HOUSE M.D. FIC: A Single Man (5/6)

[flywoman]

 

Back at my apartment, I am running out of reasons to stay the execution. The clock ticks, taunting me as the seconds slip away. I sit down at the desk and pick up the gun.

By the third day of the convention, the barkeeper at the hotel lounge greets me by name when I drop down for a beer and a pack of Lucky Strikes. I claim an empty seat in a corner and survey the crowded room, nursing my bottle and tapping my fingers along to the Billy Joel song playing on the jukebox.

I pick out a familiar face almost instantly - a sharp-featured, soulful-eyed guy with dark brown hair, barely old enough to be out of med school, is slumped at the bar beside a half-empty Hurricane. I know, because I’ve noticed him carrying an express package around all day, that his name is James E. Wilson, and that he has been receiving urgent communications from a well-known mid-Atlantic law firm that specializes in divorces. Add in his expression, which is that of a puppy that’s just been kicked viciously in the nuts, and it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s the victim of a hasty, and soon to be former, med school marriage.

I also know, from hearing him raise questions at two of the talks I attended yesterday, that he is frighteningly knowledgeable despite his youth and a grand master of the insult oblique, in addition to being by far the most attractive man in this room.

I’m not the only one who’s aware of that last point; I can spot women with their sights on him from all angles. However, I have the distinct advantage of not having to wait for him to notice me. Grabbing my beer, I circle behind and slide onto the empty stool beside him. He grunts politely, and I nod and take a sip.

As we sit in self-conscious silence, “Leave a Tender Moment Alone” ends, then starts up again. Apparently someone in here is particularly fond of it. I don’t mind; it’s a great song. But I can see Wilson’s jaw clench just before he takes a generous gulp of his drink.

“Hot in here,” he observes, loosening his tie.

“It is,” I agree, sizing him up sidelong. He looks just as young up close, although with the sallow face and shadowed eyes of a man who’s been substituting alcohol for sleep. Beads of sweat have begun congealing on his forehead.

“This place is really crowded.” He makes it sound like a personal affront.

“Well, it is the closest hotel to the convention center.” I pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Want one?”

His eyes flick to me, a bit unsteadily. “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” He thrusts out a hand abruptly, almost knocking over his glass. “I’m James Wilson. Oncology.”

“Greg House, nephrology and infectious diseases.” His hand is moist and clammy, but I feel a spark pass between our skins.

“You been to New Orleans before?”

“Yeah.”

“My first time,” he says. He turns to scowl in the general direction of the jukebox. “Excuse me? Would you mind picking another song, please?” The guy sitting closest to it was one of the panelists this morning, an arrogant son of a bitch. He stares coolly back at Wilson and deliberately drops another quarter in and punches a key. I can’t see it from here, but I’m betting that we get Billy Joel again, and a couple of minutes later, I’m proven right.

Wilson pulls a hankie out and wipes his face, then stuffs it back into his pocket. “Excuse me a minute,” he says, slurring just a little. He slides off the bar stool and sets off towards the offender, listing like a galleon at half tack. I make a grab for his sleeve, but too late.

To be on the safe side, I guzzle most of my beer while watching Wilson argue with the jukebox Nazi. Eventually the inevitable happens: the guy deliberately turns his back, and Wilson completely loses his shit and screams, “I said, play another fucking song!” The next thing I know, a bottle of rum is flying through the air - fortunately not at anyone’s head, but into the 10 foot antique mirror at the back of the bar, which shatters with a satisfying crash.

I promptly put down a five-dollar bill and make my escape as the two guys on my right cheer and begin pitching their shot glasses at Wilson’s antagonist. I know that this can’t end well, and I figure that a guy fresh out of med school wearing a five-year-old suit is not going to be able to post his own bail.

When I get back to my hotel room, I make a call to my attorney, and by the time I arrive at the jail the following morning, I am able to tell Wilson, “I took care of it.”

For some reason, Wilson always claimed, whenever we had occasion to relate this story to curious friends or acquaintances, that these were my very first words to him. I was never sure whether he honestly didn’t remember our earlier conversation (and Wilson has always been a lightweight, so it is a distinct possibility that his memories of the events surrounding his arrest were rather blurry), or whether he simply preferred to believe that a complete stranger had the human decency to rescue him from his predicament.

Then again, he also always failed to mention that after his release, I took him back to my hotel room and sucked him off with a brutal tenderness that surprised both of us. Why he didn’t consider that the foundation of our entire friendship, I don’t know.

I come to my senses sitting at my desk, the gun pressed to my forehead. Feeling defeated by nostalgia, I lower it, turn it over in my hands for a few seconds, and finally set it down. I need a drink. It would only be appropriate to toast Wilson before I go, and if I need liquid courage to do this thing, so be it. But when I pull out my bottle of Maker’s Mark, I find it nearly empty.

It’s 11:20 when I reach my favorite bar and ask for a bottle of Scotch and a pack of Lucky Strikes to go. As I’m waiting, the door opens and Cody appears, slightly out of breath. He catches my eye, his mouth quirking in a tentative smile. “Cancel that,” I tell the bartender, and signal for two drinks to be brought to me at table. I smile back at Cody, who licks his lips nervously and lopes over to sit down across from me in the booth I’ve chosen.

“Well, hello, Mr. Potter.”

“Hello, sir,” he says. The barkeeper sets two glasses down on the table, amber liquid glowing even in the dim light. “What are we drinking?”

“Scotch.”

“Okay,” he says, a little dubiously, and takes a sip. No spluttering or tears, fortunately.

“I come here all the time,” I tell him. “I live just around the corner.” Then I fix him with what I hope is a penetrating gaze. “But then, you knew that.”

“On Baker Street,” Cody confirms. There is neither embarrassment not defiance in evidence. I pull the yellow earbuds out of my pocket and lay them on the table.

“You’re still carrying them around,” he notes, looking pleased.

“Mmm. So what are you doing here?”

“Just out for a ride on my bike.”

“That all?”

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding less certain of himself now.

“Were you looking for me?”

Cody looks down, then away, smiling. “Maybe. I don’t know. I feel like my head is all stopped up with… stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” I’m walking a fine line between fascination and boredom, and whatever he says next may well tip me over.

“Like, the stuff that you were talking about today in class.”

Boredom it is. “That is definitely not important.”

“No, it is important, your class is great. But… somehow, we always seem to end up talking about death. Is that all there is? I thought we were studying medicine to save lives.”

“Death is the future,” I intone sententiously.

He grins, suddenly self-deprecating. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be depressing!”

“It’s not depressing. It’s not depressing, it’s true. It may not be in your immediate future, but it’s what we all share. Death is the future.”

“You’re right. I guess.”

“So if someone’s not enjoying the present, there isn’t a lot to suggest that the future should be any better.” Yeah, great rationalizing there, House, whispers a voice in my head that sounds an awful lot like Wilson’s.

“Yeah,” Cody says dreamily, “I’ve thought that before… but, the thing is… you just never know.” He meets my eyes. “Look at tonight.” We gaze at each other, feeling something shift in the air, in the balance of power between us. “Actually, I feel really alone most of the time.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I’ve always felt this way. I mean, we’re born alone, we die alone. And while we’re here, we’re absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies.” The throb in my thigh underscores his words, and I marvel at how familiar these sentiments are. This kid could be me twenty-five years ago, only leavened with an essential Wilsonesque quality that I can’t quite pin down. Not sweetness, exactly - that word would do a real disservice to the complicated mixture of sanctimony and caring that my partner had displayed - but perhaps a genuine driving principle to do no harm.

“It’s really weird,” Cody continues, presumably unaware of these thoughts. “Kinda freaks me out to think about it. We can only experience the outside world through our own slanted perception of it.” He jabs a finger at me suddenly. “Who knows what you’re really like?”

Wilson did, I think, and feel suddenly sad and very old. “I’m exactly what I appear to be. If you look closely. But that,” I add, feeling my throat constrict, “takes a very special kind of person. We’d all be lucky to find one of those in a lifetime.”

Cody grins shyly but triumphantly. “I had a hunch about you, sir!”

“You did?”

“Yep. I had a hunch you might be a real romantic.”

“Blasphemy,” I say, and we half-smile at each other. I take a sip of my Scotch.

“You know,” Cody muses, “everyone keeps telling you that, when you’re older, you’ll have all this experience. Like it’s some great thing.”

I shake my head. “Mmm. It’s a load of shit. It’s amazing how much ‘mature wisdom’ resembles feeling too tired.”

“So… all this experience is useless?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. In the words of Mr. Huxley, experience is not what happens to a man, it’s what a man does with what happens to him.” A test I have failed, I think. Am failing. Fuck. I’m a coward. Wilson was right.

Cody suddenly leans forward. “Let’s go swimming,” he says, his voice low, insistent.

“Okay,” I respond promptly. Cody chuckles. “What?”

“It was a test. I thought you were bluffing, so I thought I’d suggest something completely outrageous, and if you resisted, if you even hesitated, I would know that you were full of shit.”

I can’t help being impressed at how quickly he’s gone from “sir” to “shit” in less than two minutes and one shot of Scotch, and so, if for no other reason, I retort, “Well, I wasn’t, were you?”

Cody downs the rest of his drink in one gulp and bangs it down on the table. “Hell, no!”

Read Chapter 6