My heart is a smear on State Route 505. There's a trail of blood leading from the motel parking lot, stretching for miles to where I'm parked in the lot at work. It's not really there, if you were to just go look at the road. But it's real.
I am mostly dead today. And yet I'm alive.
And the human mind is capable of miracles. A dark curtain is drawing, and my breath is quickening. And the car is filling with water, coming in the doors and spilling in through the open windows.
And I think of his words the night before: It's hard to breathe when you're gone.
*
There's a dull buzz to life today. Like white noise. Like I'm standing on a railroad listening to a train approach from miles away.
I'm up here at the counter filling out the manager book, and I've got teenagers on either side of me, taking orders at the register to my left and the drive through to my left. And for all I know, they could be cursing out every customer that comes into this place.
My focus is gone. I don't know what to think or feel or say or even do with myself.
The question is no longer “who am I?” but “what have I become?”
And it's a good question, isn't it?
I'm still Aaron. My hair is still bright blue, but I've combed it today. I still get compliments on it, too, though I couldn't tell you what anyone said.
And even Martha's little nonsensical inquiries don't disturb me. She knocks and comes in without waiting about 5 times in 3 hours, and leaves the door open each time, and I just close the door after a few minutes when I realize she had been in my office. I couldn't tell you what she even said to me. She's been nothing but background noise today.
*
Warren comes in for lunch and we sit in our usual booth. And there's a sense of normalcy to it that I find almost comfortable. And His hair is still orange and mine is still blue, but there are a million miles between us.
“Did you have fun?” he's asking me across the table.
“It was okay. I'm glad to be coming home,” I say.
And he looks at me all quiet, with his eyes searching my face. My stomach tightens. And he half-smiles at me and says, “Last night really made me think. I really missed you.”
And my heart is pounding. I wonder if this is the end. I don't think I want an end right now. And I smile back at him and say, “I missed you too.”
He looks over at the window next to us, at the trees and the cars and the highway, and he says to me, his voice quiet and broken, “I know I've made a lot of mistakes, Aaron.”
And I can't take it. I want to cover my ears. I want to scream.
“It's not all your fault. I don't think that,” I tell him.
And he looks at me, and smiles after a minute and laughs. “I thought you were never coming back,” he says.
And maybe I wasn't going to. But I'm here, now.
“I'm here; I'm not leaving,” I say, my voice really rough, and I clear my throat.
I've got a lump growing in my stomach, cold and warm and unwanted.
*
The drive home is uneventful. I cross the bridge without incident. My car stays in the lane.
My knuckles are white from gripping the wheel.
I'm almost dead, coming off the bridge. I might as well have driven through the guardrail.
*
And when I get home, the house is clean. The living room is neat and orderly, the remotes on the coffee table, and the kitchen is clean, the sink free of dishes. I feel useless. There's nothing for me to do here. So I go upstairs to my office and sit down at the computer but I don't turn it on.
And I guess I sit there for a lot longer than I realize, because after a while, I hear a car door shut, and a few minutes later I hear the back door open downstairs, and Warren's footsteps echo as he comes into the kitchen from the laundry room. Then I hear him on the stairs, and I just sit there like a dumbass in my computer chair.
And the door opens and there he is. And he's got flowers. Roses. And here I am, undeserving, useless, numb. I don't even know who I am. I'm not the guy those roses are for.
“Hey,” he says, his eyes bright and his work clothes dirty.
I smile at him, autonomous reaction. I can't not smile.
He holds out the flowers to me, and I just sit there. And then my eyes are filling with water. And then there's a sound, loud and hurt and sad. At first, I don't know where it's coming from, but then Warren's face goes from happy to concerned to panicked and I realize it's coming from me. My mouth is open and I'm making the noise and my heart is beating me to death. And I realize that this is the moment I've been dreading since last night. I want to die, right here. I don't want to be alive anymore.
And Warren has dropped the roses onto my desk and is helping me stand up. My legs are rubber, and I'm almost on the floor a few times as he half-carries me to the door. After a minute or two, he gives up and just picks me up, and I wish I could stop crying. I hate crying. I feel like such an idiot.
And he's carrying me down the hall and into the bedroom and he puts me on our bed and gets on the bed behind me, putting his arms around me and holding me.
All the things I thought today up until this moment have been muffled and garbled to some degree, but this is so clear to me. I can't block this feeling out, this anger I feel inside me when I think of my life.
And Warren's voice is soft and familiar. “I'm sorry for being a dick,” he says.
And it's so horrible to feel this way. It's like white noise on full volume, my mind trying not to think. I think I'm dying, bleeding out on the bed, a bullet is in my chest.
I've outlived my expiration date, and no one can tell me why. Not even Warren. He knows what he knows, and he can't help me.
And then he says, like salt in an open wound, “You are the most beautiful person I've ever known.”
And the tears are hot and the pillow is wet, and my hands are shaking on his across my chest, his stomach against my back.
And then he says, “I've realized that I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”
And I hear him breathing, and I feel it on the back of my neck, and I'm lying on a table, and he's pulling my guts out of me, making room for himself.
And somewhere inside me, I feel my heart slowing to normal. And I know the reason. I am calm and I am here, trapped and loved and doomed to live with it, because I love him too. I've always known it. I don't deny it. Much as I wish it away when I have time to think about it, I do love him.
And then I know my fate isn't as bad as it seems. I may be putting a bullet in my own head this time, but death is logical. It always has been.
“I love you,” Warren says in my ear.
“I love you, too,” I say to him, staring at the wall ahead of me.
*
My flowers are in Pizza Hut glass on the counter in the kitchen. Warren's hoodie is across the back of the couch in the living room. There are dishes in the sink.
I'm upstairs, putting checks into envelopes and filling out forms on my computer. Life goes on, in whatever form.
There are no messages on my phone. So I put it in the drawer under the sink in the bathroom and go downstairs.
*
While I'm doing the dishes, Warren comes up behind me and puts his arms around me and kisses my neck, and I almost smile, looking up at our reflection in the night window.
I put the bowl I'm washing away and put my head back against his shoulder and look up at the ceiling, and he says things into my ear that make me laugh. We're almost normal tonight. It's kind of nice.
He goes downstairs and I'm alone with the dishes and my thoughts. I look up at the window but I can't see the pink siding because it's night and the lights are on in the kitchen.
There's something about this one simple truth that makes my heart beat faster.
I can't see the house next door. It doesn't exist.
I drop the plate I'm rinsing back into the dish water and back away from the sink, staring at the window. And I go to the switch on the wall and turn the lights off with wet hands.
And when the lights are off, the kitchen is dark, the only light coming from the open doorway to the living room and the stairway in the hall. And now I can see the siding of the house next door. Everything is okay.
But just in case, I keep the lights off until the dishes are done, looking up once in a while to make sure the pink siding is still there.
*
The best thing about owning a house is being able to sweep the living room at 11pm if you want to.
I pick Warren's hoodie up off the couch and put it in the closet by the front door and I sweep the floors. Then I go into the other rooms downstairs. They're all clean. I'm still a little numb, but cleaning helps.
And the knowledge that I can still leave if I want. My car has a full tank of gas.
Freedom is still at arm's length, though muted now.
I can quit this life anytime I want to.
*
It's about midnight when Warren comes upstairs to the living room where I'm watching TV and says, “Let's go for a walk.”
A walk. I open my mouth to say something but nothing comes out.
He smiles at me and says, “I know you love to walk.”
So we go for a walk. I wear his blue hoodie and he wears his red one. Our shoes are soft in the grass of the yards of neighbors, cutting across alleys toward the empty building where Warren when to grade school. The playground is still intact after 8 years of neglect.
And we sit on the swings and talk for a long time, about nothing. About our lives. A flood of memories, tall and suffocating, washing over me.
And he ends me with just a few words. He says, “Aaron, you're the only man I've ever loved.”
And I'm dead. Shot to death, bleeding out on the wood chips around me, limp in the swing.
I can't go back from here. I can only go forward.
*
And the funny thing is, I've always loved him. I've always fought it, but I've always known I love him. And tonight is a defining moment in my life. I wish I could have been born right now, just like this. No regrets, nothing missed out on. That way I could have enjoyed it.
*
We walk to campus after a while, holding hands, and I'm still leaving a trail of blood behind me.
And we walk to the cafe where we met, the building dark and closed. University Strip is cold and forgotten. He sits down in the chair he was in that night, and I sit across from him.
And he says to me, “I haven't been here in years.”
And I laugh.
And his hand touches mine across the table.
There's something about this moment that has been worth the years of pain. I can't explain it, and it's gone as fast as it's there.
Then we're just two guys at a table.
*
And when we get home, Warren says, as we're crossing the street toward the house, “I'm hungry as fuck.”
And I say, “Pothead.”
And he laughs and says, “Whatever.”
I laugh too, and we walk to his car in the back, cutting around the side of the house, our shoes parting grass, the pink siding of the next house closer than ever.
“We're not going to my place of employment,” I tell him. “I spend enough time there.”
“Taco Bell it is,” he says.
And we get into the car, doors slamming and engine starting.
*
In the Taco Bell parking lot, we eat in the car. It's 3am.
“I swear I said no tomatoes,” Warren says.
“Those bastards,” I tell him.
*
When we walk into the house, Warren goes into the kitchen to put our leftovers in the fridge so we can look at them for days, wondering what they are.
I go downstairs, my hand sliding down the railing, and the smell of pot has faded a bit. My eyes go after a minute to the door across the room, next to the bathroom door.
I hear Warren's footsteps coming toward the door upstairs, and I just stand there. He comes down the stairs behind me.
“What's so interesting down here?” he asks me, and then he sees the door too.
It's a storage room. Probably meant to be a bedroom when the house was a college rental, years ago before we bought it.
Warren is standing behind me now.
“I haven't been in that room in a long time,” he says.
I turn and smile at him and say, “Let's look inside.”
He says, “Why not?”
*
I knew what I wanted that room. I found it at the back of the room. A box marked “School stuff.”
And we're going through it now, upstairs in the living room, binders and folders and textbooks covering the floor. I've moved the coffee table, and some dumb reality show is the background noise.
And I find it. There it is. A manilla envelope with Warren's name on it in my handwriting.
“What's that?” he asks me.
And I laugh and open it up, spilling the contents out onto the floor.
In front of me is every card he gave me that first year, before we quit school, and ever letter he wrote me when I was home on for Christmas vacation and Thanksgiving and the summer.
And I say to him, my chest tight, “I think I've found what I've been looking for.”
*
I'm getting ready for bed when I get the text. I've been able to forget about it for most of the day. The brain is a magical thing, able to suppress anything. Until this moment, I have been increasingly calm.
But here, with my toothbrush sticking out of my mouth, standing in my boxers at the sink, I hear my phone vibrate in the drawer.
Warren is already asleep in the bedroom down the hall.
And reality is like an anvil, crashing down through the floors and framing of the house to where I stand.
For a second, I don't move. But it's not something I can avoid.
I open the drawer and take my phone out and press a button. HARRISON, it says.
My heart is beating me to death again. I want this text to kill me. I would deserve it.
I open the message and it says: I'm sorry if I caused problems for you. I hope you're okay.
And I'm not. I was. Until this text. I was blind and numb and wanting to be okay.
And I respond: I'm okay. I'm sorry I just left. Thanks for listening to me.
And then I turn my phone off and I look in the mirror. My hair is bright blue against the white tile behind me, and I just stare at it.
I put my phone down on the sink and I grab my clippers and I look at my reflection again.
*
The sink is blue again, but this time it's hair, not hair color.
I'm looking at myself in the mirror, and I'm smiling.
I've cut my hair shorter than Warren's, about a fourth of a inch long. And it's still blue, but this blue is new. It's shiny and full of freedom.
I run a hand over it and laugh, my voice echoing in the bathroom.
And then I clean the sink out, throwing the hair away.
This moment is new. I've never been here before. I'm almost scared.
*
I wake up in the middle of the night to feel Warren's lips on the back of my neck, his arms around me.
And I close my eyes. I'm bleeding out, the sheets red around us. But this time, I've pulled the trigger myself.
Then he says, dreaming, “It's hard to breathe when you're gone.”
I open my eyes, and I'm dead, my pupils fixed on the wall.
His breathing slows again, and he's asleep.
(c) 2011 Roman Theodore Brandt
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