M4M

by Rick R. Reed

  The horror? Other than losing the man he loved, the man with whom he was planning a wedding come spring at one of their favorite getaways, the little Mexican coastal village of Puerto Morelos, was that Ethan held himself responsible.

  No, he hadn’t pushed his beloved into the street, although he might as well have.

  They’d been texting. Ethan knew, from the timing of the accident and the discovery of Brian’s brand-new iPhone under the carriage of a U-Haul moving van parked illegally on Lincoln, that Brian must have been texting when he’d been hit, must have been distracted and not watching where he was going.

  And it had been Ethan to whom he was talking in the twenty-first century’s seemingly most prevalent form of discourse.

  Ethan had been asking him to pick up a roast chicken and the quinoa, arugula, and dried cranberry salad they both liked from the Whole Foods on Ashland Avenue. Then there was the back-and-forth about which wine to get—Brian had always been helpless when it came to wine—and, more important, what to get for dessert. Brian wanted a pie, preferably Dutch apple, as he always did, while Ethan pleaded with him to get something healthy, like a sorbet or even fresh fruit. They were both struggling to fit into their jeans and T-shirts these days, and Ethan had only been trying to pull in the reins a bit.

  Ethan shook his head. The biggest irony? The investigation into the accident had proven that the driver had also been texting.

  Ethan thought he’d never text again.

  The living room grew darker as the afternoon sun sank. The shadows lengthened on the hardwood. Cat snuggled in more deeply on Ethan’s lap, his claws at one point digging into Ethan’s bare thighs—he was wearing only a pair of Brian’s old flannel boxers—but Ethan didn’t move him, although he did wince at the pain. Well, at least one creature in this house, Ethan thought, might as well be contented and comfortable.

  He simply sat there, wondering if he should make the effort to eat, see what was on TV or on Netflix or Amazon, if he should bother to rise to turn on some lights as darkness claimed the room.

  But all he ended up doing was sitting on the couch until midnight, Cat snoring—or was he purring?—on his lap. All Ethan had the energy for was to stroke the cat’s head. When Ethan would stop, Cat would awaken and nudge Ethan’s hand with his head, as though to say “You’re not done yet.”

  And Ethan obliged, wishing comfort could come as easily to him.

  At last, along about 2:00 a.m., Ethan rose, pitching Cat to the floor. He stretched, his joints stiff and tingling from sitting so long in one position. He placed his hands on the small of his back and bent backward to try to limber up. It hurt, but the pain felt good in a way, a reminder that he was still alive.

  Cat trailing him, Ethan headed past the bedroom he’d shared with Brian, with its oak sleigh bed they’d discovered at an antique store on Clark, and into the other bedroom, which was a combination office/guest room with a daybed.

  Ethan settled on the daybed in his boxers and T-shirt, pulling its white duvet up over him. He stared out the window at the snow falling faster now. It was coming down almost sideways, and Ethan could hear the howl of the wind outside. He got up and shut the curtains.

  He drifted off as he imagined the snow coming down and piling up on the street below. He fell asleep wishing Chicago would be buried in the stuff. Literally.

  He barely felt Cat hop up on the bed, burrow under the comforter, and curl up in the crook behind his bent knees.

  In his dream, he walked up busy Lincoln Avenue, looking in the windows of the stores, theaters, and restaurants that lined the busy diagonal thoroughfare. He smiled as he saw Brian ahead of him, standing at the corner of Wilson and Lincoln. He was looking down at his phone.

  In the dream, Ethan felt an irrational stab of panic at the scene. He hurried to catch up to Brian, to stop him from making the mistake of crossing the street with his gaze diverted to his phone. His dream logic had no room for common sense or the way things had really panned out. In the dream, Ethan knew and yet didn’t know he was the one Brian was texting.

  He caught up to Brian, a little out of breath, and then playfully yanked the phone from his grasp.

  He looked down at the screen, at the back-and-forth, in green and white, between him and Brian, going on and on about whether to have a chardonnay or a riesling.

  Which one is a red? was the last thing Brian texted.

  When he looked up, Brian was gone. But Lincoln Avenue was filled with crashed cars, some of them burning, some overturned.

  Dizzy, he stepped off the sidewalk, his mouth open to scream “Brian!”

  That’s when he woke, twisted up in the comforter, sweaty, and with Cat lying on his chest. Breathless and still scared, he stared up at Cat, who returned his gaze with a certain calmness, as though he could project his peace of mind directly onto his human. The cat began to knead his chest and at one point dug his nails into Ethan’s flesh. Another argument he’d had with Brian was about getting the cat declawed. Brian was for it, Ethan against. Right now he wondered why.

  Ethan rubbed at his chest, which still stung. He lifted the cat gently, and in one motion, managed to sit up on the daybed, and then bend over to deposit the cat on the floor.

  Cat hurried to the exit of the guest room and turned at the doorway to look back at Ethan. It sounded like he said “Wow?” and then turned away, tail high, to stalk off.

  “It’s too early for breakfast,” Ethan called after him. “You know that.”

  Ethan was wide awake now. Ever since the funeral three days ago, he’d been unable to sleep a single night through without something waking him up. Usually it was a dream of Brian, which no matter how bad, Ethan liked to think was Brian’s way of communing with him from the great beyond. Once he was awake, the idea of returning to slumber was hopeless.

  The room seemed unnaturally bright, as though it was daylight, or at least dawn outside. Ethan got up to part the curtains and saw the snow still coming down hard. In the glow of the streetlight outside, the snow seemed an almost solid cone of white. Drifts of the stuff piled up in the street.

  No cars passed, but the “L” train, a block behind their house, made its presence known by screeching and rumbling through the darkness. Ethan took an odd comfort in the sound of the Brown Line train, imagining its passengers heading home from late-night work shifts or partying heartily downtown or in Wrigleyville.

  The snow was a comfort too, blanketing the whole world, it seemed, in white. Freezing it. Obliterating the horror of what had happened—for a few moments, anyway.

  Ethan sighed and turned from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place.

  What time was it?

  He sat down at the glass-topped desk from IKEA. Brian had assembled it, with much cursing and fist-pounding on the floor while Ethan stood by for moral support, at the ready with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He touched the keypad to bring the iMac’s screen to life and saw it was just after 4:00 a.m. Ethan felt like he was the only soul in Chicago awake right now.

  Of course that wasn’t the case. Hadn’t he just heard the “L” rolling by, so close? He was certain the train wasn’t empty.

  He clicked on the Facebook icon on the screen, just because going to this fantastical social media world seemed right. He wasn’t ready to be with other people right now, and he didn’t know if he ever would be, but the world of Facebook allowed him to lurk, spying on the lives his friends and family projected. He didn’t feel so alone.

  He brought up his own page, even though it was against his better judgment. He bit his knuckle as he looked at it.

  The last time he’d posted anything was when he’d returned from the emergency room, in shock, after leaving Brian’s body there.

  He hadn’t known why he’d posted then—in the middle of the night. Was it for comfort? Was it because we all needed to communicate every aspect of our lives in real time on social media? Was that what life in the twenty-first century was all about? Had he simply wanted to g
et the word out in the simplest and most efficient way possible?

  Who knew? Whatever the case, Ethan, almost without thinking, caressed the keyboard and then quickly typed:

  My heart is broken. My Brian is gone.

  He’d paused there, wondering if he should give more detail. The post was, even in his shocked state, shocking. To add more detail, he supposed, would make it even more shocking.

  He was run over on Lincoln Avenue by a man in a black BMW.

  Ethan thought it odd to mention the kind of car but left the bald statement as it was. Perhaps, for reasons that would eventually be revealed, it was important to mention the car was a BMW.

  He added, The driver was texting.

  He did not add, I was texting.

  He wasn’t ready, he supposed, to admit his complicity in his fiancé’s death. Certainly not to his four hundred and fifty-eight “friends.” And most certainly not to himself.

  Not that night, when he felt like a black BMW had driven a hole in his heart.

  He glanced back at the computer screen. Below his status update was a shocking, to him, outpouring. There were almost two hundred reactions, ranging from crying face and heart emojis to the tried-and-true “likes,” although Brian couldn’t imagine anyone possibly intended to mean they “liked” that his one and only true love had been fatally mowed down in the street.

  And there were comments, over a hundred of them, all with essentially the same message—Our hearts ache for your loss. Condolences. Sympathy. Hugs. Prayers. And the ones Ethan thought came from the more callous among his friends—those who tried to tell him that Brian was in a “better place” and that things, overall, “would get better.” Grieve, but give yourself time….

  Well, time was a commodity Ethan felt he now had an endless supply of. Time stretched before him, to infinity and beyond, as some Disney character was fond of proclaiming.

  The problem was—what to do with it now?

  II: Spring

  1

  ETHAN SCHWARTZ never really bought into the myth of a Chicago spring.

  No, in Chicago, spring really didn’t exist. Winter simply dragged on and on, and then suddenly one day you awoke and—voilà—it was hot and humid. Pack away the gloves and scarves and bring out the shorts and T-shirts. Of course, because Chicago weather was temperamental, there was some back and forth, but Ethan really believed there was no such thing as a Chicago spring.

  It was early in April when Ethan strolled into the office of LA Nicholes and Associates, the theatrical publicity firm where he’d been employed for most of his adult life. There was a certain comfort to Ethan in the fact that, in all that time, he’d never been promoted, aside from his title changing from publicist to senior publicist, with a small uptick in salary. He liked what he did—writing press releases, making nice with directors and theater company owners and their own staff publicists, along with the local papers and theater blogs, plus his attendance at opening nights—and liked that his cubicle had never changed from his first day to today, a Friday.

  The little cube with its fabric walls and view of the front office and receptionist—a new guy, fresh out of DePaul, red-haired, bearded, tattooed, and surprise of all surprises, straight—who right now was actually on the phone, coordinating their spring openings calendar with companies around Chicagoland.

  Ethan set down his messenger bag and looked around his little office home away from home, imagining he was seeing it for the first time. Tacked to the fabric walls were countless playbills, going back as far as the early twenty-first century, noting some of his favorite productions from companies like Steppenwolf, the Goodman, and even some of the smaller but no less genius storefront theaters who managed to sometimes put out work that rivaled the big theaters on a shoestring budget. There was his calendar, with its scenic photos of the Hawaiian Islands, to prompt him to book a trip for the fall. There was his computer, phone, pens, pencils, and other tools of his trade.

  And there were the framed photos. For his mental health, he’d often said he should take one last look at them, then wrap them in tissue, and finally pack them away somewhere safe—a drawer he could perhaps call his archive of loving memory, if he were feeling particularly sentimental.

  Ethan plopped down in his squeaky desk chair and allowed himself a moment, as he did every morning, to look at the photos.

  There was the joke that began their time together—Ethan had framed their original wingpeople.com photos, his totally fake one and Brian’s one that was at least ten years younger than his actual self at the time. The photos, printed out from his computer, now made him laugh at the memory of their origin. But they also served as a reminder that love, real love, was never about what was on the surface, but the heart and kindness lying beneath the façade.

  And there they were, the real Brian and Ethan, on their first vacation together. They’d traveled to the “garden island” of Kauai, and Brian had coerced the tender-footed Ethan into taking on at least the first portion of the dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful Kalalau Trail. The picture was taken by another hiker at the beginning of the trail, with the sign in the background and Ethan and Brian looking optimistic if not fit, their arms slung around each other and smiling. Little did they know how treacherous that trail was! But the views from the perilous cliffs were something Ethan had never forgotten. And Brian had been there to share that beauty.

  And there they were at one Christmas or another, a selfie under a “vintage” or “retro” silver tinsel tree, complete with a rotating light that was supposed to make it appear different colors as the wheel moved. Brian was holding up a furry ear-flapped hat Ethan had gotten him to combat Chicago’s more brutal winter days.

  And the one he loved best—the two of them at Belmont Harbor, just a few blocks’ walk down the street from Ethan’s apartment. The sun was bright, the water blue, and the two of them looked happy—and at home.

  He simply couldn’t bring himself to pack them away. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  A familiar female voice pulled him out of his reverie, reminding him he was not here to reminisce, but to work.

  “What are you doing for lunch today?”

  Ethan swiveled around in his chair to face Jan Most, who, once upon a time, had started out as a receptionist for the company but was now a fellow publicist with Ethan. Over the years the two had become good friends. Since Brian had passed away, Ethan had become even closer to her.

  Smiling, she peered down at him over the top of the cubicle that divided them. There was something in her warm brown eyes that he both hated and loved to see—concern, kindness, sympathy. Her expression made him want to get up, cross around the partition that separated them, and fall into her many-braceleted arms, where he could find consolation in her zaftig body.

  Another part of him wanted to get up, gather his things, and simply flee the office. He’d Uber back to his new and lonely home in Ravenswood and spend the day on the couch, chenille throw over him, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia within arm’s reach, and Cat snuggled up beside him. He had an unlimited supply of old black-and-white noir movies, courtesy of Netflix streaming—and he was not above watching his favorites again and again. He could put such detail into this fantasy because he’d made it a reality so many times before. Thankfully, those times were becoming less and less frequent, thanks to caring people like Jan, but most of all, simply due to the passage of time.

  This last part is what really disturbed him. Brian, gone now for only a few months, was already fading. Oh sure, he’d never truly forget him, the warmth of his love, and all they’d shared. But he couldn’t deny details were growing fuzzy in his head. He could still picture him, but instead of a vivid memory, the picture was more akin to looking at an old photograph, one where the sun had bleached out some of the details.

  Ethan knew life went on, and sometimes that seemed as much of a tragedy as losing Brian. Would he one day wake up and not think of the empty space on the pillow beside him? Would he not
turn and brush his hand across that space with longing?

  He didn’t know which was worse—getting over his one and only true love or not getting over him.

  “Earth to Ethan. Earth to Ethan,” Jan said.

  He looked up at her. She smiled, but there was an expectancy in the look and also perhaps a tad bit more concern than usual. He could tell she was trying to keep her tone breezy and light as she asked, “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  Ethan glanced down at his desk for a moment, his gaze catching quickly on one of the framed photographs. Then he forced himself to not only look back at Jan but also to smile. “Oh.” He shrugged. “You know.”

  Jan frowned and then looked away from him and out the window for a moment. He wouldn’t blame her if she was tiring of the pity party that was his life. She’d been there so often, he was certain he sometimes dragged her down into his own grief. It wasn’t fair. She was a good friend, and she deserved and probably needed him to be a good friend back.

  Shame crept in on soft feet to express itself as heat at the tops of his ears. “Lunch. You mentioned lunch.”

  “I did indeed. You know me—thinking at breakfast about what I’ll have for lunch.”

  They both laughed. Ethan said, “So what do you have a taste for?” And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he thought better of them. Thought he should be more proactive. Jan’s mouth was open to answer, but he interrupted. “I hear there’s a new Vietnamese joint over on Clark. You wanna try that?”

  “Great minds think alike,” Jan said. “I was just about to suggest it. I’m in the mood for a big bowl of pho.”

  “Leave here at eleven thirty?”

  “It’s a date, handsome.”

  Jan sat back down, and he overheard her start a phone call to make reservations for opening night at the Chicago Theatre. A touring company was returning to town with yet another iteration of that chestnut, Rent, and Ethan knew Jan wouldn’t miss it. He was sure she’d seen the tragic musical at least a couple of dozen times—he’d accompanied her to at least half of them—but she never seemed to tire of the story, and her tears always proved how much the show touched her.