by P. J. Vernon
Finally on the street and alone, my spine meets cool brick, and I draw a deep breath. You can do this, I think. You must do this.
Phone to my ear. The voicemail plays and something clicks.
Lots of things click, actually. Everything fits into place suddenly like a self-solving puzzle. The elusive familiarity of the number. The unresolvable déjà vu.
“Hey, Oliver, it’s me. Sorry to call like this, but I, I’m in DC, and thought it’d be nice to see you. Catch up over a drink. Or whatever. Anyway, call me back. I’m here for a bit.”
The number, the area code attached to it. Indiana. Tyre, Indiana. A hint of laughter punctuates the message. Though there’s not a damn thing funny about it.
“This is Hector, by the way.”
21
NATHAN
The empty cocktail glasses on our table have multiplied, and despite Oliver, I’ve managed to pry fun from the jaws of defeat. I’m enjoying myself for the first time since his assault. Since Detective Henning’s bizarre third degree. A lecture on spousal privilege like she suspects both of us of something. Since Mother held her own theory to my throat like a switchblade. Drawing just enough blood for her threat to go unquestioned.
As soon as Oliver excused himself, Tom ordered shots and led a game of Would You Fuck Him? which he clearly had just made up. The subtext in his timing, however? Strategic. As he pointed around Trance, he gave eight yeses—though each with specific caveats like only head and might jerk him off and girl, that man could wreck me.
I gave zero, and Tom couldn’t have been more disappointed.
I’m not aloof—or worse, puritanical. But I honestly could not imagine sleeping with any of Tom’s strangers because none of them are Oliver. After five years of dwindling emotional investment from him, do I have some kind of psychosexual issue? I should ask a therapist not named Kathy Klein.
“Seriously? Not even that one?”
I shoot silver Patrón like fiery butter and follow Tom’s gaze to a man spinning a tumbler alone at the bar. Blond bangs, husky blue eyes, and maybe…maybe I just might. He lifts a sharp chin and catches me staring. I quickly turn. “No.”
“We should ask Oliver.” Neon glistens in Tom’s eyes like something devilish. “Maybe he’s feeling more peckish than you tonight.”
“Oliver’s not hungry.” I drain a last finger of bourbon. “But speaking of, I also need to leak.”
“Let me know how fresh the bathroom buffet is.” Tom’s got the start of a slur.
I stand, push my chair back. The blood falls from my head a little too fast, and the room skews crooked for a moment. Turning down a narrow hall wide enough for maybe two people, and Oliver’s nowhere to be seen.
As I wait for a free toilet, my eyes briefly meet those of a twenty-something running product through thick hair in the mirror. Like the blond at the bar, he’s quick to look away as though it were an accident.
“Blake?” A disembodied voice whines from an occupied stall.
“What?” the twenty-something at the sink says.
“Got any Adderall?”
“Yeah,” Blake calls back, his middle finger now painting his lips with balm. “Give me a sec.”
I seriously doubt either Blake or his toilet friend have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but the apparent bathroom drug of choice calls uncomfortable attention to my age. ADHD drugs? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned blow? I never really partied, but the gap between then and now—between me and Oliver—grows wider. A gap to me, anyway. To him, it’s a chasm as deep as the Mariana Trench. What Mother said set my soul on fire. I was furious because that’s how we respond to brutal reckoning. When denial’s that thick, you can suffocate yourself with it like a pillow.
He’s ungrateful.
A stall finally frees up. I go quickly, wash my hands for the same twenty seconds I would before any surgery, and decide this night’s nearly done.
The hall outside the door is more crowded than it was minutes ago. I shoulder my way through small gaps between tanks and tight tees. To my left, the patio door swings open, and I catch a sliver of Oliver. He’s on the sidewalk just beyond the deck.
And on the phone.
A knot of something—something like tears or sadness or anger or all of them bound together—builds in my throat. Ungrateful.
“Excuse me, sir.” Blake and company exit the bathroom and push by. I hold my ground and shoulder-check one of them. Hard. “Ow! What the fuck’s your problem, guy!?”
He waits for an apology. When he accurately perceives one’s not coming, he meets my eyes like he just might leap. I shove a finger deep in his clavicle, and he squeals.
“You can fuck right off,” I say.
Opting to swallow his pride over his own teeth, he does just that. I fix my eyes back on the street outside. Oliver runs a hand through his hair, pacing. My cheeks still simmer and maybe Tom’s right, after all. Who are you talking to, Oliver?
You’re ungrateful, but are you also peckish?
22
OLIVER
TYRE, IN
The grass smelled sharp, as if Blaire had cut it just for the occasion. Dew gathered like a sparkling carpet as dawn crept closer. Threatening to end one stage of revelry and usher in another—grease at the highway Waffle House where Mom sometimes pulled shifts when she was alive.
The once-towering firepit blaze was nothing but a smolder now. White smoke, tangy and woody, touched the air.
I was in a good place. The nervousness over showing up with Hector had proven unnecessary. Of course Blaire would be fine with it. Her parents likely not, but they’d been banished to their double-wide’s interior. Some of the others knew, mostly the girls. Some didn’t. Mostly the roughnecks with Browning-branded hats and Dixie Outfitters belt buckles—which I always found so stupid. Indiana’s never been part of the Old South, but white cis-het male entitlement gets to pick and choose through history like a lost and found. Taking whatever it wants and turning a blind eye to the rest.
Hector and I made no obvious show of togetherness; we’d all screamed the countdown to the New Year together like drunk howler monkeys. Happy, drunken howlers sending half-feral barn cats skittering.
Hector hadn’t kept his promise. A fresh beer was in his hand the whole night. Glazed pupils the size of saucers. Slurring from booze and oxy.
A corner of me was jealous. Beer had done okay, but a familiar itch burned between my bones. I hadn’t popped a pill since noon. I’d wanted to keep control, given that Hector and I were coming here as a couple. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Tip off the wrong person to the fact that Hector and I were a thing. A gay thing.
Shame dictated my decisions, but what I felt for Hector, the consuming attachment? Love or a close-enough cousin to it, and I didn’t want us reduced to sexual terms. Base, demeaning, ignorant. Stupid questions about pitching and catching, who’s the woman, and how we fuck. I didn’t want it sullied like that. So I didn’t take any oxy, and now I wished different.
I told Hector I had to piss, and he nodded. I was unsure if he was nodding in the affirmative or literally nodding. As in, what folks on too much oxy did. A teetering between awake and asleep.
The trailer was off-limits, so I made for the tree line. Which was fine by me because I can’t pee around people anyway. Only ever stalls in public restrooms—never urinals. And despite the fact the woods are dark and whispery, it was this first fear that drove me far from glowing lights.
When the yard lanterns dimmed, when the laughter muffled, I undid my fly and leaked on a tree trunk. Back to the party so I could face the thicket’s shadows. Threats, dangers imagined or otherwise, come from the dark. Where I saw and heard things that weren’t really there.
Trickling piss against foliage masked careful steps. Careful steps I swore I almost heard but told mysel
f I didn’t. But leaves and twigs did in fact snap and crackle beneath heavy boots. I was almost finished when the steps drew close.
A pair of arms wrapped around my stomach like a seat belt, and I leapt.
The sleeves were Hector’s. He’d followed me into the woods. “Jesus, Hector, what are you doing?”
He said nothing. But his hands groped. He was drunk and high and he reached for my dick. I jolted and peed on his hand by accident. He didn’t seem to notice. Or he was way too fucked up.
“I wanna fuck,” he drawled. It was dark, but his belt buckle clicked open.
“What?” I pivoted, and he grabbed my arm. The speed at which he did this was surprising, all things considered. “We’re not fucking.”
“I wanna nut,” he said, bringing his face close to mine. Through the beer, his breath reeked of metallic tin or copper. “I wanna nut in you.”
I pushed away. He wobbled, but his grip tightened. His strength as surprising as his speed. I was unsure if he grasped my arm to steady himself or to stay me. Didn’t matter which because he wouldn’t let go.
“Stop it.” I wasn’t shouting. I wasn’t mad. He was intoxicated, and honestly, so was I. He just needed to let me go.
Holding his ground and my arm, his other hand plunged into his pants. He was serious then. He was pulling his dick out. Right here, within earshot of a backyard full of wasted rednecks.
“Hector, no.” I threw a sharp edge in my voice, and he traded my arm for my groin.
“I wanna nut.” It was all he could manage to spit. A skipping record, and it was such a stupid thing to say. “Remember Barceloneta Beach? We jacked each other underwater. In front of the whole—”
“We’re not in fucking Spain!” When I turned again, he grabbed the back of my shirt and I spun.
I started to scream, to yell stop! but nothing came out. For a moment, not longer than a fraction of a second, our eyes connected. Mine, dry from cold wind. His, the size of dinner plates.
Clouds parted, and the moon set the forest aglow. It lit his eyes with something I’d never seen before. Something hot like firepit flames. Something furious and swallowed by heat and rage.
The fire in Hector’s eyes, it burned. Then my cheek burned. My cheek was on fire. Hector had slapped me across my face.
I was frozen, stunned. The slap paralyzed me head to toe. He couldn’t have known how hard he struck me. He was too fucked up. Before I could process what happened, he was on me. I choked on the staleness of his heavy jacket.
My cheek throbbed with neon pain. He held my face. His thumb dug into one cheek. The rest of his fingers pushed into the other, and he puckered my lips like a fish. He squeezed, brought my face so close the tips of our noses touched.
“I’m gonna fuck you the way you like.” Metal breath. “Hard.”
“Please,” I groaned through smashed lips. “Stop it—”
He pulled my pants to my thighs, shoved me onto the thicket floor. Wet leaves on bare skin set off a firestorm of thoughts.
The whole of his weight pressed me into frosty dirt. I felt him on the inside of my thigh.
“What the fuck?” A new voice.
Hector jumped to his feet. Pants up just as quick. Heaving on the ground, I rolled over and did the same. One of the guys from the party—Dane or Dave or Donnie—must’ve had to go too. He stood yards away, fists by his sides.
“It’s fine,” Hector slurred.
“You okay?”
“Yeah—”
“Not you.” He flicked his chin my way. “You?”
“Yeah.” Staggering to my feet, I coughed into cold air and zipped my jeans. “Fine.”
Hector said something. Maybe to me, maybe to Dane or Dave or Donnie, but I was spinning. I stumbled and started the long walk out of the woods. A far longer walk than I could’ve imagined at that time.
Hector shouted from behind, and I sped up.
“Oliver?”
He couldn’t have known. I was jogging now. He couldn’t have known how hard he slapped me.
“Oliver!”
I broke into a full sprint.
Was he going to do it? That? I said no. I told him no!
I took to the country road winding from the farmhouse.
No!
The wild brush to both sides became walls. Mighty and impervious. Every breath briefly fogged before it was whisked away, dashed in my wake.
I started to cry. Slow tears turned to sobs, and I was forced to stop for breath.
Hands on my knees, I stared at scuffed sneakers. My pant leg was wet with piss from Hector’s groping. Hector who tried to fuck me. Hector who slapped me. Hector who liked to choke me from behind. I had told Hector I liked it—being choked—even though it scared me shitless.
Hector who had once kept squeezing until I passed out. For a tiny instant, but long enough to know he’d gone too far. And long enough for him to paint my back with drops of warmth because going too far really did it for him. Hector who saved his softer touch for crushing pills.
Did Mom really see me? Did she somehow know what I’d become? Was she watching this right now?
Cancer had shrunk her to a gaunt woman with no hair and yellowed skin. Pain so deep it bled into her marrow. And this was what I was. This was the son she raised. The son she loved and dressed and celebrated birthdays and Christmases for. The son she read to. The son she taught never to touch a woman like my father touched her. The son who was afraid, always afraid, of the day he’d lose his mother when Dad finally went too far. The day that came early anyway.
This was her son. It turned out I was just like her. Touched in all the wrong ways by men. Strung out. Piss on his pants. Face burning from being struck. From being betrayed by the same person who had convinced him to betray her. To park down the street from our tiny blue house with white shutters so she wouldn’t wake from the car crunching gravel. So she wouldn’t think this was a visit as I slow-walked up the porch and passed her flower boxes covered in hand-painted magpies. To creep into her bedroom, the sanctuary hospice had built for her to die in. Just once, he’d said. But that first time was the last I saw her alive.
I chose a few hours of high, chose myself, chose fucking Hector! All over the jaundiced, bleeding, moaning woman departing life as torturously as she lived it. I stole my dying mother’s pain medication.
I chose myself over the woman who only ever chose me.
III. Unconsciousness
Respiratory arrest. Awareness of self and environment ceases.
23
WASHINGTON, DC
Nathan’s alarm clock goes off. A shrieking banshee that leaves no room for excuses. He wipes his eyes, and his lips meet my forehead.
I see all this because I haven’t slept. I hold on to a vague sense that perhaps I have. An ephemeral dream maybe, but a part of me is happy I haven’t. Memories of my attack can’t strike in the morning like a billy club because they’ve beat me all night. Kristian’s fingers tight on my throat, traveling my dresser drawers, crawling the shoulders of a man named Devin. The one he’d later strangle on film.
The light in the hallway comes on. Farther down, Nathan shuts the guest bathroom door, and Tilly stirs in her bed. She begins to pace the room, anxious for breakfast.
A knot burns in the pit of my stomach. I’d switched my phone to silent—no vibrating—because I didn’t want to know if, or when, it went off. But now’s the time. Nathan’s up. The day beckons, and I must look.
Confront, I tell myself. Confront.
Three texts wait patiently. Each from Hector’s number and the first two timestamped at 11:03 p.m.:
Hey
Not sure if you got my message earlier. I’m in town. Want to see you. Call me back.
I scroll for the last message—the o
ne that will reveal much about Hector. About where he’s been since I left his life. Whether he’s continued the bottomless descent on our once-shared elevator or at some point stepped off. Maybe even climbed the stairs back to sobriety like me.
Timestamp says 3:17 a.m. A large block of text. Not a good sign of things to come.
Oliver, please call me. Please. I wanna see you. I don’t want anything else. I don’t want you. I’m happy for you. I’m just in town. For work. Got a job. It’s great. But I want to see you. Want to catch up. We have so much history. No reason we can’t be friends. Heard a song tonight & it made me think we could be friends…
The message goes on, covers the same ground repeatedly. Endless iterations of a handful of sentences. Hector’s still on the elevator. Maybe he does have work, and maybe that’s why he’s in the city, but he’s still using. He might’ve cleaned up enough for gainful employment, but that’s a stoned text. Not a drunk text rife with misspellings and nonsensical sentences. He’s high as fuck.
Nathan re-enters, wet towel loose around his hips. “Still in bed, sleepyhead?”
“I’m up,” I say, and roll over. Sitting on the bedside, I rub my eyes.
“Anything interesting?” He pulls a pair of scrubs from his side of the closet.
“Oh, no.” I slip my phone into the folds of the top sheet. “Not really.”
* * *
• •
I struggle to focus on the tasks at hand. Kimberly’s patient calendar. Resolving appointment conflicts. The birthday card awaiting my signature. A pink Grim Reaper on the front because a technician turns the big five-oh today.
These tasks feel overwhelming, which is bizarre because I’m too smart for a job like this. My self-awareness and self-sabotage have made it a slow-drip water torture.