Tearing Down the Toy City, Part One
Panic at the Disco
Ryan/Spencer
PG-13
Spencer was tired but he'd already learned never to admit it. He wasn’t really drunk - or he didn’t think he was drunk, but he wasn't sure. It was quiet. He didn't know where anyone was. There were girls earlier, but they’d gone. Spencer didn’t know where. He still made kind of a fool of himself when he talked to girls. It was easier than he would have thought to forget that he was almost a rock star. Everything was essentially the same. This whole scene was eerily familiar, not very different all from those Saturday night parties in someone’s parents’ basement back in Vegas.
"Dude, you there?" Jeff asked. His wide mouth and small eyes and nervous way of holding his hands near his body made Spencer think of a squirrel. Brent had introduced them sometime earlier in the night.
"Sure," he said. "Yeah. Yes." The dice slid sweaty in his palm. He took a sip of his beer. There were twenty bucks on the line. Spencer kissed the back of his hand; this was an affection of Jeff’s, a charm for a good roll. He closed his eyes and flung the dice against the wall. They bounced and settled. Two threes and a two.
"Fuck," Spencer muttered under his breath.
"Point," Jeff said. He cackled, gathered up the cash. "That’s rough, man."
They had been playing for an hour. Spencer had won only two games. He didn’t know how much money he’d lost. Things were getting away from him. The bus was parked no more than a hundred yards away. Spencer could be in his bunk and asleep inside of fifteen minutes. Jeff slipped the money in his wallet. It bulged. He’d played poker against some of the tech guys for Academy earlier. They were novices. He’d fleeced them. This wasn’t like that. Spencer was due a streak of good luck.
"I’ll go again," Spencer said. He slapped a twenty on the table.
Jeff smirked. "Alright, man," he said. "Your roll."
Spencer grabbed the dice, and let them fly.
----
The first time Spencer ever set foot inside a casino, he was ten years old. His father worked in purchasing at the Tropicana, and he took Spencer to one of those company sponsored ‘Take Your Child to Work’ days. A man in a dark suit led the little group of a dozen parents and their kids through the kitchen of a three star restaurant, where a smiling chef in a puffy white hat gave each kid a cookie frosted to look like a poker chip. He showed them a room full of televisions where you could monitor nearly any part of the casino. He took them into a huge dark theater and let them go on the stage. A dark haired little boy giggled and whispered to Spencer that they had shows with naked ladies on that stage. At ten, Spencer had an idea he was supposed to think that was cool or funny or something, but he just shrugged.
At the end of the tour, the man in the suit told them all he was going to do something he wasn’t supposed to and it had to be a secret. He winked. The kids giggled. He led them through a pair of tall double doors into a vast dark room. A few slot machines sparkled but most were silent. A few purple haired old ladies fed them nickels. It was eleven in the morning. The men slumped around the blackjack tables looked unwashed and bleary.
Later, in the car, Spencer’s dad asked him, "How did you like all that?"
Spencer shrugged. "It was okay," he said. "It wasn’t as boring as I thought."
His dad laughed. "I do manage to drag myself out of bed in the morning, you know."
"Yeah," Spencer said. "But it wasn’t like on TV either. I thought there'd be men in tuxedos and ladies in sparkling gowns."
"Nothing's as glamorous as it seems," his dad said. "The only thing you can do in a casino is throw away your money. That’s all they’re good for."
-----
Photo shoots kind of sucked. Ryan liked to talk to the photographer about the concept and Brent liked the free stuff they got, and Brendon liked anything that put him in the spotlight, but Spencer hated them. He had worn basically the same uniform of jeans and tee shirts for years. He didn’t want to dress up like a member of a marching band, or a Victorian gentleman, or anything like that. He didn’t want anyone to take his picture. He didn’t think anyone really wanted to take his picture.
He was first out of makeup. Ryan stared down the mirror while a petite, bored girl painted an intricate design on his cheek. He was enraptured. Brent had been a half an hour late. Brendon enthused about his love for cosmetology to the hair stylist. Spencer took his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through his contacts. The only friends he was close enough with to call he saw every day. He lingered over the entry for his parents’ house. He could call them. He knew he could always call them, but he’d already spoken to his mother earlier and if he called too often they got worried and started to ask him if he was sure he’d made the right choice.
His hair was stiff with spray. It was long now and looked kind of like his mom’s when she was going out with their dad and got too done up. He and his sisters laughed and called her 'helmet head' behind her back. Now, he felt foolish and bored. All he’d wanted to do was play the drums and help Ryan. That was a lie, but nothing was working out like he’d imagined it.
Brendon sat down beside him.
"Hey Spence," he said. "Hey."
"Brendon," Spencer said. "Hi."
"Where did you go last night?" Brendon asked. "I was looking for someone to watch Robin Hood with me."
Brendon always sat too close. Spencer shifted away. "I was just at the party," he said.
"Man, why did you stick around? That was like the worst time ever," Brendon said. Brendon had a design painted onto his face, too.
Spencer shrugged. "I don’t know," he said.
"We went back to Will’s bus with those girls," Brendon said, smiling. "You should have come."
Spencer stuffed his phone back in his pocket. "They were kind of gross," he said. "The blonde had a tattoo of a pineapple on her crotch." Her pants had been so low cut the entire party had seen.
Brendon laughed. "That’s the whole point, Spencer."
Spencer rolled his eyes.
Brendon clapped him on the shoulder. "Dude, when you’re famous, you don’t need to have standards," he said.
Spencer suspected he was parroting something he’d heard Pete or someone say. Before he started hanging out with Spencer and Brent and Ryan, Brendon had been scared to drink caffeinated soda.
Brendon waved his arm. "You need some rock star lessons, Mr. Smith," he said.
Spencer looked scornful.
"For real," Brendon said. "Next time there’s chicks around after a show I’m picking one out for you. If you go up and act like your naturally charming self I bet you totally end up hooking up."
"Yeah, right," Spencer said.
"Seriously," Brendon said. "It’s like magic. You don’t even need any luck."
----
As a child, Spencer’s year was marked by certain expected interruptions of his schedule - Christmas in December, Easter in the spring, his family’s big Fourth of July barbecue, his birthday, etc.. When he was really young, he helped his mother count down to these landmark events on the big dry erase board in the kitchen. Probably around forth grade, Spencer realized these days he looked forward to for so long only formed a horrible pattern of their own. He knew, without even asking, that his family would go on a skiing trip in February. He knew they’d visit his mom’s relatives in the summer. The next seven or eight years of his life stretched out before him in a long uninterrupted skein of routine.
Ryan’s life was the exact opposite. Weird things happened to Ryan all the time. His mom left, and then his mom came back. Snakes infested his back yard one summer, and lightening struck his bicycle once when he left it out in the driveway in a storm. Sometimes his dad drank. Sometimes his dad had three new jobs in two months. Sometimes Ryan was a normal kid, and sometimes his life was insane. He was like one of those pitiable orphans in television movies who were the target for all the worst and least likely domestic catastrophes.
The year things were worst for Ryan he slept in the trundle bed in Spencer’s room for three months. He went home only when the same rotation of five tee shirts started to feel too much like a uniform. Spencer’s mom drove him over to his house and sat parked out front with the car idling while Ryan went around back and let himself in through the kitchen. Once, Ryan found his dad passed out at the kitchen table, his skin pale and vomit sliding down the front of his shirt.
Somehow, the guidance department at school found out what was going on and called Ryan and Ryan’s dad and Ryan’s teachers and Spencer’s mom and dad in for a big meeting. During third period an announcement came over the loud speaker for Ryan to report to the principal's office. Third period was chemistry. It was the only class Ryan and Spencer had together, because Spencer was a year ahead in science. Their teacher was shrewish Mrs. Burrel, but she had no choice but to let Ryan go. All the other students whispered as he slipped from his seat and out the door. Later, a few girls came up to Spencer and asked him if he knew what was going on. Spencer explained calmly that he knew but he wasn't allowed to say. The girls feigned shock.
Spencer relished the attention.
----
"Holy... fucking shit."
Spencer was pretty sure he was asleep. They had only been at the hotel for thirty minutes at the very most, but taking short-lived, between dreaming and waking naps were all he had survived on for the entire tour. They checked in, Brendon called dibs on Spencer with an obnoxious, mischievous wink, and then his head hit the pillow and he was out.
"Holy fucking shit!" Brendon was yelling, sounding muffled this time like perhaps the walls had eaten him alive as a favor to Spencer for yelling while he was trying to relax. He opened his eyes and glared at the alarm clock. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon. The day had already been too long.
"Look at this!" Brendon yelled, grabbed Spencer by the hand, and pulled him out of bed. "Look at what this hotel can do!"
"I wasn't sleeping, or anything," Spencer told him, viciously rubbing his eyes.
"Look," Brendon said seriously, dragging him to a door that led to what Spencer assumed was a closet but had no desire to ever prove or disprove. Their band was not a family on a week-long vacation full of sightseeing and adventure. They wouldn't be there long enough to find a reason to unpack.
Spencer looked. Brendon slowly and dramatically opened the door. "Look look look!" he exclaimed, running into the open space it exposed. Behind the door was a minuscule hallway with one light above their heads, a bare bulb with a metal pull chain. Brendon pulled the string and the grinned, presumably because the light was in proper working condition. "Look look," he continued, and turned to open the door facing them. He swung it open hard and it slammed against the wall on the other side.
Suddenly they were looking at Brent. He was unpacking, like he was doing it deliberately just to prove Spencer's thoughts all wrong. Ryan was pretending to sleep on his bed against the window. "Our rooms are adjoining," Brent explained flatly.
"Holy fucking shit," Brendon concluded.
Spencer took a slow breath in and out. He looked at Ryan. "Ryan," he called out.
Brendon's smile fell. "Why do you have to be such a bummer?"
He had no answer. "I'm sorry, I just..."
"You'll thank me tonight," Brendon cut him off. "Adjoining rooms are going to make this party."
No one spoke.
"As opposed to break it," Brendon clarified.
"Ryan," Spencer said again, louder. Ryan mumbled something incoherent and rolled over to hide his face in his pillow. Spencer gave up.
----
He was unsure, but Spencer assumed dealing with Ryan Ross was akin to the way a nation under siege might treat an influential foreign diplomat with the power to save them. One was obligated to be polite and courteous to him at first, and never show him your flaws. And never, under any circumstance, were you to insult him. In fact, before meeting with him, it was a good idea to go over all the ways you might inadvertently offend him, so you could be sure to avoid it. After knowing Ryan for nearly his entire life, Spencer knew all the ways a person might insult him. The easiest, most frequently repeated, number one mistake anyone ever made was to ask him how things were at home.
Spencer watched as a child when adults would pat a younger Ryan on the shoulder and say,"How are things at home?" Even then he could almost see little pieces of his best friend pick up and carry on out of him, like he was being demoralized in a way for which only Spencer had eyes.
He wanted to tell these people Ryan was a human being apart from the older, less responsible man and woman he sometimes happened to live with. Ask him about the poem he wrote, ask him about the skateboard trick he just learned, ask him about anything at all that had something to do with who he really was, Spencer wanted to blurt out, but he kept his mouth shut. He was in no better position than Ryan to have an opinion with such little experience to back it up. Opinions then were reserved for people over the legal drinking age.
But they continued on with it, with this disgusting question that Ryan sometimes answered honestly and sometimes shrugged off and sometimes lied completely in response to, fooling people with a bat of his eyelashes. First it was teachers at school, Spencer's own parents, the parents of kids who came to his eleventh birthday party, and every birthday party after that. Later, the question morphed and melded into the brains of the kids who used to be too naive to ask it, drunk on the power being a teenager gave them, how it made them feel opinionated. That was when kids really began to pick on him, in a way that actually hurt him, when they could tease him under the false pretense of being concerned. That was when Ryan began distancing himself from people.
But Ryan had friends. The people Ryan called friends followed a strict code of conduct that involved many things, not the least of which was never asking Ryan how things were at home. They would not ask about his father, they would not ask about his mother, they would not even ask about any physical trouble of his house, like whether or not the air conditioner worked or when it was that someone last paid the electric bill. Keep things magnificently shallow, and you were a friend to Ryan.
When the band had still never set foot outside of a garage, Ryan's group of friends were a bunch of bonehead kids from the suburbs who thought themselves exceptionally punk rock. They used glue for hair gel and had unfortunate facial piercings and liked to have deep conversations about pastries that would occasionally lapse into deep conversations about the meaning of life and it was all, as far as Spencer knew, without the aid of drugs.
Spencer did not consider himself to be one of Ryan's regular friends. The rules he knew so intimately never did apply to him.
----
"How are things back home?" Spencer asked him in a low voice, accidentally bumping his nose into Ryan's ear and not even noticing how it probably should have been awkward.
He felt drunk. This was an impossibility, because Ryan was presently in one of the two phases he so adored moving in between. That night, and for the past three months, Ryan was adamantly, pointedly, not drinking. Sometimes he would get together with his group of regular friends and be convinced inheriting genes was a myth, and drink to his heart's content. Recently had not been one of those times. Spencer, chivalrous as ever, was splitting a two-liter bottle of Sprite with him. He refrained from saying something to the effect of, "If you're not going to have any fun, neither am I." Still, he felt drunk.
Brendon had a giggling girl on each arm and was showing them the ins and outs of the hallway that adjoined the band's hotel rooms. He kept looking at Spencer when the girls weren't paying attention and mouthing, 'Which one?' at him. Spencer pretended he hadn't the faintest talent in lip reading and would shrug and slip further away from him. Brent had the nerve to actually talk music with a guy Spencer thought was the boyfriend of one of the girls hanging off of Brendon.
Ryan shifted his weight and leaned closer to Spencer. He shrugged one shoulder and kept his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. "I don't know, actually. I haven't checked in since..." He didn't finish his sentence, just took a drink from his red plastic cup and smiled at a girl who said 'hi' to him in passing.
"Do you want me to-" Spencer began. It was his self-imposed obligation to make sure Ryan was okay and that when his family inevitably and completely fell apart, he wouldn't be alone. He had to ask, and Ryan had to answer honestly, and when Ryan wasn't doing what he was supposed to, Spencer had to intervene.
"What are you going to do?" Ryan shot back. He looked a little bit guilty for these unkind words, but said nothing, and took a small step away from Spencer. "I'll call soon," he said in a tone that assured it was an empty promise.
Brendon was waving at Spencer, trying to get his attention and pleading with him to join him on the other side of the room. Whatever moment of closeness Spencer had accidentally pushed himself into with Ryan was clearly over, and he was about to join Brendon when Ryan spoke again.
"Do you think..." he said thoughtfully.
Spencer was in mid-step, but brought his foot back and tried to play it off like he hadn't been about to walk away. "What?"
Ryan gave him a sidelong glance and looked away again with a smile. "Do you want to break into the pool later? I really fucking want to go swimming."
"Do you want to go right now?"
Ryan shook his head. "No, people would notice and everyone would follow us and the hotel would kick us out. Just you and I would be quieter."
"Spencer!" Brendon yelled. "Come here!"
"Okay," Spencer said to Ryan, and Ryan smiled again, even if it did only last a second.
"I think Brendon wants you for something," he said.
Spencer set his red plastic cup on the counter next to Ryan's elbow. "I'll be right back."
----
Oddly enough, when they were kids it was Ryan who was a freak about cards. First it was Magic cards, when one of Spencer's older cousins gave him an entire shoe-box full. Neither Ryan nor Spencer knew how to play. The rules were stupidly complex and neither cared to learn. Instead Ryan dumped the entire box out on the ratty carpet in the middle of Spencer's room. He sorted all the cards into piles by type, then resorted them into piles according to which illustrations he liked best. Spencer would have tossed them back into the shoe-box all haphazard, but Ryan insisted on rubber-banding each pile and putting them away neatly. He went to the library and looked up lists on the internet of how much each card was worth. Whenever he could wheedle five dollars from his dad he made Spencer walk to the magazine store so he could buy another tinfoil packet in hopes of getting the Black Lotus.
Eventually Spencer gave all the damn cards to Ryan, who stored them in binders purchased from the Five and Dime in the strip mall near the highway. The Magic cards lasted maybe nine months, but there were Pokemon cards after that, which Ryan traded during lunch, sitting on the scorching blacktop in a corner of the basketball court. Ryan liked the holographic ones best. He'd traded for a card from Japan, which he kept in his pocket for at least two weeks. By the time they entered middle school, Ryan's obsession was fading, but the binders of cards still sat on his bookshelf for years, always suspiciously dust free.
One of the kids Ryan traded Pokemon cards with was named Stephen. He was probably the geekiest boy in Ryan's grade. Even Spencer, a year younger, knew instinctively to treat him with a little scorn. Stephen was the kind of kid who could talk to you every day for a month and not know your name. Spencer thought this was why Ryan liked him so much. The summer after Ryan finished in fifth grade Stephen became an awkward part of their routine, showing up at Ryan's house two or three times a week to show off his latest acquisitions. Ryan sat Indian style on the floor while Stephen delicately pulled cards out of their tiny PVC sleeves. When Stephen deigned to hand one over, Ryan peered reverently, his nose close to the plastic. Spencer found this so boring he considered going home, but he worried that if he left Ryan might try to trade his guitar for Stephen's holographic Charizard.
Ryan's father called him downstairs to do the dishes. Ryan looked pained and told Spencer and Stephen he'd be right back. Spencer rolled his eyes, because he didn't like how Ryan's dad made demands of him without any warning. Stephen snuffled (his allergies were bothering him, he said) and nodded. Stephen tidied the binder of cards he had been showing Ryan and pulled a deck of regular old playing cards out of the wheeled backpack he carried everywhere. He started to shuffle the cards with the ease of a pro.
"What are you doing?" Spencer asked.
"Um?" Stephen said. "I was going to play solitaire, but we could play a game if you want."
"I don't really know any card games," Spencer admitted. His mom thought cards were slightly profane, and for his father they were a tiresome reminder of work.
Stephen looked slightly peeved. "What about war? Can you play war?"
Spencer had played that a few times while visiting his Grandma. "I guess," he said.
Stephen dealt the cards. "It's more fun to play for money," he said. "Otherwise it's dumb."
Spencer frowned. "I don't think so."
Stephen rolled his eyes. "It's just a kid's game, otherwise," he said. "We can play for dimes, if you're scared."
"I'm not scared," Spencer said. "I just don't see why we have to play for money."
"It doesn't mean anything otherwise," Stephen said. He slapped down his first card.
"Fine. Dimes," said Spencer.
The rhythm of the cards hitting the pile was sharp and mechanical. Spencer tried to be alert. He wondered if there were some point of strategy he was missing. Finally, two eights were dealt. Spencer's throat felt a little tight. He wanted to know what cards Stephen would deal. He wanted to know the cards in his own hand. There was nothing he could do but flip out three cards -- a six, a jack, and a queen. Stephen narrowed his eyes. He dealt out his own cards -- a five, an eight, and a ten. The tightness in Spencer's throat relaxed, like a stretched rubber band let go. He gathered up the cards. The stack was thick. They did it again, and again. Stephen looked annoyed and declared they were done. Spencer had twelve more cards. Grudgingly, Stephen counted out twelve dimes. Spencer stuffed them in his pocket.
He'd won. He had done nothing and he had won.
----
"This is the lovely Miss Kaye," Brendon said, flourishing his hand. "And this is ravishing Taran." Brendon squeezed her. Both girls giggled. Brendon was drunk and there was a patch of red across the bridge of his nose. "I was just telling them that there's no way my friend Spencer Smith would ignore us. Not Spencer. He's a gentleman."
Spencer gave them a tight lipped smile. He felt disoriented. Nothing felt quite real. Brendon was still wearing the top hat he'd taken from the photo shoot hours earlier.
"These ladies are from New York," Brendon said. He grinned. The girls laughed. The music stopped and started again, some rap song blaring through the speakers. It was so awful Spencer needed to close his eyes. "They saw us at Irving Plaza and decided they needed to relive the magic."
That could have been the slogan for a cruise line. Spencer thought of walking away. His mother had infused him with too much old fashioned politeness. "Did you enjoy the show tonight?" he asked.
"Oh yeah," said Taran. "You guys are good." She was darker and taller and looked less malnourished than her friend. She was pretty. Spencer recognized that, but he couldn't concentrate. He wondered what Ryan was doing, who he was talking to now, if he was talking to anyone. If Spencer took too long, he would head off to the pool alone. That seemed like something that could not be allowed to happen.
"Brendon's got the sexiest voice," Kaye said. She wrapped herself further around him. Brendon got a mouthful of crimped platinum hair.
There was a commotion near the door. The crowd parted ... for a wheel chair? Pushed by one of the guys from the opening local band. In the wheelchair was a keg swaddled by blankets, topped with a grinning, orange-skinned rubber mask of Bill Clinton. Apparently this hotel was staffed by the blind. Spencer frowned. The posted occupancy for these two suites was no more than twenty. There were close to three times that number in there then.
"Oh man," Brendon said. He was grinning like a fool. Kaye, on his arm, jumped a little and stumbled. Brendon tried to catch her but he was hardly better off and they both went down. Tangled, they laughed so hard tears leaked from the corners of Brendon's eyes and his face turned the color of strawberry sherbet. Kaye's dress had fallen off her shoulder. She was no less than five inches away from displaying her sheer black brassiere to all assembled.
Spencer shook his head, bent down, and helped her up. She was at least a half a foot shorter than he was, and seemed to weigh nothing at all. He pulled Brendon to his feet. "If you want to try that again, the bed's over there," Spencer said.
Brendon kept laughing. He might have been hyperventilating. Kaye was enough of a lady that she looked at least a little abashed as she straightened her dress.
The keg was installed in the bathtub. Brent carried ice from the machine down the hall in a grocery bag. The lamp on the table beside Ryan's bed was knocked to the ground. Brendon kept talking -- sometimes nothing could get him to shut up -- but his words verged on unintelligible. Someone hit the light switch. The room was soaked in dark. The music did not let up. A hand fumbled for Spencer's arm, pulled him close.
"I hate the dark," Taran said.
"Me too," Spencer said, although the dark had never before scared him. He felt sick. "I need to ... Let's to go outside."
They pushed through the jumbled crowd, through Brendon's beloved hallway, and into the other room. It was just as crowded, if quieter. Taran still held his hand. Spencer swallowed to quell his nausea. He looked around -- Ryan was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to go find him. He was not sure that Ryan was well and safe. He needed to find out. He needed ...
Taran tugged his him towards the door. Spencer went. In the hall it was calm, clean, polished. These were things Spencer liked about hotels and wished he did not. The ding of the elevator as it sank towards the ground floor was like a lullaby. Spencer was soothed. Taran was content not to speak and he liked her better for it. Outside it was very cold. New Jersey weather in February was alien to all of Spencer's experience. He hadn't worn a coat. Their breath hung nebulous and white before it disbursed. Taran was warm and close and he shared her heat.
"I have a room here," Taran murmured.
Spencer looked at her. Away from the dark, away from her stupid friend, she looked not old but mature. She was old enough to drink at least, he thought. He wondered if she knew he was eighteen years old, or if she cared. The way she stood and the quiet of her voice and the warmth of her body made him think she did not.
Spencer imagined going upstairs with her, standing with his hands in his pockets while she unlocked her room, which would smell of smoke and be littered with flimsy pretty clothes, more disorderly than it had any right to be. Spencer would be nervous. She would be kind. In the morning he would smirk and Brendon would know and give him a high five over the breakfast table. Nothing had changed and he felt no different, but the goddess of good fortune had led him to this moment.
Ryan was waiting for him somewhere, or had already gone, or did not care. Spencer didn't know sometimes, and sometimes wished he did not care, either. He'd offered to go to the pool with Ryan. Ryan had said to wait. He would do anything Ryan asked of him, but Ryan so rarely asked for anything at all.
He smiled as disingenuously as he could, and said, "Well, I think we better go inside, then."
----
On the surface, Ryan was at an extreme disadvantage: he was thin as a reed, and his ears were kind of big, and a lot of his clothes were from the second hand store. Even still, girls had always liked him. Grown up women babied him and asked him if he were getting enough to eat. Spencer's little sisters thought he was the most amazing person in the world because he occasionally let them do his hair and paint his nails with purple sparkles. And girls his own age always liked Ryan. Tiffany Alvarez had a crush on Ryan from the first grade on. He always got invited to Barbie-themed birthday parties at the skating rink. Seventh grade, the only year Spencer and Ryan weren't at the same school, Ryan went out to the movies with a different girl nearly every Friday night.
He always had girlfriends. They were inevitably blonde and, as Spencer's mom put it, fast for their age. Spencer always hated them. Ryan seemed to kind of hate them too. He treated them like minor nuisances, never returning their phone calls and moaning when they made him take them out for late night pancakes at the IHOP. They never lasted longer than a few months, so Spencer didn't have to worry about them too much.
Spencer was kind of the opposite. He never thought girls had cooties, but he was never really friends with any, either. He played football in the fall and baseball in the spring. When he was little his favorite toys were trucks and when he finally persuaded his dad to get him a skateboard he had permanently skinned knees for six months. Girls were boring, like his little sisters, whose favorite game involved building houses of books and little odds and ends for their My Little Ponies. Spencer could hardly think of anything he'd less like to do.
Spencer's first kiss came in the TV room of Megan Wallace's house when he was in eighth grade. He'd gone with Ryan. Nearly everyone was older. They played spin the bottle and when it was Spencer's turn the bottle pointed at a girl named Amy who was a little dowdy. They both leaned forward and Spencer pressed his lips against hers. They were soft. It didn't really feel like anything. If Ryan hadn't brought it up on the way home later that night, Spencer might have forgotten it ever happened.
Ryan came over late sometimes, if bad things happened, so Spencer wasn't too surprised when he heard the door bell ring at twelve thirty one Friday night when he was fourteen. Ryan ran up the stairs. He pushed open the door and stood pale and shaking leaning against Spencer's desk.
"What happened?" Spencer asked. "What did he do?"
"No," Ryan said. "Nothing. It wasn't Dad."
"Oh," Spencer said.
"I. Um." Ryan blushed. Spencer had rarely seen him so disconcerted. "I slept with Emma."
That was the name of Ryan's girl of the week.
"Dude," Spencer said. He wasn't surprised, exactly, but still ... Theirs was not a friendship based on mawkish confession of secrets. "What was it like?"
"Ummm," Ryan said. "Wet?"
"Gross," Spencer said. It was only Ryan; Spencer didn't care if Ryan thought he was a baby.
"Yeah," Ryan said. He laughed. "A little."
"Did she kick you out or something?" Spencer asked.
"No," Ryan said. "I didn't want to stay." He shrugged. "Emma's pretty annoying."
"So you came here," Spencer said.
"Where else would I go?" Ryan asked.
----
The sheets were dank with the stink of their sweat. Taran tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders. "You can stay if you want," she said.
"No," said Spencer. He felt uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to say to her. "I have to go find my friend."
"Okay," Taran said. She slipped out from beneath the sheets, naked and pale in the orange light. Spencer closed his eyes and for a moment relived the sensations of her body. She pulled on a tee shirt and fished a cigarette from a pack tossed on the floor. "You've got my number."
"Yeah," he said. He felt very much as though he had inadvertently wandered into the frame of some film. He had no script to follow. "Thanks."
"Thank you," Taran said, laughing. She sat with her legs crossed, her feet pointed towards the ground, her breasts round and obvious under the thin stretch of her shirt, her hair a springy dark mass. He thought she was probably the best woman in the world. No course of events he could have imagined seemed to justify his being here. He dressed with his back to her and toed into his shoes. She kissed him once more, voluptuous, and then he stepped into the hall.
The hotel was solemn and silent as a church. No one stirred. All the parties were long since over. All revelers had long since found their way back to the soft of their beds. The air conditioners exhaled gently. The mirrored interior walls of the elevator seemed a special kind of torture. Spencer's head ached. He violated a fierce silence as he crossed the lobby. His heels knocked against the marble floor. This hotel was an echo of something far grander. This city was a strange reflection of Las Vegas, but it felt very far from home. The night clerk dozed behind the desk. The pool was down a wide corridor lined with tall palms. The horrible faux-bronze double doors were cracked open.
Inside, teal light rippled over the domed ceiling. Ryan's shoes and clothing were heaped by the edge of the pool. He was a blur under the glazed surface of the water. Spencer dragged a chaise to the edge of the pool. He nearly slipped on the wet tile. He took off his shoes and tucked his socks inside. He sat and dipped his feet in the pool. The water was cool but not cold.
Ryan swam a few laps and then came and clung to the edge near Spencer's feet. He wrapped a hand around Spencer's right ankle. "Nice to see you, stranger," he said.
Spencer smiled. "How'd you get in here?"
"I stole the key," Ryan said. "Where were you?"
"Upstairs," Spencer said. "I didn't see you leave."
Ryan slipped under the water for the moment, and then emerged. Water clung to his eyelashes and to his eyebrows.
"I got bored," he said. "I looked for you."
Spencer brushed his hair back from his eyes. "Maybe I was helping Brent get more ice."
"Maybe," Ryan said, evenly. "You want to swim?"
"No," Spencer said. The chill in the air was palpable.
Ryan hauled himself out of the water. In the blue light, his skin was gray. He was still painfully thin, his back striped by a shocking ridge of spine. The big white hotel towel wrapped around him twice.
"Brendon made an idiot of himself tonight," Ryan said. He curled up, his knees against his chest.
"He was just having fun," Spencer said, although he agreed.
"He's going to do something stupid," Ryan said. He was in a contrary mood. Ryan's two most frequent frames of mind were lovelorn poet and crotchety old man.
"He's Brendon," Spencer said. "Would that surprise you in the least?"
"It's different now," Ryan said.
"Not everyone has the supreme force of will you have, Ryan," said Spencer. He rubbed his big toe against the cool wall of the pool. "We're supposed to be having fun. Aren't we supposed to be having fun?"
Ryan looked down. He said nothing.
"Aren't you having fun?" Spencer asked.
Ryan was quiet.
"You make me worry," Spencer said.
Ryan laughed. It was jarring, a rasp against the smooth cool of that room. "You don't have to worry about me, Spence," Ryan said.
"I always worry about you," Spencer said. That was the one purpose of the last thirteen years of his life.
"I know," Ryan said. He got up and sat down next to Spencer on the chaise. He was still dripping. He leaned his wet head against Spencer's shoulder. "I need you here."
Spencer said nothing. It had been a long time since they'd been this alone. Spencer felt as though there ought to be more for them to say. Instead, he could think of nothing. A strange emptiness had pushed its way between them. He could count the number of times he'd lied to Ryan on the fingers of one hand. The soft puff of Ryan's breath against the bare skin of his shoulder was not enough fuse them back together.
He turned, looked down.
"Ryan ..." he said.
Ryan looked up, and kissed him.
It was very soft, very different. Ryan stank of chlorine. His skin was slightly pruned. Spencer hoped that the scent of Taran's perfume did not linger in his hair. Their noses bumped. Ryan's eyes were closed.
They both went still. Spencer pulled away. "What was that?" he asked, quietly.
"I just..." Ryan said. "I don't know."
Spencer felt mulish. He stood. "You don't know?" he asked.
"It was nothing," Ryan said.
"No," Spencer said. "It can't be like that with us."
Ryan frowned. "Why do you have to act like I can't handle anything like an adult?"
"Because you can't," Spencer said. "Everything's a disaster for you, Ryan."
"Do you think I want things to be that way?" Ryan asked.
"I don't know," Spencer said. "Sometimes I think you do."
Ryan got to his feet. "If that's not a lie, you don't know me as well as you think."
He shoved Spencer then, sharp, quick, violent, and with more force than Spencer expected. Were it not for the shock of it and the slick of the wet tile floor, Spencer would have shoved back, might have punched him, wanted badly in that moment to see Ryan bleed, but instead he fell. He hit the water in a second and floundered in the cold. His sinuses flooded and stung. His eyes burned. His clothing dragged. By the time he made it to the surface, sputtering and faint, Ryan was gone.
Continue to part two...
Ryan/Spencer
PG-13
Spencer was tired but he'd already learned never to admit it. He wasn’t really drunk - or he didn’t think he was drunk, but he wasn't sure. It was quiet. He didn't know where anyone was. There were girls earlier, but they’d gone. Spencer didn’t know where. He still made kind of a fool of himself when he talked to girls. It was easier than he would have thought to forget that he was almost a rock star. Everything was essentially the same. This whole scene was eerily familiar, not very different all from those Saturday night parties in someone’s parents’ basement back in Vegas.
"Dude, you there?" Jeff asked. His wide mouth and small eyes and nervous way of holding his hands near his body made Spencer think of a squirrel. Brent had introduced them sometime earlier in the night.
"Sure," he said. "Yeah. Yes." The dice slid sweaty in his palm. He took a sip of his beer. There were twenty bucks on the line. Spencer kissed the back of his hand; this was an affection of Jeff’s, a charm for a good roll. He closed his eyes and flung the dice against the wall. They bounced and settled. Two threes and a two.
"Fuck," Spencer muttered under his breath.
"Point," Jeff said. He cackled, gathered up the cash. "That’s rough, man."
They had been playing for an hour. Spencer had won only two games. He didn’t know how much money he’d lost. Things were getting away from him. The bus was parked no more than a hundred yards away. Spencer could be in his bunk and asleep inside of fifteen minutes. Jeff slipped the money in his wallet. It bulged. He’d played poker against some of the tech guys for Academy earlier. They were novices. He’d fleeced them. This wasn’t like that. Spencer was due a streak of good luck.
"I’ll go again," Spencer said. He slapped a twenty on the table.
Jeff smirked. "Alright, man," he said. "Your roll."
Spencer grabbed the dice, and let them fly.
----
The first time Spencer ever set foot inside a casino, he was ten years old. His father worked in purchasing at the Tropicana, and he took Spencer to one of those company sponsored ‘Take Your Child to Work’ days. A man in a dark suit led the little group of a dozen parents and their kids through the kitchen of a three star restaurant, where a smiling chef in a puffy white hat gave each kid a cookie frosted to look like a poker chip. He showed them a room full of televisions where you could monitor nearly any part of the casino. He took them into a huge dark theater and let them go on the stage. A dark haired little boy giggled and whispered to Spencer that they had shows with naked ladies on that stage. At ten, Spencer had an idea he was supposed to think that was cool or funny or something, but he just shrugged.
At the end of the tour, the man in the suit told them all he was going to do something he wasn’t supposed to and it had to be a secret. He winked. The kids giggled. He led them through a pair of tall double doors into a vast dark room. A few slot machines sparkled but most were silent. A few purple haired old ladies fed them nickels. It was eleven in the morning. The men slumped around the blackjack tables looked unwashed and bleary.
Later, in the car, Spencer’s dad asked him, "How did you like all that?"
Spencer shrugged. "It was okay," he said. "It wasn’t as boring as I thought."
His dad laughed. "I do manage to drag myself out of bed in the morning, you know."
"Yeah," Spencer said. "But it wasn’t like on TV either. I thought there'd be men in tuxedos and ladies in sparkling gowns."
"Nothing's as glamorous as it seems," his dad said. "The only thing you can do in a casino is throw away your money. That’s all they’re good for."
-----
Photo shoots kind of sucked. Ryan liked to talk to the photographer about the concept and Brent liked the free stuff they got, and Brendon liked anything that put him in the spotlight, but Spencer hated them. He had worn basically the same uniform of jeans and tee shirts for years. He didn’t want to dress up like a member of a marching band, or a Victorian gentleman, or anything like that. He didn’t want anyone to take his picture. He didn’t think anyone really wanted to take his picture.
He was first out of makeup. Ryan stared down the mirror while a petite, bored girl painted an intricate design on his cheek. He was enraptured. Brent had been a half an hour late. Brendon enthused about his love for cosmetology to the hair stylist. Spencer took his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through his contacts. The only friends he was close enough with to call he saw every day. He lingered over the entry for his parents’ house. He could call them. He knew he could always call them, but he’d already spoken to his mother earlier and if he called too often they got worried and started to ask him if he was sure he’d made the right choice.
His hair was stiff with spray. It was long now and looked kind of like his mom’s when she was going out with their dad and got too done up. He and his sisters laughed and called her 'helmet head' behind her back. Now, he felt foolish and bored. All he’d wanted to do was play the drums and help Ryan. That was a lie, but nothing was working out like he’d imagined it.
Brendon sat down beside him.
"Hey Spence," he said. "Hey."
"Brendon," Spencer said. "Hi."
"Where did you go last night?" Brendon asked. "I was looking for someone to watch Robin Hood with me."
Brendon always sat too close. Spencer shifted away. "I was just at the party," he said.
"Man, why did you stick around? That was like the worst time ever," Brendon said. Brendon had a design painted onto his face, too.
Spencer shrugged. "I don’t know," he said.
"We went back to Will’s bus with those girls," Brendon said, smiling. "You should have come."
Spencer stuffed his phone back in his pocket. "They were kind of gross," he said. "The blonde had a tattoo of a pineapple on her crotch." Her pants had been so low cut the entire party had seen.
Brendon laughed. "That’s the whole point, Spencer."
Spencer rolled his eyes.
Brendon clapped him on the shoulder. "Dude, when you’re famous, you don’t need to have standards," he said.
Spencer suspected he was parroting something he’d heard Pete or someone say. Before he started hanging out with Spencer and Brent and Ryan, Brendon had been scared to drink caffeinated soda.
Brendon waved his arm. "You need some rock star lessons, Mr. Smith," he said.
Spencer looked scornful.
"For real," Brendon said. "Next time there’s chicks around after a show I’m picking one out for you. If you go up and act like your naturally charming self I bet you totally end up hooking up."
"Yeah, right," Spencer said.
"Seriously," Brendon said. "It’s like magic. You don’t even need any luck."
----
As a child, Spencer’s year was marked by certain expected interruptions of his schedule - Christmas in December, Easter in the spring, his family’s big Fourth of July barbecue, his birthday, etc.. When he was really young, he helped his mother count down to these landmark events on the big dry erase board in the kitchen. Probably around forth grade, Spencer realized these days he looked forward to for so long only formed a horrible pattern of their own. He knew, without even asking, that his family would go on a skiing trip in February. He knew they’d visit his mom’s relatives in the summer. The next seven or eight years of his life stretched out before him in a long uninterrupted skein of routine.
Ryan’s life was the exact opposite. Weird things happened to Ryan all the time. His mom left, and then his mom came back. Snakes infested his back yard one summer, and lightening struck his bicycle once when he left it out in the driveway in a storm. Sometimes his dad drank. Sometimes his dad had three new jobs in two months. Sometimes Ryan was a normal kid, and sometimes his life was insane. He was like one of those pitiable orphans in television movies who were the target for all the worst and least likely domestic catastrophes.
The year things were worst for Ryan he slept in the trundle bed in Spencer’s room for three months. He went home only when the same rotation of five tee shirts started to feel too much like a uniform. Spencer’s mom drove him over to his house and sat parked out front with the car idling while Ryan went around back and let himself in through the kitchen. Once, Ryan found his dad passed out at the kitchen table, his skin pale and vomit sliding down the front of his shirt.
Somehow, the guidance department at school found out what was going on and called Ryan and Ryan’s dad and Ryan’s teachers and Spencer’s mom and dad in for a big meeting. During third period an announcement came over the loud speaker for Ryan to report to the principal's office. Third period was chemistry. It was the only class Ryan and Spencer had together, because Spencer was a year ahead in science. Their teacher was shrewish Mrs. Burrel, but she had no choice but to let Ryan go. All the other students whispered as he slipped from his seat and out the door. Later, a few girls came up to Spencer and asked him if he knew what was going on. Spencer explained calmly that he knew but he wasn't allowed to say. The girls feigned shock.
Spencer relished the attention.
----
"Holy... fucking shit."
Spencer was pretty sure he was asleep. They had only been at the hotel for thirty minutes at the very most, but taking short-lived, between dreaming and waking naps were all he had survived on for the entire tour. They checked in, Brendon called dibs on Spencer with an obnoxious, mischievous wink, and then his head hit the pillow and he was out.
"Holy fucking shit!" Brendon was yelling, sounding muffled this time like perhaps the walls had eaten him alive as a favor to Spencer for yelling while he was trying to relax. He opened his eyes and glared at the alarm clock. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon. The day had already been too long.
"Look at this!" Brendon yelled, grabbed Spencer by the hand, and pulled him out of bed. "Look at what this hotel can do!"
"I wasn't sleeping, or anything," Spencer told him, viciously rubbing his eyes.
"Look," Brendon said seriously, dragging him to a door that led to what Spencer assumed was a closet but had no desire to ever prove or disprove. Their band was not a family on a week-long vacation full of sightseeing and adventure. They wouldn't be there long enough to find a reason to unpack.
Spencer looked. Brendon slowly and dramatically opened the door. "Look look look!" he exclaimed, running into the open space it exposed. Behind the door was a minuscule hallway with one light above their heads, a bare bulb with a metal pull chain. Brendon pulled the string and the grinned, presumably because the light was in proper working condition. "Look look," he continued, and turned to open the door facing them. He swung it open hard and it slammed against the wall on the other side.
Suddenly they were looking at Brent. He was unpacking, like he was doing it deliberately just to prove Spencer's thoughts all wrong. Ryan was pretending to sleep on his bed against the window. "Our rooms are adjoining," Brent explained flatly.
"Holy fucking shit," Brendon concluded.
Spencer took a slow breath in and out. He looked at Ryan. "Ryan," he called out.
Brendon's smile fell. "Why do you have to be such a bummer?"
He had no answer. "I'm sorry, I just..."
"You'll thank me tonight," Brendon cut him off. "Adjoining rooms are going to make this party."
No one spoke.
"As opposed to break it," Brendon clarified.
"Ryan," Spencer said again, louder. Ryan mumbled something incoherent and rolled over to hide his face in his pillow. Spencer gave up.
----
He was unsure, but Spencer assumed dealing with Ryan Ross was akin to the way a nation under siege might treat an influential foreign diplomat with the power to save them. One was obligated to be polite and courteous to him at first, and never show him your flaws. And never, under any circumstance, were you to insult him. In fact, before meeting with him, it was a good idea to go over all the ways you might inadvertently offend him, so you could be sure to avoid it. After knowing Ryan for nearly his entire life, Spencer knew all the ways a person might insult him. The easiest, most frequently repeated, number one mistake anyone ever made was to ask him how things were at home.
Spencer watched as a child when adults would pat a younger Ryan on the shoulder and say,"How are things at home?" Even then he could almost see little pieces of his best friend pick up and carry on out of him, like he was being demoralized in a way for which only Spencer had eyes.
He wanted to tell these people Ryan was a human being apart from the older, less responsible man and woman he sometimes happened to live with. Ask him about the poem he wrote, ask him about the skateboard trick he just learned, ask him about anything at all that had something to do with who he really was, Spencer wanted to blurt out, but he kept his mouth shut. He was in no better position than Ryan to have an opinion with such little experience to back it up. Opinions then were reserved for people over the legal drinking age.
But they continued on with it, with this disgusting question that Ryan sometimes answered honestly and sometimes shrugged off and sometimes lied completely in response to, fooling people with a bat of his eyelashes. First it was teachers at school, Spencer's own parents, the parents of kids who came to his eleventh birthday party, and every birthday party after that. Later, the question morphed and melded into the brains of the kids who used to be too naive to ask it, drunk on the power being a teenager gave them, how it made them feel opinionated. That was when kids really began to pick on him, in a way that actually hurt him, when they could tease him under the false pretense of being concerned. That was when Ryan began distancing himself from people.
But Ryan had friends. The people Ryan called friends followed a strict code of conduct that involved many things, not the least of which was never asking Ryan how things were at home. They would not ask about his father, they would not ask about his mother, they would not even ask about any physical trouble of his house, like whether or not the air conditioner worked or when it was that someone last paid the electric bill. Keep things magnificently shallow, and you were a friend to Ryan.
When the band had still never set foot outside of a garage, Ryan's group of friends were a bunch of bonehead kids from the suburbs who thought themselves exceptionally punk rock. They used glue for hair gel and had unfortunate facial piercings and liked to have deep conversations about pastries that would occasionally lapse into deep conversations about the meaning of life and it was all, as far as Spencer knew, without the aid of drugs.
Spencer did not consider himself to be one of Ryan's regular friends. The rules he knew so intimately never did apply to him.
----
"How are things back home?" Spencer asked him in a low voice, accidentally bumping his nose into Ryan's ear and not even noticing how it probably should have been awkward.
He felt drunk. This was an impossibility, because Ryan was presently in one of the two phases he so adored moving in between. That night, and for the past three months, Ryan was adamantly, pointedly, not drinking. Sometimes he would get together with his group of regular friends and be convinced inheriting genes was a myth, and drink to his heart's content. Recently had not been one of those times. Spencer, chivalrous as ever, was splitting a two-liter bottle of Sprite with him. He refrained from saying something to the effect of, "If you're not going to have any fun, neither am I." Still, he felt drunk.
Brendon had a giggling girl on each arm and was showing them the ins and outs of the hallway that adjoined the band's hotel rooms. He kept looking at Spencer when the girls weren't paying attention and mouthing, 'Which one?' at him. Spencer pretended he hadn't the faintest talent in lip reading and would shrug and slip further away from him. Brent had the nerve to actually talk music with a guy Spencer thought was the boyfriend of one of the girls hanging off of Brendon.
Ryan shifted his weight and leaned closer to Spencer. He shrugged one shoulder and kept his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. "I don't know, actually. I haven't checked in since..." He didn't finish his sentence, just took a drink from his red plastic cup and smiled at a girl who said 'hi' to him in passing.
"Do you want me to-" Spencer began. It was his self-imposed obligation to make sure Ryan was okay and that when his family inevitably and completely fell apart, he wouldn't be alone. He had to ask, and Ryan had to answer honestly, and when Ryan wasn't doing what he was supposed to, Spencer had to intervene.
"What are you going to do?" Ryan shot back. He looked a little bit guilty for these unkind words, but said nothing, and took a small step away from Spencer. "I'll call soon," he said in a tone that assured it was an empty promise.
Brendon was waving at Spencer, trying to get his attention and pleading with him to join him on the other side of the room. Whatever moment of closeness Spencer had accidentally pushed himself into with Ryan was clearly over, and he was about to join Brendon when Ryan spoke again.
"Do you think..." he said thoughtfully.
Spencer was in mid-step, but brought his foot back and tried to play it off like he hadn't been about to walk away. "What?"
Ryan gave him a sidelong glance and looked away again with a smile. "Do you want to break into the pool later? I really fucking want to go swimming."
"Do you want to go right now?"
Ryan shook his head. "No, people would notice and everyone would follow us and the hotel would kick us out. Just you and I would be quieter."
"Spencer!" Brendon yelled. "Come here!"
"Okay," Spencer said to Ryan, and Ryan smiled again, even if it did only last a second.
"I think Brendon wants you for something," he said.
Spencer set his red plastic cup on the counter next to Ryan's elbow. "I'll be right back."
----
Oddly enough, when they were kids it was Ryan who was a freak about cards. First it was Magic cards, when one of Spencer's older cousins gave him an entire shoe-box full. Neither Ryan nor Spencer knew how to play. The rules were stupidly complex and neither cared to learn. Instead Ryan dumped the entire box out on the ratty carpet in the middle of Spencer's room. He sorted all the cards into piles by type, then resorted them into piles according to which illustrations he liked best. Spencer would have tossed them back into the shoe-box all haphazard, but Ryan insisted on rubber-banding each pile and putting them away neatly. He went to the library and looked up lists on the internet of how much each card was worth. Whenever he could wheedle five dollars from his dad he made Spencer walk to the magazine store so he could buy another tinfoil packet in hopes of getting the Black Lotus.
Eventually Spencer gave all the damn cards to Ryan, who stored them in binders purchased from the Five and Dime in the strip mall near the highway. The Magic cards lasted maybe nine months, but there were Pokemon cards after that, which Ryan traded during lunch, sitting on the scorching blacktop in a corner of the basketball court. Ryan liked the holographic ones best. He'd traded for a card from Japan, which he kept in his pocket for at least two weeks. By the time they entered middle school, Ryan's obsession was fading, but the binders of cards still sat on his bookshelf for years, always suspiciously dust free.
One of the kids Ryan traded Pokemon cards with was named Stephen. He was probably the geekiest boy in Ryan's grade. Even Spencer, a year younger, knew instinctively to treat him with a little scorn. Stephen was the kind of kid who could talk to you every day for a month and not know your name. Spencer thought this was why Ryan liked him so much. The summer after Ryan finished in fifth grade Stephen became an awkward part of their routine, showing up at Ryan's house two or three times a week to show off his latest acquisitions. Ryan sat Indian style on the floor while Stephen delicately pulled cards out of their tiny PVC sleeves. When Stephen deigned to hand one over, Ryan peered reverently, his nose close to the plastic. Spencer found this so boring he considered going home, but he worried that if he left Ryan might try to trade his guitar for Stephen's holographic Charizard.
Ryan's father called him downstairs to do the dishes. Ryan looked pained and told Spencer and Stephen he'd be right back. Spencer rolled his eyes, because he didn't like how Ryan's dad made demands of him without any warning. Stephen snuffled (his allergies were bothering him, he said) and nodded. Stephen tidied the binder of cards he had been showing Ryan and pulled a deck of regular old playing cards out of the wheeled backpack he carried everywhere. He started to shuffle the cards with the ease of a pro.
"What are you doing?" Spencer asked.
"Um?" Stephen said. "I was going to play solitaire, but we could play a game if you want."
"I don't really know any card games," Spencer admitted. His mom thought cards were slightly profane, and for his father they were a tiresome reminder of work.
Stephen looked slightly peeved. "What about war? Can you play war?"
Spencer had played that a few times while visiting his Grandma. "I guess," he said.
Stephen dealt the cards. "It's more fun to play for money," he said. "Otherwise it's dumb."
Spencer frowned. "I don't think so."
Stephen rolled his eyes. "It's just a kid's game, otherwise," he said. "We can play for dimes, if you're scared."
"I'm not scared," Spencer said. "I just don't see why we have to play for money."
"It doesn't mean anything otherwise," Stephen said. He slapped down his first card.
"Fine. Dimes," said Spencer.
The rhythm of the cards hitting the pile was sharp and mechanical. Spencer tried to be alert. He wondered if there were some point of strategy he was missing. Finally, two eights were dealt. Spencer's throat felt a little tight. He wanted to know what cards Stephen would deal. He wanted to know the cards in his own hand. There was nothing he could do but flip out three cards -- a six, a jack, and a queen. Stephen narrowed his eyes. He dealt out his own cards -- a five, an eight, and a ten. The tightness in Spencer's throat relaxed, like a stretched rubber band let go. He gathered up the cards. The stack was thick. They did it again, and again. Stephen looked annoyed and declared they were done. Spencer had twelve more cards. Grudgingly, Stephen counted out twelve dimes. Spencer stuffed them in his pocket.
He'd won. He had done nothing and he had won.
----
"This is the lovely Miss Kaye," Brendon said, flourishing his hand. "And this is ravishing Taran." Brendon squeezed her. Both girls giggled. Brendon was drunk and there was a patch of red across the bridge of his nose. "I was just telling them that there's no way my friend Spencer Smith would ignore us. Not Spencer. He's a gentleman."
Spencer gave them a tight lipped smile. He felt disoriented. Nothing felt quite real. Brendon was still wearing the top hat he'd taken from the photo shoot hours earlier.
"These ladies are from New York," Brendon said. He grinned. The girls laughed. The music stopped and started again, some rap song blaring through the speakers. It was so awful Spencer needed to close his eyes. "They saw us at Irving Plaza and decided they needed to relive the magic."
That could have been the slogan for a cruise line. Spencer thought of walking away. His mother had infused him with too much old fashioned politeness. "Did you enjoy the show tonight?" he asked.
"Oh yeah," said Taran. "You guys are good." She was darker and taller and looked less malnourished than her friend. She was pretty. Spencer recognized that, but he couldn't concentrate. He wondered what Ryan was doing, who he was talking to now, if he was talking to anyone. If Spencer took too long, he would head off to the pool alone. That seemed like something that could not be allowed to happen.
"Brendon's got the sexiest voice," Kaye said. She wrapped herself further around him. Brendon got a mouthful of crimped platinum hair.
There was a commotion near the door. The crowd parted ... for a wheel chair? Pushed by one of the guys from the opening local band. In the wheelchair was a keg swaddled by blankets, topped with a grinning, orange-skinned rubber mask of Bill Clinton. Apparently this hotel was staffed by the blind. Spencer frowned. The posted occupancy for these two suites was no more than twenty. There were close to three times that number in there then.
"Oh man," Brendon said. He was grinning like a fool. Kaye, on his arm, jumped a little and stumbled. Brendon tried to catch her but he was hardly better off and they both went down. Tangled, they laughed so hard tears leaked from the corners of Brendon's eyes and his face turned the color of strawberry sherbet. Kaye's dress had fallen off her shoulder. She was no less than five inches away from displaying her sheer black brassiere to all assembled.
Spencer shook his head, bent down, and helped her up. She was at least a half a foot shorter than he was, and seemed to weigh nothing at all. He pulled Brendon to his feet. "If you want to try that again, the bed's over there," Spencer said.
Brendon kept laughing. He might have been hyperventilating. Kaye was enough of a lady that she looked at least a little abashed as she straightened her dress.
The keg was installed in the bathtub. Brent carried ice from the machine down the hall in a grocery bag. The lamp on the table beside Ryan's bed was knocked to the ground. Brendon kept talking -- sometimes nothing could get him to shut up -- but his words verged on unintelligible. Someone hit the light switch. The room was soaked in dark. The music did not let up. A hand fumbled for Spencer's arm, pulled him close.
"I hate the dark," Taran said.
"Me too," Spencer said, although the dark had never before scared him. He felt sick. "I need to ... Let's to go outside."
They pushed through the jumbled crowd, through Brendon's beloved hallway, and into the other room. It was just as crowded, if quieter. Taran still held his hand. Spencer swallowed to quell his nausea. He looked around -- Ryan was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to go find him. He was not sure that Ryan was well and safe. He needed to find out. He needed ...
Taran tugged his him towards the door. Spencer went. In the hall it was calm, clean, polished. These were things Spencer liked about hotels and wished he did not. The ding of the elevator as it sank towards the ground floor was like a lullaby. Spencer was soothed. Taran was content not to speak and he liked her better for it. Outside it was very cold. New Jersey weather in February was alien to all of Spencer's experience. He hadn't worn a coat. Their breath hung nebulous and white before it disbursed. Taran was warm and close and he shared her heat.
"I have a room here," Taran murmured.
Spencer looked at her. Away from the dark, away from her stupid friend, she looked not old but mature. She was old enough to drink at least, he thought. He wondered if she knew he was eighteen years old, or if she cared. The way she stood and the quiet of her voice and the warmth of her body made him think she did not.
Spencer imagined going upstairs with her, standing with his hands in his pockets while she unlocked her room, which would smell of smoke and be littered with flimsy pretty clothes, more disorderly than it had any right to be. Spencer would be nervous. She would be kind. In the morning he would smirk and Brendon would know and give him a high five over the breakfast table. Nothing had changed and he felt no different, but the goddess of good fortune had led him to this moment.
Ryan was waiting for him somewhere, or had already gone, or did not care. Spencer didn't know sometimes, and sometimes wished he did not care, either. He'd offered to go to the pool with Ryan. Ryan had said to wait. He would do anything Ryan asked of him, but Ryan so rarely asked for anything at all.
He smiled as disingenuously as he could, and said, "Well, I think we better go inside, then."
----
On the surface, Ryan was at an extreme disadvantage: he was thin as a reed, and his ears were kind of big, and a lot of his clothes were from the second hand store. Even still, girls had always liked him. Grown up women babied him and asked him if he were getting enough to eat. Spencer's little sisters thought he was the most amazing person in the world because he occasionally let them do his hair and paint his nails with purple sparkles. And girls his own age always liked Ryan. Tiffany Alvarez had a crush on Ryan from the first grade on. He always got invited to Barbie-themed birthday parties at the skating rink. Seventh grade, the only year Spencer and Ryan weren't at the same school, Ryan went out to the movies with a different girl nearly every Friday night.
He always had girlfriends. They were inevitably blonde and, as Spencer's mom put it, fast for their age. Spencer always hated them. Ryan seemed to kind of hate them too. He treated them like minor nuisances, never returning their phone calls and moaning when they made him take them out for late night pancakes at the IHOP. They never lasted longer than a few months, so Spencer didn't have to worry about them too much.
Spencer was kind of the opposite. He never thought girls had cooties, but he was never really friends with any, either. He played football in the fall and baseball in the spring. When he was little his favorite toys were trucks and when he finally persuaded his dad to get him a skateboard he had permanently skinned knees for six months. Girls were boring, like his little sisters, whose favorite game involved building houses of books and little odds and ends for their My Little Ponies. Spencer could hardly think of anything he'd less like to do.
Spencer's first kiss came in the TV room of Megan Wallace's house when he was in eighth grade. He'd gone with Ryan. Nearly everyone was older. They played spin the bottle and when it was Spencer's turn the bottle pointed at a girl named Amy who was a little dowdy. They both leaned forward and Spencer pressed his lips against hers. They were soft. It didn't really feel like anything. If Ryan hadn't brought it up on the way home later that night, Spencer might have forgotten it ever happened.
Ryan came over late sometimes, if bad things happened, so Spencer wasn't too surprised when he heard the door bell ring at twelve thirty one Friday night when he was fourteen. Ryan ran up the stairs. He pushed open the door and stood pale and shaking leaning against Spencer's desk.
"What happened?" Spencer asked. "What did he do?"
"No," Ryan said. "Nothing. It wasn't Dad."
"Oh," Spencer said.
"I. Um." Ryan blushed. Spencer had rarely seen him so disconcerted. "I slept with Emma."
That was the name of Ryan's girl of the week.
"Dude," Spencer said. He wasn't surprised, exactly, but still ... Theirs was not a friendship based on mawkish confession of secrets. "What was it like?"
"Ummm," Ryan said. "Wet?"
"Gross," Spencer said. It was only Ryan; Spencer didn't care if Ryan thought he was a baby.
"Yeah," Ryan said. He laughed. "A little."
"Did she kick you out or something?" Spencer asked.
"No," Ryan said. "I didn't want to stay." He shrugged. "Emma's pretty annoying."
"So you came here," Spencer said.
"Where else would I go?" Ryan asked.
----
The sheets were dank with the stink of their sweat. Taran tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders. "You can stay if you want," she said.
"No," said Spencer. He felt uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to say to her. "I have to go find my friend."
"Okay," Taran said. She slipped out from beneath the sheets, naked and pale in the orange light. Spencer closed his eyes and for a moment relived the sensations of her body. She pulled on a tee shirt and fished a cigarette from a pack tossed on the floor. "You've got my number."
"Yeah," he said. He felt very much as though he had inadvertently wandered into the frame of some film. He had no script to follow. "Thanks."
"Thank you," Taran said, laughing. She sat with her legs crossed, her feet pointed towards the ground, her breasts round and obvious under the thin stretch of her shirt, her hair a springy dark mass. He thought she was probably the best woman in the world. No course of events he could have imagined seemed to justify his being here. He dressed with his back to her and toed into his shoes. She kissed him once more, voluptuous, and then he stepped into the hall.
The hotel was solemn and silent as a church. No one stirred. All the parties were long since over. All revelers had long since found their way back to the soft of their beds. The air conditioners exhaled gently. The mirrored interior walls of the elevator seemed a special kind of torture. Spencer's head ached. He violated a fierce silence as he crossed the lobby. His heels knocked against the marble floor. This hotel was an echo of something far grander. This city was a strange reflection of Las Vegas, but it felt very far from home. The night clerk dozed behind the desk. The pool was down a wide corridor lined with tall palms. The horrible faux-bronze double doors were cracked open.
Inside, teal light rippled over the domed ceiling. Ryan's shoes and clothing were heaped by the edge of the pool. He was a blur under the glazed surface of the water. Spencer dragged a chaise to the edge of the pool. He nearly slipped on the wet tile. He took off his shoes and tucked his socks inside. He sat and dipped his feet in the pool. The water was cool but not cold.
Ryan swam a few laps and then came and clung to the edge near Spencer's feet. He wrapped a hand around Spencer's right ankle. "Nice to see you, stranger," he said.
Spencer smiled. "How'd you get in here?"
"I stole the key," Ryan said. "Where were you?"
"Upstairs," Spencer said. "I didn't see you leave."
Ryan slipped under the water for the moment, and then emerged. Water clung to his eyelashes and to his eyebrows.
"I got bored," he said. "I looked for you."
Spencer brushed his hair back from his eyes. "Maybe I was helping Brent get more ice."
"Maybe," Ryan said, evenly. "You want to swim?"
"No," Spencer said. The chill in the air was palpable.
Ryan hauled himself out of the water. In the blue light, his skin was gray. He was still painfully thin, his back striped by a shocking ridge of spine. The big white hotel towel wrapped around him twice.
"Brendon made an idiot of himself tonight," Ryan said. He curled up, his knees against his chest.
"He was just having fun," Spencer said, although he agreed.
"He's going to do something stupid," Ryan said. He was in a contrary mood. Ryan's two most frequent frames of mind were lovelorn poet and crotchety old man.
"He's Brendon," Spencer said. "Would that surprise you in the least?"
"It's different now," Ryan said.
"Not everyone has the supreme force of will you have, Ryan," said Spencer. He rubbed his big toe against the cool wall of the pool. "We're supposed to be having fun. Aren't we supposed to be having fun?"
Ryan looked down. He said nothing.
"Aren't you having fun?" Spencer asked.
Ryan was quiet.
"You make me worry," Spencer said.
Ryan laughed. It was jarring, a rasp against the smooth cool of that room. "You don't have to worry about me, Spence," Ryan said.
"I always worry about you," Spencer said. That was the one purpose of the last thirteen years of his life.
"I know," Ryan said. He got up and sat down next to Spencer on the chaise. He was still dripping. He leaned his wet head against Spencer's shoulder. "I need you here."
Spencer said nothing. It had been a long time since they'd been this alone. Spencer felt as though there ought to be more for them to say. Instead, he could think of nothing. A strange emptiness had pushed its way between them. He could count the number of times he'd lied to Ryan on the fingers of one hand. The soft puff of Ryan's breath against the bare skin of his shoulder was not enough fuse them back together.
He turned, looked down.
"Ryan ..." he said.
Ryan looked up, and kissed him.
It was very soft, very different. Ryan stank of chlorine. His skin was slightly pruned. Spencer hoped that the scent of Taran's perfume did not linger in his hair. Their noses bumped. Ryan's eyes were closed.
They both went still. Spencer pulled away. "What was that?" he asked, quietly.
"I just..." Ryan said. "I don't know."
Spencer felt mulish. He stood. "You don't know?" he asked.
"It was nothing," Ryan said.
"No," Spencer said. "It can't be like that with us."
Ryan frowned. "Why do you have to act like I can't handle anything like an adult?"
"Because you can't," Spencer said. "Everything's a disaster for you, Ryan."
"Do you think I want things to be that way?" Ryan asked.
"I don't know," Spencer said. "Sometimes I think you do."
Ryan got to his feet. "If that's not a lie, you don't know me as well as you think."
He shoved Spencer then, sharp, quick, violent, and with more force than Spencer expected. Were it not for the shock of it and the slick of the wet tile floor, Spencer would have shoved back, might have punched him, wanted badly in that moment to see Ryan bleed, but instead he fell. He hit the water in a second and floundered in the cold. His sinuses flooded and stung. His eyes burned. His clothing dragged. By the time he made it to the surface, sputtering and faint, Ryan was gone.
Continue to part two...