Where Do I Start?

by Chase Taylor Hackett

  “Occasionally she’d go into rehab, I guess, and I’d go into foster care, and then she’d come out, and we’d try again—and then, I think I was about nine, she just left me there. I lived in different places, mostly in Queens or Westchester County.”

  “Where’d the name come from?”

  “Fletch? Where I was when I was ten, eleven, there were a few of us. The thing with foster kids is they come and go, it’s not like a constant family. Everybody in the neighborhood knew we were foster kids, and they were either like “Oh you poor little dears” or they looked at you like they thought you were about to pull a knife. In this house, they must have had some doozies going through there, because people in the neighborhood totally shunned us. No kids could play with us. The woman across the street looked at me like I was this prepubescent serial killer. Most of my time there, it was me and two girls, one older, one not. What I really wanted to do was play baseball or shoot some hoops with the neighbor boys. Not happening—except for one guy. He was older, maybe fifteen when I was ten. And he was nice to us, always talked to us, and he would play basketball with me while the girls watched. They had huge crushes on him—maybe I did too, a little bit.”

  “Fletcher Andrews.”

  “Andrew Fletcher, but everyone called him Fletch. And then, for whatever reason, our foster parents decided they had had enough, were moving to Oregon, and they were out of the paid-parenting business. We were sent back. And then on to someplace else.”

  “Did you at least go together, the three of you?”

  “Of course not.”

  I had this huge surge of sympathy for him. It’s tough to hear about bad things happening to kids, but when it’s somebody you care about, even as a friend…

  “Tell me about Juvie,” I said.

  “Two thumbs-down, I don’t recommend it. Even Cancun would be better.”

  “Just tell me. How’d you get there?”

  He turned away a bit, pulled one foot up onto his knee, and hooked a finger in the lace of his high-tops.

  “You didn’t read the file?”

  “Jeff said it was assault, which didn’t make any sense to me. I knew there had to be more to it than that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “The benefit of the doubt.”

  “So. Assault?”

  “I clocked our foster dad. With a girls’ field hockey stick. Really, really hard.”

  “Cool,” I said, trying to make it all a little less awful.

  “It was, actually.”

  “What happened?”

  “You mean why did I hit him? He was a douchebag.”

  “Fletch—”

  “Look. I’m not ashamed that I went to juvie, and I’m not ashamed that I hit the guy. But it’s still not a very nice story.”

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Okay. The douchebag’s name was Brad. Brad and Susan were our lovely foster parents. I was there from, what?—thirteen?—until almost sixteen. There were three girls in the house and me. Big house in White Plains. No money. Foster parents never have money. I got a room to myself. Two girls shared, and the oldest, Theresa, had a room to herself.”

  “Lucky Theresa.”

  “Not so much. Every so often, Brad would drink a little. He wasn’t a drunk; it wasn’t an everyday or even an every-week thing. But every so often he’d have himself a couple or three after dinner, I think to give himself courage, and then he’d go to Theresa’s room. I knew it. I could hear it. Susan had to know it. Everyone knew, and none of us did anything.

  “And I hated myself. Every single time. I hated myself because I let it happen. I was such a fucking little coward. But you see, coming up through the system, you learn to keep your head down. There was no point in sticking your neck out and catching somebody else’s crap, because you knew you were going to have your own busload of crap come raining down on you all too soon, whether you deserved it or not, so why take on somebody else’s? And that’s how I went on, with a pillow over my head that didn’t really block out anything, and hating myself.”

  “Until you clobbered him.”

  “One night I heard him, but he wasn’t in Theresa’s room. He’d gone across the hall to the room with the two younger girls. And I couldn’t do it anymore. I went over there, the girls were both crying, and he was pawing at Angelina and trying to shush her, and one of the girls’ hockey sticks was leaning on the wall right by the door. Bam, from behind. As hard as I could.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “We stared at him lying there on the floor. Pool of blood getting bigger by the second. He wasn’t dead, but we weren’t sure of that right away. Susan came running in—now she was willing to come down the hall, the fucking cow. She started screaming, she called 911—ambulance was there, police were all over, Susan was pointing at me. And before you know it, I’m fifteen years old in the back seat of a police cruiser in a pair of boxers, a sleeveless undershirt, and handcuffs behind my back. In February. Welcome to the juvenile justice system of the State of New York.”

  “But if he was raping the girls…”

  “The girls had come from the same background as me, and they probably had it worse, being girls. I mean Theresa—she wouldn’t say a thing to help me, and why should she? Nobody, including me, had lifted a finger to help her all that time.”

  “But you’d stood up to him finally.”

  “Way too late.”

  “You were just a kid!”

  “We were all just kids. So. The two younger girls, they would talk to the social worker, but neither of them would testify. And it wasn’t like the paramedics saw Brad with his pants around his ankles and his pecker in his hand, because I had hit him before he’d gotten that far. No charges were filed against Brad and Susan. They said I had attacked without provocation. I could yell all I wanted. Brad and Susan were taken off the foster parents list, so there was that. Your tax dollars are no longer going to provide booty to a creep with a middle-aged wife and a taste for teenagers. But I popped a guy with a hockey stick. Clang, clang! Six months in the Westchester Juvenile Detention Facility in the town of—and you’ll love this—Valhalla. As you would say—oh, the irony.”

  “Fletch, that’s awful.”

  “So far beyond awful, you can’t begin to comprehend. It could have been worse, though. Because of the circumstances—I had been a good kid until then, and nobody really believed the ‘without provocation’ part—it was only six months. I was also already a big boy. But it could still get—you know—pretty bad in there.”

  “And you got out?”

  “And I got out.”

  “Sixteen?”

  “Sixteen and still a ward of the state. Well, I didn’t care what happened, but there was no way I was going back into the system. First fraction of a chance—a car door opened—and you never saw a kid run so fast.”

  “Where?”

  “I hid in the city. I couldn’t be Frank Szyfranski; he was a runaway. And I knew only one person in the world I had ever admired and wanted to be like.”

  “Andrew Fletcher. Fletcher Andrews.”

  “My personal tribute to the only decent person I’d met in my life.”

  “Let me guess. Did he say yep a lot?”

  “Man-oh-man, he did. I’m just glad his name wasn’t Horace or Gaylord or something. You’d have never let me move in, named Horace.”

  “Probably not. So how did you—survive?” I was afraid of the answer, but I had to know.

  “I wasn’t turning tricks if that’s what you were hoping to hear.”

  “I think that’s what I was hoping not to hear, but I certainly wouldn’t think less of you if you had.”

  “I did all kinds of crap jobs but never that one. And you can imagine—pretty blond sixteen-year-old boy? I cou
ldn’t take a piss without having to turn some slimeball down.”

  “But you did.”

  “But I did. I scrubbed floors, I scrubbed toilets, I scrubbed the kitchen of a fried chicken restaurant—which was way worse than scrubbing toilets. I shoplifted. I shoplifted a lot. I bussed tables, I waited tables. I tended bar in a really nasty dive behind Port Authority—they had fights in there at least twice a week. I was sixteen. After Marco took me in, I gutted fish for Marco’s dad while Marco went to high school. And I did not drop my pants, at least not professionally.”

  We sat for a long time without saying anything. Finally I put my arms around him and hugged him. He hugged me back.

  “I’m glad you told me,” I whispered.

  “I’m glad I did too. But—don’t ask me about it again. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  We were still there, arms around each other, his head next to mine. It felt familiar, and good, something I’d missed. We were just there together. And then I felt Fletch’s arm shift and pull me closer. I felt his head turn and his lips were pressed against my ear, and then my neck.

  Okay, this is what you wanted, isn’t it? I said to myself. This is what’s been working in your head since you saw him at the opera. You’ve wanted him; you’ve wanted to touch him, to be touched; you’ve wanted those beautiful arms around you again, and here he is. You’ve wanted exactly this, so don’t pretend to be innocent or shocked.

  He pulled his head back, and his lips brushed against mine and then again, more firmly.

  The feel of his face against mine, the scent of his hair, the familiar warmth that nothing had replaced. Jeffrey had been a terrible, pathetic mistake. He had never touched me like this, never affected me the way even a glance from Fletch could. And now this.

  It was perfect.

  But it wasn’t. Something scared me. I felt him push his face against my neck—and my body was completely rigid. He kissed me, and then he moved his head down and nestled against my shoulder. Was it just old fears, old hurts that held me back? Because this was it. Everything. To have Fletch back, to have it all back. Like it was.

  But like-it-was had nearly killed me.

  “Stop,” I said. He did. He just sort of froze there, without moving away, his face still nuzzled up against my neck and collar bone. “No, Fletch really. I can’t.” I pushed him gently back.

  He pulled up his head and looked at me.

  It was old fears and old hurts—and there was something else too. There was something that had been whispering at me the last couple weeks that I hadn’t yet put into words. Until now.

  “Fletch—what happened between you and Jeff?”

  He blinked at me for a second.

  “Besides mild dislike, which grew into a bitter contempt?”

  This idea had occurred to me as a possibility before—even when they seemed to hate each other, there was something—I know it doesn’t make any sense. But now I realized—Jeff had said something about Fletch, about his—Well, I’m not really the type to brag to my boyfriend about my ex-boyfriend’s impressive equipment. To Tommy, sure, but not to Jeff. Of course I told myself that maybe it had just been that pair of my sweatpants that Fletch was almost wearing that day, when the impressive equipment was pretty much on display. But still.

  “I have to know. Did you ever do anything with Jeff?”

  Fletch clenched his mouth, and then he closed his eyes. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What wouldn’t I have given for a different answer.

  “It was a while back; it wasn’t since I saw you this fall or anything.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh God, Roger, what do you want, details? Comparisons? What?”

  “How would you two even meet?”

  “At work. It was a men’s room, okay? Sleazy enough for you?”

  “A theatre?! During a performance???!”

  He didn’t respond at all, just closed his eyes again. I think maybe he was praying. Maybe I was too.

  “God damn it, Fletch.”

  “It’s not like you and I were together. I wasn’t cheating on you, you can’t be mad at me about this!”

  “I don’t even know if I am mad. Maybe just mad at myself. I start to think…and then you remind me. I can’t be mad at you—you’re just who you are. You’re just being Fletch. It’s just that I wish sometime, just once, you weren’t. I wish that that just once you’d have a story that didn’t end with you reaching for your zipper. I wish that just once I’d think the worst of you—and I’d be wrong. But nope. You never disappoint.”

  “That’s so not fair.”

  “You want to talk about fair??? You waltz into my life and smash it to bits—twice—and you want to talk about fair?”

  “I didn’t! Okay, yeah, I did, but that’s not what happened this time!”

  “In law, there’s this concept of an attractive nuisance,” I said slowly, quietly. “That’s you. Like a swimming pool without a fence. You’re this incredibly beautiful thing that looks safe—”

  “Dweeb—”

  “Don’t,” I said, pulling away from his hand, getting louder as I went. “You should have to wear a sign that says ‘Stand Back Two Hundred Feet.’ You should have flashing yellow lights around you. People should have to execute a waiver so they know that, whatever happens, Fletcher Andrews takes no responsibility!”

  “Please, Roger—”

  “Don’t try to explain.”

  “I can’t explain. There’s nothing to explain.”

  “Was he alone at the theatre?”

  “An empty seat. Said his date had the flu.”

  The flu. I raised my hand feebly.

  “Fever,” I volunteered. “One hundred three.”

  Of course Fletch had figured out long before now that I was the empty seat.

  “I couldn’t know,” he said weakly, staring at the floor.

  I got up, and I went to the closet. I pulled out the hoody he had loaned me a few weeks ago. I’d been wearing it practically every day since.

  Like a little girl with a crush. Why?

  I’ll tell you why.

  Because I am the

  World’s.

  Biggest.

  Idiot!!!

  “This belongs to you,” I said and held it out to him.

  He took it without looking to see what it was.

  “I beg you, Roger. You must know by now—”

  “Stop.” I couldn’t let him finish.

  “Roger! I’ve been hanging around these last couple months because I can’t do anything else. I can’t live without seeing you, without being around you at least some of the time. Please, I need you, Roger.”

  Two years ago, that might have meant everything to me. Fletch was perfect. Since seeing him again, he’d been even more perfect, if that’s possible. He was kinder, more considerate, gentler somehow. And as much as I didn’t want to be, I was still in love with him. Probably more than ever. All I wanted in the world was to have Fletch back.

  But here’s a little reality check for you. He came to the old folks’ home to hear us play, which was so sweet and wonderful, and yeah, it meant more to me than I let on, even to myself. But back in the day, when we were together, he never came to those things. It was okay, I didn’t expect him to, it was no big deal, but—here’s the kick in the teeth—and I certainly didn’t know this at the time, but I can only imagine what he was doing while I was scraping the strings in front of a bunch of old ladies. Just take a wild guess.

  So now he was being all charming and sweet and beautiful, and I was stupid in love with him even after all this, but what good was that? What good was any of that, if—if the moment your back is turned, he’s reaching down to pull out his—

  I couldn’t even finish the sentence in my head, it hurt so much.

  It took me a few seconds befo
re I could speak.

  “Leave the key,” I said. “And Fletch—”

  “Roger, I love you. That’s gotta mean something.”

  “Don’t come back, Fletch. Don’t—come—back.”

  I couldn’t watch him go. I heard the keys on the counter.

  “Did you ever ask yourself, when I first crashed here, why I didn’t go to Marco’s?”

  “You said you had nowhere else to go,” I croaked without turning around.

  “I lied. I wanted to be with you.”

  I heard the door open and I heard it close behind him.

  Then silence. And I realized what I’d been afraid of:

  This.

  Chapter 38

  I Hate Opera

  Fletch

  I must have walked, but I was completely unaware of it. Where had I been? What had I done? No idea. Missing time. For all I knew, I’d been abducted by aliens. When I woke up or came to or whatever it was I did, it was hours later, I was sitting on the edge of the fountain in Lincoln Center—in front of that God. Damned. Opera house. And I thought:

  You again.

  The fountain splashed behind me, the water danced. November in New York, it was dark out, and cold. The plaza was empty. Huge. There were only a few straggling tourists wandering around snapping pictures. Assholes. Totally oblivious to the fact that the world had just come to an end.

  Roger had given me the definitive answer. Go away, don’t come back. I wasn’t going to win this one after all. I had known it was a long shot, but for a while there…

  I couldn’t not try. After I saw him at Otello, I couldn’t keep away, and there was no point along this path where I could have stepped out, given up, stopped myself.

  I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until I saw him here that night, only a few weeks ago—and then it was so clear how much was wrong with my life, and it all had to do with this emptiness where Roger had been. And I had hoped that maybe he…

  I had something in my hand. It was the hooded sweatshirt I had loaned him. Even that hurt. Would it have killed him to keep the frigging sweatshirt??? Christ, he could be mean when he wanted to be.

  So what now, Fletch?