by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 24
EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT
When the gentlemen in dark suits and black cars dropped me off at my dorm, I wasn't riding in the trunk. Daylight was just breaking, and I only had mind to take a Clonazepam and sleep. I ended up taking two.
In my fear, I sweated more than salt, and the stench of it made me feel yellow and polluted, but I sullied my clean bed anyway, lay looking at my roommate's bed, and I realized I had not seen her in five days or more.
Then it hit me - the smell that morning in Caster Woods near Blue Brick. Yes, the stench that stole me away when Patrick had kept walking, and I lingered, staring into the trees.
It was quick lime.
I had never been more certain of anything in my life. How had I not immediately recognized it? It was so... palpable.
Jump out of bed right now! part of me yelled. You've got to go! To delve into those trees! To... find out! But I was so exhausted, and my limbs felt rusted. I closed my eyes. I needed to go to the woods, but I could not move. I slept.
There was a knock at my door, and I woke. It was night. I looked at the clock. Nine.
I opened the door, and Patrick stood there in a button-down shirt and blue jeans.
He stared at me, and then his eyes widened.
"What?" I asked.
"What the fuck happened to you?" he demanded and entered the room.
My heart exploded with fear, and I spun away from him, went to the sink, and turned on the overhead light. Exactly one half of my face was covered with dried blood. The cut was a spot at the top left edge of my forehead, and from it came a web of black crawling lines that weaved into my hair and across my nose. It was not a deep wound, but it had cried.
"Fuck," I said. I was marked with blood, in front of the only person in the world I swore I'd never show horror to.
Patrick stepped behind me. His hand reached up below my chin, and he turned me to himself. "Christ, Jack. Something hit you hard."
"I was drunk," I said. "I walked home. Must have fallen down."
"That's a lie. You didn't have a drop of liquor."
I thought quickly. "After you went to sleep, I drank as I walked home."
He bent his head down to mine, and then lower, to my neck. I heard him draw in a breath, and he stopped me when I tried to move away. "You smell like sickness," he said. "You smell like fear. What happened to you?"
I was too drained to think of anything. All I could do was stand and scream at myself internally to say something! Something! Find anything to tell him.
"Jack, what happened?" he asked softly.
I took a breath. "You can leave now, Patrick."
"No."
"I'm not asking." And when he tried to pull me close, I pushed at him and pushed at him, and he fought me until we were both falling to our knees, and then, finally, we crumpled to the floor. Finally, in exhaustion, I relaxed and rested my bloody head against him. We lay like that for minutes.
"Come," Patrick said, "You've got to get a shower and wash the wound."
We both went into the bathroom, and I stripped the clothes from myself, not caring that he was there and could see me. It didn't matter anymore. He turned away, though - became a gentlemen for those moments, as he started the hot water. Then, he sat against the bathroom wall, his white, buttoned shirt clinging to him in the moisture and heat.
"You don't have to tell me what happened," he said. I didn't.
"But you know you can if it will help," he continued. I did.
"Because after all that we've been through together, what's a bit more?"
He handed me a towel when I was done, and then he found clothes for me.
I dressed, feeling pains in parts of my body I didn't know existed. I found bruises all over - nicks and cuts in my wrists, at my mouth.
When I was dressed, I sat on the bed and sighed heavily, fatigued.
He sat down next to me. "What do you need?"
Only certain people would know what that tone of voice implied.
"Heroin, I guess," I said.
"I don't know..." he replied, and he rubbed his face with his hands. "If you do... I shoot you up, so you don't fucking OD." My eyes fell on him. He repeated his point. "I decide how much."
I rubbed at the scratches on my face. I licked my lips. "Patrick," I started, and then paused. I looked him in his mint green eyes. "I promise you it's not as bad as you think it is."
"Then what happened?"
I sighed and swallowed. "I can't tell you."
"Why?"
"That's part of it. You can't ever know. But... even if I could, I wouldn't. It would ruin this."
"Ruin what?"
"This... perfect friendship.
He laughed. "This is not perfect. This is anonymous."
"Exactly. Perfect."
"I don't believe so."
I said nothing more. I simply looked at him, thought of how thankful I was that this sprite was in my life, that he found me on the road that night and invited me to his world of reckless abandonment - of feeling something beyond my world, even if for a moment. I looked at the dimples by his mouth, the few freckles on his cheeks, the stubble that twinkled red in the lights. It would have been nice to have driven forever, the night that I met him.
"Look," he said to me. "I came here tonight because, actually, I was angry with you."
"Why?" I asked.
He smirked and took my hand in his. I looked at the curve of his thumbnail and found it to be picturesque. "Because, last night, when you arrived and I brought you to those three girls, and I asked you to pick which one I should fuck, you did.
"I didn't want you to. It made me so angry. In fact... I think that's why I tore Brian's pants off and burned them in the fireplace."
I chuckled quietly. "Then you shouldn't have asked me to choose."
"I know."
"And you shouldn't have fucked her."
"I won't anymore. I'm not going to anymore."
"What do you mean you're not going to anymore?"
"I want to be with you," he said.
That was the most perfect sentence ever spoken. It sped my heart.
I let a long pause drift between us, and then I responded, "To be fair, it was somewhat enjoyable to see you with her, at the piano, her singing, you swinging your hands down on the keys. I'm glad I got to choose her for you."
"Why?" he asked in disbelief.
"I got to hear your beautiful duet. Even if I was jealous... it was a different kind of peace. Do you know how long it's been since I've heard a piano in its ever-living presence? It was electric, that night."
"I didn't know it meant that much to you."
"How could you? It's just... the piano was such a part of my childhood. The good part. The only other person I loved played it, and it reminded me of him, in a good way."
"The only other person?" He said this like a question, but I gave him no answer.
Inside myself, I could feel within me a great swelling of something crystalline and pure. He was not perfect, or necessarily good, this man, but he was not harmful. He was not hateful. There was also something else there - something I knew that he didn't, that I would never tell him or anyone else in the world.
"I'll play more for you then. Music every day. And I mean it when I say I'm not going to be with anyone else. I mean," he said, "that if I fuck, it will be with you, and then it won't just be a fuck."
"You don't want to fuck me. You won't want to."
"Oh? Really? Do you realize who you're talking to here?"
That made me laugh. "I don't have enough of a soul for a person like you. You are alive in ways that I will never be, and I cannot catch up."
"I think," he replied, "it only seems that way to you."
He left the bed and perched himself close to my knees as he sat on the floor. I looked deep into his lime eyes, and as his lips parted, I sighed. He spoke. "Take as long as you want. I don't give a damn. But I won't turn away from you like you think I wil
l." He touched my knees gently, and my moist skin drank in his warmth.
I smiled and ran my left hand through his hair, just barely, daring to touch the tips of the threads of flame. "Even if you did," I replied, "at least I would have this moment."
"We would."
I bit my bottom lip.
"Actually," he said suddenly, and he lifted his head from my knees, "I must come clear. I lied before. I came here tonight for two reasons, not just one."
"Oh?"
Patrick reached into the left side of his jacket and pulled out a black, slender book. "The second might cheer you even more than the first," he said, and from this book slid a piece of paper.
It was folded, and he handed it to me from between his pointer and middle finger. I gave him an inquisitive gesture. "Open it," he said. I did. It was a check for fifty grand.
"Mother of God."
"You deserve it. You did the job. Alone. Perfectly. Well, as good as possible. I couldn't fucking believe it." He patted my arm softly like 'atta boy,' but then just as suddenly as he had handed me the check, he snatched it from me and ripped it in half, and then again, and again. The shreds fell to my lap like dried bones.
I stared at him, utterly confused and breathless. In a single moment I had returned from my richest to poorest. "What is this?" I asked.
But Patrick was busy. He was reaching into several pockets and, I realized, pulling out stack after stack of solid, tight cash. "But do you know how crazy it would be for me to write you a check for that much?" he asked. "The taxes on it would be enormous."
"Yeah," I said, blinded by the ever-growing olive green pile. "Almost as crazy as walking through this town with fifty grand on you."
"Hm. But that's my type of crazy."
He collected all of the stacks, counted them, paused, and then pulled one more stack from behind his back. He sat the tower before me on the floor, and it leaned, threatening to topple like Jenga blocks. The money came up to my knees.
The bills were not wadded or crumpled. It was all so very streamlined, like a miniature skyscraper. "It's yours," he said. "Thanks again."
I was astonished. "I never really believed you," I said.
"I know."
I peered at him, but only barely turning my head from the money.
"I know you, Jack. Maybe not conventionally, but I do. You're not an addict, love. You're not completely amoral. You're not voracious. I mean, visiting your sister the very day after I offer you that job? Come on, Jack! I'm not an idiot. You never wanted this money for yourself."
He surprised me. I did not expect my actions to leave any imprint on him or for him to analyze what they meant. I did not expect him to care to figure me out.
"Patrick, I thought you were dumber than you are."
"They expect from me a flicker, and I give them stars."
"That gets you off, doesn't it?"
He laughed. "More than you'll ever know." But when our eyes met, it did not seem as though the same laughing, joking, not-giving-a-shit Patrick was with me, but a different one.
I looked at the money and at the earnestness in Patrick's eyes. "I will expect the stars from now on," I replied.
"Always. I'd make them shoot for you."
I realized just how much of a chance he was taking with me - entrusting a person whom he did not know with money beyond which I had ever had. I understood that he appreciated me, that he felt he still needed me, though the job was done. And so I said, "You're wrong. The first reason you came is better than all this. It is."
"Then you do want to be with me?"
"One night... I'll tell you everything, about myself and my life and who I am... and if what I say doesn't trim your stars to a flicker, I will be with you. I promise."
There was a tension between us thicker than black ice. A sexual tension beginning to blister in its lack of fulfillment, and I could see the pain of that lack on his face.
"Alright," he said, "I'll wait. There is something about you," and he touched my cheek, "something within you, something so wonderful about you, that I would wait forever for." I felt the warmth in my stomach stir at this, and I wondered just what in me attracted him - if he could sense within me that that piece which I had been granted, which he could not actually see or hear or touch.
"Let's go to my loft," he whispered.
After I carefully hid the money, we left, and he shot me up. I went down, down, down. Downhill. Downhell. Like I was back in the tomb suffering the worst day of my life. But the angel that stood over me, looked down, and asked, "Are you alright?" was not stone this time. It wasn't my imagination, either.
The next thing I knew, the rosary was pulled over my head, and the cool stone pressed into my neck. He told me it would protect me.
I stared into Patrick's eyes as he ran his hands through my black hair.
Again he sang the all too familiar tune, but this time, rather than with maniacal energy, he sang it in a loving way - like a father, like a brother, like a lover. "There's no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going. There's no knowing where we're rowing or which way the river's flowing..."
"Patrick," I whispered, "You make hell so pleasant."
"Jack," he said, "I love you."
Days came and days passed, and I kept myself relatively high every hour. I barely left Patrick's loft, and when I did, I sat in class with sunglasses on and a hat pulled down. I was lucky that there were no tests for the next two weeks. I wouldn't have even been able to cheat, I was so fucked up. And Patrick had slowly begun to say, "No. No more, Jack."
When he finally cut me off, though it took a while to catch, a healing heat that stoked in my center finally reached my head.
In that warmth, I knew everything would be okay.
I told Patrick this a few days later, as he was tending to me like a dying rose bush. "I'll be alright," I said one morning, smiling. "I promise."
"Just like that?" he asked, like I might poof! disappear.
I nodded my head. "I have never been surer of anything in my entire life."
He touched my arm, and bent as though to kiss me.
Instead, he whispered, "Thank God. I have a surprise for you."
