Making Promises (31 page)

He’d seen bookshelves at The Pulpit but, detective that he was, hadn’t looked much closer.

“Jon?” Shane asked before Jon could get too comfortable, and Jon looked up in response. “Could you give me my cell phone? I need to text someone.”

Jon looked at him steadily but didn’t move. “Your guy knows you’re going to live,” he said quietly. Jon’s pretty-boy looks could hide an unexpectedly serious side, and that was the side of him that Shane was seeing now. “And Deacon still doesn’t know about your guy. Which makes this the second biggest secret I’ve ever kept. Now, are you going to tell me why everyone except Crick is keeping this from Deacon?”

“Why isn’t Crick keeping this secret?”

“Same reason I didn’t tell Crick about Deacon’s drinking when Crick was overseas—which is the first biggest secret I ever kept. Crick does not exactly think before he acts, and if anyone could frighten the raisins out of your guy by hunting him down like a big bloodhound, it would be Crick.”

Shane grimaced. “Well, thank you. I’d still like to text him….” He tried to lift his arm up and fell back with a grimace. “I haven’t even asked.

What in the fuck happened to me?”

“They dosed you with sulfa drugs…”

“I’m allergic to sulfa drugs!”

“We know—but the regular drugs weren’t doing it. So they filled you with sulfa drugs to kill the bug, then they filled you with Prednisone to kill the sulfa drugs, and now they’re trying to decide which place is going to be less harmful to you, the hospital or The Pulpit.”

“The Pulpit,” Shane sighed. “Definitely The Pulpit. Please can I text Mikhail? Actually….” Shane wrinkled his nose. “How can
you
text him?

His cell phone was shit. I was going to give him a new one before he left….” He didn’t have the strength to blush, really, but he felt like the flush would have traveled from his toes to his nose. “I just… I didn’t want him to forget about me.”

Jon looked at him sympathetically and shook his head. “Man, you don’t have to worry about the cell phone. We found it in your pile of Christmas gifts on the couch when we went in to feed the dogs. You had them all labeled and half of them wrapped—I’m telling you, Perkins, considering you had nearly two weeks left, it was just sick. My daughter’s going to love the fifty bajillion things you bought for her—and I would, too, but you’re making me look bad.”

Shane gave it up and blushed. Maybe it would be good for him—

wash out all the shit they’d been pumping into his body or something.

“I’ve never shopped for children before,” he mumbled. “I didn’t have a plan for that phone hooked up or anything….”

“Jeff hooked him up—told him it was part of the present from you or some bullshit. Truth was we felt like crap. He was wrecked, leaving you like that. And….” Jon blew out a breath and shook his head. “It’s not like one of us blamed him. Not after we figured out where he was going and why. You know, Shane, I don’t know what it is that’s got him on the run, but I’m pretty sure the reason we all helped keep him away from Deacon for now is because he’s worth the catching, you know? I think he really, really cares about you. I hope you can bring him to dinner soon.” Shane nodded, a rather dreamy smile taking over. “I’ve wanted to bring him to dinner since we met. Hasn’t been a good time. Could you just tell him I’m going to be okay? Tell him I woke up thinking about him?

Tell him I understand why he had to go….”

Jon sighed. “Okay, Cyrano.” He pulled out his own phone—

something elaborate and highly technical—and then started tapping stuff 186

into it, talking slowly as he went. “
He’s awake, he misses you, he hopes
your trip is wonderful.
How’s that?”

“Good… real good. Maybe I can go home tomorrow. That would be good too.” Shane was fugue-ing—he could feel it, but he was so tired and so relieved. “Tell him to call me on Christmas, okay?” Jon looked at him brightly and then grunted, scowling at his complex piece of machinery. “Technical difficulties,” he muttered. He typed something furiously onto the keyboard, and Shane fought sleep. There was a buzz from the little thing, and Jon grunted, then typed some more. Shane had actually nodded off before Jon made a happy sound, and he jerked himself awake.

“He got it?” Oh good. True relief flooded his body—he knew it would be okay now.

“Yup. And he promises to call or text you right about now until he gets back.”

“Really?” More good news! “Are you sure? He’s usually a little cagier than that.”

Jon’s smile was still bright, and he held up the phone close so Shane could read it through unfocused eyes.
Okay. Will call on Christmas. Tell
him I promise.

And that was all he needed.

HE DIDN’T get to leave the next day—but he did get to leave the day after that, where he felt like a big lump on Deacon’s big couch. Everybody assured him he was helping just by playing dolls with Parry Angel while they were running around trying to get Christmas things done, and he chose to believe them. He had to admit that having to sleep for sixteen hours a day was a lot more fun when you nodded off with a baby in your lap.

“Parry is the best baby for that,” Benny agreed, running in from the kitchen where she was doing the baking and some of the wrapping. “She can just sit on you and play while you nod off. You’re like the best patient ever, can I just say that? Deacon kept trying to get up and feed the horses Making Promises

last year, and Crick was bound and determined to go out and muck the stables before he could barely walk.”

Shane was unsure of when laziness had become a virtue, but since all he could seem to do was sleep, he didn’t have a lot of time to contemplate the problem.

Of course, he lived for the moments on the phone with Mikhail. His original phone had been destroyed in some bizarre accident involving a hospital gurney and lots and lots of little pieces of plastic. Jon could never really explain how it happened, but fortunately the SIM card remained intact, even if Jon got him a different carrier when he replaced the damned thing out of pocket. Shane felt bad about that—it had been an accident after all. But the phone Jon got him was pretty spiffy and easy to text with, and once or twice a day his phone would buzz, and he would no longer be in Deacon’s living room, using oxygen, he’d be someplace new and exciting and beautiful, and he’d be there with Mikhail.

The sunset has not so many colors here, but each color is very sharp.

And none of them are brown.

Mutti
spends all of her time on deck, wrapped in blankets, holding
her face to the sun. She looks very 1930s movie star.

Children in the street call for pesos. I give some, but you cannot fill
the ocean with a few drops of sweat.

I think I shall have a book of postcards. All of my pictures are of
Mutti, but here is one of me.

The picture had been sent on the phone, and it featured Mikhail looking self-conscious and avoiding the camera with his blue-gray eyes.

He was standing on the prow of the vast cruise ship and holding the camera out with his arm, and the sunset that was not brown was behind him. His skin was a pale brown, and his tiny corkscrew curls were washing nearly white with the sun, but the skittish look was pure Mikhail.

Shane spent a long time looking at that picture before he sent back his reply:
You look happy. I’ll send you a picture on Christmas—I won’t
look so much like a mental patient by then.

Mikhail’s reply made him laugh.
You probably are too thin. Eat
something, you obnoxious man—no one likes to grope a skeleton.

So when Christmas Day rolled around, Shane tried not to be too much of a big garden slug. Deacon and Crick still had the big plastic 188

bench in their shower from when Crick could barely stand, and he’d been keeping clean, but Christmas morning—while Crick cleaned up the rubble left when a bunch of grown men tried to spoil a teenager and her baby absolutely rotten—he actually shaved and buttoned up loose jeans and a shirt with a collar and then retired to the living room, thinking maybe he could go home the next day and actually feed his dogs.

When Shane sat down on the couch, feeling more himself than he had for nearly two weeks, Andrew came and handed him a mug of hot chocolate, then sat down next to him.

“You’re looking pretty spiffy there, chief. You got a date tonight?” Shane rolled his eyes. “Trying to look like a productive citizen is all.

You know—go home, feed the dogs, pay the bills, find the presents that weren’t on the couch and give those out.” He’d meant to send Kimmy her present—a big comfy throw for her couch that he’d bought from a craft fair Benny had dragged him to one weekend—but obviously that hadn’t happened. He realized with a sudden slash of guilt that he hadn’t even told Kimmy he’d been injured and sick. He was going to call her tonight—he’d have to make it sound small so she wouldn’t be hurt.

“Deacon doesn’t want anything, you know,” Andrew said now, and Shane blushed.

“Tough. I got him something anyway. And Crick too. I just hadn’t gotten the bags out to organize and wrap and shit.” He’d gotten them a Wii, and it was expensive and it came with games, and he didn’t give a shit.

“Yeah, well, I appreciate my hat and all, Shane, but you know, you’re part of us. I don’t think you have to be giving us all presents and shit—I mean, don’t worry. It was going to be a lean Christmas, and you’ve spoiled us all rotten, and Deacon doesn’t know how to say thank you for it, but anyone who gives to his girls is pretty much one of his favorite people.”

Shane blushed and looked away. “I don’t know families,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t know… limits. I just… I’m so grateful for people, sometimes.”

Andrew nodded, patted his back, and stood. “We’re grateful for you.

Man, our best Christmas present this year is that we’re all here. Crick, Deacon—there were times last year we weren’t sure either of them were Making Promises

going to make it. And just when we thought it was smooth sailing, you go and get hurt. Just know that, you know. You got the job. The audition’s over. You’re part of our family now, okay?”

Shane couldn’t look at him. Crick wasn’t sleeping well—he woke up every night around two a.m., sometimes screaming. Sometimes he just wandered into the living room and sat at Shane’s feet and watched television. Deacon was sleeping worse—he would go to bed with Crick, and then get up when Crick fell asleep to do chores or study for his classes or study the finances for, please God, another way to save his home. He was always in bed just in time to comfort Crick when he woke up. Shane was part of the family, but he couldn’t help them—not in any real way.

Apparently, all he could do was sleep on their couch and make their complicated lives harder and drink in the love that saturated the house like a plant took in water.

“Yeah, well, Merry Christmas to you too.” God—what else was he supposed to say?

So it felt surreal that night, as everyone was gathered in the living room, finishing up with dessert, to realize that he was a part of this big group of people. Mostly he was a baby seat, but that was nice too. He found that he liked the little people—they didn’t mind if he was weird or awkward, and they certainly didn’t mind the puppets or the pretty dresses or the little wooden toys and blocks he’d given them for Christmas, even if they didn’t know who’d done the giving.

Still, when the phone in his pocket buzzed, he had Andrew take Parry Angel so he could stand clumsily to pull the thing out of his back pocket.

He was so nervous about talking to Mikhail that his hands were actually shaking.

Jon saw him reaching for the phone and moved close enough to mutter, “Go use Deacon’s room. It’s quieter.”

Shane nodded thanks and pulled out the phone as he was walking down the cool, dark, hallway.

“Heya, Mickey,” he said into the quiet.

There was a gasp on the other end of the line, and then Mikhail’s voice, uncertain and wobbly.

“You really are going to be okay. That is good. I was starting to think they were pretending to be you, just so I would not jump from the ship.”

Shane laughed. “Nah, Mickey, you’re tougher than that.”

“So you say.” Mikhail sounded more sad than amused. “I know I’m not so tough. If I was all that hard, I’d be very, very angry at you, but I’m not.”

“I’m sorry I got hurt,” Shane said, wincing. “I didn’t mean for you to worry.”

“Yes, well, I’m still angry about that. In fact, it made me a little crazy there for a moment. But that I can yell at you for. This other thing, I cannot even yell at you for. In fact, I was not even going to tell you I knew, but now I find that I must.”

And then he did. And Shane felt even worse.