Bouquet (2 page)

It may be great,
he sometimes thinks,
or
it may be dastardly horrible.

He can’t imagine a future with anything good
in it, at least not in the foreseeable distance. He’s been trying
to shave away the block of indifference with the change jar he
keeps at the side of the door, as he often finds change in the
garage, though whether or not he’s stealing it is up to anyone’s
discretion. He doesn’t think it’ll hurt anyone—a few pennies here,
a dime or so there. Some would argue that a dollar could save a
child’s life in Africa, but with twenty-five cents, they’d still
need another seventy-five to get anywhere.

Shaking his head, he begins to make his way
out of bed, to get the customary warm glass of milk that usually
helps him sleep, but stops when Michael stirs at his side.

Will he wake up?
he thought.

It wouldn’t matter. Michael knows of his
sleeping problems. He won’t say a word.

Rising, he makes his way toward the door, but
stops before he can do so.

In the bed, Michael turns.

He can feel his boyfriend’s eyes on him.

“
Jim,” Michael
says.

“
Yeah?” he
replies.

“
Are you coming back to
bed?”

“
I will soon,” he says,
then makes his way out the door.

The milk does little to help him sleep. It
seems to upset his stomach, and when he goes through the entire
night in rolls of agony and frustration, it is Michael who tells
him he should call in sick for work.

“
You should,” Michael says.
“You’ve been on the toilet all morning.”

“
Shut up,” he
says.

When Michael doesn’t say anything further, he
sighs, knowing that he has crossed a boundary that he knows he
shouldn’t have broken. He begins to say something, but Michael
leans forward and captures his lips before he can finish, an
apology not broken, but accepted.

“
The boss is a hardass,” he
says.

“
You can’t fix cars if your
stomach’s messed up.”

“
I know.”

“
So why not call in
sick?”

When his stomach rolls, he decides to do just
that.

It is the next day, when he is only barely
beginning to feel better and isn’t in the bathroom for an extended
period of time, that he gets the call.

“
I can’t keep going without
a good mechanic,” the boss says.

Jim wants to argue, to say that he has only
missed one or two days in the past six months, but he says nothing.
His arguments will be futile, his rebuttals unnecessary, and in the
end he can do little more than nod.

Michael is standing in the threshold, his
arms over his chest, when he hangs up the phone. “What happened?”
he asks.

“
I just lost my job,” he
says, then begins to cry.

There seems to be little he can do. One
moment he is happy, then the next he is sad. Michael has suggested
that he go to the doctor, because they say that massive mood swings
can be an indication that something is wrong, but he says no, that
everything is fine and that he’s just going through a bit of a
depression.

That’s a medical
condition,
Michael says.

He doesn’t reply.

Seated at the kitchen counter with a
newspaper folded out before him and a red marker in hand, he begins
to circle jobs that are within his proficiency range, then begins
to think about them and just how much money they will have before
they run out. He knows it’s a couple of thousand, maybe two, and
that can keep them fed and in the apartment for at least
two-and-a-half months, but until then…

What am I going to
do?
he thinks, cupping his face in his
hands.

Part of him wants to freak out. Another,
desperate part wants to cry. Regardless, though, he has to remain
strong—if not only for himself, but for Michael, who will surely
begin to panic if he sees him crying, just like he always has and
does and will until the end of days.

Shaking his head, he picks up the marker and
continues to go through the newspaper.

He is there for much of the afternoon. Head
bowed, one-year-past-due prescription glasses balancing on the end
of his nose, he has gone through much of the paper and has even
begun to call a few of the places—the first of which is a lawnmower
repair business, while the second in line is a fast food joint. He
says he’s served as a cook before, that he can flip eggs faster
than anyone else in town (he can provide reference) and that he is
more than willing to serve in the food industry if it will help him
stay in his home.

The businesses ask for references.

He supplies them freely.

Each person he calls says they will check
back with him in the coming days.

He begins to think this is worthless when the
fifth person says that.

He lays on the couch with his arm over his
eyes. Counting sheep in a feeble attempt to fall asleep, it’s
one-two-three then three-four-five, six-seven-eight and
nine-ten-eleven. When he gets to somewhere within the hundreds, he
decides that he will be unable to sleep at this late hour of the
afternoon and succumbs to that very notion.

Throwing his legs over the side of the couch,
he reaches up to rub the half-sleep from his eyes and sighs when
his gaze falls on his boyfriend, who is sitting in the corner of
the room reading a hardback.

“
Hey,” Michael says, when
he notices that he has risen. “You all right?”

“
I’m fine,” he smiles.
“Why?”

“
Because you’re trying to
sleep at five in the afternoon.”

What more is there to do if I don’t have a
job?

Choosing to keep his thought to himself
rather than risk upsetting Michael, he stands, stretches his arms
out over his head, then forces himself to grin when Michael in turn
rises and pushes his book back onto the bookshelf. He’s always had
a problem with not finishing books—he’s an avid reader and will
devour half of one in an afternoon, but he seems to always put them
aside, something he can’t help but feel is inappropriate at the
time, if only because it makes things seem misplaced. However,
instead of dwelling how things seem appropriate or not so much, he
steps forward, sets his hand on his boyfriend’s shoulders, then
draws him forward, into an embrace he can’t help but feel is
meaningless.

“
Michael,” he
says.

“
Yes?” his boyfriend
replies.

“
Everything is going to be
ok. Ok?”

“
Ok.”

He bows his head into Michael’s hair and
breathes.

His sleeping habits only continue to decline
as the week goes on. First minutes, then hours, then eternity—it
seems like he cannot sleep at all, and when Michael finally
confronts him with a bottle of Melatonin in hand, he gives in and
decides to try to normalize his schedule.

The pill works.

Every night, he’s out like a switch, and
every morning when it fades away, he’s right back up again. Most
mornings are spent beside the phone, afternoons with Michael on the
couch watching TV or something similar. He tries to introduce new
habits into their lifestyle, budgeting accordingly for each time
they may possibly go out to dinner, but Michael is afraid. He says
so one night just as they’re getting ready to go to bed, him with
the pill already in his system and less than an hour away from
being completely light’s out.

‘
I don’t think we should
waste any money’ are the words that begin the fable
conversation.

In pajamas bottoms and
little else, he looks upon his near-naked boyfriend with eyes that
normally would have been reserved for much more lewd purposes.
Though he cannot see it himself, he feels it in the back of his
head, as though he’s just taken eye drops designed to not only
clear his vision, but enhance it. This look—this
thing
—is what makes him
feel as though he has just overstepped a boundary that cannot be
undone.

“
Michael,” he
says.

The younger man crosses his arms over his
chest, sighs, then bows his head. His fair hair falls over his face
and covers most of his eyes, shielding him from any indication as
to what he’s feeling. Jim can already guess most of it—indecision,
possibly, maybe even unease. He knows fear lingers there as well,
just under the surface, but it hasn’t yet surfaced. Indecision has
not yet progressed to unease and unease has not yet fallen to fear.
It would take some time before those emotions began to surface.

Reaching forward, he extends his hand to
touch his lover’s arm, but stops halfway there.

He doesn’t want to be touched.

The voice in his head wills him to instead
take the blanket and lift it up, if only partially, and crawl into
bed, which he does without another word or action.

Michael follows soon after.

As always, Michael falls back against his
chest.

Their fingers lace together.

It is when the first notice of rent arrives
that he begins to become frustrated. Four-hundred dollars out of
their account and with no job in clear sight, he thinks that it is
the end of the world until Michael wraps his hands around his
shoulders and leans forward to whisper in his ear.

“
I’ll get a job,” he
says.

He doesn’t want it to come to this. Always he
has promised Michael that he would never have to work, that he
could leave his past behind and instead recover from the hellish
childhood he’d survived. He took medication for such illnesses, for
such psychotic episodes that sometimes came in the form of dreams,
and for that reason alone, it pained his heart to hear such a
confession.

You don’t have to,
he thinks, but doesn’t have the strength to
speak.

The one man he truly loves should not have to
give up the comfort he’s found just because he lost his job.

Is the world wrong, or is it just incredibly
painful? He can’t be sure. All he knows is that he wants to
cry.

“
Someone called for you,”
Michael says.

He’s slept in this morning—not, of course, of
his own accord. He’d set his alarm to go off at exactly eight AM,
but sometime between that and the five minutes that followed,
Michael must have risen and turned it off to allow him the solace
of sleep. He knew what his partner would say—that it was ‘just to
let him sleep,’ but regardless, he can’t think about it. There is
something new on the horizon, something that may just get them the
money they need.

“
Who was it?” he
asks.

“
A technical
college.”

A technical college?
he thinks, then remembers that he had called a
technical company a few days prior.

This school claimed to be the future.
Computers, they said, would rule the nineties, then the
two-thousands afterward, and that by twenty-ten, every kid in
America would own one. They would be small, they claimed, but easy
to assemble, and not only by the grace of invention, but the
ingenuity of man would this future be grand. They offered a
three-year program, along with internship, that could very well
secure him a job in the flourish future of computer mechanics.

Is it really worth it
though?
he thinks, staring upon his
boyfriend’s face with all the hope in the world.

When he began to calculate the logistics in
his head, the pieces began to fall together—first the student
loans, which would supplement their income and pay for the rent,
then the school and just what it could teach him. If one thought
about it for any true, definitive amount of time, they could easily
see what it could offer, but would it be worth it to dive in
headfirst and risk getting eaten by the sharks?

I did ok in school. Maybe I can get a
grant.

He doesn’t know the exact percentage he needs
to pay for the school, but he knows he could find out.

Stepping forward, he brushes past Michael’s
shoulder, then stops.

In a rough economy, taking a risk could spell
the end of them.

“
Michael,” he
says.

“
Yeah?” Michael
replies.

“
I’m not sure if I should
go for this.”

“
I think you
should.”

“
You do?”

“
Yeah.”

“
You read it, didn’t
you?”

“
The clip and the article?”
Michael asks, then waits for him to nod before continuing.
“Yeah.”

“
You think it’d be worth
it?”

“
You’re smart, Jim—this may
be the best thing for you, but like I said, I can get a
job.”

“
I’m not going to say you
have to,” Jim sighs, “but I’m not going to say that won’t be
completely out of the question.”

With the statement out of his mouth, he feels
as though a thousand-pound weight has just been lifted from his
shoulders and replaced by something much more simple and
manageable.

He hasn’t been to college, technical school
or any kind of post-high school program.

If anything were to come of this, at least he
could upgrade his résumé.

He sits in the lobby waiting for someone to
come and get him—a student, a teacher, a secretary, maybe the Devil
Himself. He expects the world to come to an end before anything or
anyone comes to greet him, as it seems the clock overhead is simply
ticking, but when he hears the door open and a voice beckon him in,
he rises, brushes dirt from his workman’s jeans and makes his way
into the office. There, a man sits with his hands laced together
and his eyes set ahead, as though expecting someone further to
enter when he himself steps into the room.