Certain Nights
Sonny’s pulse beats hard and wet against his neck, chest rises softly and his eyes stare blindly up at the ceiling. You turn onto your stomach and for a moment, rest your face on your clenched fists, take a deep breath and then risk looking up again. Sonny’s wedding band catches the light coming in from the moon. There is no traffic outside; there’s no sound except the sound of him breathing quietly and you, holding your breath. His chest, shoulders and forehead glisten with sweat. A single blanket is thrown across his hips, binding him to the bed. You’re thankful for that. If you still had a god worth praying to, you’d send him praises tonight.
“Can you believe it, my little brother, going off to war,” he says, his voice sounds too hoarse in the room.
“Ours,” you reply.
He reaches out and runs one hand down your spine, very gently, a touch too intimately. “No,” he argues, “Mine. After all we’ve done. My brother. Your friend.”
You nip on the shoulder silently and half rise before him. He smiles and lets you kiss him.
It was always like this with him. My father, not yours. My brother, not yours. My family, my heritage, my business, not yours. Though you’ve mixed blood and fluids. Always his and never yours.
“We’re at war, you know,” you say simply turning on your back, your shoulder touching his.
He places his hand on yours and it isn’t what you share with your wife, with her hand frail as a bird in your palm. It is something else, something much closer and real. Something you and he do only in the privacy of empty rooms, and even then it is rare. Hands and arms like gnarled branches, irrevocably bound together, you think, but decide to never tell him. He’d laugh at you. He laughs at you often, at your sentimentality. Laughs off the attempts to show that this is more than sex.
“But he could die,” he mutters, not moving his eyes from the ceiling. You wonder what he is looking at, if he’s counting the cracks in the paint. Or if he’s just thinking. Thinking about the codes you’re breaking.
Not just sleeping with a man. Not just…not making love. He calls it fucking. You call it sex. No, no love is the strong embraces he wraps you in when you get home after a long business trip. Love is the simple, brotherly gestures. The times he steals foods from your plate. When he slaps you on the head and then kisses it. Staying up late, drinking, laughing. You fixing his rumbled clothes. That’s love. Whatever this is, it’s not that. But it’s not the fucking. Affairs are granted to men with power. And you are both that, men with more fucking power than they could even imagine.
You separate your lover and the mother of your children. Your lover stays in an apartment, far away from your wife. They don’t meet, they don’t break bread. They don’t… their lives are two separate entities, and you are the god controlling their destinies. But, not with Sonny. All the meals you’ve shared, all the times he’s asked your wife to dance, just once. The gifts he gives to your kids. And finally, the times you’ve brought him into your bed. Your marital bed. And the times that he’s done the same. So when he leaves in the morning, you’ll have to burn the sheets like you have, so many times before, and when your wife asks why, you’ll tell her its business.
“You could die,” you hiss and the force with which those words come out surprises even you and succeeds in shocking him so much that he turns to meet your eyes. When he does, it occurs to you you’ve never seen him so bewildered.
“Now you’re just being morose,” he teases, but something in his tone makes it sound a touch too forced. He presses his lips against yours, crushing them. He tastes like coffee, scotch, and his father’s birthday cake. A bit like you as well, you imagine.
And you’re not just being morose. Not really. You think about it every day. He could die. He could die and you’d have to carry his body back and tell his father and his blood would stain you and you could not take it. You think about it hourly some days, when he can’t keep his damn mouth shut and you know he pisses off the people who one day could call the order. It’s not morbid; it’s practical. And you, the ever-enduring pragmatist, see his death as what it is: a strong possibility.
But what it is and what it makes you feel are two completely different concepts. The thought of him dying. The feeling that it evokes in you is beyond all comprehension. Something inside howls at the thought of losing him. You try to picture a life without him, but even with your cunning and your grand imagination, the thought seems impossible. It took three years to come to terms with that thought. You could not live without him. And it is not the hysterical ravings of a woman in love and it is not impractical. He saved your life. He gave you life. If he died, what would you have left?
His two brothers and sister, which have slowly become yours. His father and mother. Your wife and children. Your wonderful, beautiful home, and your mistress. Your books and treatises and business deals. Your jobs.
The scars etched into your thighs that he gave you one night.. The shirts that you stole. The pictures, his arms around yours. You smiling at him, smiling at you. His memory, sketched into every fiber of your being, shaping you. But not a life and not a soul
“He’s my baby brother, Tom,” he reminds you, as if you were an especially slow child.
You try to remember better times, when he’s used that tone with you. Like the first few times you were together and when you finished, you shook pathetically besides him, asking if he was alright. Perfectly, he’d say, smiling, teasing you, as though it should be obvious. You want to put his face to those words, but you can’t. The memory eludes you.
You just shrug, “Aren’t you mine?”
His face swims between disgusted and amused until he reaches between your thighs for a second, “No, definitely not.”
“Then what?” you ask, without expecting an answer.
He seems agitated, but not at the question. At everything. His heart beats so loudly, the sound resonates in you; you can see his pulse rushing into his neck.
“Consigliere,” he goads, knowing well you may never be, “Consigliere, tell me why you aren’t upset that my darling brother, your Don’s prized boy ain’t getting the jobs he goddamn needs or the connection this family better goddamn get, but is willing to blow himself up for his fucking country.”
“Go to hell,” you mutter, not mad, not exactly. Just waiting to ride out the storm
“Fuck you,” he hisses, moving a hand to your throat. You stay quiet, for a moment and wait. “Say something, damn it.”
“Sonny, please, step back at look at this. I’m mad too. I planned his entire life out and he just threw it away. The old man and I…we’re working on it, alright. Figure, look, everyone loves a man decorated with medals. Hell Sonny, he’s tough, he won’t die. Promise you that,” His hand moves possessively around your ribs after those words. His body has stopped vibrating as it had before, like strings of a violin pulled much too tight. He lays back, silently, sad and somehow resigned.
“He could die,” he repeats, this time slowly.
“So could you,” you remind him, and pause, “So could I.”
“No, not you,” he whispers, surprising you. Everyone dies. Anyone can die. Anyone can be killed. You know that. He knows that. You’ve both witnessed it too many times to count.
“Yes, even me,” you assure him, putting a smile into your voice. He pulls his lips thin across his face and straddles you, eyes blazing into yours. The room is dark enough that you can hardly make out the whites in his eyes, but there’s no mistaking the fire in them.
“I’d kill the bastard who’d even try.”
“I’m not blood,” you try to joke, as if it didn’t bother you that there were others he valued more.
“Yeah, you’re more than just that,” he says, waving it off. You hold your breath. Not in a silly feminine fashion, like a woman before her proposal. You just want to stay quiet, so you don’t miss a thin, don’t miss this chance where he’s on the verge of opening up to you more than he has ever before or may ever again. “You’re my…”
“Lover?” you suggest with a kiss on his sternum.
“Bastard, not that,” he growls, nipping you a bit harder than is necessary on your lips. “You’re just mine, I suppose.”
He kisses you, this time for real, dipping his tongue deep into your mouth as if he was fishing for your soul. His teeth grind into yours. Then he closes his eyes and his eyelids look like crescent moons on his face. And the moonshine floating in through the window, turns his hair silver.
You imagine how it will be in twenty years, hair grey or turning it. Wrinkles will line his face like a road map. And the hair on his body, the trails that lead down to the treasure, will be flaked with silver and ages. You imagine, twenty years from now, in your bed or his, still together. Still lovers, after decades. There is no other possibility than the one that allows you to remain like this for years to come. For decades, until you both are old men, watching sons and grandsons take over the business. Sitting atop the wealth you accumulated. Still lovers, in your old age. Even if you don’t fuck. Still this. Whatever this is. Still turning on your side to watch him breathe.
Something cracks inside you when you realize you wouldn’t know how to live without him.
“Tell me you’re mine, Sonny,” cupping him, making him groan hard into your mouth.
“Consigliere, you’re mine,” he murmurs, moving against you.
“Come on,” you tease, “Say it.”
It is quiet as you both close your eyes and just move. This, whatever this is, is the closest to love he will ever admit.
“Bastard,” he finally says, shuddering and sinking on top of you, “Fuck it, I’m yours.”
You smile and thread your fingers into his hair, watching your bodies throwing shadows on the walls. It hurts, you realize, looking at him and watching your soul contained inside him. But then maybe, this doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe you’re both hurting and frightened from the threat of death. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe none of it does. That thought though, pains you even more. So you stop thinking and just breathe softly in, Sonny’s hair, his smile, his eyes, the scent of his skin, and out the night air, the stars dancing, your hesitation.
He speaks again, maybe an hour later. You thought he had fallen asleep on your chest, long ago, and stayed awake, keeping a watch over his body, the miracle that is him so open in your arms.
“You won’t die,” he murmurs, sounding so drunk with sleep, “You won’t, ‘cause then I gotta. And I’m just not ready for that.”
You lean down and press a kiss onto his head with a small smile, and feel your eyes damp with tears. You hold him so close to you that you wonder if he’s hurt, closer than he would let you usually. You hold him and feel his heart beat in synch with yours, a fluid symphony.
You know that you will stay awake until sunrise and keep this sad excuse for a vigil over his body, whispering prayers and hymns into his nape. You treat these nights as though they were your last ones together, which is why you wait until the sun brightens the day to see him lit up by gold in your arms, alive. Your soul, alive. To see him lit up by all that gold in your arms, your hearts enmeshed, your lips meeting.
“Can you believe it, my little brother, going off to war,” he says, his voice sounds too hoarse in the room.
“Ours,” you reply.
He reaches out and runs one hand down your spine, very gently, a touch too intimately. “No,” he argues, “Mine. After all we’ve done. My brother. Your friend.”
You nip on the shoulder silently and half rise before him. He smiles and lets you kiss him.
It was always like this with him. My father, not yours. My brother, not yours. My family, my heritage, my business, not yours. Though you’ve mixed blood and fluids. Always his and never yours.
“We’re at war, you know,” you say simply turning on your back, your shoulder touching his.
He places his hand on yours and it isn’t what you share with your wife, with her hand frail as a bird in your palm. It is something else, something much closer and real. Something you and he do only in the privacy of empty rooms, and even then it is rare. Hands and arms like gnarled branches, irrevocably bound together, you think, but decide to never tell him. He’d laugh at you. He laughs at you often, at your sentimentality. Laughs off the attempts to show that this is more than sex.
“But he could die,” he mutters, not moving his eyes from the ceiling. You wonder what he is looking at, if he’s counting the cracks in the paint. Or if he’s just thinking. Thinking about the codes you’re breaking.
Not just sleeping with a man. Not just…not making love. He calls it fucking. You call it sex. No, no love is the strong embraces he wraps you in when you get home after a long business trip. Love is the simple, brotherly gestures. The times he steals foods from your plate. When he slaps you on the head and then kisses it. Staying up late, drinking, laughing. You fixing his rumbled clothes. That’s love. Whatever this is, it’s not that. But it’s not the fucking. Affairs are granted to men with power. And you are both that, men with more fucking power than they could even imagine.
You separate your lover and the mother of your children. Your lover stays in an apartment, far away from your wife. They don’t meet, they don’t break bread. They don’t… their lives are two separate entities, and you are the god controlling their destinies. But, not with Sonny. All the meals you’ve shared, all the times he’s asked your wife to dance, just once. The gifts he gives to your kids. And finally, the times you’ve brought him into your bed. Your marital bed. And the times that he’s done the same. So when he leaves in the morning, you’ll have to burn the sheets like you have, so many times before, and when your wife asks why, you’ll tell her its business.
“You could die,” you hiss and the force with which those words come out surprises even you and succeeds in shocking him so much that he turns to meet your eyes. When he does, it occurs to you you’ve never seen him so bewildered.
“Now you’re just being morose,” he teases, but something in his tone makes it sound a touch too forced. He presses his lips against yours, crushing them. He tastes like coffee, scotch, and his father’s birthday cake. A bit like you as well, you imagine.
And you’re not just being morose. Not really. You think about it every day. He could die. He could die and you’d have to carry his body back and tell his father and his blood would stain you and you could not take it. You think about it hourly some days, when he can’t keep his damn mouth shut and you know he pisses off the people who one day could call the order. It’s not morbid; it’s practical. And you, the ever-enduring pragmatist, see his death as what it is: a strong possibility.
But what it is and what it makes you feel are two completely different concepts. The thought of him dying. The feeling that it evokes in you is beyond all comprehension. Something inside howls at the thought of losing him. You try to picture a life without him, but even with your cunning and your grand imagination, the thought seems impossible. It took three years to come to terms with that thought. You could not live without him. And it is not the hysterical ravings of a woman in love and it is not impractical. He saved your life. He gave you life. If he died, what would you have left?
His two brothers and sister, which have slowly become yours. His father and mother. Your wife and children. Your wonderful, beautiful home, and your mistress. Your books and treatises and business deals. Your jobs.
The scars etched into your thighs that he gave you one night.. The shirts that you stole. The pictures, his arms around yours. You smiling at him, smiling at you. His memory, sketched into every fiber of your being, shaping you. But not a life and not a soul
“He’s my baby brother, Tom,” he reminds you, as if you were an especially slow child.
You try to remember better times, when he’s used that tone with you. Like the first few times you were together and when you finished, you shook pathetically besides him, asking if he was alright. Perfectly, he’d say, smiling, teasing you, as though it should be obvious. You want to put his face to those words, but you can’t. The memory eludes you.
You just shrug, “Aren’t you mine?”
His face swims between disgusted and amused until he reaches between your thighs for a second, “No, definitely not.”
“Then what?” you ask, without expecting an answer.
He seems agitated, but not at the question. At everything. His heart beats so loudly, the sound resonates in you; you can see his pulse rushing into his neck.
“Consigliere,” he goads, knowing well you may never be, “Consigliere, tell me why you aren’t upset that my darling brother, your Don’s prized boy ain’t getting the jobs he goddamn needs or the connection this family better goddamn get, but is willing to blow himself up for his fucking country.”
“Go to hell,” you mutter, not mad, not exactly. Just waiting to ride out the storm
“Fuck you,” he hisses, moving a hand to your throat. You stay quiet, for a moment and wait. “Say something, damn it.”
“Sonny, please, step back at look at this. I’m mad too. I planned his entire life out and he just threw it away. The old man and I…we’re working on it, alright. Figure, look, everyone loves a man decorated with medals. Hell Sonny, he’s tough, he won’t die. Promise you that,” His hand moves possessively around your ribs after those words. His body has stopped vibrating as it had before, like strings of a violin pulled much too tight. He lays back, silently, sad and somehow resigned.
“He could die,” he repeats, this time slowly.
“So could you,” you remind him, and pause, “So could I.”
“No, not you,” he whispers, surprising you. Everyone dies. Anyone can die. Anyone can be killed. You know that. He knows that. You’ve both witnessed it too many times to count.
“Yes, even me,” you assure him, putting a smile into your voice. He pulls his lips thin across his face and straddles you, eyes blazing into yours. The room is dark enough that you can hardly make out the whites in his eyes, but there’s no mistaking the fire in them.
“I’d kill the bastard who’d even try.”
“I’m not blood,” you try to joke, as if it didn’t bother you that there were others he valued more.
“Yeah, you’re more than just that,” he says, waving it off. You hold your breath. Not in a silly feminine fashion, like a woman before her proposal. You just want to stay quiet, so you don’t miss a thin, don’t miss this chance where he’s on the verge of opening up to you more than he has ever before or may ever again. “You’re my…”
“Lover?” you suggest with a kiss on his sternum.
“Bastard, not that,” he growls, nipping you a bit harder than is necessary on your lips. “You’re just mine, I suppose.”
He kisses you, this time for real, dipping his tongue deep into your mouth as if he was fishing for your soul. His teeth grind into yours. Then he closes his eyes and his eyelids look like crescent moons on his face. And the moonshine floating in through the window, turns his hair silver.
You imagine how it will be in twenty years, hair grey or turning it. Wrinkles will line his face like a road map. And the hair on his body, the trails that lead down to the treasure, will be flaked with silver and ages. You imagine, twenty years from now, in your bed or his, still together. Still lovers, after decades. There is no other possibility than the one that allows you to remain like this for years to come. For decades, until you both are old men, watching sons and grandsons take over the business. Sitting atop the wealth you accumulated. Still lovers, in your old age. Even if you don’t fuck. Still this. Whatever this is. Still turning on your side to watch him breathe.
Something cracks inside you when you realize you wouldn’t know how to live without him.
“Tell me you’re mine, Sonny,” cupping him, making him groan hard into your mouth.
“Consigliere, you’re mine,” he murmurs, moving against you.
“Come on,” you tease, “Say it.”
It is quiet as you both close your eyes and just move. This, whatever this is, is the closest to love he will ever admit.
“Bastard,” he finally says, shuddering and sinking on top of you, “Fuck it, I’m yours.”
You smile and thread your fingers into his hair, watching your bodies throwing shadows on the walls. It hurts, you realize, looking at him and watching your soul contained inside him. But then maybe, this doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe you’re both hurting and frightened from the threat of death. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe none of it does. That thought though, pains you even more. So you stop thinking and just breathe softly in, Sonny’s hair, his smile, his eyes, the scent of his skin, and out the night air, the stars dancing, your hesitation.
He speaks again, maybe an hour later. You thought he had fallen asleep on your chest, long ago, and stayed awake, keeping a watch over his body, the miracle that is him so open in your arms.
“You won’t die,” he murmurs, sounding so drunk with sleep, “You won’t, ‘cause then I gotta. And I’m just not ready for that.”
You lean down and press a kiss onto his head with a small smile, and feel your eyes damp with tears. You hold him so close to you that you wonder if he’s hurt, closer than he would let you usually. You hold him and feel his heart beat in synch with yours, a fluid symphony.
You know that you will stay awake until sunrise and keep this sad excuse for a vigil over his body, whispering prayers and hymns into his nape. You treat these nights as though they were your last ones together, which is why you wait until the sun brightens the day to see him lit up by gold in your arms, alive. Your soul, alive. To see him lit up by all that gold in your arms, your hearts enmeshed, your lips meeting.