gavin became interesting to Matt. The man's face now carried a new dimension, a fresh and unexpected layer. Heroism. Like Matt, he’d experienced intimate tragedy. He would have answers. He would tell Matt that it was perfectly normal for the residue of a loved one, a specter that became more horrible with each viewing, to lead him from man to man, encounter to encounter. Anonymous. Emotionless. Simple.
Gavin continued, filling in the years since his wife’s death with quick hints at brief and disappointing relationships, then he asked about Matt’s romantic history and the story of Kit emerged. So Matt told him about the nine-month relationship, the best he’d had, with all of the promise of forever and all of the heat of brand fucking new, and how it had ended on a park bench in early spring. A wasp had taken offense at Kit’s presence. One sting and Kit lay on the grass struggling to catch so much as a whisper of breath through a windpipe that had swollen closed so quickly the young man hadn’t had a chance to understand what was happening to him. Unconsciousness settled in, and a woman jogged around a corner to see the crumpled man at the foot of the bench. She called the paramedics. Too late.
Gavin appeared concerned in between sips of wine and nods of his head, but Matt found the reactions suspicious. Matt suddenly felt self-conscious. Had he made too much of the incident, positioning himself as a martyr to create the kind of drama no one wanted to take on? Nine months wasn’t a significant period of time. Hardly any time at all by rational standards. The lifespan of a male wasp. The gestation of a child. Stillborn.
Though they commiserated during the entrée, the conversation turned away from melancholia and morbidity before Matt’s coffee arrived. Gavin showed a sly sense of humor and it turned out they both loved Meryl Streep and the plays of Martin McDonagh and neither of them had ever sat through an entire televised football game. Further, Gavin admitted to a fondness (okay, a flat-out love) for 1950s giant-insect-on-the-rampage films. This led to a discussion of the decaying state of the media. Gavin said it had become a Punch and Judy show.
“They want to keep us distracted,” he said, leaning back in his chair and gazing into the glass of wine in his hand. “If we’re distracted by the bright and shining nonsense, we won’t notice how deep the shit has gotten.”
This set off an extended discussion about media and politics, during which Matt genuinely agreed with his date on nearly every point. It was an enjoyable chat, but he realized, and maybe Gavin did as well, that such conversations were no less distractions than the media’s Punch and Judy show. They could discuss an issue all night and generate a hundred solutions for it, making themselves feel accomplished, but no meaningful action would come from the talk. It was a simple diversion cloaked in the illusion of achievement. In the end, it was like death: emptiness granted weightier attributes.
Following dinner, they strolled along the lakeside. Lights from the businesses on the far shore reflected imperfectly on the water’s surface, smearing and elongating with the ripples cast by the evening wind. The conversation never waned, never sounded forced. Matt enjoyed speaking with Gavin even though the guy had a habit of connecting his sentences with a mumbled “but…uh” and punctuating his speech with snorting chuckles. There was nothing about Gavin that reminded Matt of Kit, except for the way he made Matt feel. He was relaxed with him. He was not someone Matt felt the need to escape. Even when Gavin talked about his job–corporate accounting–Matt remained attuned to the sound of his voice, though he understood little of what was said.
Later, parked in the car at the curb in front of his house, Gavin asked if Matt wanted to come in.
“I’m not that easy,” Matt said. He smiled.
“So, how easy are you?” Gavin asked. “You know, for future reference?”
Matt felt certain that taking things slow with Gavin was the right move, but he almost changed his mind when they kissed. There was something powerful and intimate in the embrace, a sensation missing from his encounters with the round-faced man from the coffee shop and the man with the kind face and the ugly-faced men and the men with faces he didn’t remember. When Gavin pulled away, Matt leaned forward and twisted awkwardly in the car seat because he didn’t want his lips away from Gavin’s. He wanted to keep this heroic face close to him.
When the kiss finally ended, Matt said goodnight, though he didn’t want to go. Gavin promised to call in the morning, and he climbed out of the car. Matt watched him until he was inside the house and then saw the lights come on through the windows. The shades came down.
Driving home, Matt noted the excitement that buzzed in his chest, and he entertained fanciful thoughts of his next date with the man, and he knew that investing so much imagination in an improbable future was ridiculous. Gavin may never call. Still Matt welcomed the mixed emotions of trepidation and hope.
Without forethought, he exited the freeway and turned toward downtown. The traffic was still heavy for so late on a weeknight. Several times as he drove toward the bar, he struggled with the decision to go there. Go home. At the next corner, turn right and head back to the freeway. But he turned left and traveled two blocks to the dismal bar, and as if this detour had been sanctioned by fate, he found a parking space next to the building. Inside, he waited to see the residue of Kit before he ordered his first drink. He didn’t wait long.
The place wasn’t busy. Most of the patrons mingled at the back of the room. Kit appeared and vanished with the movements of the meager crowd.
No longer a pillar of pale plum light, the residue had grown more solid, more ghastly. Its color had changed to a deep gray with only striations of the vital plum that had once comprised it. The face was more pronounced now, more clearly Kit, but not the youthful, handsome face Matt had always admired. Now, the face was haggard, with pronounced pockets of swollen flesh beneath the eyes, and the mouth he’d always associated with smiling, drooped at the corners in a monstrous frown.
He briefly considered Gavin, but the man hardly seemed real. Right now, he was more of a ghost than Kit. Kit was present. He’s right there.
He barked his drink order to the bartender and anxiously waited for the man to fix his scotch. The tip he left was exorbitant, because Matt was too impatient to wait for his change. He needed to keep the apparition in his sights no matter how ugly it had become.
Matt found him again near the back of the bar. Kit slumped against the wall, unmoving, a statue carved of hoary slate. Matt searched the area around him and wondered which of the men Kit intended for him to meet, but the patrons were broken into twos and threes, and no one was looking his way. Like before, the closer Matt got to Kit the vaguer he became until nothing was left.
Matt took over the space the residue had occupied, pressed his body to the wall, and sipped his scotch.
A man emerged from the dark corridor on his right, wiping his hands on the thighs of his cheap slacks. Longish black hair hung to his eyes in a poorly cropped mess. He looked to be about thirty years old, but walked with stooped shoulders and the slow, uncertain gait of the elderly. His jaw worked up and down, punishing a piece of gum. Matt found him repugnant, with his loud, print shirt and dull eyes, which when they took Matt in, sent back a gaze of blatant annoyance. Relief filled Matt when the man continued past and sidestepped a group of middle-aged men while making his way to the bar.
Again Matt checked his immediate area, wondering who Kit had in mind for him, but the private conversations continued, and though there were a couple of appreciative looks, none of the men seemed eager to break from their companions. So he waited and sipped his scotch, because he didn’t know what else he should be doing. Kit was here. He wanted Matt here. He knew this. The certainty scurried t
hrough his chest like a thousand thread-thin legs.
After he finished the scotch, he gazed into the empty glass, and felt ridiculous.
Matt told himself he’d had enough.
Enough.
He remembered the night he couldn’t remember and the following morning, waking up in the decorous guest bedroom of a man named Philip. And now, when he thought of Gavin–because he’d surfaced in Matt’s thoughts, all of a sudden and unbidden–he was more than a memory, more than a ghost. He was real, substantial, and he might be part of Matt’s future, and if not him, then someone like him, a man who could offer him more than spit and skin and friction–a man who could offer more than a face, a set of eyes, a body that provided a pleasing blink of amnesia.
Matt didn’t want to be in the bar, and he was only there because he believed it was what Kit wanted, but what did Kit want? Really? What was he trying to tell him? When Kit was alive, when the two of them were together, there had been no other men. None he knew about. The relationship had been easy, exciting. Committed. They hadn’t had an “arrangement.” Their bedroom door hadn’t been open to strangers. They’d never needed a third or a fourth or fifth to keep the passion between them alive. So what was Kit’s message? Was all of this his misguided way of assuaging Matt’s loneliness? Was he telling Matt that his life hadn’t ended at the base of a park bench with the sting of a wasp, a wasp now dead and replaced already by a new generation? Was Kit telling Matt it was all right to move on?
No. It couldn’t be. That interpretation was flawed.
I’m not moving on. I’m hanging on by my fingertips.
Then the residue, fully formed, dark and sickly, stood at the bar behind the hunched man with the awful clothes and the black hair. Matt’s chest tightened, causing nausea to roll in his stomach. This was who Kit wanted for him? No. This time, Matt was determined to walk across the lounge, put down his glass, and continue out the door.
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