Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  “Look at me!” Blake roared, not sure where the rage came from, fully aware that never in his life had he had the power to compel someone through sheer force of will.

  When Cheever’s gaze, miserable, swollen, and whipped, met Blake’s fevered searching one, it felt like a miracle.

  “I’m looking,” he whispered.

  Blake pushed up and kissed his forehead. “Don’t give up,” he begged, hoping that strange ability he suddenly had to make Cheever do what he wanted would stay with him. “C’mon, kid. It took Mackey three tries before rehab took. You ain’t even tried yet.”

  Cheever bit his lip. “Three tries?”

  “Yeah. I think Trav literally beat some sense into him, because the third time, he came back with a swollen jaw.”

  “He beat—”

  Blake wrinkled his nose. “Cool your jets. Your brother has made it his life’s mission to piss people off. Trav was probably….” Blake swallowed, thinking about that time, about how close they’d come to losing their center, the guy—the brother—who kept the whole family together. “He was probably just as scared for him as I am for you. You talk about bleeding out one more time, I will lock you back to that bed, you hear me?”

  Cheever nodded, and a few more tears ran down his cheeks and down the long column of his throat.

  Blake’s knees ached, and he gave in, sitting down next to Cheever on the bed.

  To his surprise, Cheever leaned against him, resting his head on Blake’s chest, and Blake, so desperate for some reassurance that this kid wouldn’t gouge his artery in with a paintbrush, wrapped his arm around Cheever’s slender shoulders in return.

  “C’mon, baby boy,” Blake crooned. “You can talk to us. We’ll still love you. That’s a promise.”

  He felt Cheever’s suppressed sobs, rocking his narrow chest, and held him tighter. He wasn’t sure where the storm came from, but he was damned sure he’d be Cheever’s port so they could weather it together.

  19th Nervous Breakdown

  “SO, TO be honest, Doc, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.”

  Doc Cambridge examined his fingernails, picking delicately at a cuticle, and Cheever soldiered bravely on.

  “I mean, it was, you know, a bad reaction. I’d just worked so hard, and the professor sort of hit me where I lived. I mean, I can see that you’re worried, but I can only flunk out of school once, right?”

  The older man widened his eyes and raised his eyebrows, as if he was trying to stay awake.

  “I mean, I can’t ever do coke again—the doc said I’m lucky I didn’t get an embolism as it was. And that other thing, I mean, I’ll only ever do that again if I’m stoned, and, you know, that’s not going to happen, so maybe you could, you know, let me go home? Blake’s there. He’ll watch me.”

  Blake had, in fact, spent the night in Cheever and Marcia’s room, against all protocol. He hadn’t even had a bed because Marcia’s bed had taken the place of his cot. He’d just sat at the foot of Cheever’s bed after lights out, reading his phone like he belonged there, one warm hand on Cheever’s calf.

  They’d asked him to leave that morning, citing their regimen and protocols, but so far, all Cheever could see was a lot of PT that he got out of because he still felt like shit from the blood transfusion and the stitches in his ass.

  “So, Doc,” Cheever said, smiling and working on his anime eyes. “What do you say? Can I go home? What do you think?”

  Finally the doctor that Blake and Mackey seemed to think so much of looked up and pinned Cheever with an unamused gaze. “What do I think?”

  “Yeah!” Cheever put extra winning excitement in his voice. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m too old for this shit, Cheever Sanders. Jesus Christ—do I look like an idiot? Do I look gullible? Holy shitballs, kid, do I look like I want your blood on my hands?”

  Uh-oh. He could swear the anime eyes thing usually worked. “Uh, no, not at all. I just thought, you know, since I’m not an addict, we’d have an understand—”

  “Oh, we have an understanding, all right,” Cambridge snapped. “I understand that you think I’m an idiot, and you understand that if you can talk me into letting you out of here, you’re going to walk into traffic or jump off a bridge or rip a hole in your veins with a shiv, that’s our understanding. Now how about you stop wasting my time trying to get me to let you kill yourself and start telling me why you wanted to do it in the first place.”

  It was Cheever’s turn to check his cuticles. “I, uh, you know. Stoned.”

  “And why was that again?” Oh wow. Was this guy hard to impress.

  “Professor. You know. Didn’t like my art.”

  Cambridge nodded. “Are you aware of how often art gets panned?”

  Well, yeah. “I mean, well sometimes—”

  “Picasso, Lautrec, the Fauve—all of these artists were panned by the people who came before them.”

  “I mean, the cutting-edge people—”

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson threw Walt Whitman’s first edition of Leaves of Grass in the fireplace.”

  “He was pretty cutting edge—”

  “Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was panned by every major music critic in the business—”

  “See what I mean by cutting edge?”

  “Would you describe yourself as ‘cutting edge,’ Cheever?”

  Cheever swallowed, thought about all of the classic art forms he’d followed—yeah, sure, they’d been cutting edge in the 1800s, but landscapes and perspectives were sort of small potatoes now.

  “No,” he said softly.

  “And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with a classic approach to life. Just don’t expect everybody to like it, right?”

  Cheever took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I guess I wasn’t prepared.”

  Doc Cambridge’s expression softened, but his eyes stayed level. “Do you still want to be an artist?”

  Cheever thought of all the art supplies Blake had brought, stacking them in the corner. Paints, palette, watercolors, (palette knife?), colored pencils (pencil sharpener?), paint brushes (metal edges?)—he smiled dreamily.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Cambridge grimaced and pulled out his phone, making a quick text. Then he took a deep breath.

  “Don’t you think you’re going to have to get used to criticism?” he asked.

  “Well, what? I’m supposed to run screaming to a shrink every time someone shits on my art?” Cheever demanded. I’d rather die. He actually frowned at that. Why is that my only fallback?

  “Some people do.” Cambridge glared at him, and Cheever sat back, surprised.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Why does that shock you?”

  Cheever had to think about it a moment. “I mean… Doc. Mackey may be the only person from our hometown who’s ever been to a shrink. And it’s okay for him, ’cause, you know, he’s gay.”

  “So are you,” Cambridge added.

  “Who told?” Cheever covered his face with his hand because he actually sounded thirteen years old all over again.

  “If you want it to be a secret, don’t look so happy whenever Mr. Manning walks in the room. If he wasn’t completely oblivious to you, I’d have us a private ass chewing because, at the moment, the relationship is totally inappropriate.”

  Oh no! “You won’t, will you?” Cheever asked, biting his lip. “He, like, reveres you, and right now, he’s the only thing keeping me from losing my shit!”

  Cambridge let out a long cleansing breath. “Okay. I will make a deal with you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Blake Manning can come visit you for an hour a day and longer on weekends if—and only if—you tell me why you are losing your shit.”

  Oh hell. Oh hell, oh hell. “You’re right,” Cheever said in wonder. “That first fifteen minutes here was really a waste of time.”

  “I need chocolate,” Cambridge muttered. “Now shoot.”


  “I… I don’t really know where to start,” Cheever said, feeling empty. One go. It only took one go with this guy and half his excuses were blown to shit. No wonder Mackey and Blake respected him. That was damned impressive.

  “How about we start with the way you thought you were going to take criticism?”

  Cheever thought carefully. “I guess… I guess I thought I could take anonymous criticism,” he said after a moment. “Like, like you said. Journals and critics and blogs. That all feels… not quite real. This was someone I….” He shifted and tried not to wince. He’d been working overtime to not remind Cambridge about that portion of his whole “nervous breakdown” experience. “I respected,” he finished. “I respected her, and when she didn’t like my art… I felt like a fool.”

  Cambridge nodded. “That’s an honest answer, son. Good. We’ll talk about how to deal with criticism later—after the medical staff checks your art supplies for sharp objects.”

  Cheever resisted the urge to say “Who told?” again, mostly because it was redundant. “Fair enough,” he muttered. “Are we done for today?”

  “Why art?” Cambridge asked—so apparently no, they were not done for the day. “Your brothers picked music. Why art?”

  Cheever thought about it. “I don’t know. I was too young, I guess, when they started playing. But I’d draw on walls and stuff, and they’d bring home paper, and that made me feel special—’cause we didn’t have anything. So I’d use the paper. And then they’d bring me crayons and told me how good I was, and… I guess, at the beginning, art made me feel good because they made me feel good about it.”

  Cambridge nodded. “That’s sweet. I mean, it is. I know those boys. Their worry about you drove them through their first years down here in LA—keeping you fed, clothed, housed, safe. They wanted a lot for you. Sounds like you all thought art was the way to get it.”

  Cheever nodded. “And the more I did it, the more I… I just got lost in it. I loved everything about it, you know? Color, form—making it. It was like getting credit for playing, after I got serious about it.”

  “And when was that?” He had a deceptively mild voice, this doctor, when he wasn’t being a sarcastic asshole.

  “Middle school, I guess,” Cheever said, remembering that moment on his bed, after his mom had left.

  Then he remembered what had prompted that moment.

  Oh, sneaky doctor.

  “What made you decide then?”

  Oh yeah, Cheever had seen that one coming. “My brothers’ friend died,” Cheever said, because that sounded good, right?

  “Grant Adams?”

  “Yeah. He and Mackey… they’d been, uh, boyfriends—”

  “Secret lovers,” Cambridge supplied grimly. “It almost destroyed your brother.”

  Cheever thought about that. “It’s weird that everybody thinks it was a secret. I saw them making out when I was a little kid. I just thought everybody knew and it was okay.”

  Cambridge tilted his head, looking truly curious for the first time since they’d started talking. “Did anything happen to change your mind? That being gay might not be okay?”

  Cheever shrugged and shifted on his seat again, this time not suppressing his wince.

  “Son, do you need another painkiller? Garden-variety ibuprofen, right?”

  “Yeah, that would be great.”

  Another quick text, and Cheever wondered how many people the doc had on speed dial.

  “Cheever, we’re running out of time here, and I’m sure that breaks your heart. But I want you to think about some things before we talk tomorrow.”

  Cheever waited, not even bothering to make his eyes big and limpid—that seemed to be happening all on its own. “Yeah, sure. Not running anywhere in the next few.”

  “Wait until PT kicks in.” You could sand a deck with this guy’s voice. “Here are some things I know about you. You’re an artist, but you don’t want your art to be noticed. You’re gay, but you don’t want anybody to know. You were sexually assaulted in a hotel room two days ago, and you won’t even mention that your netherparts are uncomfortable. And you want to kill yourself in the worst way, but you don’t want to tell anybody why. Have I about summed it up?”

  Oh God. The tears weren’t supposed to…. He’d planned to charm his way through this. How hard could it be, right? He sucked in a gulp of air through the tears running down his face.

  “I don’t really want to die, you know,” he said, proud that he could breathe through that. “I just don’t want to… don’t want to… don’t want to….”

  Cambridge passed him a box of Kleenex. “Hurt anymore.”

  “Yeah.” Cheever took a tissue and heard a warm, kind voice telling him to blow. He did, and the memory sustained him. “Will Blake really be allowed to come eat here?”

  “Yeah, Cheever. You know—you can’t live just for him, right?”

  “I know.” Cheever did. On a fundamental level, he knew he wasn’t “living” for Blake. He was learning to appreciate him. “He’ll just make me feel better for now.”

  “Good.”

  Augh! So much gentleness. Cheever dreaded tomorrow’s session already.

  “Blake… Blake is a good man. One of the best, although he doesn’t think so. I worry about… about what you could do to his heart too.”

  Cheever sucked in a breath, because of all things, this hadn’t occurred to him. “I… I wouldn’t ever want to hurt Blake.”

  Cambridge nodded. “Good. But I want you to think about what… what you would have done to him if he’d found you after you’d bled out.”

  His teeth began to chatter. “Oh God.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his face against them, thinking about Blake, losing his mind the day before, yelling when Cheever had never heard him yell. Thought about the kiss—ah! That fragile, wonderful sunrise of a kiss, and the stunned look on Blake’s face when he’d pulled away. Oh God!

  Cheever started rocking back and forth, shaking, and Cambridge made an unhappy little sound. “Oh, son. Pain makes you selfish, did you not know that?”

  “I do now!” Cheever wailed, unable to breathe, and while he was vaguely aware of Cambridge talking on the phone briefly before he came to sit next to Cheever and wrap an arm around his shoulder, Cheever wasn’t really aware of anything else until an orderly pulled out his arm and gave him a sedative. After that, the world was a watercolor blur.

  HE CAME to in his bed again, and, oh joy, the rail had been pulled up and the handcuff put on. “Fuck,” he mumbled.

  His response was a comforting hand on his calf, and he realized Blake was sitting at the foot of the bed again, his legs crossed, Cheever’s guitar in his hands.

  “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” Cheever rasped. He could taste the sedative in the back of his throat. “My mouth tastes like ass.”

  Blake snorted. “As if you would know. Let me get you some mouthwash.”

  Cheever pulled fruitlessly on the handcuff. “Is this really necessary?”

  Blake just shook his head, like he couldn’t talk about it yet, and he returned with the mouthwash and a spit cup and a bottle of water. Cheever rinsed and spat and waited for cleanup, moving his bed upright and sipping at the water. Blake looked… strained. There were bags under his eyes, his cheeks were stubbled, and he was pale, like he hadn’t had enough sleep.

  He’s worried about you.

  The thought popped into Cheever’s head like a balloon, and he couldn’t get rid of it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as Blake returned.

  “For what?” Blake dragged the room chair to Cheever’s bedside and looked to Marcia’s bed. “She was out when they brought you in—PT and a group therapy session and then dinner. They’ll bring us some dinner in a bit.”

  Cheever nodded and kept his eyes on Blake’s face, troubled.

  “I’m sorry I worried you,” he said, the words feeling weighted, painful, like he learned something just saying them.

 
“Yeah, well….” Blake shrugged like it was no big deal, but Cheever reached out with his free hand and snagged Blake’s wrist.

  “No—this is important. You’re… you’re worried about me. I… I hurt you, hurting myself. I’m sorry.”

  Blake tried a weak smile, but his lower lip trembled. “I was waiting here, and the orderlies came to search your art supplies. They took the palette knives and the pencil sharpeners and some of the paintbrushes that were too sharp on the end. They got a text, I guess, that your stuff might be dangerous, and I thought….”

  Oooh—that Doc Cambridge was tricky.

  And right.

  “I didn’t even know I was thinking about it until Cambridge said something,” Cheever admitted, leaning his head back but keeping hold of Blake’s wrist.

  “Why?” Blake asked, and he took Cheever’s hand and squeezed it, rubbed his thumb along the knuckles. He didn’t let go, not even after he sat down.

  “I think….” He closed his eyes, and what showed up behind them was his art, the paintings of Tyson/Hepzibah, the feeling he had in his stomach when he thought of himself as a punk-ass kid.

  The way that feeling had spread, eating away at him like a cancer.

  Until all that was left was the sickness, the feeling of being rotten to the marrow.

  Of not even being able to be clean again.

  “What?” Blake’s motion with his thumb along the back of his knuckles never stopped.

  “I just felt ugly inside,” he breathed, amazed that the words could come out.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Blake told him. “I know how that feels.”

  Cheever opened his eyes and focused on Blake’s plain, thin face, and how it seemed to grow more luminous every time they touched.

  “I can’t imagine you any way but beautiful,” he said softly. He was expecting Blake’s self-deprecating smile, so it didn’t hurt.

  “You ain’t—aren’t trying, which is kind.” Without seeming to realize he was doing it, Blake raised Cheever’s knuckles to his lips and rubbed. Deep under the sedative, the layers of pain, Cheever felt a little frisson of excitement—such a romantic gesture from such an everyday man.