Julian had gone very still. He was staring at the Chevrolet under the carport, red paint and windshield glazed with dust. Henry pulled up beside it, parking with scrupulous precision between the white chalk lines.
“I thought you sold it.”
Henry sighed and zipped his Dartmouth crew jacket up to the chin.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said. “For your birthday. But by then things were already so . . . Well, anyway. I was proud of you for finally getting your license. And it’ll be a saleable asset—which you’re going to need, if you insist on behaving this way.”
Hectoring and unsentimental as the act was in its particulars, the love behind it was starkly clear, but Julian couldn’t seem to make sense of it. He didn’t move until Henry, barely hiding his impatience, reached into the back seat to hand him the keys.
The luggage that had fit easily into Henry’s trunk became an awkward jumble in the back seat of the coupe. The vents yielded a musty bovine smell from weeks of disuse. Paul didn’t want to be privy to their goodbyes, so he waited in the passenger seat and folded himself narrow. His purpose now was to be small, even if it meant driving himself from his own body. Whatever Julian needed from him now, it wasn’t strength or courage or even anger; he’d rejected that in favor of something any other devotee could have given him. Paul felt his own presence as if from a distance. He was beside the point, easily taken apart and even more easily replaced, whether or not Julian actually wanted to do it.
Neither Julian nor Henry had much to say. They mumbled between long silences, arms folded, pointedly not touching. Eventually they each nodded curtly, and Henry retreated to his car. He didn’t wait around to watch them leave.
By the time Julian settled into the driver’s seat, his brother’s taillights were already waiting at the mouth of the drive. A brief pause to watch for traffic, then he was gone. Julian had fixed his attention on adjusting the mirrors; Paul was the only one who saw him go.
Carefully, as if he didn’t trust the car not to spin out of control, Julian shifted gears. He had to pause to remember how to turn on the windshield wipers; in the moment before they clicked to life Paul thought he saw the crescent of a bruise on Julian’s cheek, but it was only the shadow of a raindrop’s impact on the glass.
“What did my mother say to you?”
It was the first time Julian had addressed him directly since they left. He still didn’t meet Paul’s eyes; he spoke very quietly.
“Nothing.” He knew Julian could tell he was lying, but he couldn’t tell the truth without having to feel it. “Nothing important.”
Julian set his jaw and straightened his back. He’d wanted an excuse to be wounded and defensive, and had fully expected that Paul would give him one. At first Paul thought he was infuriated at being denied; he could see the imperfections in the studied blankness of Julian’s face, and he braced to find anger underneath. When he felt himself being watched, Julian finally met his eyes, and there was such vicious bitterness in his face that Paul nearly recoiled. But it was only an imitation of anger, desperate and grasping, nothing like the real thing.
When Paul tried to touch him, Julian shoved him away. He seemed to regret it instantly—brusquely, without apology, he put his arm around Paul’s neck and looked away from the road just long enough to kiss his forehead. Paul rested his head on Julian’s shoulder and listened to the movement of the air through his chest. Ragged but steady, still in control. It had been disrespectful of Paul to doubt that he would be, and worse that he still wished Julian would fall apart for him.
“I can’t remember,” said Julian. “The town where we’re going to live, is it in Vermont or Maine?”
He’d nearly forgotten about their northern college town, the factory windows and autumn sunlight that was to be their reward at the end of their game. Julian shouldn’t have reminded him. Paul wanted to forget that he’d ever thought it possible to suture the cut that separated them, to tether themselves together and then hold still.
“One of those,” he said, and he tried to close himself off to the yearning. But it was already inside him, deep in his marrow, and he couldn’t pretend not to feel it.
The car emerged onto the highway, alone between the sprawling tidal flats and the low gray sky. Paul listed all the ways death could find them in that moment, while they were still young and bright and certain of each other. It found them in the wreckage of an accident, the pain shattering and quick. It found them in a smear of atomic light in the sky over Washington, and the world preparing to die with them as they sat on the hood of the car, hand in hand, waiting. It found them together in the inlet waters beneath a bridge, their bodies tied to each other at the wrist.
But they would keep driving, and Julian would switch on the radio, and Paul would page through the road atlas in search of a route home that accommodated Julian’s skittish dislike of the interstate. There would be no stillness, no permanence. There couldn’t be. Paul wasn’t strong enough to hold Julian in place. All there was to him was that desperate, wretched need; the weakness was unforgivable. The fantasy of the house fire had brought them to an impossible truth. They could only stitch themselves back together if they did something irreversible.
Part III
1.
In mid-August, the night the meteor shower reached its peak, they took the rural route into the foothills. Julian parked in the tall dry grass at the side of the road. He leaned on the driver’s-side door and watched, heckling, while Paul spent twenty minutes adjusting the feet of the telescope stand. As the last sunlight faded they sat side by side on the bumper, working through their respective six-packs of ginger ale and Dr Pepper, until they could only see each other by moonlight. They were alone in the country darkness. Hours went by without a single passing car. The nearest farmhouse was a mile across the valley, a lone chip of light against the black.
It was the first real time they’d spent together since the start of summer. For weeks Paul had seen very little of him, because Julian refused to let him close enough that the effort might show. “Getting by” had to look like a series of easy victories, and only now had there been enough of them that Julian could devote his attention to anything else. The work-study job at the campus library, the cheap one-room walk-up in lieu of a dorm room—he’d assembled a tidy new life for himself, and once he had it, he pulled Paul abruptly back in from arm’s length, as carelessly as if the distance had never been there.
Paul wasn’t relieved and he couldn’t quite force himself to pretend he was, but at least now the two of them could fall back into each other’s orbit. Paul could lie on the hood of the car with Julian’s arm around his shoulders, under a breathtaking sky that could still never blaze as bright as Julian did. He could watch the moon-painted curls of smoke leaving Julian’s lips—one of those new, cheaper cigarettes he’d switched to without comment, hoping perhaps that Paul wouldn’t notice the slight change in the taste of his mouth. They could talk to each other without grazing any open wounds, and somehow Julian could act as if there was nothing there to avoid at all. In that moment they were so close to the way they’d been before that Paul could almost believe it was the same.
They drove back to the city in the small hours of the morning, thick warm air sliding through the open windows. The heat shone through Julian’s skin, down the length of his arms and the elegant angle where his wrists met his hands. It can always be like this, Paul tried to promise himself. But he’d never believed it, even before Mrs. Fromme told him he shouldn’t.
They were deep past the city limits when Julian finally broke the silence. “I’ve got a good one,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
Julian looked sideways just long enough to smile. The late hour and the long drive had made him languid and calm. “So you talk yourself into the subject’s bedroom—”
“I do?”
“General ‘you,’ you square.” Julian rubbed one eye with the back of his wrist. “You tie him to the bedpost, then you
empty his wallet and knock a candle onto the bed on your way out. Looks like he just got screwed over by a one-night stand.”
“Your ideas are always too showy,” Paul said, though he also found them so endearingly vindictive that he couldn’t mind. “What if someone saw you together? What if he doesn’t behave exactly the way you need him to? It has too many variables.”
“You’re such a drag, Pablo.”
They never mentioned their first idea. In the light of day it had flaws enough, but Paul didn’t want to dissect what was already dead. It was better to leave it in the summer, along with the unburnt house and the letters too painful to reread and every other thing they had consigned to silence. With the Frommes out of reach, their target was constantly shifting. It was always “the subject,” a hateful ever-changing him—someone who by callousness or malice had earned the privilege of being killed, though he had never touched the nerves they both wanted to forget ever feeling.
They could never approach the perfection of the house fire, even if their newer techniques were objectively more sound. It had become an idle game, a chance to enjoy each other’s cleverness. But it reminded Paul what they were capable of, even as everything else between them was riddled with the unspoken.
“Needle’s getting close to empty.” Paul folded his arms and watched the amber gleam of passing streetlights glide over Julian’s face and hands. “Tonight was my idea, you should let me pay to fill up.”
“Nice try,” said Julian, drowsy and unconcerned. “It’s nothing, I liked having a chance to get out of the city—”
The interior of the car was suddenly alight with red and blue. Swinging out of a cross street not far behind them, a police siren gave a single, yowling cry.
Julian sat up straight and turned in his seat. “Fuck. Fuck, I’m not even speeding!”
“It’s fine, just pull over. He might only want you to get out of his way.”
But when Julian brought the car to a nervous halt, the police car pulled over behind them. It occurred to Paul abruptly that they might actually look suspicious in the dark. Bundled in the back seat, the telescope resembled a sniper’s rifle, as if they were a pair of contract killers fleeing the scene of an assassination.
“Christ.” Julian had gone very tense. “Do I get my license out yet?”
“No, wait, put your hands on the steering wheel and don’t do anything unless he tells you.”
The officer left his roof lights on as he picked along the crumbling shoulder. He was middle-aged, about as old as Paul’s father would have been. He had tired eyes and a thick mustache. The name nowak was embroidered at his breast. Even if Paul had met him before, he was too much like every other beat cop in the city to summon any specific memory.
Julian took a moment to find the officer’s eyes in the dark past the glare of the flashlight. “Is my taillight out?” he asked. He offered a conciliatory, apologetic smile, and Paul realized with a lurch of panic that Julian was planning to treat the officer like any other adult in a position of authority—he was going to be earnest and cheerful and self-deprecating, every unthreatening quality that Paul’s mother was charmed by and that a police officer would regard with instant suspicion.
Nowak didn’t answer the question. The faint shape of his face grew grim in a way that made Julian shrink back in his seat.
“You boys know what time it is?” He asked it flatly, as if he didn’t expect an answer so much as an excuse.
“We’re just heading home.” Julian still hadn’t abandoned the persona, though it was unraveling at the edges. He glanced reflexively at his watch and smiled again. “There was a meteor shower we wanted to watch, we had to head out past the smog to be able to see it.”
“A meteor shower.”
“The Perseids.” Paul couldn’t tell if Julian thought the name would jog the officer’s memory, or if he just thought it was a disarmingly eggheaded thing to say. When neither proved true, he spoke again, voice audibly pitching with nerves. “They happen every year. It’s—”
“You were just . . . out looking at the stars. That’s your story.”
Paul had awful visions of a night spent in lockup with the local hustlers and drunkards—of the telescope, which had cost his grandfather a small fortune, wasting away in an evidence locker until it made its way to a police auction. He had to say something before Julian could make the situation worse.
“Don’t mind my friend, he’s never talked to a cop before.”
Paul’s voice was so firm and self-assured that Julian turned to stare at him. The beam of the flashlight moved from Julian’s face to Paul’s, and he was all but blinded by it. “Listen,” he said. “Do you know Frank Malone?”
A long silence. The flashlight wavered just barely.
“You could’ve made that up,” the officer said finally. “Enough cops on the force named Malone. What’s he supposed to be, your dad? That red hair don’t make you look Irish.”
“Ha, ha. He was my dad’s captain.” It didn’t occur to him to be surprised at his own easy candor until he saw that Julian’s mouth had fallen open slightly in shock. “His name was Jakob Fleischer, badge number five-one-eight-four. I don’t know Malone’s off the top of my head, but I think he’s still at the—”
“Jake Fleischer?” The officer lowered his flashlight and dipped toward the window to get a better look at him. “Your dad is Jake Fleischer?”
“Was,” Paul corrected, but Nowak ignored him and gave a sudden bark of a laugh.
“Jesus,” he said, “I remember you. I bet you really were fucking stargazing, straight-A student and everything.”
Paul felt his mouth pull into a grin. “Yes,” he said, “we really were fucking stargazing.” He wished suddenly that he wasn’t telling the truth—that he was helping them get away with some beautiful crime.
Between them, Julian held very still. But Nowak was no longer paying Julian any attention. He straightened again, bracing his forearm on the roof of the car.
“Listen, you kids better head straight home.” Nowak was as gruff and dispassionate as he’d been at first, but all the suspicion was gone. “Couple teenagers out late in a flashy red car—looks like trouble, and not everyone’s going to remember your dad.”
“We will,” Paul promised. Nowak sent them on their way with a wave, and an admonishment to Paul to look after his Ma.
They were across the river before either of them spoke. Julian’s hands shivered as he lit a cigarette.
“I’ve never seen you like that before,” said Julian. “Not once.”
Giving Julian a moment of novelty meant there were still parts of Paul he hadn’t seen. As long as these moments still happened, Paul could almost trust Julian not to tire of him.
“It seems like a waste, though, doesn’t it?” he said. “Getting out of trouble when we weren’t really getting into trouble at all.”
“The night is young.” Julian’s mouth tilted into a grin. “There’s still time.”
2.
It was only when classes began at the end of August that it became clear how much time together they were losing. They adapted. Or rather, Paul adapted, while Julian took for granted that he would be the one to do it. Julian’s new commitments were immutable—so Paul rearranged his schedule at the garage and quit volunteering at the gardens several weeks early, because that would buy them a few extra hours together. Paul could study anywhere, so he might as well bicycle to the library in the dwindling light, lugging his homework between study carrels to stay within earshot while Julian shelved books. “You should see me trying to do this when you’re not around,” Julian told him once—his tone was blithe and bored, in a way that intensified the manor-born refinement of his accent. “It’s so goddamn dull, I’m at death’s door by the end of it. Sometimes I think about running someone down with the cart just to liven things up.”
Glad I’m here to entertain you, Paul didn’t say, because he wouldn’t see Julian again until their statistics class tomorrow aftern
oon and there was no time to pick fights.
“How many times would you have to do it to actually kill him?” he asked instead, because it was the only safe way to needle him.
Julian wheeled his cart back out from behind the stacks.
“Twice,” he said cheerfully. “One to knock him over, and then you just”—here he gave the cart a gleeful shove forward—“aim for the head.”
Their shared statistics class was the kind of math Paul had moved past in high school, but Julian needed it for his major, so that was what they took. Whenever Paul dropped by the shabby apartment, he usually spent much of the visit watching Julian wearily rush through his homework. He would have liked to keep up with the books Julian chose for them, but Julian himself hardly had time for them. They could only inch through a book a chapter or two at a time, curled up together in Paul’s bed and reading from the same copy. They had to give up on Pale Fire after an intractable quarrel about the order in which they ought to read it.
For his part Julian paid him such relentless attention that Paul had to reassure himself sometimes that it wasn’t a cruel joke. It reminded Paul of his letters from the summer, affection overflowing, enveloping them both so completely that he could barely see Julian at all. Julian ended up with solid Cs on their weekly stats quizzes, which would have thrown Paul himself into a panic had he done the same, but the lecture seemed little more than an excuse for Julian to leave jokes and doodles in the margins of Paul’s notebook. (Strychnine!! he wrote, accompanied by an X-eyed stick figure whose limbs twisted like corkscrews. When Paul captioned it with an unceremonious no, Julian kicked him.) He’d always touched Paul casually in public, letting his hand rest on his arm or his back just long enough to send a shiver through his body, but there was something different about it now, less careless, lingering a moment longer than he would have before. Now and then Julian would catch his eye and offer him a small private smile, neither aloof nor teasing, asking nothing. It looked so strange on him that Paul knew it must be an invention—not insincere, just designed, as if Julian were indulging him with a gift he didn’t really deserve.
These Violent Delights Page 19
