Drawn to You

by Jerry Cole

Max held her eyes for a long time. Then, he turned back, feeling suddenly lithe. In a sense, he felt like the father he’d been fifteen years ago, leaving Christine in the car whilst he filled up the gas tank in the car. “Just rest your head, baby,” he’d said. “I’ll be only a few minutes.”

  Some of the vespa drivers that came to work on the construction site kept their gasoline cans lined up near their vespas, just in case. Max reached for the first, jiggling it to see how heavy it was. Then, he reached for the next, then the next, until he found one that was mostly full. He froze again, blinking at the construction site once more. Several boards were flat before him, leading over the area where the pots and other ancient architecture had been found. He knew that the pots and important bits had been removed thus far, to make room for the construction. And for that reason, he marched forward and began to douse the wooden boards with gasoline.

  It seemed that at first, nobody took any notice of what he was doing. Even the rioters were rioting on, seemingly reading from a script that they’d all read and memorized before. Still, Max burst forward, dousing more bricks and wooden beams and even the building itself. His scowl was deep, forming a crater in his face. Suddenly, he reached for his cigarette, flicking it over the gasoline drippings of the building. Then, he reached for his matches, and lit one after another, tossing them onto the wooden slats before him.

  The fire flared up. It happened fast, creating a wall between him and the rioters. Behind him, another fire grew, tearing through what it could of the newly-built construction site. The crowd was deathly silent. He stared at them, daring them to scream.

  Far to the left, the other architects began to screech, telling the construction workers to “take cover.” The fire was far more successful than Max could have imagined. He felt the heat flicker up behind him, growing hotter and hotter against his elbows. He wanted it to melt the shirt from his back. He wanted to have a reason to die.

  The architects and construction workers burst from the site, reaching for their vespas to protect them. Everyone joined the crowd in front of Max, staring up at the building as it creaked and moaned. Max’s adrenaline pulsed up. He’d never before destroyed anything, had always felt he was a builder, not one to tear it all down. Yet the deconstruction felt just as romantic as the building, if not more.

  The heat grew and grew, perhaps exponentially. Max began to lose consciousness, if only for a moment. Someone — he would never learn who — grabbed his shoulder and shoved him out of the fire. He toppled into rubble. At this point, the fire roared, a wild beast that overtook the building and had begun to nibble into the surrounding buildings. Suddenly, Max realized just what he’d done. The iron stretched and faltered; the bricks crumpled and toppled to the ground.

  The rioting crowd’s cheers were replaced. Now, they howled, watching as the fire he’d created churned over their darling city. Max hustled back, no longer the topic of conversation. Rather, he felt the people’s terror: would the fire get to their houses? Would it overtake their boats? How could they stop it? People were dialing their friends, their relatives. People were hobbling back into their boats, reaching for loved ones and motoring away, back down the canal where they belonged. Each regretted everything.

  Max then remembered, with a torturous pain, that his daughter was somewhere in the crowd, watching what he’d done. Perhaps she was in danger. Perhaps she would fall victim to the fire! Instead of retreat, which was what he so wanted, he moved forward, calling her name. The crowd worked against him, moving him toward the water. Still, nobody seemed to recognize him. He was just another face.

  “CHRISTINE!” he cried, blinking wildly against the smoke. “CHRISTINE! WHERE ARE YOU?”

  Still, the crowd bucked against him, blasting against his shoulder. They spoke volatile Italian, moving their hands wildly at one another. Max shoved forward, further and further, until he was near the edge of the dock. He blinked down at the water, which reflected back the shimmering fire. Around him, the crowd had dissipated. With room to breathe, he turned around, gazing up as the building took its final path toward the ground. When it did, the dock began to rip apart, forcing the part on which he stood to erupt from the rest of it and begin to float out onto the water.

  It was a strange feeling, watching the building burn from the water. Max felt like a continent that had drifted off from the rest of the world. The building began to smoke more than it burned, showing a sign of decline. Only bits of the surrounding houses had taken any damage whatsoever. For this, Max was grateful. He allowed his shoulders to slump forward, and he murmured, “It’s over. It’s over.”

  Of course, at this point, the dock was far in the center of the canal, unattached to anything. He floated past dark churches, through brimming smells of baked bread and pasta and cheese, before collapsing to his knees. The piece of dock drew tighter toward the brick wall that jutted out from a nearby bridge. With all his might, he reared forward and gripped it, tossing himself along the edge of the canal.

  He gripped the top of the wall, his feet hanging down below. He huffed, trying to draw up enough strength to yank himself up. As he hung there, thoughts of Mario returned to him. Mario, who had abandoned him. Mario, who had revealed the truth of Max to Christine. Mario, who had made a complete and total mockery of Max, despite all the love Max had given him….

  In some respects, perhaps, this was payback for all the years of deceit Max had given Amanda. He’d allowed himself to fall in love in the most complete, boundless way. And he’d been smacked across the face, cast aside. What had it all been for?

  Max erupted from the side of the canal, slipping his hands across his mucked pants, through his ash-ridden hair. After several blinks, he spotted a cab in the distance, parked to the side of a little panini shack. He slipped his hand across his pocket, ensuring that his wallet and passport were on him, and then he cut forward, careening into the back seat.

  “Airport,” Max huffed. “I want to be at the airport. The faster you can get me there, the more I’ll pay you. Go.”

  The taxi surged forward, nearly toppling into several pedestrians — a family, it looked like — with backpacks clunking around on their chests. They huffed at the taxi, muttering in British English. Max rolled his eyes back, marveling at the innocence of a stupid family vacation. Hadn’t he taken them with Amanda and Christine? Hadn’t he been crawling out of his skin the entire time, aching to be anywhere else, with anyone else?

  He couldn’t handle Europe. He couldn’t face a reality sans Mario. He felt his heart dipping lower in his stomach, burning. He clutched at his chest, wondering if there were some pains impossible to escape. Perhaps he would carry this one for the rest of his life. Would that be better than letting it go?

  At the airport, Max bought the first flight he could back to the United States. For whatever reason, that flight would take him to Miami, of all places. Whatever. It was a start. The woman at the counter slipped her eyes over him, but didn’t seem to recognize him as anything but a scruffy traveler. She demanded two thousand dollars from him, for such a quick flight across the ocean, and he smacked his card atop the counter with more ferocity than such a transaction warranted. He felt like an animal, out of his cage. He felt uninhibited.

  “Have a safe flight,” the Italian woman said, seeming to bare her teeth at him. “I hope you’ll come see us again.”

  Max had to laugh. He lurched forward, feeling his stomach tighten. His laugh echoed through the small entryway of the airport, bouncing from the windows. But it hardly powered over the wild language of the Italians, who seemed to spit words back at one another without waiting for answers.

  “I’m sure I won’t,” Max finally said, slipping his finger beneath his eye and mopping up a final tear. “I’m sure I absolutely will not.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mario

  Mario’s long-time friend Alexander had, indeed, slipped Mario onto his couch in his gritty living room, telling him, “Si, mi amore. Stay as long as you need to
.” He hadn’t asked a single question, and had instead leapt back into bed with his current love, a little twenty-two-year-old girl on holiday from Australia. Mario had had to listen to their bumps and cries throughout the night; had rolled back and forth with exhaustion, wishing he could turn off the chaos in his head along with the chaotic noises from the bedroom. It seemed the world offered no reprieve.

  Mario stayed like that throughout the day following his escape, feigning sleep when Alexander and the girl slipped out for drinks and then returned, latched to one another and preparing for another wild afternoon and evening of lovemaking.

  And suddenly, it was the second day after Mario’s retreat. He wondered how long he could possibly stay there, huddled on the faraway island, knowing that he’d created a swirling mess on the main ones.

  Sunlight careened through the living room window, blasting across Mario’s naked stomach. He scrubbed at his brow, opening his eyes. Alexander ducked down the hallway, naked, his ass shining in the light. The twenty-two-year-old screeched out his name and he hailed back, “Be right back!” before knocking the bathroom door closed behind him. The sound of his peeing rang out, a bit too loud. It felt invasive, although Mario was, himself, the one invading.

  Everything seemed to irritate Mario.

  He swung his feet over the side of the couch, glaring down at his toes. They were hairy and strange to him, just now, as if they belonged to someone else. Alexander erupted out of the bathroom and spotted Mario, kind of draped over himself. At this, Alexander tilted his waist into the wall beside him and gaped at his friend. His normal, raucous smile faltered.

  “You really do look out of sorts, there, friend,” he sighed. “Are you going to tell me what’s happened?” He clucked his tongue, whilst the Australian girl called again for him.

  Mario reached for the remote control, feeling as though it was difficult to breathe. He clicked on the television, trying to draw within him the strength to explain his stiff silence. “I’m not sure I could describe what’s happened, Alexander,” he sighed.

  “Why not? Is it because I’ve known you twenty years, and I can see through any bullshit you’ve put yourself through?” Alexander asked. “Come now. You’ve been sleeping on my couch for over twenty-four hours, like some sort of depressive, sad sack.”

  Mario clucked his tongue. It felt as though someone had reached inside his ribcage and begun to squeeze at his heart.

  “Mario, look at yourself. You’re pale as a ghost. When was the last time you ate anything, hey?” Alexander asked. He pointed toward the kitchen. “I know you better than all this. If you aren’t fed every three hours, it’s like you become a child. Whatever it is, you can fix it with pasta. The way our mothers always fixed everything.”

  “It’s not so easy this time, Alexander,” Mario sighed. He crammed the bottom of his hand into his eyes, making himself see black spots. “I think your lady wants you in there, you know. You can’t make her wait.”

  “Come now, Mario. Aren’t you expected at your father’s school? Classes started hours ago? And you must have missed all of them yesterday. How are those little assholes going to learn how to paint?” Alexander’s voice was a funny mix of mocking and humor. His eyebrows scrunched tight over his eyes.

  Mario clicked at the remote control, buzzing through the channels. His eyes were glazed, hardly seeing before him. Alexander yanked a towel from the bathroom and slipped it over his waist, rapping on the door and telling the Australian girl that he would be “just a minute.” Alexander trudged toward the couch and slipped onto the cushion, his eyes still focused on Mario.

  “Man, I’ve never seen you like this,” Alexander murmured.

  It was at this moment that Mario clicked just a notch too far on the television. Immediately, a spew of Italian words streamed out, sounding wild, crazed.

  “What you need to understand is this,” the Italian announcer said. “That monstrous architectural horror near the center of the city is now destroyed. It’s nada. It wasn’t taken out by one of our own, not one of the Italians that worked terribly hard to protest the construction of the building over the previous few weeks…”

  Mario gaped at the announcer’s familiar face. He spoke with too much enunciation, and it made his face spasm and quake.

  “In fact, we’re getting news accounts that the fire was started by none other than the architect himself,” the announcer continued.

  Mario dropped the remote to the ground as the square in the corner of the screen filled with Max’s face. His nostrils flared out. The photo had been taken quite some time ago, when Max had had shorter hair, when he hadn’t had as many laugh lines. His eyes glowed out from the screen, from a time when he’d been closeted, keeping his true passions a secret from his then-wife and daughter. Max remembered with a jolt that it had been him, Mario of all people, who’d outed Max to his daughter. God, that hadn’t been his right.

  “Wow. That horrible building,” Alexander murmured, scraping a finger across his mustache. “I’m glad it’s gone. Perhaps someone knocked some sense into him, eh, Mario?”

  Mario blinked several times. “My father really loved that architect. A photo of him hung in his office. I used to look at it, when I was growing up. I regarded him as something larger than life.”

  “I suppose that’s the thing, isn’t it? If you’re a god, then you should know when to tear apart your creation. It’s like what God did with Noah and that flood,” Alexander shrugged.

  “Although it’s clear that Venice is pleased at his decision to set fire to this monstrosity,” the announcer continued, “Police are still interested in questioning Max Everett about what happened last night at the construction site. However, it seems that Max Everett snuck out of the country before any sort of inquiry could be made. According to police, he went immediately to the airport and flew to Miami, Florida, of all places. After that, his whereabouts are unknown.”

  Mario erupted from the couch. It felt strange to stand on two feet, after over twenty-four hours of lying sprawled out, almost too stricken with some kind of grief to get up to use the toilet. Now, he buzzed with apprehension. For the first time, he was fully aware of the fact that Max Everett was out of the country. That Mario had single-handedly shoved him out of his life. He felt like the most selfish man in the world.

  His bare feet plodded along, taking him from one end of the room to the next. Alexander’s eyes remained fixated upon the television as the camera crew snuck through the still-smoking plot of land, where Max’s building had been. Kristin, the Australian girl, careened out from the bedroom, incredulous. She slipped a white t-shirt on over her torso, leaving herself naked beneath. At this, Mario took only a cursory glance.

  “Kristin, you need to put some clothes on!” Alexander sighed, half-teasingly.

  “We all know he’s gay,” Kristin shrugged.

  Mario shot his hands down on either side of his waist, feeling like a toddler on the verge of some kind of panic. “I wanted to be with him,” he muttered. “I just panicked. I’d never… I’d never…”

  “He’d never what?” Kristin asked, spreading her mouth wide with a lackluster yawn.

  “I’m not sure, babe,” Alexander muttered, dotting a tiny kiss atop her forehead.

  Mario surged toward the window, gazing out at the bright sun that cut through the normal fog. He felt on display, completely and totally aware of his beating heart, his racing thoughts, his tense muscles. Kristin leaned toward Alexander again, wrapping her thin arms around his neck and plastering her breasts against his chest. The way their bodies connected made Mario feel heavy with grief. Only a day and a half ago, he’d been in a similar position with Max. He’d belonged to him.

  He’d abandoned him, casting Max back into the world like a crazed lunatic.

  Mario ripped his fingers through his hair, squeezing his black curls. He fell onto his knees, wanting terribly to screech his anger at the window and feel it echo back at him. His knees scraped upon the hardwood.
r />   “Is he going to be all right?” Kristin said, in a voice that showed how desperately terrible she was at whispering.

  “I’m not quite sure, darling,” Alexander returned.

  “If you have any news of Max Everett’s whereabouts,” the news announcer continued. “Then please, call the station or the police. Again, there is currently no warrant out for his arrest, as the city of Venice is largely glad that he decided to finish the project and end his time in our beautiful city. The Venice skyline certainly deserves a far better look than the one he was attempting to structure.”

  There was a long beat, during which the announcer seemed to give a scathing glare into the camera. Mario gaped at him, feeling heavy with the silence. He wanted to screech at the announcer, at all the world who watched along, and tell them that Max Everett was a genius. That perhaps, in the case of this building, he’d been misguided. However, the misguided nature of his mind was all to do with the love that brewed between them. In that, it was perhaps Mario’s fault that any of this had happened.

  How could he not feel at fault?

  Again, Mario collapsed on the cushion beside Alexander and Kristin. He breathed strangely, as though his chest wouldn’t push out the proper amount to allow enough oxygen inside.

  “Do you believe in soul mates?” he suddenly asked the pair of them, uttering his first words in several minutes.

  Alexander guffawed. Kristine situated herself atop his knees, then began to pump her legs back and forth, like a child on a swing set. She shrugged. “Of course soul mates exist,” she sighed. “What else do you think? That we all just bump into one another at random? Nothing is random, Mario. Nothing.”

  Mario’s shoulders slumped further forward. He felt like a snail, crunching in on himself. “I might have just ruined my life,” he offered.

  “If you don’t explain to us what’s going on,” Alexander began, “We can’t help you.”

  “There’s no helping me,” Mario murmured. He leaned tighter toward the television, waiting. They’d paused through a commercial break and returned to speak about the mafia in Southern Italy, rather than talk about Max Everett’s demise. “My life is over.”