by Rick R. Reed
He made it halfway before he forcefully vomited up a stream of acid yellow bile. He dropped to his knees and kept adding to the puddle, which smelled foul and looked like watery mustard.
Tears ran from his eyes, snot from his nose, and saliva from his mouth. His stomach kept heaving long after there was anything left to empty from it.
He squatted above the mess he had made and began to cry, really cry…big baby sobs.
Someone, an older, heavy-set guy with a heavy salt-and-pepper beard, squatted down beside him and put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Buddy, you need to get home. Do you want to come downstairs with me? We can call a cab or even an ambulance if you think you need one. Come on, let me help you up.”
Ethan looked into the man’s eyes and saw nothing but pity there.
Weakly, he stood, grasping the man’s beefy arm for support, and said, “I think I’m good enough to get home on my own.”
“You sure?” It was then Ethan realized the man was just doing his duty and was waiting to be excused, so he could get back to whatever he was doing or looking to do.
Ethan nodded. “Yeah,” he croaked, his voice hoarse from the acid and all the smoke. “Just a little too much partying.” He tried to smile, not sure if he succeeded.
“Well, if you’re sure…” Hope shone in the man’s brown eyes.
“I’m good.”
And now, as he made his way north on Halsted, stopping every few minutes to raise a hand and clutch at a brick wall for support, he hoped a cab would come along, soon. He shivered, teeth chattering, and felt completely depleted.
This has to stop. One of us is going to die. I don’t want it to be me.
Ethan saw the familiar bright yellow of a taxi headed south. He stepped out and raised his arm, amazed at how much effort it took to do just that one simple motion.
I have my whole life ahead of me. I need to get right. Robert can help me, whether he likes it or not. He’s old. What does he have to live for anyway?
Chapter 9
When Robert pushed aside Jess’s collection of Heather Marshall books, one of the books he missed seeing was Morey Bernstein’s The Search for Bridey Murphy. But Jess hadn’t, and now, her gaze fell upon its cracked spine. The book chronicled taped sessions the author made with a woman named Ruth Simmons in 1952. Under hypnosis, the woman revealed several past lives, the most memorable of which was the life of Bridey Murphy, a woman living in nineteenth-century Ireland.
Jess remembered reading the book as a girl, fascinated by the possibility that reincarnation was a real phenomenon. The book seemed to offer proof—a woman with memories of a time and place she had no way of knowing about. She even talked about areas of the county of Cork that were small and obscure. She described a trip from Cork to Belfast with astonishing detail, even though she had never been out of the United States.
Jess pulled out the book from the stack, running her fingers over its simple pale cover and went back to being in her girlhood bedroom in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, lying on one side while she devoured the entire book in one afternoon. Bernstein had made it all seem so real…his case for reincarnation so compelling.
After reading the book, she wanted to find out more. She couldn’t understand how a case like this one, with such credible evidence, had escaped her attention. She was surprised it wasn’t still being talked about with awe and reverence. Neither Ruth Simmons nor Morey Bernstein seemed like hungry fame-seekers, but rather, people who had stumbled onto something remarkable.
Back then, Jess went to Naperville’s public library and began researching the case on the computers, there. Eventually, she came across detractors who labeled The Search for Bridey Murphy a hoax, calling into question the author’s real motives and Ruth Simmons’s sanity (who, she discovered, was actually named Virginia Tighe and been born in Chicago, not far from Jess). They described the book as mumbo jumbo, not worth the paper it was printed on, nothing in it provable.
Basically, all the ones who scoffed belonged to the media, many of whom had actually gone to Ireland to see if they could track down verifiable evidence about Bridey Murphy. The book had been a bestseller in the nineteen fifties, and at the time, people like Jess wanted to know more. They came back with their own evidence proving none of what Virginia Tighe recalled could be true. In fact, sympathetic theorists conjectured that most of her “past life” memories were nothing more than buried memories of the subject’s own early childhood. But they were never really able to explain the accuracy of her description of life in nineteenth-century Ireland, or the fact that she mentioned places and names that turned out to be real.
She laughed out loud, her voice echoing in the empty apartment, causing her to stop abruptly. What had seemed so powerful, romantic, and real when she was a teenager had been rubbed out by the realities of her early adult life. The Story of Bridey Murphy had become a book she dragged with her from dorm room to various apartments around Chicago, but it seemed to be more of a delightful fiction, a fun ghost story that pulled at her imagination, but didn’t really convince her anymore.
She thought of her dream. The young Robert as he had appeared in the photo she had seen…not before the dream, but after. She thought of waking up in his car and seeing the face of Keith reflected back at her from the sideview mirror, as if Keith’s face were her very own. Granted, she had seen a photo of Keith by then, but she had never recalled a dream where she actually saw herself as another human being, let alone a middle-aged man.
Jess suddenly needed to get outside. She stood and crossed the room to the wood-framed glass door that would take her out to the front balcony. The brisk, cold air helped clear her head of the spell Bridey Murphy had cast. Looking west on Fargo Avenue below her, the prospect of someone actually being reincarnated seemed dim and remote, well, X-Files stuff.
She sat on the concrete ledge of the balcony and watched a red Jeep pass. But then, how do you explain the feeling you get when you’re with him? You can call it comfort. You can say you feel close to him because he saved you from making a stupid mistake. But it’s just us talking here, Jess to Jess. I have to admit that those rationalizations seem like sheer and utter bullshit. Here, in the cold light of a winter day, being honest with myself, I have to admit that what I feel for Robert is more than just comfort.
It’s love. A deep, abiding love…powerful, inexplicable, and real. How do I explain that? Where does that come from? Especially when I’ve never felt so helplessly in love with anyone I barely know before (discounting the superficial infatuations and attractions she had had for various women over her brief adulthood), let alone a man. I’m gay, a lesbian, a woman’s woman. How do I explain these powerful feelings for a man? Is there something more going on here? She laughed again, but the laugh quickly turned to a choked sob.
Jess looked east, realizing that dusk was just around the corner. She could see the sky beginning to deepen in color and knew that near the sharp, ice-blue reflective surface of Lake Michigan, the light would be pinkish, fading to lavender higher in the air, then gray, then navy blue. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering, and hoping that Ramona hadn’t taken all the Typhoo tea bags with her when she left…and thinking about how there was a lot of beauty and strangeness in the world that could not be easily explained.
She went inside.
* * * *
Jess awakened with a start. The Search for Bridey Murphy poked her uncomfortably in the ribs. She had fallen asleep on the daybed after having read only the first few pages. Now, it was full dark in the apartment, and Jess’s mouth was dry. She sat up and the simple action caused a bright shimmer of pain to flash just behind her left eye. She sighed and leaned back against the bed’s hardwood frame, running her fingers through spiky red hair.
There had been another dream. And this one filled her with a mixture of raw emotion—emotions that warred with each other. Part of her felt disgusted by what she had dreamt, the other part felt a curious sense of giddiness.
I
n the dream, she was in a dark and smoky bar. She heard music playing, so loud it drowned out the voices of male patrons, and she could see only their mouths moving. The song she recognized from her brief junior high infatuation with eighties disco music as Evelyn “Champagne” King’s “Love Come Down.” As she moved through the bar, she observed men leaning against the walls, all of them holding alcohol (mostly bottles of beer), most of them smoking cigarettes, some cigars. Some were alone, very obviously posing as if hoping to be selected from the other offerings on display. Others gathered in groups, talking, every so often their heads thrown back in what appeared to be laughter.
When Jess glanced into the shadows, she looked away quickly because she noticed some of the men on their knees. She ascended a staircase and found a room with a pool table. She paused to lean against the wall and lifted her own bottle of beer to her lips. It was then she noticed that her hand was large and encased in a thin, black leather glove. Coarse black hair covered her wrist. She looked down at herself and saw a firm, well-muscled male body, dressed in a leather bar vest and no shirt, faded Levi’s 501s, and a pair of chaps. In the dream, none of this seemed strange to her. She drank and watched, listening as the music segued into Paul Parker’s “Right on Target.”
The song seemed part of a soundtrack because it was then she (he?) noticed a very beautiful young man standing alone at a corner of the bar, looking about as if terrified. The nervousness and sheer innocence on his face set him apart from the crowd of wizened partiers, as if someone had trained a spotlight on him, indeed, making him a target. Blond hair curled around the smooth skin and rosy cheeks of an angelic face. He was dressed all wrong for the place: an Izod shirt, Adidas running shoes, and a pair of jeans. Even the down-filled ski jacket he had placed to his side was as out of place as a nursing mother in this fake-macho world of leather, latex, and even in one case, nothing at all save for a pair of metal ankle cuffs.
It was one of those movie moments in which people’s eyes meet across a crowded room. Jess thought her heart would stop. The young man smiled and his face lit up. It was one of the most alluring smiles she had ever seen, completely joyous and without the slightest trace of guile. He seemed relieved that someone had taken notice of him, but more importantly, it was almost like there was recognition there, too. He continued to smile, casting eyes to his side, where there still remained room for someone to sit. Finally, Jess was jolted out of the visual connection by the young man patting the place beside him with his hand. Jess moved forward.
Then the dream scenario shifted, and she was looking at the young man, standing naked in front of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out on a sunny winter’s day. She came up behind him and wrapped him in her arms, looking out at the cold blue expanse of Lake Michigan, crusted with ice at the shore.
But here, with this beautiful boy pressed against her, the warmth curled around them, snug and enveloping. Jess took his hand and led him back to the bed. The electric feel of his smooth chest against her own hairy one startled and delighted her, filling her with euphoria. Their kiss, once heads met pillows, transported them.
Jess realized there was no mystery here. Or, at least, not much. She knew she was reliving the night Keith met Robert and that she was seeing the scene through Keith’s eyes. Not just seeing, but experiencing—the residue of desire and love-at-first-sight were still with her. She felt almost delirious, in spite of the fact that she had never had a dream like this one, and one had certainly never inspired the same kind of powerful lust for a man. She reached down and found herself wet—physical manifestation in her female body of what she had felt in her dream as a man.
Weird.
Had Robert told her of the first meeting with Keith? She was sure he hadn’t. Part of her wanted to go back to the dream, to complete the act of love she knew was coming when she had awakened. Part of her wanted to press her fingers into herself and bring about the logical conclusion to what the dream had begun.
She told herself the dream indicated nothing odd or paranormal, really. Common sense dictated that meeting Robert under such traumatic circumstances and then thinking about Bridey Murphy and reincarnation might lead her dreaming mind to make up the whole encounter. Two gay guys meeting in a leather bar wasn’t exactly much of a stretch. For God’s sake, it was probably happening right now, multiple times, in leather bars all over town. And she had even been to one, once, with some friends from Twelfth Night when she performed in the play last summer. That setting had been much the same as the one in her dream.
But the music—eighties disco—was most decidedly not the same.
And everything was so real! She knew dreams could often elicit powerful emotions, but these were so sure and, oddly, foreign at the same time.
Jess thought she should just lie back down and see if she could reclaim her sleep. It was the middle of the night…she might feel less inclined to flights of fancy with morning’s light.
What she did, instead, was get up and flick on the light switch. She picked up the cordless, which she had placed on the floor before she had dozed off reading The Search for Bridey Murphy, thinking maybe Ramona would call (as Jess had hoped every night since Ramona had left). She pulled a sheet around herself because now, deep in the middle of the night, the apartment was cold—management controlled the heat. She guessed they hadn’t anticipated night owls like Jess, up and searching for a phone number, groggy with sleep, and inappropriately horny from a dream that was completely out of character.
In the kitchen, she found Robert’s card on the little dinette set Ramona had been kind enough to leave her. She picked it up, running her fingers across the words “Robert Harris” engraved in a simple font. Glancing down at the number, she wondered if it would be outrageous to call him right now. The clock on the soffit above the sink told her it was just past four A.M.
Common sense told her to wait a few more hours, at least until nine, which is a lot more respectable than calling up the poor man in the middle of the night. But common sense, especially when a night so black it seemed almost palpable pressed against her kitchen window as if demanding admittance, didn’t stand a chance. Not when Jess had such a desire to know if any of what she had just dreamt was real. Besides, it was important she talk to him now, because the imagery of the dream, in all likelihood, would fade with the morning light, irretrievable.
So she pushed the Talk button and began to punch in the numbers on the card.
* * * *
Robert was not asleep. He had heard Ethan come in at around three thirty, heard him staggering around downstairs, listened as he splattered the powder room off the kitchen with his vomit, and wondered what he should do about this boy/man. Was Ethan just drunk? Or was there more to it? He needed to have a talk with him.
He knew he needed to get rid of him. But he was afraid. He had never been alone, not since the desperate loneliness that followed Keith’s death. There had been, starting just a month or so after Keith had died, a succession of Ethans. At first, they were lured by Robert’s good looks and guileless charm, later by his bank account. In the beginning, these Ethans were the same age as Robert, but they continued to stay young, while Robert aged. Sort of like some twisted Dorian Gray scenario.
He loved none of them. In fact, he wondered if he was even capable of love anymore, or if Keith had taken that capacity with him as he gasped his last breath. And was, even now, keeping it with him for safekeeping, until the two of them could be reunited.
And, as if unbidden, a picture of the young girl, Jess, rose up in his mind. He shook his head to clear it.
Downstairs, he heard the TV go on and almost expected to hear the manic electronica of a gay male porno soundtrack. But as soon as he heard the volume rise (an infomercial), Ethan shut off the TV, leaving the condo in silence.
Robert had known all along that Ethan would not last forever. And he knew the time had come for him to give his farewell speech, which he had given a half-dozen times over the past twenty-plus years.
Ethan probably thought it was his own decision for the two of them to stop having any kind of sexual contact. In reality, it was Robert, who feared what infections Ethan might have picked up and would bring home to him.
He didn’t think he could nurse anyone through AIDS again, even though the prospect of such a quick demise was unlikely these days. Especially not someone he didn’t love, or even respect…
No, he would tell Ethan, maybe even later today, that he needed to move out. The decision had made itself over the past several months, as Ethan disappeared from their home more and more and hid the signs of sexual excess less and less. He would do the same thing he had done with the others he had “kept”: write Ethan a check for several thousand dollars and send him on his way.
He hoped Ethan would use the money to go to rehab. If he didn’t, Robert feared the boy would die. Death would either come slowly, from a combination of HIV and other infections, or quickly, with one toke, snort, or injection too many.
The chirping of the cordless on the nightstand next to him interrupted his thoughts. At first, he just lay there, waiting for Ethan to pick up. Most of the time, the calls that came through were for him. Yet, he wasn’t answering and the phone was on its third ring. And then it occurred to Robert that very few people called Ethan anymore on the land line. Recently, calls were always to his cell phone (the communication tool of choice for drug dealers).
