Two Hearts

by David Connor

  Liam looked confused.

  "When I point to you, you sing. Okay?"

  Liam said not a word, as the scratching sound started ahead of the introduction to James Brown.

  "Get ready. I'll point." Frank did. "Oops. We missed that one. Next time, when he says 'feel,' you say what you say when I asked if you liked spaghetti."

  After the first time through the hook, with Frank's explanation, a light seemed to come on behind Liam's eyes. He smiled.

  "Now you're getting it. Ready? Here it comes again." Frank waited, then pointed.

  "Good," Liam said, right on cue.

  It made Frank chuckle, and made Liam grin, as they waited the short time for Brown to get to the word again. Frank pointed.

  "Good."

  They both laughed. "Now pay attention. Here comes two in a row." Frank pointed.

  "Good."

  "Bum! Bum!"

  "Good."

  Frank banged the brass instrumental part out on top of the TV, and then they sang together the rest of the song—four times.

  "And I've got you too, huh?" Frank asked at the end the last playing.

  Liam nodded.

  The water finally boiled, so the singing had to end. "So I was just sitting there," Frank said, telling Liam about the day the lightning hit him as he stirred in the pasta. "Ash, Maple, Oak… I was pointing skyward, identifying trees for creatures who already knew them better than I." Once the water started bubbling again, he got Liam's comb out and pushed it across the table reminded by the long, yellowish noodles Liam's hair was still a mess. "It was the Fourth of July, a day eerily still. Not a creature was stirring. I know," Frank said, trying the joke once again, "wrong time of year." The response was only slightly better than the first time he'd cracked it. Either Liam didn't get the reference, or else it wasn't funny. "You know, like The Night Before Christmas?"

  Liam nodded. He knew. It just wasn't funny.

  "Anyway, I've come across articles in several reference books that state a person gets a tingle before the strike. The hair on one's head stands up, these supposed experts claim, like yours is now. I can't help but wonder which ones wrote from experience and which ones purely hypothesized. I lived it, and it does in fact seem accurate. I sort of recall the goose bumps and a prickle. Even though I didn't know what was going to happen, I had a weird sort of feeling that something was about to."

  Liam listened intently, as he tried to run the comb through his stiff, wayward locks.

  "I took the orange from the paper bag I'd taken my lunch in to work."

  "G-good."

  Frank turned from stirring and smiled. "Yes. Good. I do like oranges. Apples too… and grapes. Tomorrow we'll get some grapes. I'll feed them to you like a seal. Arf! Arf! Arf!" Frank barked and clapped his elbows together like flippers, and Liam laughed. "So I peeled it and sucked down the juice. Mmm—"

  "Good."

  "But not that good. The reaction of my body came from something more primitive, an oral stimulation and action that brought something more sensual to mind."

  "Good."

  Frank smiled. He blushed a bit. If the Clement Moore reference hadn't gone over Liam's head, perhaps the ribald one hadn't either. "Anyway, I… Well, I was touching myself when it happened." Frank looked at the floor but glanced up for a reaction. "Touching myself in a way men sometimes do." He waited for "Good." It didn't come. He figured Liam's amnesia may have taken away any memories of masturbation after all, and so he moved on. "All of a sudden—Boom!" Liam jumped, and Frank turned toward him. He put both hands on the table and leaned in as close as he dared, to intensify the tale. He was still a good three feet away, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. "My limbs stiffened like a corpse gone rigor mortis. My eyes rolled back so I could see my own eyebrows from the inside." Frank smiled. "Okay, not really. My heart jumped around like a fish out of water, though, and the prickling sensation was like a thousand vengeful honeybees all stinging me at once. I fell over, conscious, but dazed. The rain pummeled me then, and I thought I might drown like an unfortunate, addlebrained turkey in the yard, because I couldn't close my mouth, though no words would come out of it."

  Liam's mouth was just as wide. Not a sound came from his either.

  "I slept after that. Not too long, I guess. Then I woke up and came home." Frank moved back to the little gas stove. "It's still in me somehow, even though an entire year has passed." He counted on his fingers from July a year ago to that October. "Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen months. Sometimes it still makes me angry." Frank looked at the boiling water, then went on. "I tempted it a couple of times since. 'Go ahead. Take me. What do I have to lose? Who would miss me if I died'?"

  "Me."

  Frank spun around, surprised. "You?"

  "Me."

  "You would miss me?"

  "Me."

  Frank swiped at his glasses, fogged up from the steam of the boiling pasta. "Well, you didn't know me then. And you don't know me very well now." He smiled, his vision still blurry. "I'll be damned." Frank's glasses weren't the only things moist. "I talk too much." He rubbed his eyes.

  "Good."

  Frank chuckled. "You may not be saying that in a day or two. So, even though I had a taste in my mouth like the smell of your father's ashtray… Ew."

  "Ew." Liam's one-syllable words were coming fast now.

  "Definitely. But that seemed to be the worst once I awoke. When I told your father, he was rather distraught. And… I guess I know why." For the very first time, Frank made the connection. The other person Vaughn knew who'd been afflicted after being struck—Ivan—that explained why he had reacted the way he had. Was Ivan Vaughn's friend or acquaintance, his protégé or a lover, perhaps? Whoever he was, maybe Vaughn had been on the lookout from that day on for similar symptoms in Frank. But why hadn't he just asked, Frank wondered? Frank would have to find out—if Vaughn and Marion ever returned. They planned on coming back, didn't they, or were they gone for good? The way events were unfolding, that troubling outcome was certainly possible.

  Liam cleared his throat.

  "Oh. Yes. I got lost in my thoughts. Where was I?" There was no point worrying about what might happen when there was enough going on presently to keep them fretting dawn until dusk. "Hmm. I remember. Your father. That was it. 'Get into zee bed!'" Frank faked Vaughn's accent, which seemed to tickle Liam. "No! Stay avake. You might have zee concussion!"

  Liam laughed hard. This was, by far, it seemed, his favorite part of the story.

  "He called me before the birds even woke the next morning. 'You did not phone. I vas worried'."

  Liam chuckled.

  "I was sleeping, I told him. 'Vhat! You should not have done that! Vhy you don't listen to me?'" Frank drained the pasta, dropped it into a bowl, and added heated up sauce leftover from another night. Liam licked his lips. He must have been hungry. "Two more minutes," Frank told him.

  "More."

  "More sauce?"

  Liam shook his head.

  "More story?"

  Liam nodded.

  "Hmm. What happened next? Oh. I know. Buzz, buzz, buzz… As I'm conversing with your father, this incredibly bothersome insect, as big as a hummingbird, is droning in my ear. He lights upon the window pane. I reach my hand up to catch him in it. Zap!"

  Liam jumped again.

  "Firefly? No!" Frank shook his head for effect, and Liam's eyes grew wide. "Fly on fire. I electrocuted the thing. Poof!"

  Liam gasped.

  "I know!" Frank set down the pasta bowl, then gathered a loaf of bread, some butter, plates, plastic silverware, and a dozen napkins. "Spaghetti can be messy," he said, sitting down. "So, I took to my bed for a while, stopped washing, and when I peed I wore a catcher's mitt on my hand as not to bring harm to my… you know." He embellished a bit for humorous effect. "But after a while boredom and other things got the best of me, and, long story short… I know, too late, huh?"

  Liam moved his head side to side.

  "You're
too kind. I do drone on. But here's the dirty part. I can still… touch myself." Frank ran his hand up and down the long handle of the wooden spoon, simulating the act. "To bathe and… other things." He continued to wonder if Liam was able to pick up on what "other things" meant.

  "Good," Liam said. Apparently he got the reference to self-pleasure, maybe from Frank fondling the spoon. That actually deterred Frank from going further. He changed the subject.

  "I have to be careful around metal—even doorknobs and such. I have none now. No need to lock things up here anyway. I took a baseball bat to them and then kicked them out the door with rubber sole boots."

  Liam looked at the door.

  "Overkill, perhaps. Some metal is okay, but why take chances? Plastic… wood is better. What I know, what I rely on from simple science, is the knowledge that wood is not an electrical conductor. I can touch wood. Wood can touch me."

  "W-wood."

  "Yes. You know what is not good like wood?" Frank made a face. "People, sadly. Animals too. Certain living beings are conduits for current. So, as for touching other people—Vaughn, Marion… Renny… Unfortunately, I will most likely never be able to do so again. It is particularly sad that I have never been able to touch you even once."

  "S-s-sad."

  "Yes, Liam. Very sad." Frank drew in a breath. "Let us dine."

  It was fortunate neither man had put a shirt back on. Spaghetti was one of those meals Frank could never eat without dripping or dropping. He liked it on a sandwich, weird as that might be. Eating a wad of spaghetti between two slices of white bread with butter was never going to be a neat endeavor. It was, however, a delicious one, and therefore Frank decided to introduce it to Liam. Frank filled up a folded slice with pasta and set it upon Liam's plate. He then picked up his, twisting his head to the side for a great big chomp.

  "Your turn," Frank said with his mouth full. By the time it was over, both grown men looked more like highchair toddlers captured with a brand new Polaroid after their first try at feeding themselves. Frank's too-soft bread had split. The spaghetti filling had plopped right onto his chest. Liam had torn his sandwich apart purposely then. Both laughed and ate spaghetti off their laps with their hands. Marion would have beaten them silly with the Sunday newspaper had she been there, as the "normal" one was no cleaner than the one supposedly regressed. Liam wasn't slow, though. Not at all. His verbal skills might have still been lacking, but he was a normal adult man in every other way. He was a silly, unconstrained one who wore his heart on his sleeve, but he was a man, just as Vaughn had said. Frank was some of those things as well, and envied the characteristics in Liam missing in him.

  When Frank started to clear the table, Liam objected with a shake of his head. He picked up the big pasta bowl and pointed to himself. Maybe it had been one of his chores at home. So, Frank sat and relaxed, back in the hallway, to let Liam take charge of the cleanup.

  "I realize," Frank said, as Liam ran water into the sink for dishes, "I know so little about you. Where were you born? Here or in Europe?"

  Liam looked perplexed.

  "I have an idea," Frank said. He stood and went to the tiny bedroom for the atlas. After cleaning a spot on the table with a dishtowel from the fridge handle, he set the book down and opened it to the first image, a two-page spread of the entire world. "Come—but not too close. Show me where you have been. Here." Frank picked up the washed and dried wooden spoon. "Use this to point."

  He slid it toward Liam, who wiped his hands on his pants and stepped toward the map. After studying it quietly for several seconds while stroking the phallic handle of the spoon, Liam looked at Frank, bewildered or maybe aroused.

  "Okay." Frank took a deep breath. "Perhaps that was too difficult a place to commence our familiarization process. Oops." He offered a crooked grin. "There I go again. How about we start with your middle name? If only your parents had sent your birth certificate. Do you have a wallet? A driver's license?"

  Liam shrugged.

  "Mmm. A question for your father anon. Tomorrow. Let's say tomorrow. Next week, actually. You drove a car, I presume. Unless you were with someone else when your acc—" Bringing that up might be cruel, so Frank moved on. "Okay then, what is your middle name?"

  Liam formed his lips into some sort of response, but no sound came out.

  "Umm… Wilbur. Liam Wilbur Hellier."

  Liam shook his head, with a grin.

  "No, huh? Vaughn… after your father?"

  Another negative response.

  "Franklin!"

  "You… F-ank-win."

  "Yes. I'm Franklin." And he was also astonished at what was almost a complete sentence. "I thought maybe you were as well. Hmm… David?"

  "No."

  Frank wondered if Liam even recalled his middle name. If he could almost say "Franklin", he should have been able to say it, whatever it was. "Peter, Oscar, Fred, Allister, Adam, George, Walter, Lawrence." Frank got a chill, and it wasn't from a draft. "Not Lawrence," he said.

  "No," Liam agreed.

  "Well, you're Liam. Liam the Lion, Love 'em and Liam, Liamardo Da Vinci."

  Liam laughed, possibly only because Frank had. He reached for the atlas afterwards, and flipped a few pages. Stopping on the page for Africa, Liam touched it with his finger.

  "Have you been to Africa?"

  Liam offered a negative response.

  "Would you like to go?"

  Liam shrugged.

  "They're going to the moon soon. Astronauts in outer space," Frank said in an eerie voice. "Would you like to go to the moon?"

  Liam said no with a twist of his head.

  "Me neither. At one time I might have signed right up. What did Earth have to offer me? Not now, though."

  Liam nodded once, so Frank mimicked him this time. "What then? Would you like me to read it to you?"

  An affirmative answer came to that.

  "Will do." Liam went back to his task, as Frank began to read. "'Africa is the second largest continent in the world and is considered by most to be the birthplace of all humankind'. Maybe that is where you were born," Frank teased. "'There are two hundred and fifty-three million, nine hundred eighty-seven thousand people in Africa'. Whoa! And this is from…" Frank closed the atlas and looked at the cover page. "1955. In almost ten years since, I'm sure there are more," he said, as if he were a teacher and Liam his student. "So many people in the world, Liam, and I know so few." Liam was looking at him. Frank smiled. "I'm glad I know you now."

  "Liam… glad."

  Frank was still smiling. "Good. Now no more talking," he jested, waving a finger, like a strict Geography professor. "We're learning."

  "Lear-a-ning."

  "Very good. Gold star. You're learning really…" Frank took a breath. "Really fast." He cleared his throat and his mind. "'Africa borders several bodies of water, including the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.'"

  Soon, the kitchen was neat and tidy and both men knew more about Africa than they would ever have need to recount. Liam even washed the coffee pot and set it up for morning. Maybe Marion had done it that way. Frank wondered why he had never thought of it. Liam was quite the enigma—what he knew, how he thought, the things he did so naturally, and those he struggled with.

  It was determined Liam would use the bathroom first to clean up for bedtime. He took his shower while Frank put sheets on the sofa and watched the latest episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on The American Broadcasting Company network.

  David Nelson, that was who Liam reminded Frank of. David was an all-American, California blond good boy according to the covers of Hollywood magazines Frank had seen at the gas station store. They were even the same age, though the all-American part was still up in the air. David's character was married on the show, as he was in real life. Liam might be someday too. Maybe he had been. Frank would have to ask.

  Liam walked into the living room wrapped in a towel just as Frank reached out to touch David's gray image as it moved across the sc
reen. The show was in color now, for all the good it did Frank with a black and white set. He swallowed hard, trying not to stare, as his houseguest tugged at his rather large protrusion. The light crackle of electrified dust at Frank's fingertips didn't scare him now. He actually found it erotic.

  "Ready for bed, Liam?" he asked. "I, uh, figured you could have the bedroom, and I'll take the couch. That is the most hospitable thing for a gracious host to do, after all."

  There was very little extra space in the twenty-six-foot Whitely Thrifty not taken up by furniture. Liam was close enough for Frank to see the water droplets still shimmering on the back of his neck. He could smell the shampoo Liam had used, and could feel the heat coming off of him. He could definitely see Liam finger his erection where the towel didn't quite come together in front.

  "Yeah, Liam," Frank said, his own member starting to grow. "It's a normal biological, anatomical reaction." What would Ozzie or Harriet say if David started masturbating in the living room? "Granted, there are those less evolved who would argue that, in so much as it pertains to a pair of men with certain feelings toward one another. 1965 in some ways is less evolved than ancient days." Frank swallowed again, his feelings, more words. "But, um, it's supposed to do that."

  Liam smiled. He knew. Frank knew he knew. Liam's inhibitions, even as the rest of his skills improved by the minute almost, still hadn't come—or come back—be it due to upbringing, heritage, or his brain injury. He would have some someday. Eventually. Maybe.

  "I'm going to, um… take my turn in the shower," Frank said. "You get into bed. We have a very early morning." That was sort of a fib. They could tend to the cemetery whenever they wished. "Go to sleep, now. Goodnight, Liam."

  "Good n-ight." Liam frowned, but Frank ignored it. He headed for the bathroom, well aware he would only have cold water until the heater warmed up a new batch of hot. That, as it turned out, was a good thing.