by Harper Logan
He was the one honest thing in your life.
The first beer made him feel warm inside. Almost talkative, but looking around, he realized there was no one he wanted to talk to. He ordered another. That one made him laugh. This was all so ridiculous. Wasn’t it? His life as a great writer? Who sets themselves up like that? It was just failure waiting to happen.
He threw some bills on the bar and went outside. Things were a little wobbly. He never drank. It was…an interesting feeling. Maybe he should do it more. Maybe he should go to a liquor store and just pick up some random things. And then…get a pizza. Yeah. There was that one place that stayed open all night, he’d seen it on some of his midnight runs. Dripping cheese, all the meats, nothing but salt and bad fats and empty carbs to fill his empty life.
Unbidden the face of Cam appeared to him. Stop it, he told himself. That stricken look on Cam’s face. That horror.
You should have known there were things wrong between us, he told this imaginary Cam. How could we have ever worked out? We were just too broken.
He reached the liquor store and went inside. A sleepy cashier watched him pick up bottles, study them, put them back. He didn’t know what anything was. Wasn’t that ironic? Detective Valentino always knew what to drink. Scotch at night. Red wine with every meal. Flask carried to the crime scene. But here in the real world, Serge had no idea what any of this stuff tasted like. He began to grab bottles at random and take them to the register.
You should have known better, Cam, he told this image in his head. You saw me trying to write. You saw how hard each word was for me. The fact that you couldn’t recognize the stench of failure has nothing to do with me. You’re young, you’re innocent. You’ve protected yourself by burying yourself in work, so you have no idea how the world really works. How failure works.
He thanked the cashier and walked out into the night. He would get Cam out of his head, once and for all. But first… that pizza.
25
Cam
Cam should have felt empowered. After all, the conversation with Serge had been full of the sort of brutal honesty that stripped away all your illusions. He had seen clearly the kind of person Serge was. Never look back, after something like that. Charge onward, growing and living, after realizing what a narrow escape that was.
But he didn’t feel empowered. He felt exhausted. After a night of crying, he’d thought about calling in sick to work, but then what would he have done, sit in his bed and think about Serge? He’d pulled himself out of bed, trying not to think. He got in the shower, cleaned himself off. Didn’t look down at his body. Was careful not to consider the way he and Serge had gone at it in the shower that one time. Didn’t want to think about the way that handful of suds had slithered down Serge’s tight body, slipping past his balls on its way down his thigh—
No.
This wasn’t a break up, it was an emancipation. He was free. The pointless entanglement with Serge’s weird fears and worries was over.
Madeleine was on the couch, with her cigarette and a legal pad, when he came in. “Oh, darling. I didn’t expect to see you today.”
“Today’s not special,” he said, trying to sound healthy and noble and good. His voice was hollow in his throat.
She slid her legs off the couch and sat up. Her legal pad joined the stack of manuscript pages on the table. She patted the cushion next to her. “Come to Maddy. Talk to me about it.”
Maddy?
He sat next to her but shook his head. “Nothing to talk about. You were there.”
“I was. And I feel so bad, being the agent of Serge’s exposure. But someone had to do it, Cam. Someone had to show the world what a fraud he is.”
“How did you find out he was blocked? Was it Angela?”
A sly smile crept across her face. “Sergio is very bad about locking his back door, and Angela is very good at looking through computer files.”
Funny how little he cared about that now. A few days ago he would have been furious. Right now, he hated Serge so much, he wished people on the street would throw rotten fruit at him. Boos and catcalls for the rest of his life.
But was it wrong that he was also thinking about that time at the lake? Sitting on the blanket, the cool wind coming off the water, Serge’s arm around him, thinking about the future…
No. Serge didn’t deserve a memory that good.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said.
“You did a very natural thing. Nobody ever said that Serge is not good-looking and charming. That’s how he weasels his way in. But his insecurities show so quickly.” She waved at the direction of her office. “That review. So bitter. So clearly the work of a jealous mind. I will not say I told you so.”
“But you did tell me so.” He sighed. “Is there anything I can do today?”
“I don’t want to make you work today. You look like a sad little puppy.”
For some reason that made him think of the little white kitten at the shelter. He wondered how the kitten was doing. Once he’d gotten wrapped up with Serge, he’d stopped going by the shelter so often.
“No, I need to keep busy. Keep my mind off things.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “Very well, you can go to the bakery. I spoke to Gilbert Ross of East Street Books last night. A beautiful talk, once he saw Sergio’s true face. He wants us to have a big reading tonight. So there’s that to prepare for, and we have to think about which excerpts of my work will most impress everyone.”
He nodded. A reading required a little planning. Not too much. Just enough. That would be perfect, a good way to get his thoughts in a more constructive direction.
But the walk to the bakery was agonizing. Every little shop seemed to speak a memory to him. There was the jewelry store where they had looked at watches. There was the Bean and Berry, where he and Serge had met up to go to the lake. And then there the actual road down to the lake.
Don’t think about the lake.
“I’m free. I’m free,” he said to himself, chanting it like a mantra. Free people don’t cry. Free people don’t wonder what could have been. They feel the rush of their escape, they understand the narrowness of it, how easily they could have been bound, how they could have been lost forever in the arms of someone who could not love them.
Lost in Serge’s arms, staring out at the water, his lips against my throat…
In his whole life, he’d only known one cure for misery, and that was hard work. Whenever he’d gotten down on himself in college, whenever the dark clouds would gather, he’d simply had to turn off his feelings, knuckle down, and get to work. That is what he would do here. Turn off his feelings. Wasn’t there a little switch inside us all that could do that? He just had to find it.
He reached the bakery, took his number and gave his order and waited. This was normally one of his favorite places in town. On any other day, the warm, yeasty scent of freshly baked bread, the creamy aroma of the pastries, would welcome him in, and make him feel at home. He was in here so often he’d gotten to be on first-name terms with the owner, Russ, and sometimes managed to nab a free cupcake.
But today his back was against the wall, his head down, staring at the number they’d given him, 63. No magic in that number. No hidden meanings. Just a number. Just another little point of data to use and then discard.
Serge had called him a drone. This is what drones do. They work. They take whatever’s needed right now, they use it, then they discard it. Once he was done here, that little number would go in the trash.
His memories of Serge would go in the trash too, now that he didn’t need them.
Serge’s strong hand slipping under his shirt, stroking the skin of his belly, the mix of the cool lake air and the warmth of his skin…
He didn’t need these memories.
Serge at the keyboard, lost in thought, Cam staring at him from the sofa, just watching the planes of his face as he considered the next line, the next word…
He didn’t need
anything. Except to pick up this order and go back to work.
26
Serge
“Oh my god, you’re pathetic,” said Tish.
Serge looked up from the floor. A crushed beer can poked into his flank. “It’s not time for tough love lectures yet. Go away.”
Tish used her toe to lift the lid of a pizza box. “Don’t worry. I may be your best friend, but I’m not long-suffering. I ran out of patience after you sent the thirtieth drunk text last night. I’m not going to clean up your mess and fix you a piping hot black coffee so you can come to the realization that you’re an absolute idiot.”
“Thank goodness,” Serge said, closing his eyes. “I would’ve hated that.” He listened to her shuffle around, heard the clink of bottles. He tried to sink back into unconsciousness, but between the little noises she was making, and the throbbing in the back of his head, he couldn’t manage it.
“Peach schnapps? Really, Serge? Are you joining a sorority?”
“That was truly nauseating.”
“If you’re going to live out the cliche of the boozing failed writer, I think whiskey is the usual drink.”
“Would you please just fuck off and let me die here on the floor? It won’t take long. I can feel my liver trying to crawl out of my body as we speak.”
He heard her nearby, and opened his eyes long enough to see her crouching beside him. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. How long is this going to take, Serge?”
“How long is what?”
“This phase. Your mourning, or humiliation, whatever it is. I want my friend back.”
He sighed. “I don’t mean this as melodramatically as it’ll sound, but what if I don’t want to come back?”
“Oh, yeah. This is your new life? Lying on the floor, sucking down empty calories, covering those abs you work so hard to maintain with a layer of guilt-fat?”
“What guilt? Forget that. I am morally upright and pure.”
“Please don’t make me play therapist. I don’t have any deep insights to give you, Serge.”
“You started it.” He pushed himself up, his head pounding. “I need an ice pack.” Stumbling toward the kitchen, he blinked, making the fuzziness leave his vision. He got a dish towel and threw a bunch of ice into it, wrapping it up, then putting it against the back of his head. “I’m not guilty,” he said. “That’s not what this is.”
She lifted herself easily onto the kitchen counter, sitting on it so she was eye-level with him. “Do tell. What is this then?”
The thoughts weren’t cohering inside his mind. It was like watching clouds swept by the wind, trying to form, trying to exist, but turning to tatters. “This is what failure looks like,” he said to her. “I am a failure. I am done lying about it. Is there anything in my life that isn’t a lie? Working out is just a lie, isn’t it? My body is going to die someday anyway, and before that I will become old and decrepit, so who cares if I had a 6-pack until then? In a hundred years, who will care how much I could bench press?”
“Oh, so it’s self-pity rather than guilt, I guess that makes sense.”
He set the ice pack down and leaned over the sink, his stomach suddenly coiling and twisting. Nothing happened, thankfully. He ran cold water and splashed his face, then put his lips into his cupped hands and drank. “Do you understand what happened to me?”
“You got what you had coming?”
“Jesus! Be my friend, Tish! Come on! I know you want to lecture me and be all tough and point out my fucking flaws, but for five minutes can you be my friend and see things from my point of view? Just five minutes?”
She sighed, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Serge, I know. Okay? I know.”
“Everybody knows what a failure I am. It cuts so deep.”
“Tell your agent you need a new deadline. Ask for a month. You could still write your book.”
“Write a book in a month?”
“I’m just saying, you haven’t failed yet. But that isn’t what this is about.”
He pointed at his phone on the floor. “My editor and agent filled up my voicemail. Everybody knows now. Can’t write. Haven’t written.”
“This isn’t about writing.”
“It’s about not writing.”
“No. It has nothing to do with your book. That’s a symptom. It’s not the cause.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Serge, you need to. This is important. You can’t hide from it.”
“No.”
“You need to think about what you did to Cam. And what you did to yourself.”
“Cam was just using me. He was nothing but Madeleine’s tool. I was so stupid.”
“Do you honestly believe that? Do you think he is not hurting right now?”
“Yeah, he was hurt that he got caught.”
“You know, for someone who can’t write, you described the situation pretty thoroughly in your texts last night. Cam was hurt because he loves you, and you denied his love, in front of everyone. That’s why you feel so sick. So guilty. Because for once in your life you got close to telling the truth about yourself: That you’re not this miracle-man that combines a hot body and an intellect and an interest in hard-boiled crime and a lust for the ladies.”
“Right, I’m nothing. I’m a bundle of lies, like I said.”
“No, you are a bundle of truths that you are so busy hiding from, you forgot they were true. I’ve known you since high school, Serge. I’ve been there through all your tantrums and depressions. And I remember what you said to me during them. They’re a lot different than the picture you’ve painted of yourself.”
“I thought you weren’t going to play therapist. No deep insights.”
“I’m playing the part of your friend, the friend who reminds you that you didn’t get into this for the literary acclaim. You got into it because you enjoy writing stories that people love, that they zoom through, desperate to get to the next page. You don’t want to be on some dusty shelf in the library where only the literary critics love you. You want to be at the fucking drugstore next to the coolers and sunscreen. And you don’t want to be Mr. Hard-Boiled Straight Man. I know you. That has never been you.”
Serge’s lips were pressed tight together. As he listened, as he accepted the truth of her words, his headache was beginning to fade. The muscles binding his neck and skull were loosening their vise grip.
“Can you admit it?” she whispered to him. “Can you admit the truth about yourself?”
“What’s the use?” he said, his voice strained. “Even if I say yes, I am into guys, and yes, I love Cam, what does it matter? I’ve destroyed everything.”
“Then you need to get back out there and rebuild. Because you’re my friend, and as much as I want to play tough guy with you, I can’t come in here again and see you passed out on the floor. It’s not about the calories and what you’re doing to the body you’ve worked so hard to achieve. It’s about that sense that you have caved in to a lie about yourself, a lie that says you failed. You didn’t fail. You fucked up. And you can change that. You can fix it.”
“How? How can I do that?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a flier. Tonight, a Very Special Reading by Madeleine Stevens. “This is in two hours. That’s about how long it will take you to scrub the grime off your body and think of something charming to say.”
He took the flier from her. The little flame he felt inside his heart was too small to be called hope. But he pressed his hand against his heart nonetheless, to protect it. “Okay,” he said. “Help me.”
27
Cam
The reading should have sent Cam right into his element. There was so much chaos needing to be sorted, so many pieces to organize. There was a last-minute call to the caterers, the rush of planning all through the afternoon, the talks with the bookstore staff. His mind should have been carefully laying out every possibility, so that when Madeleine took the podium she would have the perfect atmosphere to read from D
ona Quintana, as well as a special selection from her prior books.
But it all seemed empty. This need to keep busy was like an addiction, and once he broke free from it, what was left? There had been no time to replace it with anything. He conferred with the caterers, he gave brief statements to the two local beat reporters who showed up, and he shook hands with the bookstore staff, but his heart was somewhere else.
Just say it: I can’t stop thinking about Serge.
It was so self-destructive. He knew that. Even though Serge had been right about absolutely everything: Cam was a drone, he was a slave to Madeleine’s every whim, and worse, part of him was doing it as an excuse not to follow his own dreams. Letting himself be abused by a crazy author just for the sake of hiding from himself. These were ugly truths, but he had faced them. But what kind of person said them in anger like that? Serge was right, but that didn’t mean he was good for Cam.
Cam didn’t want to go back over last night. He’d thought about it enough times. But he kept wondering: What next? What to do with all this emptiness?
Madeleine texted him that she was outside in the car. He glanced up at the room. It was packed. There were plenty of her fans here… or at least people who had heard about her dramatic fight with Serge, and were here to see if she’d cause any more fireworks. Cam let Mr. Ross, the bookstore owner, know she was here, and went out to get her.
“Is there a crowd?” she asked nervously. Her fingers fidgeted with the corner of her papers.
“They’re really excited,” he said, taking the chapters from her before she shredded them.
“Packed house?”
“To the rafters.”
She clutched his arm as they walked toward the doors. “I can feel their energy from here,” she said. “I wish I had time for just one more cigarette. My hair, is it fine?”
