by Lee Mandelo
“Fuck, could you just sit down? Your hovering is making me anxious,” Halse said.
“I’m good here,” Andrew said, almost without meaning to.
The flat look Halse leveled at him in response spoke to how often people told him no. A flicker of a smile pushed at the edges of Andrew’s mouth, his shoulders squaring up wider at the brief burst of tense contest, bringing the agitation stewing inside him to the forefront of their strange domestic tableau. Maybe he had the energy to fight after all. Except then Halse snorted and rolled his eyes.
“Down, boy. It’s your house, stand all afternoon if you want to. I was being polite.”
Riley pressed the power button on the charging phone, load screen lighting up. Mid-reach to set it down on the table, the phone started to vibrate and didn’t stop, one missed message coming after another in an unending stream. The alerts went on and on with the phone balanced on Riley’s palm like a snake that might bite at the slightest provocation. Chagrin was a delicate and scholarly look on him, paired with the glasses.
“Thirty-seven unread messages, eight missed calls. Six voicemails. Also, a software update needs to be applied,” Halse said, peering over his cousin’s shoulder at the screen.
“That isn’t your business.” Andrew crossed the room to take his phone from them, but at one percent, he hesitated to unplug it again. He was caught towering awkwardly over the seated men on the couch.
“Let me get this straight,” Riley said. “You drove down here from Columbus, let your phone die, and haven’t turned it on since yesterday?”
“Who am I supposed to be calling?” he said against his better judgment.
“I’m assuming whoever left you all those messages,” Riley replied, incredulous.
Andrew fumbled for an answer he didn’t have. It doesn’t matter was staggeringly inappropriate, but also too close to the truth: I don’t care. He had no excuse, aside from his weeks of constant shuttling between irritated exhaustion and dead numbness. His fingers tightened around the plastic casing.
Halse clapped a hand on Riley’s shoulder and stood. “That’s our cue to get out of here, kid. I need some help with the car before we go out tonight.”
“Sam, I’m seeing Luca this afternoon when she gets off, I can’t just—”
“You really can,” Halse said.
The speed with which Sam hustled Riley into his shoes and out the front door was impressive. When the sudden silence of their departure descended on the living room, Andrew found himself standing stupidly next to the couch holding his phone. Halse had spared him from further interrogation, though he had probably been trying to save his cousin from an anticipated blowup. Andrew collapsed onto the warm impression of his roommate’s ass on the couch and propped his phone on his knee to thumb the password in. The missed calls list—five from Del, two from his mother, one from a number he didn’t recognize—he cleared. The voicemails he marked as read without listening. He could guess what was in them.
Most of the texts were from Del too. Instead of tackling those, he clicked through to his mother’s thread, asking if he had made it safe. He typed back a brief I’m fine, just busy. Family brunch with him and Eddie, once a month for the past few years, was the extent of their usual interaction. Del probably spoke to his mom more than he did, and he briefly wished his mom luck with that, because Del’s name on his phone had an impressive blue “24” in the alert bubble next to it. He halfheartedly scrolled through a wall of texts without reading. Another flick brought him to the bottom, where the last handful of messages read:
Please please answer me
You’re such an asshole please text me back
Are you dead
This isn’t funny I’m not laughing
He typed back, I had to move in and take care of some estate stuff, please calm down. Morbid curiosity about the paragraphs lingering hidden in the scroll was outweighed by the preemptive fatigue he felt just thinking about reading whatever she had thrown at him.
The phone vibrated in his hand a split second after: incoming call. He answered, “Hey.”
“You’re the most inconsiderate person I’ve ever met,” Del said.
After eight years with Del, Andrew had a good sense of when he had pushed too far, and her brittle-bright tone was a strong indicator. But he had his own concerns to deal with. “Has it occurred to you that I might have some shit I need to work through right now?”
“I’m sure you do. So do I, you fucking asshole.”
The line disconnected. Andrew sighed and pressed the phone to his forehead. Thirty seconds later, it rang again. He swiped to answer and didn’t bother to say anything, just tapped speakerphone and set it on the table as he leaned back against the couch.
Cold with distance and fuzzy through magnification, Del said, “I thought you were dead. Literally, actually dead. I thought I was going to get a second call in a month from somebody telling me, hey, that guy you care a lot about? He killed himself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, you aren’t.”
Silence crackled between them. He slumped forward again, ran his hands through his hair, and stared at the phone display; seconds ticked past, then minutes. She was waiting for him to speak.
He said, “You don’t need to worry. I wouldn’t.”
She laughed like crying. “Andrew, babe, I don’t believe you. Eddie spun all sorts of stories about how great he was doing. He didn’t tell me something was wrong. Worse, he didn’t tell you. So why would you tell me?”
He didn’t do it warred with he wouldn’t have told you and the impossibility of telling her what Eddie had been hiding from him—that fucking research—without exposing a host of other secrets.
So he said, “How am I supposed to argue with that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Tell me the truth, are you okay down there?”
“I met his roommate, and the guy’s cousin—the one with the WRX, I think.” He paused. “He set me up a bedroom. It’s a good bedroom. He was here without me for like six months, Del.”
“Maybe you should leave the good memories, then, and stop looking to fill in the gaps. He’s gone, you don’t have to follow him into the trouble he made for you,” she said.
Andrew flopped limp onto the couch, one foot hanging over the arm. The ceiling above him had a water stain at the corner; he stared at that ’til his eyes smarted. He’s gone—she said it so simple, like a knife to his brain.
“Uncalled for,” she said, quieter. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I hate seeing him still doing this to you from … from beyond the fucking grave.”
He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “He would not have left me, Del. Not possible. I’m going to find out what happened to him.”
“Andrew, come on,” she said.
“You don’t get it,” he said.
“I get that he hurt you, and you’re not accepting the truth about that,” she said.
“I don’t know what I think did happen, but I know it wasn’t—that. He didn’t fucking turn into a different person and kill himself for no reason without telling me a goddamn thing. He wouldn’t do that to me.” He ended on a choked note.
“He wasn’t that good, Andrew,” she said, her voice hitching to match, conflicting emotions swelling between them across the phone line. “He was always self-centered, and you know that. You can’t argue with that. I don’t think he thought about us at all.”
He wasn’t sure why he kept trying to convince other people, since their minds were made up from the start. To them, he knew, he came off as pathetic, distraught, grieving. They were all ready to let go, leave him in the deep end. He was alone with Eddie, or the remainder of him, as he’d always been.
He said, “I’ll never be closer to him again than I am right now, and I’m staying.”
“Shit. Please, this isn’t good for you.”
“Ain’t going to convince me,” he said.
“So you’re going to go running straig
ht down the same path he did, and just see what happens to you too?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll figure it out,” he admitted. He tapped off of speakerphone and held the phone to his face, warm like a broad palm. “I’ve got to go, Del. Take care of yourself.”
“Don’t hang up—”
He hung up.
* * *
The porch door opened behind Andrew as he stood at the sink, contemplating the pattern of ripples in his half-finished cup of tap water. The conversation with Del had left him numb and drowsy, and his new roommate’s voice was slow to turn him around.
“Andrew, this is my girlfriend,” Riley was saying as he turned to face them.
“Good to meet you,” he blurted out, as stiff to his own ears as a telemarketer.
She smiled anyway. Kinked curls with a purple sheen the same color as her lipstick clouded around her face. The riotous combination of colors in her outfit—pink shoes, yellow blouse, white shorts—complemented her deep brown skin. She said, “Hi, sorry for the circumstances, but it’s good to meet you. I’m Luca.”
“We’re dropping in for a minute, but I’m going out tonight,” Riley said.
“All right,” Andrew said, unsure why he was being told.
“I thought I’d apologize for Sam,” he continued.
“Nothing to apologize for,” Andrew said.
Luca laughed, leaning on the kitchen table with one hand on her hip. She said, “First time a person’s ever come to that conclusion about Samuel Halse.”
Riley shrugged expansively. “He can be a lot.”
Andrew waved him off and sat his glass on the counter. “Seriously, it’s fine. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
The sound of their murmuring conversation chased him up to Eddie’s room, where he barricaded himself in against further socialization. The sinister spread of books and papers on the desk mocked him, still itching with betrayal. A cursory scan of the top layer of loose-leaf pieces revealed a printout about “the legend of the Bell witch,” annotated heavily with doodles of birds and the occasional note on sensationalist reporting, and a tightly scrawled page of summaries of the old families in the state with a conspicuous blank under Fulton. There was also a barely legible set of purple-inked pages that appeared to be a short story about a haunted house. He figured that one had been an inebriated fancy of Eddie’s.
Scooping those pages into a pile left Andrew with a stack of uneven sheets almost an inch thick. He stuck them on the shelf by the door and stacked a book on top to cover the handwriting. Without its explosion of research, the desk looked naked.
Someone knocked on the door and he said, exasperated, “What?”
“Got a second?”
It was Riley. There was no real out, other than a lie or pure petulance, so he said, “Yeah, do you need something?”
Riley opened the door and paused on the threshold. His chest rose on a long breath as his eyes swept the room, glance catching first on the rumpled sheets and second on Andrew, sprawled boneless in the chair.
“Before I head out, which courses did you register for? I thought we shared at least one, but I wasn’t a hundred percent,” he said.
“I’m not sure,” Andrew admitted.
“It starts tomorrow, man. And it’s Vanderbilt. I don’t care if you’re paying them out the ass, you’ll have to at least try.” Riley rapped his knuckles on the wall in a staccato pattern. The sound filled the quiet with a hollow, eerie echo. The moment he noticed, he stopped. “He bought the textbooks, at least, I think they’re in your room.”
“I’ll get them,” he said.
“I’m teaching a couple courses, so I’ll be busy, but if you’re lost or something…” He fidgeted again. “Okay, actually, want to come out with us tonight?”
Andrew fixed him with a baleful, exhausted glower. His patience had run out around the first time Del called him. Gathering up the remains of Eddie’s unwanted research wasn’t an improvement, nor was he pleased with the friends his companion had made, and that was without them prying into his business. Politeness was not his strong suit on a good day, and tonight he felt utterly raw.
“Message received—get some rest, dude,” Riley said.
He disappeared again with a jingle of car keys and the thump of thick-soled boots on the stairs. A feminine laugh followed his exclamation below Andrew’s feet, something that sounded like let’s get out of here.
Andrew felt like he was losing traction around a steep curve, controlled for the moment in his cornering slide but half a second from a crash. The anticipation of impact tingled in his molars. On a masochistic impulse, he crossed the hall to his bedroom. Riley was right. The sole stack of books on the shelf seemed to be intended for his courses. He tucked them under his arm and took the university planner with his name written across the front in dripping silver paint-pen as well, trotting down the stairs to the living room. If he expected to keep hunting for the people Eddie had known, the places he’d been, the bullshit he’d spent his time on, he’d have to attend the program Eddie had selected for them. And also: breaking the habit of abiding by Eddie’s plans was going to take longer than a handful of weeks. He still needed Eddie’s direction, as much as remained to parse out.
Eddie was a hooligan, but an organized hooligan. His professors had found it charming enough to let him skate straight past the occasional missed deadline or lecture, a saving grace that Andrew often benefited from in turn. He would miss that luxury this time. Around midnight, after he had perused his course schedule and added relevant notes to the planner, his roommate staggered around the corner from the kitchen. Riley squinted against the glow of the overhead light and scuffed his forearm across his mouth. The center of balance he sought appeared to be skewed several inches to the left. Tires squealed from the alley, and the rattling roar of an engine sped off.
“Fucking Sam,” Riley groaned.
His uneven stumble to the other couch ended when he caught his knee on the coffee table and pitched over it in a heap, rolling onto the floor on his back. The groan he let out was feeble. Andrew slapped the planner onto the table and leaned around to get a glimpse of his face. An unflattering, hectic flush glowed under Riley’s pale splotchy skin. His glasses were gone. Either he’d changed before he left for the night, or they’d gotten lost in the interim. Andrew watched him fumble with the lacing on his boots long enough to get frustrated and start to curse, low and involved. He let that procedure continue until it crossed the line into pathetic before sliding into a crouch next to Riley and tugging the laces loose from the hooks. Riley covered his face with his hands, laughing, then spread his fingers to watch while Andrew pulled his boots off.
“I have to teach in the morning,” he slurred. “This is dumb. Sorry.”
Something about seeing a stupid, plastered boy laid out on a hardwood floor, regretful but no less pleased with himself, set Andrew back in time. In the better version of their lives that he didn’t get to have, Eddie would’ve been getting the other boot, or throwing up over the porch railing. He missed him with fierce pain. The time-dislocation softened his spiny edges for a vulnerable moment.
“C’mon,” Andrew said.
Riley hooked an arm around his shoulders and he levered them both up, catching what felt like fifteen separate elbows and knees in the process of forcing him up the stairs. He deposited him on the edge of the bathtub.
Riley said, “Get out, I need to piss.”
Andrew had no intention of helping him with that. He waited outside the closed bathroom door until the toilet flushed and Riley slouched into the hall, using the wall for leverage.
“You got it from here?” he asked.
“Thanks, yeah, thanks. Hey—” Andrew cocked his head at the change in tone: clumsy with attempted delicacy. “I’m … I believe in it all, that dead people shit. Ed didn’t tell you, I guess, but I’m on board. I don’t think it’s weird what you guys are into. Fuck Sam, anyway. Let me help you.”
T
he air dropped out of Andrew’s lungs.
Eddie had told Riley about them, about him. That was much worse than doing the research. They’d never even told Del—Del, who they’d known for eight years, who they’d each fucked and stopped fucking and once halfway tried to live with—but Eddie had come home south, picked up a kid who liked punk music and had a good car, and spilled their business like cheap beer. He’d shared their secrets while he kept Andrew waiting alone, then left him that way for good.
“Fuck off,” he said, and slammed Eddie’s bedroom door behind him.
4
The Mazda was gone by the time Andrew came downstairs the next day, saving him from having to address their nettling interaction the night before. He’d slept propped in the office chair wrapped in the comforter, and though it wasn’t restful, he hadn’t been treated to another morbid visitation. Time stretched strange and compulsive as he paced the corridors of the house on Capitol, making the circuit of rooms on repeat. Waiting for something to change, maybe. Once he had that thought, he shoved out the door and yanked it shut behind him. He could sit in Eddie’s chair forever, but it wouldn’t bring him home.
Routine was routine, regardless of the campus underfoot. He located a parking garage, loaded the school map on his phone, and set off for his first course with fifteen minutes to spare. Two on Monday and one on Thursday—an introduction to the program, then two subject courses, including a seminar on American contemporary music. The tiniest bubble of interest welled up when he considered it. He’d written his undergraduate thesis on murder ballads and folk-country, used that same thesis for his admissions writing sample, and had some intention of continuing with the research when he arrived. He’d cared about music, once, though he no longer had access to the emotion, which felt like it had happened inside a different person a long time ago.
