Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Chapter 38-Resurrection-2/2
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BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 38-RESURRECTION-PART 2/2
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
see if you can somehow factor in
Back at your table in the restaurant, your waiter brought you ginger ale, too; maybe you looked like you needed it or something. While you’d been talking to Brian in the restaurant, as the conversation progressed, there was something going on under the surface that you were determined to tease out; there was more to this, another piece to the puzzle…
“Brian, without going into too much detail, I just want to confirm a few things.”
“Okay.”
“Justin went to high school, graduated, did he go to college?”
“He took some classes, art classes, never graduated. Went to Hollywood for a while; his work was going to be made into a movie.”
This was news to you, “What work?”
“A comic book.”
“Didn’t know he did that kind of work. What was it?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re going to have a fucking field day with it.”
“Look, I don’t try to do your job; don’t try to do mine,” you told him.
“Fine, it was a gay comic book based on a super hero named ‘Rage’ which was me.”
You sat back in your seat, “Whoa.”
“See, I told you.”
“The movie didn’t get made?” (It couldn’t have, you thought, because you and Daniel would’ve been at that theater every night for a least two weeks just to argue about symbolism, subtext, and spandex and where exactly the thrice should meet.)
“No. It tanked.”
It was at that point that you realized the scope of what you were dealing with and the challenge of keeping all of it front and center, so you began to unroll an unused cloth napkin that you’d pushed to the end of the table and setting the knife, spoon, and fork in front of you. Brian asked what you were doing, and you said, “Placeholders. You’ll see. So Justin came back?”
“Yeah.”
“You say that like you were surprised,” you told him.
“I was. I figured he’d get a taste of Hollywood, of LA, and forget all about Pittsburgh.”
“And all about you?”
“Yeah.”
“That seems to be a recurrent theme in your life. The storyline of the comic book, was it--?”
“Autobiographical?” Brian asked, finishing your sentence.
“For Justin?”
Brian sighed, “Yeah.”
“And it tanked?”
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Brian said. He didn’t seem surprised, which seemed a little strange to you, but then again maybe not, there was something about that that you wanted to come back to so you picked up the fork and placed it in front of you, horizontally, between you and Brian. “What’s that for?” he asked.
“Something I want to come back to. How was Justin when he came back? Disappointed?”
Brian seemed suspicious of your psycho-cutlery but answered you anyway, “Yeah. He tried to act like he didn’t take it personally, but he did.”
“I can imagine. He was what? Twenty?”
“Yeah, twenty.”
“So, this comic is autobiographical for Justin, but the central character is you as ‘Rage’ and-"
Brian interrupted you, “He didn’t write it; he just illustrated it.”
“Really?”
“A friend of mine wrote it.”
“A friend of yours or a friend of yours and Justin’s?” you asked.
“Well, both of us at that point,” Brian conceded.
“Your friend went to LA as well?”
“No.”
“Why not?” you asked.
“He wasn’t asked to go,” Brian said. “They wanted Justin.”
You moved the spoon next to the fork, “And how long did this project go on?”
“Couple years.”
You wanted to get your hands on this comic book yesterday, but you weren’t exactly a magician so, “Okay, so Justin only illustrates it; he stays once removed?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Was he afraid to get any closer, even then?”
Brian dodged you, defending Justin, “He’s an artist, not a writer.”
……
You were learning on your feet and very quickly with both Brian and Justin and the quickest way to end a conversation with either of them was to probe the motivations or intentions of the other, and while you found this intriguing, you were smart enough to back off of a land mine lest you find yourself ejected from the property, so you decided to slow down a little, to lull the pace of the conversation a little and make it less of a firing squad and more of a fact-finding mission, “Right, I see your point. Your friend, what’s his name?”
“Michael.”
“Right, Michael. He writes the script, so to speak, and then Justin fills in the illustrations; am I correct?”
“Yeah,” Brian said, like he was hoping you’d just buy that answer and move on.
“So, Justin didn’t have any real input into the story?”
……
Brian looked around the restaurant as if he’d never seen it before, and finally admitted, “Well, he had some input, I guess.”
“Okay, but just a little, for artistic reasons?”
“Well, no. I mean, he wasn’t going to just illustrate something he didn’t like.”
“Makes sense. Every artist has their own sense of artistic integrity. I can understand that,” you told him. Brian smiled at you. “Okay, so your friend would write the issue and then bring it to Justin, and he’d illustrate it? Is that how it worked?”
Brian shook his head, “Yeah…sort of. Not really. It was collaborative. They usually worked together, especially in the beginning.”
“Justin liked that? The collaboration?”
Brian let a breath of laughter escape, “Yeah, he liked it all right. He liked it a lot.”
“Why are you smiling?” you asked him.
He did it again; the huff of laughter through his nose, “He was so young, everything made him either unbelievably happy or totally fucking miserable. There wasn’t much in between.”
“Did that include you?” you asked him.
Brian’s smile became more of a sneer, “You could say that.”
……
You moved back to the comic book, “So if the comic book is more or less about Justin and you, and Justin has significant input into the storyline, and he’s the illustrator and the one who’s invited to LA to make the movie, what exactly was Michael’s role in all of this?”
……
Brian’s eyes narrowed before he could stop them, “Is that some sort of a trick question or something?”
You answered him honestly, “Absolutely not.”
……
Brian was clearly exasperated with you or perhaps the subject matter at this point, answering you with an I’ve had quite enough of this tone to his voice, “Fuck, I don’t know, channeling?”
Honest answer, you thought. You were impressed. “Channeling what?”
If the table between you and Brian weren’t bolted to the floor, Brian would’ve successfully pinned you with it at that moment, leaning back in the booth like he really needed to get the hell away from you, but was unable to get up, “What the fuck are you getting at? Just fucking say it because now you’re just pissing me the fuck off.”
So you told him because like Richard always says when he’s under the covers, ‘Ask and ye shall receive,’ “Well, what I’m getting at is that it’s an awful lot of work to produce an entire comic book-that someone else ‘writes’ for you--and eventually end up all the way across the country making a movie about your relationship when you could just sit down and talk to the man you love about how you feel.” Brian stared at you and said nothing, just stared as if you’d suddenly sprouted another head. “Justin didn’t have to draw you and your rage; he could’ve talked to you about it, tried to help you work through it perhaps?”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s not-that wasn’t the way we did things.”
“So he goes all the way to LA to do this and it bombs, and he comes back to you, and what happens?”
“We’re totally out of sync.”
“How so?”
“He needed things from me that I wouldn’t give him.”
“Like what?” (The firing squad was front and center again. You were beginning to think he preferred it.)
“Like everything.”
“Why didn’t you give him what him what he wanted?” you asked.
“I don’t even fucking know,” His defensiveness was back, “I wanted to; I could see what he wanted, but it was like I just couldn’t do it, felt like I was fucking paralyzed.” He stopped, and you thought he was finished but he wasn’t, “Sometimes I would stare at myself in the mirror, and I’d be screaming at myself in my head to just stop this shit, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything.”
“What happened?”
“Shit got weird, and he left me.”
Just talking about this, Brian’s entire demeanor had changed; he wasn’t the confident ad exec anymore; he wasn’t a man on the brink of forty; he was a frustrated man stumbling around in a dark room trying to find his light switch of denial, so you softened your voice a little, gave him a little time to feel his way around… Let him tread water for awhile…
“Okay, let’s back up a little. There’s a pattern or a reflex in your relationship-things get difficult or tense and someone has to leave or the scenery has to change. You see that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You and Justin had to the leave this place last night; you left Justin at the hotel later on, you left him today at the church-"
“That’s not the same thing,” he interrupted you.
“Why not?”
“When he leaves, he leaves. He goes; he’s gone.”
“You don’t leave him like that?”
“No, never.”
“Tell me why he leaves. Is it the same reason over and over?” you asked.
“No. The first time he left me for someone else.”
That surprised you, “Okay. Who?”
“A musician.”
“Someone who could express himself?”
“Yeah. Then he left to go to Hollywood.”
“To express himself?”
Brian looked at you like you were an irritating fly buzzing around his head, “Yeah, and then when he came back, he left because-"
“You couldn’t express yourself?”
“Fine, whatever.”
(Different reasons, indeed. A rose, a tulip, a daffodil...all growing in the same garden...)
……
“What did you do when Justin left that time, Brian; when he was back from LA?”
Brian laughed, seemingly at himself, at his defeat, “I went over to my friend’s house and tore him a new one.”
“Your friend?”
“The writer.”
“Michael? The surrogate?” you asked.
“Yeah. I killed the messenger.”
……
“And Justin?” you asked.
“He got to watch,” Brian said, proud and ashamed of it at the same time.
“Once again, once removed?”
Brian’s shoulders sank, “Yeah.”
“Well at least you were finally expressing yourself.”
……
“Brian, looking back on it, what do you think would’ve happened if you’d given Justin what he wanted when he came back from LA?”
……
And as you waited for an answer, the color began to disappear from Brian’s face again…
……
So you back pedaled, “It’s okay; you don’t have to tell me. I understand.” You could tell by the look on his face that Brian understood, too. “You weren’t ready,” you told him. “It’s okay. You didn’t know why. Forget it; let it go.”
Brian’s voice was wavering as he told you, “But then the club exploded.”
*********************
HARPER COLLINS’S POV
in all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean
Your phone call to Justin revealed that he was at Daniel’s in your studio, and he seemed mildly pleased when you told him you were on your way, and when you let yourself in, the whole place was dark-blinds drawn, doors shut, including the one to the studio; the day had begun to get cloudy so everything was covered with shades of gray as you climbed the stairs and tapped on the door, “Justin? It’s me.”
“Yeah.”
You let the door pop open, and your eyes adjusted to the room, even darker than the rest of the house because there were shades on the studio windows; Daniel and Sam had installed them for Amelia, for when she was napping or staying over. You left the door open so you could see better. Justin was lying on the futon, sprawled on his back, one knee up, the other leg halfway on the floor facing the covered windows, a tiny border of light trying to peek through each one.
“Can you shut the door?” he asked you without even turning in your direction.
“It’s awfully dark in here,” you said.
“Light a candle or something.”
“Okay.”
So you fished in your desk for a match and lit a candle that sat on a small table in the corner of the room which put the light behind Justin; he moved his legs, so you could sit on the other side of the futon and continued to stare at the ceiling.
“I got your message late because I was in Macy’s; I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
……
……
“You said you needed to talk to me.”
“I do.”
His shin was pressed against your thigh, and you let your hand rest there, curious to see if he’d push you away, but he didn’t, “I’m listening.”
“I can’t speak at Alan’s funeral tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Are you going to?” he asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I’m not sure yet, probably whatever comes out of my mouth.”
……
He covered his eyes with his forearm, “I tried to write something, but nothing came out; I mean, nothing that I could say. I just don’t think I can.”
You shrugged, a little confused as to why he was so focused on that, “You don’t have do to anything you don’t want to do, Justin. Tomorrow’s about you saying good-bye to Alan however you want to. You can do anything you want.”
……
“Are you ready to tell him good-bye?” he asked you.
“Am I ready…?” You pondered the question for a while… “Mostly, I think I am. In a lot of ways, I think I said good-bye to him a long time ago. I’m not sure; I think some of the readiness will actually come tomorrow.”
……
Justin seemed so distressed, so out of sorts, so uncomfortable, you thought you’d just make light conversation for a few minutes, “Hey, off the subject, but why is Daniel’s chair in here?”
……
Of all the words you’d ever spoken in your life, those were the ones you wished you could take back.
*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
this could be the end of everything
You weren’t planning on bringing up the explosion at Babylon, but since Brian did, you kept him going, “I read about that,” you told him, “Let’s keep a wide lens on it so you don’t get sick again, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Justin wasn’t hurt-"
“No, but Michael was, my friend- It almost obliterated the messenger,” Brian said, looking tired all of sudden as if the years of all this grief were finally starting to sink in; his age was returning. “He’s Jenny’s father.”
“So he’s part of Gus’s life as well; it would’ve been a huge loss all around?”
“Enormous.”
“The tragedy, it brought you and Justin back together?”
“Tragedies have a way of doing that,” Brian said, almost flippantly, the emotions beginning to saturate him. “That’s when I asked him to marry me. He refused the first time, and then he agreed.”
“He didn’t believe you were serious the first time or something?”
“I believe the technical term is ‘full of shit.’”
……
“Tell me why you didn’t get married,” you asked him, trying to steer him away from images of blood and ambulances.
“We are married.”
“You know what I mean, before.”
“So he could come here.”
“He could’ve come here married; there’s no law against that.”
“I told you I didn’t want him to feel obligated.”
“Did you believe that he loved you?”
Brian smiled and laughed at little, “Yes.”
“Why is that funny?”
“I don’t know; it just is.”
“So you love him; he loves you, but you don’t know if he’s ever coming back?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he know if he was going to come back?” you asked.
“I don’t know; you’d have to ask him.”
And then it was your turn to laugh, “No, thanks. I don’t do couples counseling.”
“You don’t?” Brian asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s bull shit.”
……
And then you asked Brian something that you and Daniel had been wondering about since Justin had set foot back in the city with a ring on his finger, “Why didn’t Justin invite any of his city friends to the wedding?”
Brian looked at you and laughed, his eyebrow headed for the ceiling, “Because our bed isn’t big enough.”
“There was no ceremony?” you asked.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Who officiated?” you asked, strictly on Richard’s behalf because he was dying to know.
“My dick.”
*********************
somewhere, somehow,
somebody must have kicked you around some
The string you were trying to pull, you’d see it for a few seconds and then it would disappear again, sucked back up into this emotional quagmire, but you kept trying, determined to grab it…
So, basically, “You pushed Justin out of the nest, right?” you asked Brian.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you push anybody.”
“But when he left to come here, he left knowing that you really loved him, unlike when he went to California. Is that a fair assessment?"
“Yeah, I made sure of it,” he said, possibly unaware that he was sliding his ring up and down his finger. He was correcting a mistake; you got the feeling it was the first of many, and your instincts told you that some of ones he was correcting didn’t even belong to him; he was trying to shed a legacy. So you asked him if it was okay to switch gears for a while, to focus on something else for a few minutes, and Brian seemed relieved. You asked about his family and listened as he talked about them, no warmth in his voice, no emotion really, mostly a stale disgust, and when you asked if he ever saw any of them, he told you no and, “My father’s dead.” You took the knife from your right side and sat it in front of you, next to the spoon.
“I’m sorry to hear that; when did he die?”
“When I was twenty-nine.”
“How was your relationship with your father before he died?” Brian laughed at you. “So you were estranged from your father?”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with your father growing up?”
“He beat me; let’s leave it at that.”
“That’s a horrible thing for a father to do to his son, Brian. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“He’s dead; it’s over.”
“Tell me a little bit about him; what was he like?”
Brian looked at you with his glass of ginger ale in his hand, suddenly holding it like it was something much more potent, and shook his head, “There’s nothing to tell. My father was a blue collar bully, and he’s dead. The end.”
So you went in the back door, “Point taken. But if he were alive today, what would he think of the man you become?”
Brian sneered, “I’m a fag, Jon. Please.”
“Okay, I understand that; let’s just put that aside for a moment. What would he think?”
Brian was quiet for a few seconds, staring at the tablecloth, running his finger across the fabric, and then he looked up at you soaked with the realization, “He’d be proud of me.”
“Really? He would, why?”
“Because I’m just like him, only my collar’s white.”
*********************
pass before my eyes,
a curiosity
Although much of your conversation with Brian that afternoon was wandering all over the place, the duality you were interested in was coming into focus, slowly but surely, separating within him like oil in water…
“What kind of relationship did Justin have with his father?” you asked Brian.
“Before me or after me?” he asked.
“You think you changed Justin’s relationship with his dad?”
“Yes…I know I did. I know I have. Back then…his father attacked me once when he saw Justin and I making out outside a club.”
“Were you badly hurt?”
“I was on the ground; he kicked me repeatedly in the ribs. Justin was screaming at him, trying to pull him off.”
“Was this before or after Justin was attacked?”
“Before.”
“You didn’t retaliate?”
“Not then and never physically.”
“You retaliated later?”
“Yes.”
“In front of Justin?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why did I retaliate?”
“No, why not in front of Justin?” Brian looked at you and then looked away, like he didn’t want to answer you. “Because parents shouldn’t fight in front of the children?” you continued.
Brian’s eyes shifted back to your face, “No, because it was between Craig and I.”
“Man to man?” you asked.
“Right.”
“Not man-to-son to man who’s fucking that man’s son?” You garnered no response from Brian, so you switched lanes, “Brian, are Justin’s parents still married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they got divorced.” (Ask a dumb question; get a dumb answer)
“How old was Justin when they got divorced?” you asked.
“Eighteen, nineteen, somewhere in there.”
“So after Justin got hurt then?”
*********************
he learned to walk while I was away
This was when the rest of your first-hand knowledge about Daniel, Justin and company came into play because although you were no miracle worker nor a psychic, you’d been a faithful fly on the wall of Daniel’s heart since the night he met Justin and knew enough about Daniel to lead you to some conclusions about Justin before you’d ever even considered Justin your friend. Daniel was an only child, his father a hospital administrator, a high-powered, well paid man who died out of the blue when Daniel was thirteen-after lunch in his office from an undiagnosed heart condition. Daniel became a doctor because of that tragic moment in his life and took forever to come to terms with specializing in Psychiatry because he felt he was never doing enough, that maybe if he became a heart surgeon he could bring a dead man back to life. Since then, he’d admitted to you that he finally chose Psychiatry because he thought it would be ‘a lot less life and death,’ and you told him that he was abhorrently naive if he really believed that because Psychiatry is nothing more than presiding over a protracted death sentence in very expensive, fifty-minute increments.
So when Daniel would gravitate toward lovers who were way too young for him, who were unsettled and aimless or committed but not to him, you were never really surprised because you never felt like Daniel really wanted a partner; he wanted a son of sorts. He wanted to be the father who didn’t just die one day and leave his family shrouded in grief and uncertainty; he wanted to be the answer to someone’s question, the reason that Justin felt safe and welcome in the city. It meant more to Daniel than Justin ever understood; it was the reason that Harper was still around…because she did. She could relate to Daniel, to the need to take care of somebody, to be the person who wouldn’t disappear. And as you sat across from Brian that day, you could feel that vibe coming off of him; he seasoned it a little and was much more astute at disguising it, but by the same token, his was like the Cocaine you’d buy from your friends in the Eighties-sinfully pure and at such a high price.
“Brian, is Justin’s father proud of him?” you asked him, watching him closely as he absorbed your question.
Brian’s eyes locked on yours when you asked, his gaze had become untrusting again as he answered you with a lie lined with velvet, “I wouldn’t know.” You didn't care that he lied to you because it wasn't the real question anyway...it was the bait. And next came the switch: “Does Justin know?” And though the answer to both questions was the same, it was the truth of the second one that was destroying Brian more than the first. You didn’t need him to answer it. “Has it always been that way?” you asked him.
“Since I’ve known him,” Brian said quietly.
This was the loose end you’d been pulling, and now you’d finally gotten to it, you’d unraveled the entire ball of yarn and found the knot in the middle, the one that had been there for years, that gave the ball its shape in the first place. You didn’t have to spell it out for Brian; he knew that you’d figured it out; he knew that his efforts to disguise this aspect of his relationship with Justin were aging just like he was, wearing like an old pair of jeans, threadbare at the knees. But there was another side of all of this that was really concerning you, the side he wasn’t seeing, and that’s what you needed to help him with so that he, in turn, could begin to help Justin.
*********************
will you walk with me out on the wire?
The afternoon was ticking away; you knew it and Brian knew it. You didn’t have much more time to make a real difference, so you told Brian as much and more, “Brian, last night, when we brought Justin to Dan’s, he was truly frightened about what had happened to you, heartbroken even-"
He interrupted you, “It’s done, okay? I can’t go back and erase it now. I’ve gotta go forward.”
“You’re right, you do, but I want to talk to you a little bit about Justin, about what happened, so you can move forward; I need you to help me with a few things.”
“I’m listening.”
“Dan and I talked to him after he’d gotten you calmed down and you’d fallen back asleep, and Justin gave us the brief synopsis about what’d happened to him, but it was almost emotionless, almost like he was talking about a horrific event that happened to someone else. But when I tried to press Justin for information, he changed the subject and made it about you.”
Brian looked confused, as if he was suddenly surrounded by fruit flies that fed on his guilt, “What do you mean? All about me?”
“He had a very difficult time talking about it from his own point of view. He talked about your feelings as if they were his own.”
“What feelings?” Brian asked.
You smiled, “Well, exactly, that’s what I mean. What feelings? There were none. He said the guy that attacked him got community service, and when I asked him how he felt about that, he said he didn’t know because he was recovering.”
Brian shrugged, “Well, he was.”
“Okay, so then I asked him how you felt about it, and again, no real emotion; he said that you think that’s the way the world works, that you expected the outcome.”
“I suppose I did.”
Brian’s tone of voice was as flat as it was when he’d ordered lunch earlier, no passion at all; if you didn’t know better, you’d think he wasn’t even interested in the subject you were discussing. So you took a very quick, very calculated risk…
“Brian, why did Chris hit Justin?”
“He saw us dancing at the prom-"
“No, I mean why did he hit Justin? Why didn’t he go after you or both of you? Surely, you were much more of a threat to him than Justin.”
……
“I was in the car,” he said, his words metering out like they’d been stuck in mud for years.
“He waited until Justin was alone?” you asked.
“Yeah. He followed us....” The expression on Brian’s face began to change; he wasn’t ordering lunch anymore. “He watched us goofing around and kissing and saying good-bye…and that’s…
……
“…that’s when he went after…him.
……
“Fucking little coward.”
……
You weren’t sitting across from a man who fainted at the sight of blood anymore, you were sitting across from a man whose fists were tightening, whose jaw was setting firm, who was experiencing this anger for the first time in all its substantive glory.
……
“Brian?” You said his name, calling him back to the present. “Brian, tell me-"
……
His eyes closed tight and then re-opened to stare at you again like you’d caught him robbing a bank. He wasn’t sick or dizzy or anything but furious.
“Where’s this anger been, Brian?”
……
After about another minute, he finally admitted that he didn’t know.
……
Normally, this would’ve been the moment you’d stop and say, ’We’ve done some excellent work today; we’ll pick up here next week’ but there was no next week. There was only that night and tomorrow and a nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach that if you left it there, it would hang right there for a long time-maybe even forever-because Brian, despite his best intentions, was frozen. You’d gotten him to the hand off, to the point that Justin grabbed the baton and took off running and hadn’t been seen since…
……
It was time to set the table.
*********************
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
“Brian, I’ve hardly known you long enough to do what I’m about to do, but in the interest of time, and the fact that I’ve known Justin for a while, I’m going to give you my two cents. You can stop me whenever you want.”
“No, go ahead,” he said, “I’m tired of talking.”
“Okay,” you said, “Here goes nothing.”
You picked up the fork and put it back where it belonged, “That anger that you just felt a few minutes ago, that paralyzed you, that practically shut you down, that’s why Justin came here. He came here to dispose of it, to get rid of it for both of you. He’d tried so many times before to get rid of it, tried and failed, and ended up right back where he started. I think, this time, he was determined to do it right. That was probably why your separation felt so open-ended; I’m sure Justin didn’t know how long it was going to take him to get rid of something considering it didn’t even belong to him.”
……
You stopped; the look on Brian’s face; you couldn’t even describe it. “Are you all right?” you asked.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Keep going?” you asked.
He nodded.
……
You returned the spoon to it’s former position, “Justin has taken on this burden either by choice or obligation; I’m not really sure, but it’s something he’s felt for years, and everyone around him recognizes it as his burden as well, even Hollywood. They wanted him and not Michael. Even you see it as his burden, unable to stop yourself when you know you’re hurting him, weighing him down with more than he can carry, forcing him to leave you when it comes to a head instead of helping him work through this stuff.”
A tear ran down Brian’s face, and he let it fall; he didn’t stop it or even acknowledge it.
……
“Brian, let’s stop, okay? This is too much.”
“No, don’t stop. Go.”
“Brian,” you insisted.
“Go.”
……
“When you told Justin to put his anger into his work, he did, but you didn’t realize that he was the guardian of your anger as well, and he gladly did as you instructed him, but when you turned around and bought it back, it was like a slap in the face to him. He went to unbelievable lengths to get it away from you, Brian. He made an entire comic book that someone else wrote; he went to California to make a movie about it; he post-poned his own relationship with you to come here and bury it.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“And now, Brian, all of these things have failed. The comic book is dead; the movie tanked; he came back to you to find his artwork in your home, and last night you scared the fuck out of him thinking that he’d gotten hurt again. He’s terrified, Brian. He’s trying to protect you, and he can’t.”
“He doesn’t need to protect me.”
“You’re his role model, Brian. That’s like telling the son of a four star general not to join the army.”
And finally you took the knife and put it back next to the spoon, “You have to understand why he’s doing this, how high the stakes are for Justin. You’re more to him than his lover or his partner; you’re his foundation. You were the man he turned to when he was coming out, when he was hurt, when he was recovering; you’re everything to him. His family fell apart; his relationship with his father is adversarial; you yourself weren't even surprised when his efforts failed. He's killing himself trying to do the impossible. He’ll do anything to keep you safe, losing you or seeing you in pain is unbearable to him because every time he peels back a layer of his life, you’re an integral part of that memory, and you know that. It’s why you take such good care of him, give him so much freedom. He’s more than a partner to you as well.”
……
You couldn't see Brian's face for a solid minute.
……
“How do I fix this?” he finally asked.
“You get some help. Stand on your own two feet about this stuff, so that Justin can stand on his. He has his own feelings, his own questions, about what happened to him that he can’t even reach much less express because he’s so concerned about you. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I understand.”
*********************
you don’t need no baggage,
you just get on board
Your time was up.
You made your point, and Brian was on the move again, just as he was when he stormed out of the church hours before, and it was your choice: keep up or get lost. So you got up and started putting your wallet and your pager in your pocket and then Brian asked you, “What’s your hourly rate?”
“Insured or uninsured?”
“Fuck, who cares?”
“High end, five fifty an hour,” you said.
“Are you shitting me?”
“I’m good at what I do.”
Brian threw a wad of bills on the table, “Well, fifteen hundred’s gonna have to cover it.” And then he turned to your waiter who’d been watching him like a hawk, “It’s not a restaurant, but it’s the best I can do. Thanks for the service.”
“And the discretion,” you added.
“Absolutely, Mr. Kinney,” he said, “Anytime.”
The young hostess who’d just come on duty, a beautiful, young, skinny wisp of a girl who smelled like lilies opened the door for both of you as you walked out, “Mr. Kinney, Dr. Massey, have a nice afternoon.”
“Hey,” you told Brian once you were both inside a taxi, “She knew my name.”
“Of course, she did,” he said, “You were with me.”
……
One call to Richard from your cab, and the two of you learned that Justin wasn’t at the church, but Sam was, and he confirmed that Harper was with Justin at the studio, so that’s where-against your better judgment-you and Brian were headed. You fought with Brian because he had no business going back there, but he wouldn’t take your advice and just go back to the hotel and wait for Justin, so you called Daniel’s cell and told him the two of you were on the way, to have the door unlocked because you weren’t going to allow Brian to loiter outside of Daniel’s place for more than a nanosecond lest he bite the dust again.
*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
so take a look at me now
there's just an empty space
You’d been home for almost half an hour, holding your own private vigil in your own kitchen trying to rework your speech for Alan’s funeral. It was an exercise in futility because your legal pad was wet from random tears, and your mind was worn out from wandering all over the place. But the call from Jon made you snap out of it, that and their almost instantaneous arrival about two minutes later.
Brian stood at the bottom of the stairs once he was inside your place and looked up, “Is he alone in there?”
“No, Harper’s with him. They’ve been in there for almost two hours.”
Brian looked at Jon and then sat down on the bottom of the stairs, his long legs reminding you of a grasshopper, “Got anything to eat? Some crackers or something?”
“Yeah, sure,” you said, and Jon followed you into the kitchen.
……
“How’d it go with Justin?” he asked.
“Let’s just say it went,” you said. “You?”
Jonathon gave you a quick synopsis of his afternoon:
“Well, we switched the chairs, put the old one in the studio-"
You stopped him, “What?”
“We switched them.”
“You put the old one in the studio? Are you out of you fucking mind?”
Jonathon looked at you, his eyes widening as he realized that yes, he was out of his fucking mind, his hand covering his mouth, “Oh, fuck. I swear to god, I didn’t even think about that. Oh shit.”
You shook the box of the crackers you were about to open in his face, “No wonder Justin won’t come out of there. Why didn’t you get rid of it? Jesus.”
“I don’t know; I didn’t even think about it. Wasn’t that the whole point anyway? To stop trying to shovel everything under the proverbial rug?”
You glared at Jon’s dead-on assessment as you backed out of the kitchen, “Well, next time, warn me when you’re planning on using such a big shovel.”
“Why don’t you just pull up the fucking carpet?” Jon shot back. “Go with hardwood? It’s much easier to keep clean.”
“I don’t have time for this right now,” you whispered to him in what he always refers to as your Mommie Dearest voice, “We have company.”
And by company, you clearly meant a fucking disaster.
……
So the two of you exited the kitchen to rejoin Brian on the staircase, but he wasn’t there so you and Jonathon took one look at each other and then started up the stairs, but halfway up, you were stopped by a tall figure tapping your leg through the banister, “I’m down here in the living room.”
You were both relieved until you saw the double shot of whiskey in his hand.
*********************
sit around gettin’ older
You watched as Jonathon tried to talk Brian out of it. “I’ll write you something, okay? Daniel’s got samples here. At least, give it a try, at least for today, okay? You can go back to whiskey after the funeral.”
Brian tipped the glass back and the whiskey started to disappear into his mouth, but he didn’t swallow it; he swished and spit it back into the glass. “Mouthwash,” he said. “He expects it.”
Jonathon stared at Brian like he was his new puppy that just started to paper train but spoke to you, “Whatcha got, Dan? Go get it.”
So you disappeared into your office and re-emerged with Xanax and Ativan and Valium and handed them to Jon, “Pick your poison.”
“And stay away from red wine, red anything really, just be careful, until you’ve had more therapy. I don’t want you to be schmoozing clients and hit the floor when somebody breaks out a Merlot.”
……
Jonathon said he was hungry and Brian had scarfed the entire box of crackers you’d given him, so you went in the kitchen and threw together some finger food, and the three of you sat in your living room for half an hour eating and talking, until finally, Jonathon was getting antsy, “How long are they gonna stay up there?”
“Go pull the fire alarm,” Brian said, after he’d eaten all of the celery himself.
That reminded you of when you were in college and, “Jon, remember when they’d do that just to get everybody on the front lawn so everybody could see who was fucking who?”
Jon laughed, “Um, yeah. Never saw many girls on our lawn, did they?”
“Except that one time, remember, and we were all freaking out, and it turned out to be Eddie’s sister?”
“Uh, yeah. She picked a bad weekend to visit.”
Brian was laughing, saying that talk of college was making him feel really old, and then Jon was kicking his shoes off and declaring, “Okay, I’m going up there; just to listen for a second; just to see if we’re anywhere near the end or if we need to go out for the evening.”
“If he opens that door and sees you,” you warned him, and Brian finished your sentence, “God help you.”
“God helps me everyday,” Jon said, “I’m fucking one of his underlings.”
You and Brian laughed as Jonathon tip-toed up the stairs; he knew exactly where to step so as not to make them creak.
*********************
tonight this fool’s just a halfway to heaven
and a mile outta hell
With Jonathon on his clandestine mission, that left you and Brian alone for a little while. For years, you’d tried to imagine the kind of man that he was just from the little you’d seen of him the night he came to get Justin and the images of him that Justin had created in his studio, and you had to admit to yourself that you’d built him up quite a bit in your head, perhaps saw him the way you felt Justin did-perhaps a bit tainted with hero worship-but in your living room that late afternoon, you didn’t find him as imposing.
“Jonathon said you fainted out front earlier?” you asked him.
Brian rubbed the back of his head at the memory, “Yeah, luckily I wasn’t standing up at the time. He said I was squatting down on the ground.”
“You don’t remember?” you asked him.
“Not really, and I don’t think he wants me to talk about it. I get sick and stuff.”
“Oh, sorry,” you said.
“No problem.”
……
“There’s something I want to show you in my office,” you told Brian, “I need to show you before Jon comes back downstairs.”
“Okay.”
Brian got up and followed you into your office, and you closed the door almost all the way and started pulling out a package that was strategically hidden behind your sofa. When you turned around to show it to Brian, he was sitting at your desk which was covered with news clippings about Alan’s murder. You sat the package on the sofa. “Brian, you probably shouldn’t be looking at those. Some of them are crime scene photos.” You tried to gather up everything he didn’t have in his hands. Jonathon was going to kill you…
“I’m not looking at the pictures,” he said. “I’m reading this article.”
“What article?” you asked, still frantically looking all around him trying to grab everything you could find.
“This article that says that the cops that beat Alan, that you testified against them, that the killing…may have been…retribution…”
“Brian, give me that, please,” you said, grabbing it out of his hand.
“Are they blaming you for his murder?”
“It’s just speculation, okay? It’s just the media.”
“Is it true?”
“Is what true? That I testified against those cops? Yeah, I did. Over a year ago. They have anger management problems; they barely met the psychological requirements to be on the force to begin with, and no one took their earlier incidents seriously enough.”
“It’s not your fault, Daniel.”
“Brian, please. I’ve already caused both you and Justin a horrific amount of pain since what happened to Alan because I didn’t know about Justin; I don’t think we should talk about this, this is dangerous, okay? You’re not well.”
“That’s not your fault either.”
“Jesus Christ, where’s the fucking Xanax?” you asked the ceiling.
“Here,” Brian said, handing you one out of his pocket, “Calm down. You go from like zero to queen in three seconds. What did you want to show me?”
You flopped down on your couch next to the package you’d uncovered, “It’s hardly worth it now, trust me.”
“What is it?”
You laughed because at that point the day really couldn’t get any worse and began to unwrap the bubble wrap, “This is what I’m giving Jon for his birthday in a couple of months. I wanted to show it to you to explain why we did what we did today, that we were truly worried about you and especially about Justin because-"
He cut you off, “You don’t have to explain.”
“It’s just that this isn’t the kind of stuff you fuck around with, and I know that Justin’s really angry at me right now.”
“He won’t be pissed forever. He’ll get over it.”
You weren’t convinced, but you had the gift unwrapped by then, “So instead of telling you all that crap, I was just going to show you this because it sort of expresses the same sentiment, and plus, it’s so Jonathon:
“He’ll love it,” Brian said, a smile spreading across his face. “Did you fuck that artist, too?”
“Um, that would be a negative, but you get ten points for having wit sharper than an ice pick.”
“Why thank you,” he said. “How kind of you to notice.”
“Don’t mention it.”
*********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
if you get caught between the moon and New York City
You stood with your hands stuffed in your pockets, your legs crossed, your right ear against the door of the studio and listened to the bits and pieces of conversation that were escaping now and then. Justin’s voice was virtually impossible to decode; his register was too low, but Harper’s wasn’t, and every few seconds you’d get a few words straight from her mouth, loud and clear…
"…well, it’s not exactly the same thing, Justin…
"…because… we were children…
"Okay, okay…. look… Justin… will you please... let me say something?...
"It’s apples and oranges.
"Okay, fine….red apples and green apples…
……
"Because…
"Because....... we each lost our mother. Your situation...... different. And two, we were children."
……
Harper sounded frustrated, worse than she usually did when Sam wouldn’t stop talking like Fozzie the Bear.
"…let me put it to you this way, then.... never get that chance now.... I’m ready to talk to him about it...won't matter.... he’s dead."
……
"I can’t do this anymore." And that was Justin’s voice which meant that he was way too close to the door. You almost pissed on yourself.
”"Please just sit down for a minute." Harper, closer.
"Please, Justin." Harper, farther away.
You froze until you knew they no where near the door, turned around, and scurried back down the stairs.
*********************
time is the season
time ain’t no reason
“Well?” Daniel asked.
“It’s probably going to be weird if they come out, and the three of us are sitting here,” you said.
“What’s going on in there? Could you hear?” Brian asked.
You shook your head and lied to him, “No, couldn’t really make anything out,” because you wanted to give Justin the chance to tell Brian what he felt, whenever he was finally ready. “I’m going to catch up with Richard, go back to the church. Why don’t you two come with me?”
Daniel agreed immediately, but Brian refused, “No, I’m going to wait for him.”
“Will you be all right?” you asked him.
He pulled out a pocket full of pills you’d given him and put them on the coffee table, “I have an arsenal of happy pills; I should be fine, right?”
“Stay out of the liquor cabinet, please.”
“Aye, aye, doc,” he said, and then he saluted you.
You handed him one of your business cards and wrote your pager number on it, “Here. Page me if you need me. I’ll call you right back.” Brian took it and laid it on the table with his medicine.
“Good luck, Brian,” Daniel said. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Make yourself at home.”
“Yeah,” you said, “Just whatever you do, don’t fuck up any more furniture, okay?”
He was laughing as the two of you were leaving, laughing and stretching out on the couch, “Yeah, I’ll try, but I have an overwhelming urge to trash this sofa right now. Don’t know if I can stop myself.”
“Baby steps, Brian,” you told him from the doorway, “Baby steps.”
*********************
BRIAN’S POV
what’s your name, little girl,
what’s your name?
an hour later…
And it was baby steps that woke you up-so to speak-because for the second time that day you awoke to find yourself alone in a room with Amelia, only this time, she wasn’t sitting on your chest watching television, she was standing next to you while you napped on the sofa with one of Daniel’s stethoscopes hanging off of her head while she pressed the very cold end of it to your forehead. When you opened your eyes, she smiled at you like you were a Christmas tree and she was the very bright star on the top.
“Hi, Amelia,” you said.
She smiled and laughed and did a little move that was some sort of toddler ecstasy, and then got serious again, “You’re bery, bery sick, Brime Kinney.”
“I am?” you asked her, trying to move the stethoscope cord off of your face.
She pointed her finger at you, “You took a bery good nap, but you have a feber.”
“Is that why you have a stethoscope on my head?”
“It’s your tempature.”
You turned your head toward the coffee table and noticed that it’d been completely cleaned off, no magazines, no meds, nothing. “Amelia, where’s the medicine that was on the coffee table?”
“Daddy put it up high,” she told you, “’Cause it’s bery dangerous.”
“Where is Sam?” you asked her.
She started moving the stethoscope down your face, onto your chest, down your arm; the ever-serious look on her face never changing as she answered your questions, “Yeah...he’s upstairs ‘cause if Mommy doesn’t come down right now I’m gonna borget what she looks like.” When you laughed, she looked at you, studied your face, and then pretended to laugh as well, and then she walked back up to your head to break the horrible news to you in person, “I’m bery, bery sorry, Brime Kinney, but you have to go to the hobspittal.”
“Why?” you asked.
“You have affection.”
“Um, I don’t think I have to go to the hospital for that.” Maybe straight to bed for a solid week, you thought, but not to the hospital. Bad case of affection could put me down for a month even…that wouldn’t be so bad…
The next expression that arrived on her face was one of Harper’s, one of exasperation, and then she bent down and stood back up, smacking your stomach with her little black purse, “You have to have a big shot then if you don’t go to the hobspittal ‘cause you’re so ‘tagious.” You started to have Syphilis flashbacks while Amelia wandered into Daniel’s office and came back out with an ink pen. When she started jabbing you in the hip with it and telling you to, “Roll ober ‘cause it’s so big,” you put an end to her little game.
“I’m sorry, but you have to have a lot more training before I’ll roll over for you, sweetheart. Go put Daniel’s pen back where you found it.”
She was so enthused that you were sitting up and talking to her that she did what you said, looking back over her shoulder a couple of times to see if you were still there as she walked away. You put her little purse and the stethoscope on the coffee table and looked up to see Justin on the stairs watching you.
“Hey,” you said.
“Hey.” He smiled.
Amelia came back out, immensely proud of herself for following your instructions, “I put it back right where I founded it, Brime Kinney!”
“Good job,” you told her as she came back over and stood in front of you. You picked her up and put her in your lap, but your eyes were on Justin because he was walking over and sitting down next to you, too.
“Hi, Waffle,” Amelia said.
“Hi.”
“Why does she call you that?” you asked him.
“It’s a very, very long story,” Justin said.
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s onceupomatime,” Amelia said, standing up in your lap so she could walk back and forth between you and Justin.
“That’s right,” Justin said as she came his way. “Once upon a time.”
*********************
once in your life you find her,
someone that turns your heart around
Sam and Harper came down a few minutes later, and Amelia got to tell her version of shopping at Macy’s in which everyone she met was named ‘Macy,’ how she ‘got losted by the accident,’ and like any good story there was surprise twist at the end…
“Amelia,” Harper said, “Show Daddy the money in your purse.”
Amelia was in heaven during the story because she was the star, and she made a huge production of digging in her purse and pulling out the plastic ice cube she’d been toting around, “This is my fweezer money, Daddy, like Mommy.”
“Freezer money?” Sam asked.
“Yes, honey. You made me freeze my credit cards, so now our daughter thinks that anything in the freezer is money. Isn’t that wonderful?”
(At that point, you weren’t sure who was enjoying this little production more-Amelia or her mother.)
“Show Daddy the rest of your money, Amelia.” Harper said.
So Amelia proudly-and right on queue--pulled four one dollar bills out of her purse one at a time and showed them to Sam who asked, “Where’d you get those?”
Harper smiled at her husband, “She got those when she returned the bracelet she stole.” (Sam looked mildly horrified.)
But Harper and Sam were young parents then and not yet cognizant of the fact that the one golden rule of parenting is that the joke is always on you…
Because Amelia was still digging in her purse, desperately trying to help her mother show her father exactly what she meant and when she finally pulled her little hand out, her face gleaming with pride because she had tangible proof of what her money could’ve bought had it been so inclined-a tiny, colorful, Hello Kitty bracelet-and she proclaimed with the enthusiasm of an Olympic gold-medalist, “Here, Daddy, look! It’s so ‘squisite ‘cause I stoled it!”
And it was Harper’s turn to be horrified.
......
And in an odd way, it gave you hope. You weren’t the only well-intentioned soul in the world whose influence over someone much younger than you, someone that you loved in a way you could barely describe had gotten off track; maybe these things happen to everybody to some degree or another; maybe the stubborn, faulty reasoning of a beautiful, little girl with unbelievable taste in men could help you forgive yourself for what you felt you’d done to Justin.
Because all those years that you thought you were keeping him safe with condoms, unconventional commitment, and insisting that he get a PhD in the Brian Kinney Beer Before Liquor and Related Substances Program had been a complete joke, and, quite frankly, it really wasn't funny anymore.
*********************
no good deed goes unpunished
Justin wasn’t really himself until you got back to The Regency which was about forty minutes after Amelia’s one woman show. You felt like you’d been at a party with him, some company thing that he didn’t really want to be at-where he was just cordial and polite to everyone, including you-until you got back inside your suite. But he didn’t move away from you when you put your arm around him on the ride back to the hotel and when you helped him out of the cab in front of the hotel, he never let go of your hand, walking a step behind you all the way through the lobby.
But once you were alone with him, things began to change again…
“How did this get here?” he asked, pointing to his garment bag hanging in the open coat closet as you stepped off the elevator.
“That’s your suit. Gabe’s in town; I asked him to bring it…for tomorrow. They must’ve brought it up.”
“Are my-?”
“Your shoes are in there.”
“What about--?”
“I have a tie you can wear.”
He walked over to your suitcase, flipped it over, and began to dig through your clothes, presumably to look at his options, and you were going to just go show him, but you didn’t really think that what he was in there mumbling about really had anything to do with ties, so you went into the outer room and sat down on the sofa and looked out the window at the view of the city. It was five o’clock and the frenzy was starting.
“I don’t really like any of the ones you brought,” he told you from the doorway of your bedroom. “They don’t look like me; they look like you.”
You stared out the window, wondering if it was going to rain, “There’s one in there that’s just black. You can wear that one.”
“I don’t like that one either.”
……
“Then don’t wear one.”
……
You knew he was just standing in the doorway, staring at you with his arms crossed because that’s what he does, so you offered up another alternative, “Call downstairs. They’ll get you anything you want. You can pick it out online; they’ll go get it.” He waited a few seconds and then disappeared from the doorway.
He said nothing; he just closed the door between you-a quiet but firm click.
*********************
wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then
You watched as it began to rain, watched it trickle down the window, felt the darkness fight and then give up as it began to settle too early over the room. You stared at the door he’d closed between you; there was no light underneath it, no invitation. He’d given up as well. You knew on some level that you had work to do, that you needed to get up and do something, but that something was stopping you because you found yourself, once again, faced with a revolving bookcase of sorts…the kind that you’d seen in the The Addam’s Family… only yours was fashioned not out of books of Morticia’s incantations but out of the decade of guilt you’d harbored because of that one night, and when it turned, it wasn’t a fake fireplace ready to blend in with the rest of the room, it was a patchwork of indecision, a rouse to fool yourself-and Justin-- that you were doing what was best for him by doing nothing. After all, if he disagreed, if he pushed you against the wall, well, all you had to do was smile, and, lo and behold, it disappeared.
Voila!
As you sat there watching the rain, your sense of obligation began to knit, to repair the connection between the two of you, willing to bear the burden for the time being. You got up and tapped on the door, and when he didn’t respond you opened it. Your suitcase was on the floor, and he was lying on the bed, facing away from you, staring out the window at his own storm.
Go on to: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Chapter 39-Crucible
Lyrics taken from Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, What A Wonderful World, Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me, Oasis’s Wonderwall, Bob Seger’s Against the Wind, Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity, Gene McLellan’s Put Your Hand in the Hand, Culture Club Time, Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters, Bert Russell Berns’s Tell Him, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Steely Dan’s Do It Again, Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know, Kenny Loggins’s Whenever I Call You Friend, Billy Joel’s It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me, Fastball’s Out of My Head, Bob Seger’s Against the Wind again, Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know again, Tom Petty’s Refugee, Kansas’s Dust in the Wind, Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle, Steely Dan’s Reelin’ in the Years, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run again and Hungry Heart, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, Phil Collins’s Against All Odd from the motion picture soundtrack An Officer and a Gentleman, Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark and Better Days, Arthur’s Theme (Best that You Can Do) by Christopher Cross, Blue Oyster Cult’s Burnin’ for You, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s What’s Your Name?, Arthur’s Theme (Best that You Can Do) by Christopher Cross again, John Mellencamp’s Crumblin’ Down, and Bob Seger's Against the Wind again.
Icon bases used throughout this story came from basicbases, basebeat, khushi_icons, obsessiveicons, graphical_love, anithradia, simplybases, randomicons, bases_by_maggie, blackwhiteicons, dramadiva_icons, driveon_icons, foryourhead, icon_goddess, amillionicons, joelzbutterly, icon_duration, jillicons, andos_pics, some icon communities at Greatest Journal, and the website Absolute Trouble.