Come Unto These Yellow Sands (6 page)

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

Wonderful. And this little parody was wonderful too. He read it over twice. Smiling, he set the submission in the pile with the others marked for acceptance. Nothing made him happier than when he found a jewel like this.

Mostly what he got was the inevitable adolescent and post-adolescent angst usually written in anticipation of coitus and punctuated with “I, I, me, me, I.” Sunset, suicide and long walks on the beach figured largely in the variations on the theme of nobody loves me, nobody understands me, we’re all gonna die.

No wonder his thoughts kept circling back to Max’s office. Each time he remembered the angry contempt on Max’s face, heard that whiplash
get the fuck out of my office,
it was all he could do to keep down the boiling acid of his dinner.

Crackbrain.
That pretty much summed it up. How had he not realized ahead of time what a disastrous decision he was making by not telling Max what he’d done? Apparently it was only too true about the permanent brain damage cocaine caused.

He let his head fall back on the arm of the sofa and stared up into the soaring cathedral ceiling past the grid work of blackened beams into the ink shadows. He couldn’t let himself think about Max. The rest of it was already more than he could deal with. If he was arrested…if he lost his job…?

Either one of those was liable to prove too much for his fragile equilibrium. He knew better than anyone how weak he was, how…untrustworthy. His relationship—friendship—with Max was one of the things that gave him the most happiness, most comfort. No, he couldn’t even consider that loss right now. Not on top of the rest of it.

Swift jumped up, scattering the neat stacks of papers. He circled the large room, too nervous to stay still any longer. He needed…something.

Maybe a walk.

The rain had stopped. The cool air would feel good after an hour of sitting so close to the fire. He could stretch his legs, fill his lungs, clear his head.

He started toward the coat hook by the door but stopped.

No
. No, leaving the house now was not a good idea.

Swift mentally ran through The List. The list of ways he’d found of coping when the craving started. The first version of the list had been supplied by his therapist. Since then he’d had six years to come up with his own personal tried-and-true methods of distracting himself from that twisting, gnawing hunger. In the beginning he’d resorted to elaborate diversions: hyperbaric oxygen treatments, infrared sauna, acupuncture and massage therapy. Now days a long walk was one of the best things, but at night…no. The night offered the wrong kind of possibilities. Sex was a good distraction and comfort, but the only person he wanted to have sex with was Max. And jacking off on his own was a poor substitute for that.

He could usually find some relief in small, homely things like a cup of hot tea and calming music, a hot bath and aromatherapy candles, looking through art books, meditation and visualization techniques.
Martha Stewart Living
magazines. He had a whole collection of them. There was something very comforting about Martha’s ruthless discipline and focus—something almost Zen. And there was always yoga. Yoga and meditation.

He couldn’t stand the thought.

It was disheartening to realize that he’d come to take his focused well-being so much for granted that he felt unprepared to deal with the sudden resuming of the symptoms of addiction.

Not that Swift had been silly enough to think he was cured, but after six years he’d reached a point where dealing with his habit was no longer the mainstay of his day. What had triggered the craving? The phone call from Bernard? The fight with Max? All of it? None of it?

Whatever the reason, he now needed a distraction. Nothing that was going to trigger anxieties or put him in temptation’s path. He went into the kitchen and fixed a cup of chamomile tea, carried it back to the cluttered comfort of his office and sat down to sort through the papers and books and brochures he tended to stockpile.

He didn’t let Mrs. Ord in this room to tidy up, or he’d never manage to find anything at all—not that he spent a lot of time in here. Mostly he worked in his office on campus or at one of the local coffeehouses. When Swift did work at home, he tended to sprawl on the sofa in front of the fire or, in better weather, on a lounge chair in the garden.

Looking around at the stacked books and piles of paper, he tried to decide what needed doing first. His gaze fell on the bookshelf and a familiar spine. He rose and pulled the narrow volume out.
Black Solstice
by SSS. Sebastian Shadrach Swift. His mouth quirked. Now there was a moniker. From the time he had been old enough to speak, he’d insisted on being called only Swift.

He flipped through the crisp pages curiously, studying his own adolescent efforts. It had been twenty years since he looked at these.

Time roaring loud behind me,

Spring-heeled sun sprinting over housetops and dusty trees;

And there they are, glistening, brilliant, motionless,

Dying stars stitched in a failing sky

By mild and faded fingers long since turned to dust.

He snorted. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He’d have been better off writing about walking with his boyfriend on the beach.

Swift stared moodily at the black bird-scratchings on the snowy page. An idea suddenly came to him. Tad had submitted a poem to the magazine, hadn’t he?

Swift shuffled more stacks of papers, moved more books. Where the hell…?

He opened one of the deep desk drawers and swallowed at the unexpected sight of a blue rigid paper box laminated with images of clouds and crimson leaves. He’d forgotten that was in there.

He stared down at the box. What a weird coincidence that Bernard should be asking about those poems. To this day he didn’t know who had collected and saved them after he’d ODed.

He closed the drawer with a little bang and kept moving papers and files until he found the folder with the twenty lonely accepted submissions to this spring’s
Pentagoet Review
. He flipped through them until he found Tad’s submission.

Cast your shadow white as stone

Wing of laughter, heart of bone…

Thirty lines of it beneath the title “Ariel”.

Ariel.

Was that Ariel as in homage to Plath? Or Ariel the asexual sprite from Shakespeare’s
The Tempest?
Or Ariel as in a real, live flesh-and-blood girl?

Because if this Ariel did exist, there was a slim chance she might know where Tad was. Assuming Max hadn’t already tracked him down and was holding him in a jailhouse cell. In which case it was too late for Tad.

And perhaps too late for Swift.

Chapter Five

You’re journeying on your own by train through the snowy mountains of Romania. This lonely and remote range is known as the Carpathians, and this part of the country is rumored to be the ancestral home of vampires!

Although, in fairness, most of the kids weren’t that bad. You couldn’t go by the fact that they all looked dazed or half-dead on a Monday morning. He probably didn’t look a hell of a lot better after the weekend he’d had.

The good news was he hadn’t been arrested. He had half expected it, but there had been no word from Max at all—that, of course, was also the bad news.

Not that Swift had sat around waiting to hear from Max. He’d managed to keep himself occupied planting over two hundred Asiatic lily bulbs in the back garden. He’d dug holes and raked leaves and mulched until his back felt ready to break. Then he’d cleaned out the garage, giving away boxes of books and odds and ends of old furniture and fixtures. He got rid of the bike he never used. He got rid of the punching bag that only Max used. He should have slept like a log, but the nights had been spent tossing and turning as he went over and over the scene with Max in his office.

But better not to think about Max just now.

Swift said briskly, “At the outset of
The Tempest
we see Prospero as man in conflict. He’s wise, balanced, mature, but he also longs for revenge—although I guess we can argue that it’s justice he longs for. He’s not a man of perfect judgment. He lost his position of political authority by failing in his duties. Now he’s got one chance to revise that mistake. He doesn’t create the opportunity, it comes ‘by accident most strange’ and ‘a most auspicious star’. So sorcerer or not, Prospero’s not all powerful and he’s not in total control. He plans to reverse his fortunes and regain his previous position, but there’s no guarantee of success. His plan might not work. It’s dependent on timing. On Fate.”

In the back row, Hodge Williams’s head tipped back, and he woke himself up with a loud snort.

“Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Williams?” Swift inquired, just to be a prick.

“Uh…” Hodge sat up, blinking. There was a ripple of laughter around him.

After a second, Hodge laughed too. He was a nice kid. Not the brightest bulb, but handsome and—for a varsity-jacket jock—good-humored. He was also one of Tad’s closest friends.

What Hodge and Tad found to talk about was a mystery, but plenty of friendships had been built on having only one thing in common. Swift could testify to that.

Tad would need a friend about now. According to the news on the radio that morning, he was still on the run four days after his father’s death. Swift decided to have a word with Hodge after class. It couldn’t hurt, right? He dearly wanted to find a way to fix things.

Claudia Lambert raised her hand. Swift nodded permission.

“I saw the film
The Tempest
. It was with Helen Mirren. They changed Prospero to Prospera.” Claudia stuck her tongue out. She had an unusually long tongue. Swift observed it, fascinated.

“Uh…did they?”

“It was
terrible
.”

Because Prospero was now Prospera? If that was the case, he could only imagine what snake-tongued Ms. Lambert would make of Derek Jarman’s untraditional version.

Swift turned back to the chalkboard and out of the corner of his eye caught motion at the door.

Glancing over, he saw Max standing just inside the classroom.

His willful heart gave a delighted leap before he recalled the situation between them. Max’s face was impassive, and Swift’s throat tightened with a painful mix of fear and longing. Was this it? Was the arrest he had feared all weekend now imminent?

Several of the students were throwing Max curious glances. Max was impervious to them. He nodded curtly to Swift, apparently giving him permission to continue with his lecture, but no way could Swift calmly conduct class while wondering if he was about to be led off campus in handcuffs.

That morning he’d told himself on the drive to work that he was prepared for anything. He wasn’t.

How could you prepare for something like this?

He shot a glance at the clock in the back of the room. “I think that’s it for today. You should have read up through act four, scene one by Wednesday.”

There were a few surprised faces, but mostly everyone was moving fast, gathering notebooks and backpacks before he could change his mind. Cell phones flipped open like transporter devices used by space crew desperate for escape. The seminar room doors flew open and students began to file out.

“Hi,” Swift said to Max who had not moved.

“Swift.” Arms folded, Max continued to wait, unsmiling, as students moved between them on their way to the door.

Yes, this was clearly going to be official business. Not that he’d really hoped for anything else. Except that you always hoped…right up to the moment the axe fell. Swift carefully stowed his lecture notes and roll book away in his briefcase and sat on the edge of the desk, waiting.

Max didn’t move a muscle until the last student had shuffled out. Then he pulled the door shut.

“Tell me if you’re going to arrest me,” Swift said. “My nerves can’t take this.”

The look Max gave him was unmoved, but what he said was, “Arresting you isn’t going to solve anything, and it would only bring more unwelcome attention from the media our way. That’s the last thing we need now.”

There was no hiding his relief, and Swift didn’t bother to try. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, because if it made sense, I’d throw your butt in a cell in a New York minute.”

Swift nodded. It was too hard to meet Max’s steely gaze. He stared at the well-worn carpet. Institutional blue. Why did everyone, from mental hospitals to jail visitation centers, favor that same depressing shade? Why not a soft, buttery yellow? Or the fragile pink of a baby’s blanket? Granted, belfry blue ought to be his favorite color by now. He’d seen enough of it in his lifetime.

It occurred to him that Max was expecting more of a response. “Have you found Tad yet?”

“No. That’s why I’m here. I need to ask you some questions about what happened between the two of you.” Max added acridly, “I should have held you for questioning Friday, but I admit to being thrown off-guard.”

Max’s brown boots appeared in Swift’s line of vision. He looked up. Max stopped a couple of feet away, propping his arm on the lectern. Max was keeping a safe distance. Possibly to control the desire to throttle Swift.

“Tad was in class on Thursday. He seemed…well, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. When I saw him later, he’d obviously been in a fight. Bloody nose, black eye, split lip. He said I should see the other guy.”

Max’s dark brows drew together. He considered. “What time was that?”

“After four. It might have been as late as four thirty. We had a department meeting, so I’m not sure how long Tad was waiting.”

“What about the department secretary? Wouldn’t he have checked in with her?”

“Anything’s possible, but I doubt it. We try to encourage it, but students don’t really need to make appointments. The idea is instructors keep regular office hours and make ourselves available to students. Tad might have asked Dottie where I was but, like I said, he’d been beaten up. I don’t think he wanted to advertise that. Plus, I think it had just happened.”