His laugh is a kind of triumphal cheer, as if I have pitched a shutout. He clearly likes the company I've put him in, the short list of Gray and Daniel. "Well then, what're you complaining about?" he teases. "You've still got one left." Meaning Gray, like an ace in my pocket.
I slip my arms closer around his neck, a hug that holds no fear of choking. "I'm not complaining."
Brian tilts his head and rubs his cheek against my arm. "Neither am I."
Above our heads a tern is wheeling, and he starts to crow insistently, as if we have usurped his dinner perch. To us it's like the blast of a starter's gun. Brian pivots around, unbelievably light on his feet, no consciousness of the load. He takes the next flight at a near gallop, and I am as tuned to him as a jockey now, more lift than ballast.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," I announce to the denizens of the cliff, the tunneling gophers and ghosts of the Malibu. "At the three-quarter mark it's Shaheen and Shaheen. Nobody else is even in sight. What form—what fucking grace!"
Not even a pause at the next turn. I can hear the heaving labor of Brian's breathing, the thump of his heartbeat under my locked hands. Two more flights to go. "You're watching it live, lentils and germs! A new world's record in the stair-carry!" My bellowing is all free-form, for what do I know about sportscasting? Lesson one: it's the bellow that counts. "Coming into the stretch! This crowd is going wild!"
Round the penultimate landing, and then just eight more steps. Brian wobbles and shakes his head, blinking the sweat from his eyes. "Go!" I command him, clenching my knees. There's a growl in his throat as he pitches ahead, every step an agony now, beyond his strength. It's the last mile of the marathon, when you don't know why anymore and your body has to will it.
I'm bellowing "Go!" over and over, driving him like a locomotive, the first time I've ever cheered my brother. For I'm the will he needs to finish, craning to watch his feet and counting down. "Three... two... Go for it, man! One more! One more!" A thousand games are over as Brian plants a foot at the top of Everest, hauling us up. We've made it.
Then I'm drumming my fists on his shoulders, shrieking, as he staggers through the cactus. At the edge of the lawn he stretches upright with a groan, releasing his grip around my thighs. I slide to the ground with an ache of regret, and Brian buckles to the grass. He's panting and laughing at once, splayed on all fours.
And I have no headache whatsoever. My brother's hetero mania for making life a contest has saved me a probable blackout. Beyond the water the sunset glow is absolutely painless, silvery pink at the rim of the world. I know it's only a matter of time before Brian recovers his breath and his equilibrium. In the meantime I take up the slack. I don't know what to give back to him for the ride, except the picture of me standing here erect, so at least he won't have to remember me sick.
After a minute he pitches over on his back with a groan of relief.
He grins up at me. Nothing further needs to be said—except good-bye, of course, but that will come later. For now it's enough that we found the time to play together, a game of our own devising. My answering grin is as giddy as his. We are home free. Here on the last day, we have finally managed this boys' thing of putting together a team.
The first time I woke up clean, without any dislocation. My eyes blinked open, and I knew right away that the rustle at the foot of the bed was Gray. I flicked a look at the clock—11:06. Gray was draping his pants over the ladderback chair, getting the creases right. That poignant WASP exactitude for keeping up appearances, pouring tea as the ship goes down—milk or lemon? My own clothes were flung in an angry heap, my enduring protest against the rules of parochial school, where a tidy desk promised a tidy life. I made no move to unbend from my fetal curl on the moonlight side of the bed, or otherwise let him know I was conscious. I wasn't sure why.
He drew back the covers with excruciating care, lowering himself beside me without a sound. Well, perhaps a small contented sigh. I could feel him just a few inches away, mimicking the S curve of my body but making no move to touch me lest he jar me awake. The first thought always for me. This man I'd been waiting to meet forever, who banished all the mismatched ghosts of my previous tilts at love. So what was I so pissed about, that I should suddenly shrink and feign slumber like a mauled bride?
Certainly not Gray's fault. If he'd known I wanted to be alone with my brother to say good-bye—if
I'd
known—he wouldn't have dreamed of intruding. In any case, it was only an hour ago that Brian checked in with Nigrelli from the Chevron and found out the agents would be by to fetch him at 7:00
A.M
. We'd have to be up before the sun to fit in a glassy-eyed breakfast.
I'd been in bed myself since shortly after the sunset caper, having a proper crash. Brian had been in twice, once with a mug of soup and then to announce the revised hour of his departure. The soup was there on the nightstand, cold. But even half-comatose, I'd promised myself to be present and accounted for at dawn. I would section the grapefruit and griddle the hotcakes, returning the favor at last for those years of breakfast on West Hill Road. A private exchange between me and my brother, meaningless to an outsider.
But how was Gray to know? He came back tonight for one reason only, to make sure I was safe. Besides, all I would have to do in the morning was slip out of bed as stealthily as he slipped in. Once I'd got it choreographed in my head, I was seized with a rush of tender feeling. I rolled over into his arms, burrowing in. I could feel him grope to the surface, the fastest sleeper in the West.
"You all right?" he murmured thickly. I nodded against his chest. He was already tipping back over, his head filling with white noise. Then he snorted and cleared his throat, swiping at the cobwebs. "Don't forget," he rumbled. "Twenty-four hours. No excitement."
Yessir. Flat on my back with the drapes closed. No tap-dancing on the beach stairs. "Graham," I whispered, "you know what else? I love you."
He was more under than not by then. His assent was hardly audible. "Good," I think he said. I most assuredly didn't require a declaration in return. It went without saying now. But what he did instead was reach a hand between my legs and cup my balls. I don't even suppose it was conscious, certainly not erotic. The perfect combination, in fact, of capture and protection.
Not a job for the school nurse, men,
indeed! I was fast asleep in half a minute.
The second time I woke was quite, quite the opposite. I came roaring up out of a sea cave with my lungs on fire, pursued by something horrible. I thought I must've screamed as I broke the surface, jolting up onto my elbows, except Gray hardly stirred beside me. I was drenched, truly as if I'd been underwater. Though I couldn't recall the monster's shape, the fear had survived my breaking through the membrane of the dream. Instinctively I shrank from the sleeping figure beside me, not so much to keep him dry as to spare him the taint of my dread.
It was all very out-of-body, even for a night sweat. I knew it was Gray next to me, knew he was my lover, and yet I was nagged by a vague anxiety that I wasn't in the right room. Silently I slid out from under the covers, leaving my wet bodyprint on the sheets and pillow. I swayed in the moonlight, catching my spectral image in the mirror above the dresser. At least I wasn't a vampire. But otherwise I scarcely recognized myself: How did I get so
old?
I took a step closer and peered at my haunted eyes. The night wind from the balcony sent a shiver up my spine, as the specter in the glass seemed to direct me by telepathy.
Go to your room.
I thumped into the bathroom, groping a towel from behind the door. Methodically I rubbed myself dry, in the process making sure
I was all there, no fingers or toes lost to the beast. Grounding was what was required to reconnect the synapses, a sort of metaphysical version of name, rank, and serial number. PWA's who went to parochial school undoubtedly kept half-gallons of Gatorade in the medicine chest, to goose their electrolytes, but I was a lost cause in the preparedness department.
I turbaned the towel around my head and sat on the can to pee.
Like a girl,
sneered the censoring voices of Chester. No! It was only that I didn't trust my aim in the dark and didn't want to wake the rest of the house.
I looked up sharply at the door beyond the tub. A woozy grin slithered over my lips as my bladder emptied. Of course—the rest of the house.
Thomas Francis Shaheen,
said the voice in my head,
210 West Hill Road,
It surfaced now like a mantra, drummed into us by the nuns, what to say if we ever got lost. The door opposite glimmered, the crooked line of my life having come full circle at last. Right through there was my room.
I stood up from the toilet and pressed the flush. The clinging fear of the beast was gone as I padded across the tile toward the past. The mirage was total. Had I glanced in the mirror over the sink, I would surely have seen a ten-year-old. I turned the knob as carefully as the combination on a safe. Then felt a tilt of unutterable relief as the door swung wide.
For a moment I saw what I wanted to see: the jumble of baseball gear, the crossed pennants on the far wall, Notre Dame and the Yankees. The moonlight was the ally of my memory, heightening the feel of the otherworldly. In the far corner, my father's dun-green sea trunk from the Navy, used by us as a toybox now. Under the window a hamster's cage, complete with runwheel, previously home to a green snake from the Essex marsh, and before that a pair of salamanders who willfully refused to mate. Unquestionably the same place, down to the Mickey Mantle nightlight grinning from the baseboard.
I made a move toward the bed, and the dreamhouse began to falter. For obviously there should have been
two
beds, with a nightstand in between supporting a deadlocked chessboard, the game abandoned as soon as Brian realized he couldn't win. In its place Cora's oak four-poster stood its ground, mocking me. I grappled to reconfigure, blinking to change the channel back. But once you see better than you remember, the mirage is over. I wasn't home on West Hill Road at all. It was now and getting later by the second.
And Brian wasn't there.
I lunged for the bed, swirling my hands in the sheets to see if they were still warm. Barely. The agents had only just bundled him out. It was Brian's muffled cry that had rocketed me awake in Foo's room. I pitched for the door to the upstairs hall, frantic now, ready to run up Highway 1 till I caught them. No one was going to take from me my chance to say good-bye.
I grabbed the newel post and swung around the stairwell. Then I froze with a stab of relief at the sound of voices below. I was in time! Problem was, I was also stark naked. I squirmed a moment in confusion. From where I stood I couldn't tell which one of the agents was talking, or maybe it was Nigrelli. Biting the bullet, I yanked the towel from around my head and cinched it about my waist, locker-room style. The sight of me
half-
naked, scrawny and pocked with lesions, ought to rattle the agents nicely. Then they'd damn well wait in the car while Brian and I got off a final volley of brotherly feeling.
I clutched the banister with both hands and began a labored descent, working it like a performance, focused only on my shameless bid for sympathy. The surly voice of the agent stopped midsentence as I came into view. I fixed my doleful eyes on Brian, sitting in tank top and sweat pants on the sofa, barefoot. I had an instant's curiosity as to why he wasn't dressed to leave, but I was busy smiling bravely, trying to project the vast nobility of my dying wish. The footlights of the moment had me blinded.
"Well, well, well," declared the agent smugly. "If it ain't Tommy the Tattle."
I didn't react at first, except to brace myself against the banister, for the fugue state apparently wasn't finished after all. I was back in Chester, just as before, when Cora's room was the lost world. For "Tommy the Tattle" meant one thing only: the schoolyard at Saint Augustine's. A cruel misnomer, since I'd never told on anyone, but who said life wasn't cruel? I cast a puzzled frown at Brian, to see if the past had claimed him too, but his own face was oddly blanched.
I shifted my eyes to the agent standing on the hearth, his leering grin as wide as his bull neck. He made a beckoning gesture with his gun. "C'mon join us, kid," he said. "We was just talkin' old times."
"He doesn't know anything," Brian hissed.
But I hardly heard him, so loud was the ring in my ears. I floated the rest of the way down, spellbound by the beckoning gun in Jerry Curran's hand. Not afraid of him yet. Too stunned—too
fascinated.
For the tube and the
Hartford Courant
hadn't done him justice. He weighed two-fifty easy, the tire at his waist like an eighteen-wheeler, a pig Republican fatcat. The armpits of his white button-down shirt were bluish circles of sweat. Nothing remained of the brawny mick linebacker, except the sneer.
"That don't surprise me a bit," retorted Jerry with a dry laugh. "Tommy Shaheen never knew shit. Played fourth base—right, Tom?"
Question rhetorical, no reply necessary. He kept waving the gun to the left, nudging me from the foot of the stairs across to the sofa. I sidled that way till he motioned me to sit, in the opposite corner of the sofa from Brian. The gun was a sleek machine pistol, matte black.
Jerry clicked his teeth. "Brian and I was having a little disagreement about how we managed to misplace seven million bucks." On the "mis" his lips simpered with contempt, as he darted a black glare at my brother.
"I told you, Munson ate it," Brian growled in answer. Another name I hadn't heard in fifteen years. Scotty Munson: center in the fall, catcher in the spring. Sewer-mouth.
"Oh yeah, them pension funds." Jerry wedged his tongue between his teeth, and the laughter came spitting around it like an adder's venom. "I sure hope you're wrong, Bri, 'cause Munson's real dead. And he died real slow."