by Tina Amiri
Night stood up and shot across the landscape like a bullet himself, to reach his car. He drove for some time without turning on the headlights and as the city lights emerged in the distance, he once again dreaded his homecoming…but much more than usual.
Deferring his responsibilities, he sat in the foyer and sifted through today’s pile of mail—mostly from girl fans who’d managed to circumvent the fan club. He took a bit longer examining the postcards that showed him glimpses of different parts of the country, but one picture, a shot of some rugged coastline, caused a new lump to form in his throat, especially when he flipped the card over and confirmed that it had come from Oregon.
“I would do anything to meet you,” the sender had written in the message space. “I bet I have more of your stuff than any other fan in the whole world! Maybe soon. Love YF”
He shuffled this postcard to the bottom of the bundle, which he carried upstairs and tossed on a chair in Morgen’s common room. He had to control his paranoia. Naturally, he would also have countless fans in Oregon…
He approached Morgen cautiously and placed the thirty-eight revolver on the bed. “I went to kill Sean,” he said, “…before he could do it to one of us who you know would be me. But I didn’t get him, and now I made things worse. I know he saw the car.”
Morgen clenched his fists over his eyes. “Fuck, Night…” he intoned above a whisper, which Night recognized took a great deal of effort. “You can’t…go around killing people.”
“Well, Sean wanted to kill you, and you killed Andrew, and he killed at least—”
“No…” Morgen groaned, which made him choke. If he had been capable, he surely would have been yelling. “You can’t just kill a person—no matter what I did or anybody else did.”
“I can do anything I want now.”
“Oh, God…you don’t even know what you’ve done.” Morgen’s hands melted flat over his face. “You shot at him… Do you think he’s going to forget about that? Sean knows people—like the people who messed up Sandy’s face—the kind of people that will do the same thing to you, but twenty times over. Even if you elude them until the tour, they’ll still be here when you come back…”
Night felt his body numbing more with every word that managed to escape from Morgen’s lips.
“This is just great, Night. How am I going to fix this?”
Night shook his head. He doubted Morgen could fix anything as he watched the skeleton hacking away in his bed.
“Maybe…maybe if I confess what’s been going on,” Morgen sputtered between gasps. “I’ll explain that you don’t understand things. Hurry… Bring the phone closer to me.”
Night had abandoned the bedside. He stood at the dresser, a few feet away, and drew some morphine into a syringe with which he returned.
“Don’t bother with that, right now. I told you, I have to do something and I can’t be falling asleep…”
“It’s a stupid idea.” Night clamped his brother’s closest arm against the bed and plunged the needle straight through an old puncture mark. “There’s no way for you to fix it…but I can.”
****
The lights were all on when Night returned to Sean’s isolated house and pulled into his driveway. He slammed the car door, with all his strength, stomped up the path, and hammered on the front door when he tried the handle and found it locked.
“Open it, Sean! We need to talk!”
Sean thrust the door wide open, barreled into him, and shoved him against a post on his veranda. “I was expecting one of my guys—who I called right after you shot at my head, asshole!” Sean’s dog could only bark through the mesh on the door. “Why on earth would you come back here?”
“Sean, I want you to know something. You were right every time you said ‘that guy ain’t Morgen.' I found out this year that I have a brother, and you should know it was my brother who tried to kill you—because you were threatening his life and everything we’ve worked for.”
Sean looked uncertain, even a bit frantic.
“It’s true. Only thing is…” Night pulled the gun from his back pocket, “I’m the brother.”
Sean scrambled backward, but the piece fired. Night felt confused in the proximate aftermath. Sean continued to stand. His gaze aimed vacantly into Night’s face…
Then, blood leached through the stonewashed denim of Sean’s jacket’s breast pocket. A short cough sent more blood to trickle from his mouth, and finally, he collapsed onto the wooden planks of his shallow deck.
****
He didn’t expect Morgen to be conscious when he got back to the house, but through deep, precise breaths, Morgen peered upward and waited for Night to speak.
“Sean’s not going to ruin anything now.”
Morgen’s eyes squeezed shut and his head rolled to one side.
“You said it yourself, Morgen. Sean wouldn’t just forget what I did. He only came to the door because he thought I was the guy who he already called to deal with you.”
“You shot him?”
“Yes, and I already got rid of the gun…like on TV.”
Morgen’s chin lifted and fell as his lungs jerked and a tear ran from each eye.
“Why aren’t you happy?”
Morgen’s whole body shuddered. “Oh, my God…!” His voice came out full-bodied, a sound he hadn’t produced in over a month. “Sean used to be my friend—and yet we got to this point where he wanted to kill me. And you…you just killed a man and seem fine with it. And what can I do about any of it? Even if I could change what you just did, I can’t think of anything else that would’ve guaranteed you’d stay safe…you, the psychopath.” His voice wasted steadily back to a whisper. “And I’m not forgetting what you keep doing to me with the morphine. You just do whatever you want, with no regard for decency, you freak…psychopath.”
“Stop it.” Night sat down and grasped Morgen’s head between his palms. “I didn’t want to kill Sean, but I didn’t want him to kill me either, because I still have to be here for you. And what would have happened to me if I had let you call Sean?”
Wheezing, Morgen started to nod in the way that he did when his lungs got too full to speak.
Night reached for a fresh towel, pushed Morgen forward and walloped his back in the precise way that instantly saved him from drowning. “Good thing you have this freak to keep you breathing long enough for you to see him complete all your unreasonable requests…every one of Morning’s greedy desires.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Dahlsi Family Housekeeper: Victim of Hit and Run.”
The article contained little substance with respect to the assault on Sandy since he refused to share anything. Consequently, it had to be inflated with Frederick’s campaign statistics and facts about the band’s tour. Reporters clamored for more information, both at the house and in the hospital, hoping the family might elaborate on the story.
Night tagged along with Frederick and Brigitte when the hospital informed them that Sandy was alert enough to receive visitors. The doctor informed them that Sandy’s concussion had diminished already, but his broken femurs would not be better anytime soon. His legs would stay in traction for weeks and his humor, according to the doctor, had probably taken the hardest hit.
“Why don’t you help them write their article?” Frederick quipped. “God only knows what they’ll print if left to their own devices…and I’ll take the sympathy votes.” He pressed his hand on Sandy’s shoulder as though acknowledging he’d made a joke in bad taste, but then he grew serious. “How could this happen to you a second time? Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell us, at least?”
Sandy’s eyelids closed as though he’d heard nothing except for the call of his sedatives.
Brigitte gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze before she followed Frederick out of the room. Only Night lingered behind.
“You have to tell me where you put the pictures.”
“Go to hell,” Sandy muttered, barely opening his eyes. �
�And don’t forget to make your payments to me while I’m in here.”
“Morgen’s going to die, and I never did anything to you, so why do you have to be so mean? Maybe if you were nicer these things would stop happening to you.”
“Yeah…okay,” Sandy grunted, rolling his head the other way.
Night’s fists tightened. “I’m going to find them. And you’d better be scared if I don’t!” He thumped Sandy’s shoulder and then elbowed the traction pole as he ran for the hallway, slamming the door on Sandy’s cries.
****
Night tried not to panic when he got the call from Gin Corbin, the following day, about another major headline: “Morning’s Desire’s Ex Drummer Shot Dead”. Gin had been tasked with getting all the band members together for a police interview, that afternoon.
Everyone sat in the room, wide-eyed, even before the investigators arrived. Doris was the first to offer more than a burst of expletives.
“I wasn’t completely on board, Morgen, when you insisted we had to lose Sean. I’m sorry. I had no idea he was in that deep.”
When the interview began, one officer pulled out a list of phone records that exposed all the recent calls from Sean to Morgen Dahlsi’s personal number, but Night managed to stay collected. “He did call a few times, but he didn’t care about the band. He just wanted to make a deal with me, to sell his stuff to the band.” Morgen had supplied him with that one. “Of course, I didn’t agree.”
A policeman explained they would be remiss if they didn’t check out every lead, especially in light of Sean’s recent dismissal from a thriving band. Luckily, their investigation had already uncovered a more compelling lead and the air did not feel suspicious.
Along with Night, Gin exhaled as the interview wrapped up with the consensus that Sean’s murder had everything to do with his extensive drug affiliations and his shooter would likely never be identified.
****
With Sean now crossed off from their list of worries, the key point—that Morgen was actually going to die—stabbed through every level of Night’s awareness. Decisions had to be made about his brother’s care before the tour whisked his sole caregiver away. Morgen insisted that a hefty dose of morphine would fix the problem, but Night refused to hear it or even grant Morgen access to his own vials, so nothing came close to being resolved.
“Beth wants to come in to see you,” Night informed, one day, as he administered his brother’s drug. Morgen had snubbed her ever since the tabloid incident, but now he barely had the cognizance to argue.
“Don’t let her in,” Morgen pleaded. “Don’t do this to me or I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
He would too, Night imagined, but he couldn’t imagine life any other way. “She wants to see you. She loves you, Morgen.”
A surprisingly healthy grunt escaped from Morgen’s lungs and he turned his face to the wall.
“Well, don’t expect me to stop her.” Night started to walk out, but he suddenly remembered what he’d initially come in to do. He returned to Morgen with a handful of photographs that Brandt had taken during the making of their last video and he dropped them all on the bed. While Morgen struggled to focus on them, Night crept toward the door, turning around a couple of times along the way.
Morgen rarely got to behold his dream through some tangible means. He studied each picture until they tumbled from his unwilling fingers, and just for once, he looked blissful as he lost consciousness.
****
“You’re getting a reputation,” Brandt reported on a Monday afternoon, after watching Night guide a giant white tiger around a ring in a specific format. “People think you’re a ghost. You appear for work, but nobody knows where you go after that.”
Night replied, “I go home.”
“Don’t worry. Your mystery is part of your image. People create fantasies about icons like you…and when you appear, it’s like they’re seeing a god.” Brandt started to laugh. “Imagine that…going home instead of partying with the celebrities is making you irresistible. Did it also work for you in high-school?”
It relieved him when Brandt didn’t wait for an answer. Brandt’s focus switched as he witnessed the trainer walk up to Night and hand him the object of his next lesson: a short range projector pistol.
The trainer’s shoulders dropped. “It isn’t loaded, but didn’t I tell you last time never to hold it like that—no matter what?”
Night straightened his elbow and let the muzzle hang down.
“I’ll tell you again. Always assume that you’ve got a lethal dose of Hellabrun sitting in there. The rest of us aren’t tigers and I assure you if there was an accident, any one of us would end up dead from respiratory shut down before you could even utter the word antidote.”
Brandt smiled and waved Night off. “Go learn your stuff, tiger.”
Night glanced back and shrugged before he followed the trainer to the building’s side exit, ready to assimilate yet one more arbitrary talent.
****
Beth twisted a bobby-pin around in the door handle of Morgen’s common room. She didn’t go straight for the guestroom, afraid that her struggling effort might provide her brother with a potentially never-ending warning to her intrusion. It did take several minutes and a few beads of sweat to gain entry into Morgen’s suite, and she called his name softly as she entered from the conjoining bathroom.
Night’s account of Morgen’s condition had not prepared her for the remnants of skin and bone that now replaced her brother. She crept alongside the bed until she reached his shoulders.
“Morgen…open your eyes. Look at me.” She waited but he didn’t respond. “Night told me you still talk to him, so talk to me!”
The mangled sheet that covered most of his body continued to rise and fall and she sensed his frustration at not being able to keep all signs of life from her.
“I miss you. I didn’t want to believe this—I didn’t want to find out it was true. Morgen, why won’t you talk to me—even now? She crashed down on the edge of the bed and leaned over his chest until it dawned on her that he could suffocate under the slightest weight.
“I love you, Morgen. I love you like a sister—only like a sister—and I’ll always be exactly that to Night from now on. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She sniffed as she endured another silence, but she noticed his hand looked unnaturally tense. She also noticed how the bed sheets were clean, except for the damage from Morgen’s constant perspiring, which boosted her respect for Night even more. “Oh, come on, Morgen. I don’t know how you can be so stubborn, right to your last breath.”
When he still didn’t react, she touched his arm and ran from the room, wishing she had just barged into the suite, a long time ago, when he could not have gotten away with this act.
****
Beneath the afternoon sun, the front garden looked electric when Night pulled into the driveway. The breeze ruffled the glistening foliage surrounding the lawn statue that, with its blind eyes and trace grin, appeared to be concealing something today. A second glance revealed the sculpture’s secret, a human companion cowering behind leaves and alabaster.
With thoughts of Sean’s cronies, Night killed the engine and charged from the car, but the intruder didn’t make a break for it.
Steve’s dark eyes quickly scanned his face, after Night aborted his attack.
“I wanna see Morgen,” Steve blurted. “He don’ let me see him no more, but maybe I know why now.”
Night had no defense and Steve also impressed him so much that it left him speechless. It only took this fellow an instant to see what none of Morgen’s friends or family had the time, imagination, or guts to perceive in over half a year.
Steve’s head tilted beseechingly. “Come on. You’re not my friend, man. You’re not Morgen and I know he’s sick. I try to help him before but he don’ listen. Look…I can still help him, but you will have to let me see him.”
Night scowled. “Why were you hiding if—?”
&nb
sp; “I was not hiding—I was jus’ waiting and I jus’ got scared when you come out of the car so angry. Believe me, if Morgen is sick, I can help him,” Steve persisted, slightly bouncing from the knees. “I can take him to someone who can make him better.”
“Nothing can make him better!”
“Look man, after I done this big favor for you guys in Oregon, you should believe I jus’ wanna help. Whatever’s your secret, I will keep it.”
Night eyed the familiar fellow. What would he be risking if he allowed Steve to confirm what he already knew?
“I swear…” Steve hammered. “I swear, I mean it.” He looked around himself before dropping to his knees. His fingers fumbled inside the collar of his top until he pulled out a gold cross on a chain that hung around his neck. Without looking up, he squeezed the cross in his fist. “I swear…I swear to God and to Jesus, to Santa Maria, and to all the saints, I mean it. I can help him…or at least, I know someone who can try.”
Night gazed down at Steve, amazed by the display of devotion for his thankless brother.
“Please. I mean it. I swear.”
“All right. Fine. Whatever!” It frustrated him to think how he might still be gullible, but he didn’t say another word. He simply beckoned Steve to follow him through the entrance beside the recently refinished garage door.
Morgen’s eyes flew open when two sets of footsteps approached his bed, and the shock catastrophically derailed his carefully paced breaths, just as Night had anticipated.
“Jesus…” Steve slurred.
Night managed to get his brother’s lungs back on track with a recent trick that involved close eye-contact and a breath-mirroring technique.
Steve obviously couldn’t wait to speak. “It’s okay, man. I needed to talk to you before I went. I knew there was something more wrong.” He glanced at his guard uneasily, but the words continued to flow. “I try to tell you before about my aunt—who I’m going to stay with for a while. I think it will help me…after what happened, you know, in Oregon. She lives in Chihuahua Mexico and she learned from the different yerberos and curanderos their art. She’s a healer.”
