by Jerry Cole
“You’re thirty years old, Mario!” Alexander said, smacking him on the back. “I know you’re just about as dramatic as they come, but you have to snap out of this.”
Mario didn’t answer. He remained perched atop the couch, feeling the air grow thick around him. At some point, Alexander carried Kristin back to bed, tossing her atop the mattress to force out a wicked squeal from her lips. Mario had never felt so alone, so much like a shadow. He used a search engine to read more details about the fire, learning how Max had looked enraged, like a wild animal whilst he flashed the gasoline atop the construction site. Mario wondered if Christine had yet heard anything about the fire? What had she done in the wake of learning about her father’s affair with Mario, the man she, herself, loved?
Mario had never felt such a complete distrust and disgust at himself. Suddenly, he wanted to run away from everything he’d ever known; to void himself of this reality and take up some place else. Perhaps he would change his name. He scratched at his cheeks, feeling half-crazed. Where on earth would Max go, now that they’d separated? Where could he take himself, in the wake of his ex-wife’s new partner, with his daughter now surely refuting everything he stood for?
When Mario had been younger, he’d been a bit of a tortured soul — this was the term his father used, at least. He’d stayed up late staring at the stars, his eyes big and searching.
“What are you looking for, Mario?” his father had asked, time and again.
“I just want to know what on earth I’m doing here,” Mario had responded, occasionally allowing a single tear to tread down his cheek. “Father, I don’t understand it. I feel so much pain right here.” He would pat his chest, feeling unable to breathe.
“Use that for your art, my dear Mario,” his father had said. “Perhaps the fact that you can tap into your pain so early means something. Maybe it means your life will be tormented. All of the greats were tormented.”
“But they must have been miserable, Papa,” Mario had murmured.
“They were. They JUST turned their misery into such beauty. And the world wouldn’t be the same without it,” his father had returned.
Chapter Fourteen
Max
It was Christmas.
And for that reason, it was difficult not to think back to all the other Christmases; all the other cozy nights, holed up in their home in Chicago, listening as Christine played the piano, as Amanda prepared the traditional cookies, as the carols played out of the raspy record player. This was Max’s first Christmas alone, and he felt it like a shadow over everything.
He awoke early, just before five in the morning. His nails scrubbed into his chest, feeling at the coarse hair. He’d lost a bit of weight since he’d returned to America in October. His ribcage shot out from his upper belly, and his stomach was taut with early-morning hunger. It had been a long time since he’d thought of his body as anything besides the strange vessel through which he interacted with the world. And it had been far longer — since he arrived back from Venice — since he’d had much of a conversation with anyone.
The only real personal contact he got was with his bi-weekly delivery of groceries, wine, and beer. Usually, it was the same guy who made the trip up from Rochester, a Polish immigrant named Jan, who told Max in increasing intervals that he was looking “rather pale” and that he needed to “get out of the house more.” Jan had made his final delivery before the holiday three days before, and had brought a special something: cookies that his wife had baked, especially for Max.
This bit of pity — imagining that Jan’s Polish wife had rambled about her apartment, stirring up cookies and outrightly worrying about Max, chilled Max’s blood. He didn’t want anyone to know what a devastating, horrible man he currently was. He imagined her whispering about him to her Polish friends at whatever tea time they had together, her saying, “I don’t know. Jan says he worries he’ll head up there and find the poor man dead!”
Of course, this all existed only in Max’s imagination. But it had too much of a glimmer of truth to it. How could it be anything else?
Now, Max scrambled out of bed, wearing only a pair of torn boxer shorts. He reached for one of the last cookies and toasted the air, toward the window, before crunching into the cookie. It hadn’t the flavor of Amanda’s cookies, but it did have chocolate chips. He sucked on them, allowing the chocolate to ooze across his tongue.
As he chewed, he snuck a glance at himself in the mirror, assessing the damage. He ordinarily avoided the mirror, knowing it wouldn’t deliver any information that he really wanted to know. Now, it gave him notice of his sagging cheeks, of the dark hollows beneath his eyes. It gave him notice that his hair had grown a bit gray at his temples. At this, he shoved yet another cookie between his lips. “If I’m never going to see another soul again,” he said, making the words sound dramatic, “Then I might as well get Orson Welles-level fat. Huh? Might as well.”
The cabin in which Max had been living as a hermit was about an hour and a half north of Rochester, far from the chaos and life of New York City.
Max had learned about the cabin upon returning to the States, as he’d immediately flown up from Miami to NYC to sleep on the couch of a good friend of his from architecture school. When he’d arrived at her front door, she’d slipped her glasses up her nose and uttered the words, “What on earth have you gotten yourself into this time, Max?”
“Just let me in, Julie,” Max had sighed.
Julie had spread her door wide, giving him a roll of her eyes — similar to how she used to react when he would arrive at her door in the middle of architecture school, bemoaning the fact that he was a lackluster father, that he’d had to grow up far too soon. “Amanda is brilliant. Christine is great. You’re going to be fine,” she had sighed to him, back home in Chicago. They both had their entire lives before them, back then. They both pulsed with adrenaline and life, looking for whatever awaited them.
Max collapsed atop her couch, a brand of furniture he recognized from an ad he’d seen on the plane. He assumed the couch cost upwards of 100,000 dollars, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Just now, despite having money all his life, he felt broke and strange, as if the Italian government would dart after him at any moment and take all his cash.
“You burned your own building!” Julie had said, blurting it out. Her cat-eyed glasses glinted in the lamplight. “I’ve never seen such footage as that. It looked like a war zone.”
Max had hung his head, feeling like a child.
“What got into you, Max?” Julie demanded. “You’ve never been so… So wild about your decisions…”
“In fact, I have been,” he sighed. “If I’m being terribly honest, I’ve always been a volatile decision maker, Julie. I cheated on Amanda for years, you know… Always rushing off to one architecture conference or another. And it wasn’t women, Amanda. No. I was never after the women…”
Julie didn’t bat an eyelid. She shrugged her bony shoulders, then reached up to the wine rack on the wall, lifted out a glinting bottle, and tore off the twist-top. She poured a glass for both herself and for Max. The wine was blood red and strange, somehow too thick to drink. Max lifted his glass and clinked it with Julie’s.
Max felt stunted by Julie’s silence. He ached, needing to fill it. But how could he possibly, when he’d delivered such news?
“I wish we were twenty years younger, Julie,” he sighed. “I wish I could take it all back. All I did to Amanda. All I did to Christine. And now…”
“It’s not as though I didn’t always know you were gay,” Julie said. “It was always apparent, the struggle you were going through to make sure you could remain with Amanda. To make sure you could show her you were devoted to her and to your family together. It was a wonder you didn’t sneak off sooner…”
“Julie…” Max said, feeling her words like a knife through the heart. Had it always been so sure? Had it been written across his face like a sign?
“The truth is the only thing you have
, Max,” Julie said. She clucked her tongue, grinning to herself. “What a cliché, hey? I can’t imagine myself saying something like that, before now. What a sap, hey? God, I want a cigarette. Perhaps that’s one reason I wish we were younger. All I want is a smoke without it smearing my face with countless wrinkles. All I want is to…to not be so terribly lame.”
Max guffawed, grateful for the slight joke, even if it was just the tiniest one. “I do, too.”
“Why did you burn the building, Max?” Julie sighed. Her fingers looked like spider legs across the wine glass. “I need to know. Not for any reason but to fulfill my own urgent desire. And besides, you owe me. I let you into my home, didn’t I? You, a big criminal on the loose from the Italian government?”
She gave him a wry smile, showing once more that she was teasing. He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bobble.
“You did. And I’m forever grateful,” Max said, his words tentative. “I need your help in a far different way.” He paused, swirling the red wine before him. “I just need to find a place to hide for a while. A place to make art. To truly think. Do you have any ideas for me?”
Julie hummed for a moment. Her eyes turned to the black windows. In the middle of Brooklyn, they could hear the howls of countless alcoholic hipsters, chasing one another down the road in search of sex. That should have been Max, years ago. He’d missed it.
He didn’t suppose he cared too much about it. It was a strange thing, being able to visualize a reality you’d wanted, then automatically refuting it.
“My great-uncle has this cabin in upstate New York,” Julie offered. “I haven’t been up there in years, but I know it’s empty. I don’t think it’s very close to any sort of supplies, either. You’d have to drive…”
“Or have stuff delivered,” Max said. He cracked the wine glass before him, rubbing his palms together. “I could just hole up there and really, truly think about the work again. Sketch. Paint. Dream. The stuff I was never able to do, because I was always trying to become something, for Amanda and Christine’s sake…”
“Max…” Julie began, squeezing her face tight, causing wrinkles to form upon her cheeks and above her eyebrows.
“Julie…” Max said, mocking her. “Truly, I think this is the proper way to proceed.” He was speaking a bit too quickly, now, as if he were in the midst of a manic episode. “Are the Italians after me? Have you read much?”
“They want to speak with you…” Julie said, arching her brow. “There’s no warrant for your arrest. In fact, it seems they’re rather pleased the construction stopped.”
“So many protestors, Julie. And Christine was one of them…” Max murmured. “It was absolutely horrid, seeing her in the midst of all of them. She blared words at me I’ll never forget.” He burst up from his seat, pacing back and forth. The wine sloshed about in his glass. “I wish I could tell her how I used to be. Show her that I’m not this idiotic fool who would really build such a monstrous…” He trailed off, realizing he was about to reveal to Julie just how lost he’d become, in the wake of falling for Mario.
Julie knew better, perhaps, than to point out his fallibility in the midst of his breakdown.
“She’s a child, Max. She loves you. She’ll forgive you, even if…” She paused for a moment, swishing the wine around her mouth. “Even if she won’t forget.”
The words seemed enough, at least for then. Max allowed his chin to fall to his chest, reflecting on how impossible it was to ever return to where he’d been. He wished he could slip back into a dreary afternoon, perhaps in the midst of another October in Chicago. Perhaps he could listen to Christine practicing the piano in another room. Perhaps Amanda would place her hand — covered in paint — atop his shoulder, and he would shift a bit whilst she asked, “I’m making myself a salad. Do you want a sandwich? I think we still have lunch meat.”
That night, Max had slept in Julie’s guest bedroom in Brooklyn, listening to the prattling from the partiers outside. He could feel the emotion behind their yells and cries, could comprehend how wide-eyed their eyes were for whatever kind of future they could craft. Don’t ruin it all, he wanted to tell them. You’ve been given the world. Don’t waste it.
The following day, Max arranged for a car to take him up to Julie’s great uncle’s cabin, which was dusted-out and a bit ratty, but still very functional, despite Julie’s great uncle’s death a year before. And it was precisely there that he remained for the following two months, gradually crafting it into a sort of “home.” He dusted the fireplace, slipped a blanket across the couch to cover the brown stains from God-knows-what, and arranged for a shipment of groceries to arrive to ensure he didn’t go hungry. Already, since leaving Italy and Mario’s arms, it seemed he was losing weight fast. With a deep inhale, he could carve out a hollow in his belly. Placing his finger in his belly button, he felt he could nearly touch his spine. He hadn’t been this thin since college.
Now, it was Christmas. And Max hadn’t had any personal contact since the day he’d arrived to Julie’s apartment, begging for her help. He forced himself into the shower, aching with nostalgia. Why was it that such a date — the 25th of December — had such power over his heart and mind? He’d never been particularly religious. He didn’t feel the eyes of God upon his shoulders, watching him on this gray and grisly Christmas morning…
Max fumbled through his wardrobe, looking for anything worthy of a drive to the city. He felt manic, his blood pumping wildly past his ears. He muttered to himself, shoving his arms through a button-up flannel. In the mirror, now, he looked far more like a rugged mountain man than a city architect. He buttoned to the top, beneath his chin, and then unbuttoned a few again, sensing he was closing himself in.
When he latched the door behind him, he wondered what on earth he was locking inside. Was there any way a stranger would wind up the narrow road to the cabin? Did anyone know he existed up there, besides Jan, his wife, and her circle of Polish female friends?
The drive to New York City felt like watching a movie he’d seen before, but not for many years. Max gripped the steering wheel a bit too hard, making his knuckles glow white. Billboards flashed up on either side of the car, advertising things in relation to Christmas, to Thanksgiving, to New Year’s. What had he been doing on Thanksgiving? He struggled to remember. Had he eaten anything special? Had he watched television? No. Perhaps that had been the morning and afternoon when he’d been lost in a drawing, watching his pencil stretch across the page. He’d felt he was disconnected from the art itself, as though his brain had some sort of strategy that he couldn’t comprehend. The finished product—a drawing that in many ways resembled him and a young girl seated on the dock of some long-ago lake cottage, gazing out across the water—had made his heart heavy and gray. He’d slipped the drawing beneath several massive encyclopedias atop the desk that he hardly used, unwilling to look at it, yet similarly unwilling to throw it away.
It was funny the way time worked on this particular Christmas day. Minutes ticked along, as if they didn’t notice. Suddenly, it was already one in the afternoon, and then it was two. The day slipped past, just as the previous few months had. Max pressed his foot harder on the gas pedal, willing himself to arrive in the city before dark. How he craved to watch night descend on his favorite city, watch the lights twinkle up. How he longed to see little Manhattan families taking their early-evening strolls, huddled together and wrapped tight in thick coats. He wanted to reminisce. He wanted every layer of sadness.
Max approached the city just after four in the afternoon. Adrenaline made his arms shake. The buildings grew tall around him, overpowering him. He felt oddly threatened. He’d spent too much time alone in the woods. Just a few blocks before Time’s Square, he yanked into a parking lot and paid an insane amount of money, just so he could slide out of the vehicle and stretch his legs. When he paid the attendant, the burly thick-bellied woman said, “Good evening, sir! Having a very merry Christmas?”
Max muttered back, “S
ure am. And yourself?” and was surprised at how believable he sounded, after so many days without hearing the sound of his own voice. It was scratchy, a bit rugged. The woman’s smile widened, showing her gray and gold cavities in back.
“It’s a good thing to meet people like you when I gotta be at work,” she said. “On a holiday! You believe that? But you have a good time out there. Hug the ones you love.”
“I sure will,” Max returned. He felt as though he’d been punched in the gut.
He forced himself out of the car park. Drab snow had begun to fall, and it dampened his beard and the top of his head. The hat inside his coat pocket lagged out. He stretched the ugly red thing over his ears, willing himself to become invisible. The city air was thick, strange, reeking of garbage and of car exhaust and, strangely, of bagels, of rotting fruit. Most places were closed for the holiday, except for a smattering of shoddy-looking bodegas and coffee shops. Inside, people huddled together, gazing outside. Max wondered what on earth they could possibly think of him; a stranger on the street alone, hunched over.
When he neared Time’s Square, he heard the squabbling of tourists, the crying of children. Employees swirled signs advertising for Broadway musicals and tours of the wax museum and cheap tickets to the Knick’s games. It had been an area Max had always avoided, deeming himself far more important than the quivering, anxious tourists with their money belts and their affinity for shoddy brands.
For whatever reason, his lack of human content led him to suddenly stride into the center of these packs of people, wanting to listen to their conversations. The flurry of words was like endless adrenaline. Max squeezed his fists together, feeling delirious.
“Just if you could run off and grab me a pack of smokes, Denise. Just a pack… I swear, it’s just all this stress from the holiday…”
