"We can talk after the performance." Brennan and I both nodded toward Nicolasha.
"Maybe dinner," the strange photographer added.
I shot a final glare at Basilio before leading Brennan up the winding staircase toward the box seats.
*
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote fifteen symphonies, an unusual but powerful and important body of work that made him the premiere symphonic artist of the twentieth century. While a few of these works were written as Soviet political vehicles, rather than purely aesthetic compositions, the overall quality of this canon is hard to overstate. Any listener with a shred of interest in the symphonic form can discern in these an enormity of style, line, and sensibility that far surpasses the idle carping of critics, who can't see Shostakovich as anything more than a noteworthy composer of the Soviet Union. But what do critics know, anyhow?
We sat alone in our small corner box, overlooking the bright and clean stage where the Chicago Symphony players got comfortable and adjusted their instruments. The applause for the first violin was polite. The applause for the conductor, Sir Georg Solti, was vigorous. He was well on the way to making our CSO competitive with the very best orchestras in the world. The old Magyar alone was worth the price of admission.
Brennan pretended to whisper something in my ear when he in fact kissed me as the auditorium silenced itself and Sir Georg raised the baton to beckon the triangle to sound, the flute to blow, and the bass to play, beginning this oddly enigmatic symphony.
I did a Charlie Chaplin and mimicked a silly person moving bits of their body in a strange rhythm to the trumpet solo of the second subject, almost making Brennan burst out in laughter.
The quotations of William Tell brought both of us to act like we were riding horses. We could feel the icy vibrations from our neighbors, all but willing us to sit still and stop enjoying ourselves.
I personally think Shostakovich would have enjoyed the bizarre facial expressions and devilish physical gestures me and Brennan exchanged, trying to make the other one laugh out loud first, even though, if either one of us actually had guffawed like we wanted to, Sir Georg himself would have stormed up there to beat us into submission.
The pause between movements at a live concert has always been a point of hilarity for me, what with a couple of hundred people suddenly being switched "on" to cough, hack, wheeze, groan, sniffle, and sneeze, only to be switched "off" by the fearsome conductor, a few scant seconds later. We ran through quite a repertoire of coughing wheezes and hacking sneezes before we stopped and were plunged into the driving elegiacs and inner sadness of the second movement Adagio.
Brennan listened intently, but kept turning to his side, watching my face harden and then withdraw from the crowd as the violin solo filled the white shell of the concert hall. I was assaulted with faces, Mom and Dad's faces, the different faces I had seen on both of them throughout our last Christmas Eve. The funeral march made me look away from the orchestra and close my eyes. I wouldn't let Brennan slip his hand inside of mine until I began to cry silently, despite my every effort not to, and took his hand in both of mine, crying the faces out of my sight.
I wondered what Nicolasha was thinking of, hearing the same notes.
The third movement Scherzo came and went through my shaken mind. It was as seemingly random and dissonant as The Age of Gold introductory and dance allegra, but had such superior depth I decided I needed to listen to it many more times before I even began to understand what Shostakovich was getting at.
I became convinced that Basilio character was the person who took the naked photographs of Nicolasha. It made me dislike him even more than I already did.
It was funny to watch and feel Brennan take his turn at drifting off into the murky depths of his own thoughts as the richly individual fourth movement Adagio-Allegretto played on. Unlike me, he spared himself the indignity of public tears, but seemed to welcome and appreciate it when I wrapped the palm of my hand over the back of his warm neck and squeezed gently a couple of times.
The final applause was thunderous. I was gratified to see Brennan yell out a few "Bravos!" for the band.
Before we left the box for good, Brennan took a good, hard look at the interior of the hall, memorizing it for future reference. "No telling when I'll be back here, especially in seats like these."
"I'm glad you liked it." I fiddled with Brennan's tie.
He nodded with satisfaction. "I feel pretty wild, hearing music like that. Thank you."
Brennan Albert 'Thank You' DeVere.
Thank you for coming over. Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for having me over. Thank you for calling. Thank you for a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for letting me be your friend. Thank you for staying up all night to have jungle sex with me.
(He never said that.)
We left Orchestra Hall without seeing Nicky the Music Teacher or Basilio, his faithful Euro companion. If Brennan was disappointed, I couldn't tell. I wasn't. We sang loudly along with The Moody Blues on the chilly ride back to the gulag of suburbia.
*
I switched my bedroom stereo to Dad's jazz station, turning the volume low enough for us to hear, but quiet enough for us to sleep, when we eventually got around to doing so.
I was getting used to the sensation of sliding between the cool sheets and under the heavy quilt on my bed, and then to be met by another warm and naked body, which would surround it with mine. You've no idea how much pain seemed to slip away with each second spent like that.
"How come you changed the channel?"
"Don't you like jazz?" A rich Duke Ellington indigo played softly in the background.
"I haven't heard a whole lot of it, but sure I like this. Very cool, like a black-and-white picture of a rainy city at night, you know?"
"Dad loved this station." Brennan reflexively kissed me on the forehead, like I might forget he was there in bed with me. "I guess I'm classical music'ed out."
"It doesn't matter. Anything they'd play would sound shitty compared to what we heard tonight. By the way - "
"No. Don't say it."
"Say what?"
"Thank you. You don't have to thank me for everything. I don't want you to."
Brennan laughed quietly. "Why not? It's polite."
"It's insecure. I don't want you to be thanking me every five minutes. If I'm giving you something or doing something with you, it's because I want to. If you want or need something, well..." I felt an enormously soothing, warm flash across my body that made me tingle. "I want or need to give it to you, not because I want to hear you say thank you, but..." Brennan felt the flash, too, and pulled us closer together. "You don't have to keep saying thank you."
We were silent for a few minutes, both struggling to ignore the urge to reach below our waists for the other. That's why we were upstairs in my frigid bedroom, instead of on the floor, in front of the fireplace.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"No."
Brennan ignored me. "You want or need to give something to me, not so I'll say thank you for the umpteenth time today, but...?"
"But?" I could picture Brennan's face getting all lemony with being needled. It turned me on, too. All of a sudden, I wanted to go downstairs and start up the fireplace. Damn it!
"Well? You said it. But...?"
I exhaled noisily. I was genuinely tired. I hadn't slept in twenty hours, but I then recalled how it used to feel when I slept alone. Sleep could wait.
I sat up and slipped my arm around Brennan's shoulders and draped the other across his chest and held his face with my hand, like we were posing for the movie poster of "Gone with the Wind". I slid a leg in between his and lowered my face closer to Brennan's. I could see him smiling in the dark.
"The point of being friends is filling in some want or need in each other, whatever those happen to be. And I want to, for you. With you. And from you. Not because I want you to say thank you, or because I want to have sex
with you - "
"Or because you want to make love to me?" His voice was almost as quiet as the Thelonious Monk solo tinkling in the dark beside us.
"No. Not that, either."
"Did we have sex, or make love?"
"Does it matter?” His fingers tightened on my arms. “OK, it feels like making love, to me. As if I’d know."
"Me, too."
"Shut up, Brennan." He pulled his head up and kissed me on the lips. "I do it because I love you, and I want and need you to love me back."
"I do." He kissed me again. "I love you."
A chill crossed through my consciousness, recalling Felix saying he loved me, before he ran off; thinking about Nicolasha, how afraid he was to say the same thing; remembering Mom and Dad, how they used to say it all the time, and how little it was said between any of us for...too long. How it would never be said again.
Nonetheless, the chill was momentary. The moist warmth of Brennan's thin lips rolling along mine broke my thoughts, and I eagerly let them, until his lips drew close to my ear. I could feel him giggling in his closed mouth.
"Why do you love me?" Brennan's playful words came to me in ticklish puffs of air, but dropped like mortar fire. It took a long time for him to realize I wasn't responding to his kisses.
My lost words fertilized the garden-variety fear inside me. "I'm alone, without you."
Brennan's hands took my face and felt the wetness along the edge of my eyes and my shaking lips. "You're not alone."
"I am..."
"No."
"My God..." My voice went to pieces. "Alone!" Some kind of scream began to retch outward before it was stopped dead by Brennan's mouth, sealing itself over mine. His fingers closed my wet eyes, keeping me from another selfish cry and keeping us locked together.
Somebody, presumably in a heaven someplace, sent us to a merciful sleep on the same tear-dampened pillow.
*
Bits of the sun managed their way through the corners of the storm clouds, which could not decide if they would come together and have at it, or just drift off toward another city in need of wintering.
I finished my REM-interrupting pee and stared out of the bathroom's icy rectangle window as the toilet flushed. I didn't hear Brennan open the bathroom door behind me, but, without a start, I smiled when his hands reached around my waist.
We stood wordlessly in the dark and held and touched and rubbed and licked and sucked and pushed and pulled and pumped and drained each other senseless.
*
"I have another question."
"Brennan, shut up until the sun comes up."
He ignored me again. "Does love last forever?"
"How would I know?"
"You're the smart one."
"Christ, Brennan, I'm no smarter than you or anyone else. I just remember everything I read." And feel. And think. My voice tensed up and rose. "Do you have any idea how that separates me from others, like you and the guys, or the other inmates in my classes?"
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "You are smarter, though, or more talented, maybe both, to judge by your poetry. I've read some, you know."
I rolled over from my back to my side, facing my friend in the fading darkness of the bedroom. I could distinguish a Stan Getz ballad somewhere in the background. "That’s funny, but I don’t remember ever showing you any."
"Before the symphony, when you took your shower without me." I figured we'd miss the symphony, if I hadn't gone in by myself. "I hope you're not mad."
"No," I mumbled. "Did you like any of ‘em?"
"I sure did a whole lot." Another flash overcame me, the bastard. "Especially the one about going to the ballpark with your mom," he added. The frosty currents of silence took me away from the exploding scoreboards and flaming Cubs pennants and into Brennan's soft arms. "I think you're super-special, and you'd be a happier person if you accepted that."
"Stop it, Brennan."
"I love you."
"Stop it." My voice was crushed by the tears that began falling from my eyes. More damn tears. I felt like a weakling, such a helpless, useless fairy. I wanted a dollar for every time had I cried in the last calendar year. I'd buy the White Sox, by God!
Brennan ignored my tears, too. "So, do you think love lasts forever, or what?"
"I don't know," I choked through the end of the light rain. I managed a laugh. "I love the White Sox, even when they're no good."
"Which is most of the time," Brennan added. We laughed together and kissed. "Hey, the sun's up. What would you like to eat for breakfast?"
"How about you?"
"You."
"Huh?"
Brennan pointed at me and said quietly, "You. I want you for breakfast."
Aren’t you stuffed from dinner? I knew I was. Ouch.
I brushed a curtain of his long blond hair away from his face. "You can have me for the rest of the year, Brennan," I replied in a hush.
"What happens after that?"
"Ask me again next year."
We laughed again and kept kissing, until a further three more songs finished after Getz'. I had a mind to call the station and ask if they'd play "Cheek to Cheek" for me, no, for us, but my breakfast kiss kept me busy. Kept us busy, actually.
*
Much later, the phone kept ringing, and it wasn't a bad dream. It was Felix.
"Good morning, sir. This is your wake up call."
"Felix..." What time was it?
"How was the symphony? What was on the program?"
I rolled over and moved closer to the edge of the bed. Brennan kept his eyes closed, but followed my body with his.
"Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony," subtitled: The Evil Photographer.
"How was it?"
"Superb." I only cried once, and didn't laugh out loud at all.
"I'll bet it was. Have you ever been snowmobiling?"
"It's been a few years, but, yeah, I have. I love it."
Brennan mumbled he loved me from the nape of my neck.
"What did you say," Felix asked?
"Nothing." I covered the mouthpiece and whispered for Brennan to be quiet. He stuck his tongue out at me. "Why?" Had Jason bought a stable of snowmobiles?
"Dad saw something about snowmobiling on TV last night, and wants to drive to Michigan, like, right now." Jason Cromwell was mad, and would live a very long and happy life, I reflected. "We'd all love for you to come with us."
I smiled. "Right now?" It sounded fun. Brennan pressed his erection between his stomach and my lower back, moaning very loudly in the process. I clamped my hand over the receiver and told him to shut up. He pulled a strand of pubic hair from my balls in reply. I screamed out, pushing Brennan and his playful tool away from me.
Felix hung up.
I tried calling back, but the line was busy, and stayed that way. I dropped the phone into its cradle and fell back into bed. I felt bad. Brennan said he was sorry. I shrugged it off and went back to sleep in his arms, thinking about how I might try and make it up to Felix next week.
*
We drove back to Brennan's and strolled through his backyard into the connecting forest. The morning sun gleamed through the tall grey trees around us. We had trouble keeping our footing on the uneven ground and the loose layer of snow over it. Brennan took my hand as soon as we couldn't see his house.
"You have to have the biggest backyard I've ever seen. It’s so cool."
"The guys always come over after school to light up out here."
It was good to hear the team hadn't changed much. "How are they?"
"I don't remember so many of them being such jerks when we were younger. Still, they'll always be the team."
"I guess."
Brennan stopped walking and held us still. He bit his lip while he looked around us, as if we were in a Belgian forest, surrounded by enemy soldiers. Confirming no mustard gas attack was imminent, he took an uneasy step closer to me.
"Now what's up?"
"You never answered my question."
"Jesus, Brennan! Maybe you can use these sleep deprivation interrogation techniques with the CIA!"
"I'm serious."
I sighed. "Which question?"
"The one about love. You didn't say if you thought love lasted."
"I don't know. People don't last. Why should love?"
"Love is better than we are."
I tried not to smile. "If love comes from people like us, how can it be much better?"
"The same way a symphony can be better than the guy who wrote it."
"You sound like Nicolasha." I squeezed Brennan's hand in mine, but got no visible reaction.
Brennan began looking around the empty and frozen preserve once again. "Well?"
"I don't know, Brennan. Real love should last forever, I suppose. I'm not sure." I usually have trouble with real like.” No return smile. "Does that answer your question?" He nodded. "Good. Can we go inside now? I'm still tired, damn it, and now I'm hungry, too." Well, for food.
"One more thing. Please." I looked down at the snow and shook my head, keeping my grin to myself. "Can I kiss you again? Out here?"
I finally laughed out loud, making my friend blush. "Like I’m gonna say no. But you'd better make it quick, Brennan. Some raccoon might see us."
We had come a long way in a short amount of time. It seemed our mutual walls were falling, the rifles lowering, every time we were together. Did we really respect and trust and care about each other enough to call it love, or were we just greedy and horny and saying whatever shit sounded good enough to get what we wanted from each other? We weren’t even seventeen; I was at least smart enough to have doubts about, well, everything on that basis. Or maybe we just weren't brave enough to admit we actually had found love in the other, certainly not smart enough to admit it to ourselves and make our lives a whole lot easier - or unimaginably worse, as the case might be.
Miles Page 17
