by Eve Morton
The more Eric tried to remember the scrawny kid with a baseball hat and a giant oxygen tank that he’d painted in purple and red, the more he was positive that they were the same person. Christopher Ren had followed him around set, asking interesting questions in between coughing, while his co-star had been a diva because the show was going off the air and so there was no need to care anymore. The kid was looked at as a pest at best, and a spectre of death at worst. So while his co-star had eventually left with a rather tone-deaf joke about a dying industry of sci-fi crime shows, it had just been Eric and the kid for the rest of the afternoon.
“I’m shocked he was still alive much longer after that,” Eric said. “I mean, don’t they do Make-A-Wish for kids who don’t have long? Do you have to, like, refund the experience if you survive?”
“Some people with CF do live a long time, but it’s also inherently unpredictable. We had a drive for CF once at the radio station. The man who gave the talk was very interesting. He was in his thirties, but his doctors had been telling him he’d die since he was fourteen.”
“And did he?”
“Yes. Everyone does, but he died not long after the drive.”
Eric did math in his head. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen at the time of the tour. If he’d really survived for almost ten more years after that, then he’d beaten the high mortality odds with his CF much longer than anticipated. But even so, the calls from a lawyer—about an estate inheritance no less—still didn’t make any logical sense.
“Why wouldn’t his family handle this? Why bother to reach out to me?”
“Perhaps they’ve died too.”
“Sure, okay. But friends? Other distant relatives? In order for this to happen, he would have had to specify me directly. So why give an actor he’d met at sixteen this much power?”
“Did you say something to him, maybe? Anything stick out in your mind?”
Eric shook his head. He hadn’t thought about all of this in years, not even his co-star’s prissy tantrum, not even when he was utterly infatuated with him. After explaining the tone-deaf joke, and Jeff’s departure, Eric documented the rest of the day. “I mean, he just followed us around. Watched us tape a shoot. And then—Oh, shit.”
Eric remembered now. He ran a hand through his hair as he recalled the lines he kept butchering that day. He’d seen no point in memorizing them anymore with the cancellation, so he kept screwing up the scene and needing to do retakes, and even though it was taking much longer than usual, not even the director or writer seemed to care anymore. When he caught sight of Christopher watching him, though, Eric realized he still had an audience. He still needed to keep trying.
So when they all eventually took a break for lunch, he took Christopher back into his dressing room where he showed him the script. “I told him we were cancelled, and that was why I hadn’t bothered to learn anything. Then I wrote on the back of the script pages we’d already shot all the lies I was telling myself: I can’t do the show because it’s been cancelled; I can’t memorize my lines because I see no point; I can’t work because no one will hire me. I wrote out a dozen things like that, then I ripped them up in front of him.”
Eric smiled. He remembered Christopher’s face lighting up beneath the oxygen mask, especially as Eric explained that with all the can’ts removed from his lexicon, he would be just fine. When they’d gone back to the set after a break, he’d done the scene better. Not perfect, but better. And the kid had written his own I can’t statements on the back page of a script and then torn them up with Eric after the shot was done.
“And that’s it, isn’t it?” Eric said, concluding his story. “And that moment is why he’s leaving me everything, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s good advice,” Cosmin said.
“It’s recycled advice.”
“Still doesn’t mean it’s not good.”
Eric met Cosmin’s gaze with exhaustion. Recognition prickled the back of his neck. Cosmin knew what Eric was referencing; they both knew it all so well, but had forgotten it, separated it from the origin point, as they moved on in their lives until it came back in peripheral ways, sense memories, and unarticulated references.
One of Eric’s first auditions had been for a Shakespeare play, The Tempest, in a high school production. He’d wanted to play Ferdinand since he was, in a way, the leading man. Yet he had some of the most tangled lines, some of the strangest syntax. And so he’d been pouting instead of practising, tossing basketballs into the net with more strength than it required, and muttering the lines, horribly mangled, under his breath.
Cosmin had been home. He was across the street, getting out of his car, when he heard the familiar lines. He’d been teaching The Tempest. He had it in his leather satchel, and his annotated pages, his already deep understanding of the character motivations of the scene made Eric feel inferior as a sophomore who just wanted people to love him on the stage.
But still, Cosmin came over. He insisted on helping. “I’ll be Miranda. You be Ferdinand.”
So they practised, and practised, and when Eric thought he had finally acted like enough of a petulant child to get Cosmin to leave, he’d whipped out a crumbled exam booklet and they’d done the can’t exercise together.
“Remove all the can’ts from your lexicon. You must always make space for what you can do,” Eric said now as a thirty-something, parroting that time period when he’d been barely fifteen himself. “And not for what you can’t.”
Cosmin nodded. He touched Eric’s phone, as if it was emblematic of Christopher and the new responsibility on Eric’s shoulder. “You do not need to feel bad about this.”
“I stole from you.”
“You made an impact. And before you say that you stole that impact, I want to tell you that sentiment is simply not true. All advice is stolen because it works, and therefore it ceases to be owned. It becomes eternal, proverbial, and belongs to everyone who’ll listen. You listened. Christopher listened. And before there was you, it was me, listening to that advice from someone else. I’m pretty sure I took that from a university professor who probably took it from Chicken Soup for the Soul who probably took it from Viktor Frankl who probably took it from The Essays of Montaigne. It doesn’t matter, Eric. The first source we hear the advice from is luck, blind hope, dumb chance. What matters is who it affects, and how it’s spread, and how it becomes a story.” Cosmin’s dark eyes were bright. “This is exactly what I want for my show. This kind of story. It’s downright illogical, but also beautiful.”
Eric let out a breath. “Yeah, you’re telling me. I can’t understand it.”
“But you must. That is the point. And by telling it on the show, you’ll assign meaning to it and prove the show’s entire point. The luck turns into intention and it spreads. And you’ll have something that’s all your own.”
Eric glanced at the phone. He wanted Cosmin to be right—about meaning, but also about having something. The lawyer had been deliberately evasive about the amount in the estate, which made sense, since Eric was a stranger. The lawyer needed to see Eric and verify he had the right man before he laid out the inheritance in starker terms. For all Eric knew, the kid could be gifting him his entire collection of troll dolls or buttons or something equally weird.
Or it could be a house. It could be enough cash to start over. It could be a trunk of gold in the basement, next to the body of Jimmy Hoffa, and he could live off the compound interest for the rest of his life. Eric swallowed, not realizing just how trapped he’d felt in Waterloo, with Cameron, with his dead-end career. Without any kind of start-up cash or safety net, he always had to accept what happened to him. And after Trina, he’d believed he deserved so much of that blind happenstance.
But maybe, like Cosmin had said, his marriage had ended for human reasons. He had made a mistake, but so had millions of other people. Maybe the meaning in the divorce wasn’t th
at he was a failure, but someone who deserved the love he wanted, and deserved to seek it out on his own terms, and so the relationship he had which did not meet those needs for either party had ended. Maybe he was worthwhile. A dying teenager had remembered him. Maybe that was enough meaning before he could start making his own.
Eric drank from the cup of hot chocolate that was now more like chocolate milk. Cosmin rubbed his back and chatted aimlessly about what he’d been envisioning for his final episode. Eric didn’t really hear it. He realized he didn’t really care. If Cosmin wanted him to tell this story, that was fine, but what he wanted most of all was for Cosmin to be a part of it. None of this would have happened without him.
A ripple went through the small crowd in the community room. Cheers erupted from those around the hot chocolate stand, close to the entrance window, which looked out into the parking lot. The lights for one part of the street had come on again. The power was slowly creeping back, and life was being restored.
“Celebrating still seems premature.” Cosmin held his phone in his hand and idly scrolled through messages as it charged. “I’ve learned my lesson from before and won’t be breezy until I see that streetcars are working. Toronto still seems shut down.”
“Little victories, I suppose.”
“A drugstore may be open, though.” Cosmin glanced up from his screen with a sly grin. “What do you think?”
Eric nodded right away. His last fantasy fully felt. He didn’t want to think of it as an ending, though, so he sprang into action. “My mom and dad are being redirected to Ottawa,” he explained in a clipped fashion. “They’re taking a plane there, and my aunt Berta’s tagging along. Margo’s trying to work her way over to Ottawa like she’d originally planned to be with Dana and her kids. So, really, it’s going to be one big family Christmas after all. They want me to take a car, and if I can, drive up tomorrow with the presents that are under our tree.”
Cosmin nodded along, tracking all the names and details that seemed somewhat familiar. “That sounds feasible from the weather reports I’ve heard so far. We are truly out of the worst of it now. Some roads might be icier as you move out of the city and towards the north, but knowing your luck so far, you will probably be fine.”
“Yeah... Are you still getting that drink with your friend?”
“Yes. She’s been texting me too, asking how I’m faring... I’ve been evasive.”
“Same.”
Another moment passed with them drinking hot chocolate and charging their phones in silence. Soon, though, Cosmin’s hand crept over Eric’s back. He melted into the touch. He wanted more of it. Cosmin pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, whispering a quick, “Let’s go.”
Eric’s phone was not fully charged. He still had yet to reply to so many messages. So much had happened in such a short period of time—and still so much more needed to occur. Time itself became ice; only a degree difference would warm and flood or freeze and shut them out again. Only so much more time together could also occur before both needed to depart for good.
But it’s not an ending. It’s not an ending yet, because I still have no idea what it means.
* * *
He felt like a teenager buying condoms from the corner store while Cosmin lingered outside. And this, he knew, was precisely the point. The street had come alive again with activity and people; lights were on and the holiday was back in swing. It was a slower version of the holiday, since everything was still solidly covered in ice, and people did not yet want to get hopes so high to have them dashed to pieces, but the earth was emerging again.
And like that original moody teenager, all Eric wanted to do was shut out the world in his bedroom.
Cosmin was more than eager to play along. The two of them had never been teenagers at the same time, but it didn’t matter. Eric kissed Cosmin on the mouth. He tasted him. He let the world fall away. Cosmin was firm as he pressed Eric against the bedroom wall, now painted an eggshell blue rather than the darker palette it had once been.
Cosmin’s fingers and palms explored and pressed into Eric’s chest and thighs as if it was the first time all over. Eric liked the thought of newness and wondered how different his life would have been if it had been Cosmin, not Billy, in bed with him for the loss of his own virginity with men.
“Can I fuck you?” he asked, trailing kisses from Cosmin’s neck to his ear. “I want to fuck you.”
Cosmin nodded and brought their mouths together.
Eric pulled apart. “Say it out loud.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Say my name with it.”
“Fuck me, Eric.”
“Oh fuck.” Eric shuddered. Words would be the death of him. But even the erotica novels he sometimes narrated didn’t seem quite as erotic as this. The wistfulness of his bedroom, where his first desires were forged, was brought into sharper focus as Cosmin stripped. He lay back on the bed naked, his cock red and straining against the dark thatch of his pubic hair.
Eric slipped out of his clothing—now permanently smelling of sex, he was convinced—and got on top of Cosmin. They rocked their bodies together, hands and mouths exploring before Eric used his knee to open Cosmin’s thighs. He groaned. Eric added his mouth to his cock and Cosmin became undone again. He slipped fingers between, exploring and probing, before he got the condoms they bought.
Cosmin angled himself on the bed, chest to the wall, his ass displayed for Eric. The separation of their bodies as Eric readied himself was chilling. The room was cold from lack of heat. Though it’d rattled on as they stepped in the door, it would take a long time for the house to recover after so long without sustained power.
Eric forgot all thoughts of cold as he slipped next to Cosmin’s body. His back was aflame with desire. He turned to look over his shoulder as Eric’s lips met his. Then Eric slipped inside. Cosmin let out a breath which tapered off into a moan. Eric moved inside him, feeling him out. He held up Cosmin’s leg when it seemed like too much and thrust his hips more.
It was awkward. It was weird not seeing Cosmin’s face, not seeing his cock strain against his belly. When he reached around and found Cosmin was only half hard, Eric knew this position wouldn’t work.
“Face me,” Eric said.
Cosmin didn’t move. Eric pulled out and nuzzled Cosmin’s neck. He moved in between his legs, smile on his face. He pressed a kiss to Cosmin’s thigh, then his mouth. Cosmin bloomed between his lips. And when Eric backed up so he could enter him again, Cosmin seemed more ready than before. Now he really was fucking Cosmin on his teenage bed. Goddamn it, it was the hottest thing in the world.
He pressed his mouth against Cosmin again, trying to last longer, but it was a futile effort. He was done in a matter of minutes.
Which, again, made him feel like a teenager. Which, once again, made time slip towards something more pliable rather than something that was always passing, passing, passing away.
When Cosmin’s arms came around to hold him inside longer, Eric stayed. Their gazes met and desire was gone. Something more pronounced was there, something akin to longing, but lacking the precise word. Eric threaded his hand around Cosmin’s cock and brought him to orgasm.
Yet it wasn’t what either one of them wanted. Not at all, not even once—because, once complete, once the bodily movement had passed, so had the rest of the fantasy. It was now over, done and gone, solid yet always, horribly, incomplete.
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
Cosmin sat on the bed the next morning. After spending another night together, this time in Eric’s old bedroom, they’d woken to find the ice still present on most surfaces, but the power now on. Some salt trucks had been on the main roads around the enclave where their parents had lived, and residents had done their best to thaw the sidewalks and pathways around their houses. The
world was waking up again slowly, and Eric could feel the tension between them. As he’d made breakfast and coffee, Cosmin had showered. He was now dressing with a slow alacrity, buttoning up his shirt as if he was learning it for the first time, and the subdued actions had, at first, given Eric hope for something more. Blind hope, he was learning, but it had been nice while it lasted. Maybe Cosmin wanted to stay longer with him, rather than skip breakfast and get to his condo right away. Maybe instead of playing catch-up with his parents and sisters, he and Cosmin could shut out the world and not bother with any of this.
But that was never going to be the case.
“I can’t throw out the journals,” Cosmin said. He met Eric’s gaze as he straightened his collar and then turned away to examine his own open palm. Eric sat on the bed with him, since it was clear that they weren’t going to share coffee together. Eric made sure to leave inches between their bodies. “I know you’re right about it. If I hold on to them, I’m no better than my father. I become Prospero from The Tempest.”
“How so?” Eric asked.
“Prospero lives his life in books. Miranda loves Ferdinand mostly because he’s the first man she’s seen who isn’t her father. Then the other men from the shipwreck come, and she’s surrounded by beautiful and wonderful people, an entire new world, not one contained in books.” Cosmin sighed. “I know the world is brave and beautiful and it could dazzle me as it does her. I know that to keep Prospero’s books is to keep the island. Yet to throw them out is to throw out my own inheritance. I’m... I’m the last one in my family. I’m the last alive.”
Cosmin’s voice trembled. Eric squeezed his hand and assured him with a quiet plea. He felt a familiar pang in his chest he tried not to dwell on. He remembered the play, absolutely everything about it. I’m not Ferdinand. I’m the brave new world. And I’m all the characters at once.
