by Jerry Cole
Always, Mario was so, eternally hungry.
Max blinked toward the clock, noting the time. It was nearly ten-thirty. He’d slept far beyond his normal morning schedule, which meant that, perhaps, Mario had slipped out, dotting him on the head with a kiss before scampering to his first class of the day. This was proper. This was right. If they were going to remain secret, folding into one another without alarming Christine, then perhaps this would be the first of several mornings like this. They didn’t necessarily have to kiss goodbye, every single time. Did they?
Max texted Mario, a brief, “Hey. You slipped out. God, I wish I could have said goodbye,” before throwing his phone onto his mattress and watching it bounce. Where was this sudden rage coming from? He waited, staring at the phone, knowing, just knowing it would begin to buzz with Mario’s response. Seconds passed, then a minute, then another. Max’s hands drew into clenched fists. How could he calm himself?
Without thinking, he leapt into the shower, drawing it as hot as he could, nearly scalding his back. He scrubbed at his skull, tearing at the skin, feeling Mario dribble off him from the night before. He tried to generate thoughts he needed for the work day ahead, a kind of dialogue. He imagined he would toss insults at the workmen, probably make them wish they had never agreed to do the job in the first place. They would avert their eyes as he approached, their champion, their leader — a man who would ultimately become their villain. It was the nature of all good art, wasn’t it? That one had to make sacrifices.
A half hour later, Max glared at the menacing construction, his hands slatted on his hips. One of the low-level architects approached him from the side, a set of blueprints flapping in her hands. Max shot a finger toward her, not bothering to look. The finger said, wait. The finger told her, don’t come another step closer. And she hovered, clearly struggling, her face looking squeezed.
“If you please, sir,” she said, speaking in a bouncy, Dutch accent.
“I simply don’t have time for your menial requests,” Max barked, tossing an angry look her way. “Don’t you understand? We’re making something here. Something important.”
Several blocks away, the Italian crowd had formed, a tradition now. Their signs blared in both misspelled English and Italian, calling Max a liar, a thief, a coward. “TEAR IT DOWN! TEAR IT DOWN!!” they chanted, occasionally switching to Italian, and tossing in the occasional swear word or two.
Over this, the young Dutch architect shot out another request, sounding a bit desperate, now. “Please, sir. It’s terribly important that we discuss the last elements of the third floor. I’m a bit frightened about the way the bearing wall…”
“The bearing wall is surely fine,” Max said, barely hearing himself. He turned with a flash, nearly bumping into a construction worker as he marched toward the nearby canal. His phone remained blank, sans any indication that Mario had read his message. Max toyed with the idea of texting him again, having no idea of the etiquette of text messaging. Having only dated Amanda, during a time when one waited at home for a call.
And as far as his brief affairs with other men, throughout his marriage? He hadn’t bothered any sort of texting, beyond arrangements to meet. Rather, he’d felt squeamish at the thought of texting them more than that, knowing that nothing could ever become of whatever they were.
Max had championed his affection for Mario above all else. He’d assumed he would never have to press him for information, or feel as though he revealed too much. His shoulders fell forward, and a feeling of devastation made his stomach boil. It felt as though the world had shifted, without anyone informing him of the rules of this new reality.
What on earth was he going to do?
Again, without thinking, Max pushed himself through a long walk to the studio. He was blinded, now, unable to rationalize what would happen if he showed up and discovered both Mario and Christine there. Would he balk and pretend to have only arrived to speak to Christine? Or would that seem sinister to Mario, who was clearly ignoring him? How far was he willing to “use” Christine as his excuse for seeing Mario. For wasn’t that precisely what he was doing, just now?
Irritation. Guilt. The two crowded in his stomach, building a kind of war. He tried to steady his breathing, but nothing came of it. It felt staggered and strange, making his tongue feel heavy.
The sight of the studio made his heart patter wildly. Max ambled forward, feeling like a crazed man, the last man on earth, looking for life. When he entered the studio, he found only a straggling of students, two girls and a boy, all hovering over their canvases. One girl turned blank eyes to him, uttering a California-like, “Uhhh,” as if his entire existence was worthy of questioning. He supposed it was.
“Hi. Um. Hi,” Max said, shoving his fingers through his hair. He felt he needed yet another shower.
“You’re Christine’s dad, yeah?” the boy said, hardly glancing up from his charcoal.
“Sure thing. I’ve been, um. I’ve been looking for her,” Max said.
The boy flicked his tongue at the exterior of his mouth. It reminded Max of a frog, hunting for flies.
“She’s not here,” the boy continued. “Ain’t been here all day, in fact. Neither has Mario.”
At this, a heavy silence crept across the room. One of the girls snickered, seemingly insinuating that everyone there—and, assuredly the others—assumed that Mario and Christine were sleeping together. The poison of it shot through Max’s heart. He felt bludgeoned.
“No idea where she is?” he demanded, trying to press beyond their assumptions. They were just kids, just Christine’s age. Christine was an imbecile, apt to open up the second bottle of wine before the first was half drunk. There was no method to what she did or said.
“Maybe check Mario’s boat?” the boy offered, coughing at the end of the phrase to insinuate that no, he didn’t give a fuck what Max did or what Max knew or what Max said.
“Listen, kid,” Max stammered. “I know you think you’re fucking…”
The boy blinked drab eyes at him, then delivered a menacing smile. One of his teeth was crooked, beaming out between his lips. “Listen, man,” he said, echoing Max. “I know you’re some hot shot architect or what the fuck ever, back home in America. But here? In Venice? You’re a fucking clown. Everyone hates you. They hate what you’re building over there. You’re literally destroying the world that we’re trying to honor. Tell me. How the hell do you live with yourself?”
Max felt like a gorilla, his hands hanging low and far forward. He took a heavy step back, feeling his pit stains from his shirt stick onto his skin. The boy continued to gaze at him with the arrogance of a twenty-year-old, sans the knowledge of all the sadness and disillusionment that awaited him. Max wished he could punch him with that weight — destroy him with the understanding that one day, everything would change, and he wouldn’t be able to get it back.
Max tore from the studio, ambling down the now-familiar path, toward Mario’s boat. For reasons he couldn’t comprehend, he was reminded of a long-ago memory of snaking through paths along Lake Michigan, alongside a dune. Christine had been six, maybe seven. They’d erupted out on one side of the dune, to discover a speedboat, floating sideways in the water. One of the red seats was sideways, empty in front of the steering wheel. There was no way to know what had happened. Max had waited perhaps too long before drawing down, explaining the situation to Christine. Rather, she’d had full view of whatever sort of devastation this might have meant. It could have been nothing. It could have been everything.
Max found nothing in the space Mario’s boat normally inhabited. He blinked down at the algae that grew along the edge of the dock, that had probably torn away from Mario’s boat in the process of whatever sort of rapid skirt away from Venice he’d taken. With a wave of childish melancholy, Max thought about tossing himself to the ground below, thought about waiting, cross-legged, for Mario’s return.
How could this have happened? How could this — this most promising, most glorifyin
g “this” — have gone off-course? He dropped back toward the tight cobblestones, his thighs feeling heavy. He realized he hadn’t eaten, and took a small pause at a little stall, blinking at the various types of paninis and pizzas. The Italian above scattered some words at him, flailing his arms. Suddenly, he felt irritated at the entire concept of Italians. How dare they live the way they did? Constant carbs? A constant flow of wine, of rich food? Why on earth did they think it was okay to uphold art above all things Although, of course, that is what Max did in his everyday life, as well?
Wasn’t it foolish? Wasn’t the entire concept of Italian life silly?
He pointed at a panini, a chocolate croissant, a pizza. The man wrapped the food up, chattering happily.
“You’re speaking only to yourself,” Max boomed, feeling how stony his face truly was.
The man hardly skipped a beat, seemingly pleased with himself for corresponding with an American. “English? Wow. You from England?” he asked, slipping the paper packages across the glass counter.
“No,” Max said, staring. “I’m the imbecile architect who’s destroying your culture,” he stammered. He swatted a five euro bill onto the counter between them, his nostrils flared. “Take it. Take the change. Take whatever you want.”
He gripped the paper bag and stormed away, ripping a bit of bread from the panini and eating it. The taste was glorious in every sense — greasy and full and lined with gorgeous cheese. He chewed it slowly, allowing it to course along his tongue and glide down his throat. He knew that if he ate every morsel of what he’d purchased, he would grow sick and bloated. He’d have to lie on his back—an older man, now at thirty-eight—than he’d been once, when he’d been able to down an entire pizza in a sitting and still go back for dessert.
Still, as he walked, he ate. He finished the panini and began to rip into the pizza, gorging himself. He remembered the delicate bites Amanda had taken, especially as she’d grown older. Every night before bed, he knew she privately measured her waist with a tape measure, ensuring she didn’t bloat, didn’t grow heavy. And Max had taken similar care of his form. Admittedly, this had always been for the gay men he’d encountered on his travels. Gay men were far less forgiving than heterosexual women.
Thusly, Amanda had kept up her form for him, whilst he’d kept up his form for…others. Whoever came along.
How truly wretched of him.
When he arrived back to his hotel, he tossed his empty wrappings into the trash and did, indeed, splay out on his back. His heart felt slow, like it, itself, was deep within water, while the rest of him waited outside.
Where on earth had they gone? Christine and Mario, his two last links in the world. They’d abandoned him. And what did he have left to do now?
Chapter Twelve
Max
Max slept very little throughout that night. Sweat poured out of him, creating slick sheets. He coughed, leaping up from his bed and pacing back and forth. The moonlight brought a slice of light before him, a kind of path that led precisely back to where he’d started. Many times, he thought of calling Mario, of demanding more answers. He felt certain that Mario wouldn’t answer, which would reaffirm, again and again and again, that he didn’t want Max’s correspondence. In that sense, Max preferred to live in the not-knowing.
Many times throughout the night, Max pretended that Mario had drowned in some sort of boating accident, or been kidnapped, or had discovered a terrible secret about his father’s will… Anything dramatic that could fill in the blanks, much better than simply, “I didn’t want to be with you anymore.”
When sunlight strained into the bedroom, Max felt it with a burning rage. He tossed himself onto the bed with the drama of a tortured lover, gripping his fists tight and pounding at the pillow. At that moment, his phone began to blare. It was just the alarm clock, telling him that yet another day was awaiting him.
He didn’t bother to shower. Didn’t care for it. He slipped his shaking legs into pants and stabbed the button together, noticing that he was bloated from his binge the previous evening. The first time he buttoned his white dress shirt, he buttoned it wrong and had to redo it, cursing the entire time. Finally, he opened the door, feeling like a man in the midst of a psychotic episode, unsure of what he would do next. “This is how the world ends,” he murmured to himself.
When Max arrived at the construction site, he found a still larger crowd had formed in front of it; spitting Italians, enraged about the horrific building. He pressed through them, lodging his shoulders against their hefty backs, before forcing himself to be vomited out on the other side.
It was strange, as he throttled away from the crowd, wiping off the dirt from his sleeves, that he wasn’t recognized by the crowd that screeched their hatred for him. It was akin to the devil being amongst us all, unrecognizable, perhaps because he looks like the rest of us. Max trudged up the rest of the busted cobblestone, until he reached the site of the building.
He blinked up at it, suddenly recognizing it for what it was.
It was a monstrosity. It was strange iron and brick and concrete, coiled together to create — what? A sort of lackluster calico cat-like building. A sort of lurching form, more pulsing organ than solid construction. Again, his hands found fists. In the distance, in the shadow of the building, he watched his lower-tier architects form together, muttering. He felt they were speaking of him. Wave after wave of paranoia surged through him, assuring him of this fact.
Of course. They’d known all this time that the building was an enormous mistake. They hadn’t wanted to badger him, thinking of him as the single boost to their career they so needed. They craved the attention he received in the world. They yearned to suck it from him, like vampires. And they were willing to see him humiliated in the process.
He’d been too blinded with lust for Mario to fully realize what was going on. He’d erred on his artistic promise, been unable to see what was truly in front of him. It was akin to the days back when he’d “fallen” for Amanda. He’d surged with lust, , kind of lust so linked with slotting a dick into a pussy (that had nothing to do with real, eternal love. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, feeling spread bare across a similar cross. He was dying, all for what?
Max lurched toward yet another crowd of rioters, much closer to the building itself. He walked with his head down, his shoulders yanked back. He heard them calling his name. This time, this time, they recognized him. It was to be his final show. With a flash, he turned his head, scanning the crowd with squinted eyes.
Almost immediately, he latched onto a familiar sight.
There, front and center of the frothing crowd, stood Christine.
Christine. His daughter. The light of his fucking life.
Christine.
He froze. It was a midair kind of frozen, one of his hands still poised in the act of tossing his weight forward. Their eyes locked. At that moment, she shoved the sign she’d written higher in the air. It read, “GO HOME. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE.” In every single sense, Max knew this was true.
Max had never felt like a fraud. Always, throughout his architectural career, he’d upheld the wisdom of an area, ensuring that he honored the cultural significance of whatever he was around. But now, standing before a seething crowd, he saw himself as the sort of villain he’d always yearned to avoid.
Max took a heavy step, and then another, walking toward his daughter. Slowly, she lowered the sign, but her face was still menacing, creviced. She lashed her tongue out at him, spewing words he couldn’t yet hear.
When he drew close enough, he recognized Christine even more as the daughter of his wife. In every sense, in every beautiful and wretched way, she was her mother at the time that he’d met her. His heart lurched, remembering how much he’d wronged that young Amanda. How he’d considered her a dark hole, a way to escape his innermost emotions. Not a woman he wanted to latch himself to for a bit less than eternity. What was nineteen years if not an entire lifetime.
“Christine,
” Max said, standing just a foot away from her. For whatever reason, tears dripped down her cheeks. She’d dropped the sign to the ground. It rustled a bit in the wind. Her hands quivered around her cheek, before falling to her side.
Around them, the crowd continued to jeer at the building, seemingly too frightened to direct their anger at Max, exactly. It felt too personal, perhaps. Still, he and his daughter locked eyes. Max imagined all the wretched things he still needed to say to her. All the ways he’d lied to her since her birth. “Don’t lie,” he’d told her as a child, hearing it echo within his chest cavity, within his lungs. “It’s the worst thing in the world, to misrepresent yourself. If you want to be an artist, everything must come from the truth.”
Yet, nothing he’d ever done had been truthful.
Finally, Christine spoke. Her words cut through the gritty, raucous words from the crowd, surging directly into Max’s ears.
“I can’t believe you thought he could ever love you, Dad,” she said. “I can’t believe you ever thought you were worthy of the likes of him. HIM!”
Max reached into his back pocket and drew out a cigarette. He slipped it between his lips, staring at her. The words rang between his ears again, playing like some kind of horrible loop. “I can’t believe you ever thought you were worthy of the likes of him.”
He puffed at the cigarette, feeling the smoke scratch at his throat. He forced himself not to cough, although he so wanted to. He glared at his daughter. And in this glare, he felt every other time he’d ever looked at her. He felt the first moment he’d held her, so light, flipping back and forth in his nineteen year old arms. “What did we do?” he’d muttered to himself, as if this were something he could answer.
“Fuck you, Dad,” she said finally, building a line between them, one he didn’t think he could ever cross again. “Fuck you for thinking that. Fuck you for trying to take over my entire world.”
