Sky Full of Mysteries

by Rick R. Reed

  It was as though Rory had never been there. And maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it was all a dream. Even though Cole knew that wasn’t true, he wished it were so. It would make life easier.

  COLE THOUGHT going to bed was futile. He’d never sleep, not tonight. Especially after the phone call he’d just gotten from Tommy, where he told Cole how much he missed him and how he couldn’t wait to be home with him again, in their own little bubble, in just a couple of days’ time. Cole mouthed all the right reciprocal words and hung up with an “I love you,” feeling numb and dazed.

  Around 1:00 a.m., though, he thought he should at least try to get some sleep. Even if he only rested, it might alleviate some of the nausea and fatigue he’d felt since Rory departed. What if he’d stayed? Cole wondered as he threw back the quilt and the top sheet and crawled into bed in his boxers. He settled himself and mused that they might be lying together in this very bed, warm body pressed to warm body, as though no time had passed, as though the two of them were young men again—randy and in love.

  He shook his head, turned out the light.

  Contrary to his expectations, he was asleep within minutes.

  HE WAKES to the sound of voices in the other room. He stirs sleepily, wondering if Tommy has come home, brought a friend with him. He turns to glance at the pale blue illuminated display of the combination charger/alarm clock they have on the nightstand. It’s a little after two in the morning.

  He rubs his eyes and sits up in bed.

  He hears laughter floating in from the other room, just a normal and happy sound. But it’s not. He doesn’t hear Tommy’s voice. The voices he hears both confuse, delight, and scare the hell out of him. They make no sense.

  He puts his feet to the chilly hardwood floor. He creeps to the bedroom door and opens it.

  Down the hallway, he can see there are lights on in the dining room. He knows he shut off the lights before going to bed.

  Trying and failing to avoid creaking floorboards, he makes his way down the long, narrow hallway that leads to the “proper” part of the house, living room, huge dining room. As he comes into the living room, he stops, stunned by what he sees at the dining room table.

  It’s a common scene, and in that commonality there’s a bizarre sense of unreality, one that almost makes him scream. He’s sitting there—with Rory. The two of them stare into one another’s eyes, and they’re laughing. Before them sit plates of food, spaghetti and meatballs in wide bowls, glasses half-full of red wine.

  The weird thing, besides the obvious, the thing that paralyzes his limbs and closes his throat, is the fact that they’re both the same age. Both in their twenties. Cole’s hair is once more dark, thick, and lustrous. His face is unlined. All this matches Rory’s appearance.

  “Did you get enough to eat?” Cole asks.

  And Rory replies, “Yeah, but I think I’ll switch to beer now. For dessert.”

  They both chuckle again, and it’s as though no time has passed between them.

  He closes and opens his eyes, and the food and drink on the table are different now. There’s a box from Giordano’s Pizza, its lid stained with grease. There are cans of Old Style beer.

  Cole looks to the sideboard, where he knows there’s a little gallery of photos of him and Tommy. But they’re all gone. Now they are pictures of Cole and Rory—on Fargo Beach, at the Lincoln Park Lagoon, Halsted Market Days, the two of them shirtless, arms flung around each other.

  The books of Tommy’s, once stacked at the edge of the sideboard, have vanished. In their place is a row of boxed computer games.

  Rory’s.

  He sinks down to the floor in shock and simply watches as the young men’s laughter turns to soulful gazes. As Rory rises to come to Cole, to kiss him, straddling his lap. He stares, biting his lips, as the kisses grow more passionate, as clothes are shed and dropped carelessly to the floor.

  They’re naked now. Cole is fucking Rory, who lies on his back on the table. Cole’s slamming causes one of the beer cans to tumble to the floor. An explosion of foam spurts from the can, staining the ancient Persian rug beneath it dark.

  And as he sits there, in the half-dark, the room itself changes, by dissolving degrees, into their old apartment on Fargo.

  Maybe, Cole thinks, the past twenty years never happened.

  Maybe they were only a dream.

  WITH THAT thought Cole was jolted into the present, into harsh, cold reality. He lay in bed for a moment, gasping, erect, and disoriented.

  A bright light from the window illuminated the room. Silvery, a glow as though someone were flashing a spotlight.

  A weird thought came to him in this strange pocket between dream and wakefulness. Are there aliens outside? Looking for me?

  He got up and hurried to the window, heart racing. In his mind he had only one thought. This can work. We can be together again. He didn’t question it. He leaned his head against the window’s glass, expecting to see a spacecraft, something like, maybe, the one in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  But all that was out there was a full moon, shining bright.

  Chapter 22

  WHEN RORY opened the door, Greta looked up from the couch. She set down her Kindle. “So you went through with it?”

  Rory plopped down, a little breathless, on the opposite end of the couch. “I went through with it. We met up. We talked.” He almost added “It was magic.” Like no time had passed… and for him that was kind of true.

  He wasn’t going to tell his mom about the passionate kisses and caresses, the indecision and confusion. He didn’t know what to make of them himself. It felt like there was a weight on his brain. He needed to think. For a long time, he simply stared straight ahead, feeling sort of numb and lost.

  “Son? Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  Rory debated. Maybe he should just make an apology, say he was really tired and needed time alone. He’d head up to bed now if she didn’t mind. They could talk in the morning. All that was true—and certainly understandable, given the circumstances.

  Instead, not quite understanding why, he told her, “You were right.”

  She nodded; her face looked expectant and fearful. She gently laid a hand on his arm.

  “He’s married now. Happy. I was a shock, but more, I was an intrusion.”

  But was I? Or was I a relief? Was I the key to rescuing some lost joy from his past? Was I the key to making everything in both of our lives good and real again?

  Greta moved toward him. Ever since Rory was little, Greta had cornered the market on comforting hugs. She knew just how to envelop a person in her arms and with her warmth, her presence, and her touch. There was something all-encompassing about it. And Rory imagined letting himself surrender to the magic of a mother’s arms.

  But he couldn’t.

  He leaned away. “No. Thanks, Mom, but I can’t take your comfort right now. I’m too torn up. You still don’t get how little time has passed for me. This is breaking my heart.” He knew if he didn’t get away soon, he’d begin to sob, and he didn’t want her to witness that.

  He stood. “I, uh, need to get to bed. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.” She looked up at him, and he could see the sorrow in her eyes. “You should rest,” she said softly. Instinctively, he knew his pain was her own. She wished she could take it away from him, would even gladly absorb it herself, no matter how bad it hurt. That’s what good mothers wished for, even if was never possible.

  He started up the stairs, and Greta called after him, “I’m so sorry, Rory. Try to sleep.”

  He couldn’t help it. He said the words as much as a reminder to himself as corrective news for Greta. “He needs time to think about things. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. Nothing’s really decided.”

  He was certain his mom would protest, so he hurried up the stairs before she had a chance to say anything. In his room, behind the closed door, he fully expected her to come knocking. He actually waited for a long time. But hi
s room remained silent, the dark a comforting presence.

  Rory stripped down slowly, remembering, savoring the feel of Cole’s body against his own. He luxuriated for a while in the questions of regret—Why did this have to happen to me? Why did fate intervene with a perfectly happy life? Why can’t I simply get back to what once was? Why does there have to be someone else?

  Those questions offered no succor, nor answers. Even regular life, in the absence of strange and mysterious circumstances, was full of such wondering.

  Rory lay on his back, staring up. His eyes had adjusted enough to see the ceiling, and he smiled. There were stars up there—stickers he’d put up as a boy that once had some kind of light-absorbing property so that when he turned off the lights, they would dully glow. He’d always been delighted by them. They made him feel weightless before he drifted off to sleep, as though he were floating in space. He’d tell himself stories about rising up into the night sky, the stars warm and welcoming. He’d imagine reaching out and touching them and discovering they were not fiery and hot, as one would suppose, but infused with a golden warmth. Those were the kind of thoughts that lulled the boyhood Rory to sleep on many nights.

  In the morning he’d wake to the sun’s bright light and forget about the stars.

  Now the stars didn’t glow, but Rory imagined rising up to meet them, actually feeling that old sensation of weightlessness, of floating.

  He drifted off, feeling a golden warmth not outside himself, but within.

  CLOUDS SHIFT, revealing blue, green, brown.

  There it is, just below. He doesn’t know how he’s seeing it, but he is—the blue orb of the earth, mottled with clouds, the shapes of the continents beneath the wisps and clusters of white clear, defined. It’s breathtaking in the most literal sense of the word.

  He’s lying on something, something soft yet firm, holding him. He’s strapped down but doesn’t feel confined. There’s a kind of peace running through him—a faithful certainty that no harm will come to him.

  He turns his head to look into the large eyes of a strange face leaning over him. The emotion in those large, nearly bulging, and pupilless eyes doesn’t frighten. Somehow it tells him this: Everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to be. That Rory is chosen. Rory is special. There’s no need for anxiety because harm and danger are simply out of the question.

  Rory knows all this. He “hears” all this without the creature opening its tiny slit of a mouth at all.

  In his ears—the sound of his own heart, beating steadily and surely. He feels half-asleep, and the lights behind the creature, pulsing in illuminant gold, red, silver, and deep blue, are some of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

  But this vision, whatever it is, isn’t so much about what Rory’s seeing but what he’s feeling. His eyelids flutter as he wonders how to describe it. Words like serenity, joy, and peace filter in, like soft neon light or the twinkling of stars. God qualities, Rory thinks, although the thought comes to him unbidden.

  Simply, he wants nothing.

  When he closes his eyes, it’s with a smile on his face.

  RORY WOKE to dim light in the bedroom, grayish, revealing his maple desk, the recliner in the corner, and the maple footboard of his bed all as dark shapes. His imagination, at this low level of dawn light, could make the inanimate objects in the room into other things, morphing them, bringing them to fanciful life.

  But no. He turned one way and then the other, the fragments of his dream coming to him like a montage from a movie.

  There was a bright glow at his window, forcing its way through the slats of the plantation shutters, landing on the carpet in stripes. Rory sat up, feeling a pulse, a kind of hum, coursing through him. Mesmerized, he threw off the covers and wandered over to the window, although he didn’t really feel his feet making contact with the floor. It was as though he floated over to the window.

  He opened the blind, and it was out there. So familiar. So strange. Fearsome and comforting all at once. The membrane, the craft, Rory was never sure what to call it. To him it was simply an amorphous gray cloud with dark edges that formed it into a kind of oval. It spun in the dusky blue-gray sky, and Rory swore he could feel it calling him, not in words or signs but within a place deep inside him. Dare he describe it as his heart?

  He felt only love as he stared out. Safety. Security. A place of belonging.

  He pressed his hand against the glass, and the cold pain was a shock.

  The cloud vanished at the moment Rory felt the cold, shooting upward into the still-dark night sky.

  Chapter 23

  COLE FIDGETED on the couch in the living room, a bundle of nerves. Outside, the sun shone brightly, streaming in their floor-to-ceiling windows with glorious and buttery light.

  The illumination somehow seemed wrong and out of place. It didn’t match the somber and fearful emotions coursing through him. To Cole, the appropriate look for the day would be gray, dark clouds massing on the horizon. A threat of a deluge. Thunder rumbling.

  He’d come to a decision.

  Today, he knew, would be a sad day, even if he hadn’t come to the conclusion that this day would be a bridge to a happier and more fulfilled future.

  But not for everyone….

  Last night, he’d hardly slept. He’d tossed and turned for hours until finally, around 2:00 a.m., he rose and went into the living room, dragging a blanket from the bed behind him, with his pillow tucked under one arm. He’d made a bed on the couch, and then, after he’d lain down, he aimed the remote at the TV, determined to watch whatever came up on its screen.

  It was an old episode of Green Acres on TV Land.

  No. He switched off the TV, despite his determination, and lay in the dark, thinking until the room lightened, filling with grayish shadows, reminding him that this was home.

  Yet at one point he must have dozed, because he startled awake, thinking Rory was sitting on the big leather chair and ottoman at the foot of the couch. His hand reached out for Cole.

  Many things coursed through his head—memories of him and Tommy mostly from the start, right up to the other day, when he headed out for LA. There were many, many happy memories! Good times shared with others, better times with just the two of them. They were a couple in every sense of the word. They did the old cliché of finishing each other’s sentences.

  But in the end, his mind kept coming back to Rory and the powerful heat of first love he shared with him. At last he shook his head, feeling as though God, fate, whatever you wanted to call the universal force, was giving them a second chance. He could think of no other reason that—let’s call him God for lack of a better word—God would put Rory back in his life again, after all these years of mourning and longing had passed.

  It was like a resurrection.

  Yes. Rory was a gift.

  A second chance.

  And it wasn’t saying too much to say Rory was a miracle.

  How could Cole just let that pass by? Continue with the status quo? He needed to be with Rory again, to see where things would go.

  And once his mind was made up, he sat up, and the sun, like an omen, burst into the room.

  He felt horrible for knowing how much he was about to upset Tommy’s world, but he had to do this, had to follow things to their logical—no, miraculous—conclusion.

  Maybe Tommy would understand. Maybe not. And despite how Cole’s heart ached for Tommy, that same organ was also buoyant with joy at being reunited with Rory.

  He’d already showered and dressed. Eating anything was out of the question. Now he was simply sitting on the couch, hands folded in his lap, waiting for the sound of Tommy’s key in the lock. He thought he should be buzzing with nerves but instead felt an eerie calm, as if all of this was preordained.

  Tommy had texted about forty minutes ago that he’d just landed at O’Hare and would cab it home, what with it still being rush hour and all.

  Cole figured he’d be home in the next ten or fifteen minutes, ma
ybe a little longer, depending on how bad the traffic was on Oakton.

  He simply sat there waiting, not allowing himself to think. He knew if he permitted himself to wonder, to ponder, he might feel regret, and with regret, he might change his mind. There was a certain inertia that kept long-term couples together, Cole knew, and he didn’t want to succumb to it.

  He needed to be strong. For Rory. For himself….

  At last the jingle of Tommy’s key chain, the smooth sound of the door key inserted into the lock….

  Despite the numbness he felt, Cole tensed at the sound.

  Now there was no time for regrets, because Tommy opened the door much too quickly. Cole felt a rush of cool air on his neck from the hallway and smelled the aroma of Tommy’s Old Spice deodorant.

  He turned, and he sucked in a breath, shocked at what he saw.

  Tommy stood in the doorway, his suitcase behind him, his keys still in his right hand.

  His left arm was in a sling.

  His face, the left side of it anyway, was a mass of ugly yellow-purple bruises and near-black cuts. A big goose egg rose out of his forehead, looking painful. His left eye was nearly swollen shut. Cole watched him swallow and then witnessed Tommy’s good eye swell up with a tear that ran down his face.

  Cole was on his feet in a split second, rushing toward Tommy. All the thoughts of the night before and the morning vanished, along with Cole’s resolve. “My God, what happened?”

  “I got hit by a car.”

  Cole gathered Tommy up in his arms, pulling him into the living room and hugging him at the same time. The heat and solidity of his battered husband’s body against Cole’s own changed everything. In that one instant, before they even sat down, Cole knew with a certainty beyond any doubt that his place was with Tommy. It always had been. Their years and years together—of good times and bad, of being rich and poor, of nursing one another through sicknesses and celebrating vitality, of dark nights and sunny mornings, of eggs Benedict and bowls of Frosted Flakes, of concerts, plays, nights out dancing and evenings sprawled in front of the tube with a bowl of shared ice cream between them, of all the elements of a life together—they were a couple, welded as one by history, by friendship, by caring, and by love.