This fact is very obvious the second I open the door to the hallway, and there's Warren, asleep against the wall. If it weren't for the circumstances, I would say that the way he looks right now is the only reason I stay with him.
But circumstances being what they are, some deep dark part of me wants to pick him up and throw him down the stairs, just to watch parts of him break.
I'm such a bad person. I really am. I tell myself this as I step over his sleeping body and approach the landing. And I'm dreading what I'll find downstairs. I could spare myself the grief of seeing it, I suppose, by taking one of our pictures off the wall on the way down, breaking it and slashing my throat with it. I might do that one day.
But not today.
And as I reach the bottom I realize that the house is very quiet down here. I find the living room to be clean and orderly, and I just stand there. I mean, it's not the way I'd have done it, obviously, but I start to really feel like shit for locking Warren out last night. This room is not at all how I'd last seen it. It 's void of his brothers, relatively clean, and I just feel like shit.
*
I've been sitting in here, dreading the moment when Martha would knock on my door. And it seems that the moment has finally arrived. I recognize her tiny little fearful knock. Then she opens the door without waiting for me to answer. I swear, one of these days, I'm just going to slam it shut on her as she's opening it.
“I got a guy asking for a free sandwich cos he says he ain't gonna pay for the one he's got,” she says to me in her usual run-on sentence. If you typed her daily conversation out it would just be a big block of text with no periods or anything. I'm in such a bad mood right now.
I look at her, and I'm sure I look like shit, blue hair messed up and uncombed. I just said fuck it after seeing the living room.
“Aaron what do I do?” she asks me.
“Martha, you're a manager. Promo it off. I just don't care today.”
And she looks at me like I am the craziest motherfucker in the world. And I probably am right now. And then she leaves, not closing the door.
That's the last time I can take that particular habit of hers. I doubt the teenagers working in my kitchen have ever heard the office door slammed quite as hard as I slam it just now, clipboards and pens falling out of their holders on the wall. And I lock it. And then I sit at the desk and stare at the computer screen and wish for death. All kinds of death.
I could destroy this whole office right now and not feel bad. I could burn this fucking place to the ground. My mind is filled with scenes of Warren cleaning the living room, totally hungover, then trying to open the door, then giving up. And I want to destroy something.
There's a knock at the door, and I smile when I hear Martha trying to open the door. She can't do it. It's locked. And there's no window. I'm in here, calm and undisturbed. I am an island.
She knocks again, then I suppose she goes back up to the front, because it doesn't happen again for a few hours.
*
I must have fallen asleep, because I'm suddenly awake and pissed when there's a knock at the door that won't stop. I roll over to the door in the chair and unlock it and fling it open and stare at Martha, waiting.
“Aaron there's a guy up here won't go away, and he ain't very nice. Wants to speak to the store manager.”
Fuck my life.
I stand up and follow her, not talking, to the front, running a hand over my uncombed blue hair, bubbles popping over my head. I am not happy.
And there's this fucked up redneck guy standing on the other side of the counter, holding a half-wrapped sandwich, yelling at one of my employees. No, screaming. Veins practically popping out of his skull.
And suddenly, this one thing has caused me to snap. I have lost the will to maintain control.
“Danny,” I say to the kid he's yelling at. His eyes are full of water as he looks at me, backing away. “Go do back cash for a while.”
And he runs to the back of the store.
Then it's just me and this guy, on opposite sides of the counter, and he's looking me over. Even Martha has left the scene. Customers are staring.
I am not in the mood to answer questions like this. I picture him exploding, and it gives me the strength to do my fake customer service smile. And in a calm voice, I say: “What seems to be the problem?”
His face contorts into mock surprise, somewhere between a turtle and a walrus, and he slides the sandwich he's holding across the counter toward me. “Look at that shit,” he says to me, all indignant. I picture this massive inbred fuck wearing a tutu, and it helps me to keep smiling. “This ain't made right,” He adds, pointing toward the kid I sent to the back, “That little faggot fucked it up.”
Using that word, he's lost all credibility with me. I don't care if Danny peed on it, and then peed on the guy's face. This fight is over.
And the words come out of my mouth before I can think about what I'm saying. “Get the fuck out of my store,” I say to him. I see all the customers in the dining room turn to look at us again, and I hear some of the kids in the back laughing.
“You can't say that to me,” he says.
I walk to the cash register and open it with my key.
“You hard of hearing?” He asks me, coming over to talk to me with his onion breath. Giant man in a tutu, I think, and I laugh a little, and I look up at him, counting out the bills.
“What did you order?” I ask him calmly.
He looks at me for a second, and then says “Number one.”
I hand him 5 ones. I close the drawer and void his order and I say, “You have your money back, now.”
And he takes the money, but then looks at me like he can't understand why I'm giving it to him. Finally he says “I still want a sandwich.”
I smile at him, feeling a bit light headed. My mouth opens, and once again I lose control of my speech. “Get out of my store. I'm not telling you again.”
He blinks. And his mouth opens too, and I swear he has the same problem, because he says “Listen, you stupid faggot, I paid for a sandwich, I want a sandwich.”
And that's the deal breaker. All customer service is gone.
I say to him: “You need to get out of this store before I have you removed. You've come to the wrong place to be flinging the word 'faggot' around. This is not high school. I suggest you grow up before you walk into my establishment again.”
And the whole place is quiet. I'm sure I've just made Burger King history, and secured myself a pink slip. But right now, this is war.
He opens his mouth to say something and I say: “Do you have something unintelligent and uninformed to add?”
*
After I destroyed a paying customer and kicked the office door in when I realized I locked myself out, Martha had offered to take over my shift.
So here I am, driving home. Fuck my life. I feel like I'm killing myself one piece at a time.
And I'm crossing the bridge now. And I'm letting the car drift toward the guardrail, and I'm moments from freedom.
But at the last second, I grab the wheel. And I'm in tears now.
This world is a trap. This car is a bullet. And I don't have the guts to do it.
*
So I get home, and there are dishes in the sink. And you know, this would not matter on any other day. I might complain a little, but normally I would just do them and be done with the whole thing.
But today is different. The sight of dishes in the sink is so jarring and insulting that I just stand there in the kitchen and scream as loud as I can, and I imagine the room on fire.
And then I do the dishes. I'm shaking and I want to break every single one of them, running them under the water and trying not to break them, but I want to. I want to break every dish in the house so there can never be dirty dishes again.
*
In the bathroom upstairs, I take out every bottle of pills in the medicine cabinet and put them out around the sink and look at them. Every prescription Warren and I have ever been prescribed and stopped taking. We're not very good patients. But there they all are. At least 20 bottles, most of them half-full.
And there it is. My silver bullet.
But my phone vibrates right then, from the lid of the toilet. For a second, I'm so focused that I don't hear it. I only hear in on the second round of vibrating. I look over, and the world is becoming surreal. And when I see the name on the screen, my heart starts pounding so hard I have to grab the sink to keep my balance. HARRISON, it says.
He's calling me.
Like he sees me about to off myself.
Looking through a window or something. My eyes go to the window, two stories up. Nonsense. There's no one there.
I let it vibrate again, and then voice mail gets the call, and I just stand there with pill bottles all over the sink, wondering what to do. Then there's a voice mail. And I just stand there like an idiot for a second, then I sit down against the wall behind me. Then I grab my phone and dial voice mail and put it to my ear.
“Hey, I just wanted to make sure you're doing okay,” his voice says in my ear, and I look up at the edge of the sink, pill bottles towering over me. “And we should hang out. I may visit you at work. I know you're at work so you can't answer your phone but--” I stop the voice mail and put my phone on the ground, thinking.
And I smile and laugh and I say, all crazy, “This is too stupid to do.”
And I pick up the phone and dial Harrison's number.
*
And before I know it, I'm walking toward campus, and toward his apartment, having put all the pills back.
I have self-control sometimes. It's one of those things people used to admire about me.
I guess. I don't know.
I don't know why I called him back, but here I am, walking to meet him.
*
Harrison's apartment looks like the one Warren was living in when we met. One room, a wall kitchen and a tiny bathroom hidden behind a curtain. When I get there, he's in his pajamas, and he's been playing video games all morning. The resemblance is there.
He closes the door behind me and we're suddenly in the same small, suffocating room as one another. And he just looks at me and says, “You look tired.”
And I know I look like shit. I smile at him and he smiles at me, and my stomach is warm.
“I am tired,” I say to him, not knowing what else to say.
I sit down on the sofabed he sleeps on, defeated.
He goes over to the little college refrigerator that dominates the wall kitchen and opens it, bringing back an energy drink. And normally I hate those things, but I guess I make concessions for people. I take it from him and I suddenly feel too tired to be alive.
“I am so tired,” I say to him, quietly.
He sits down on the sofabed really close to me and he pulls me over to him in a hug, and it's amazing. It's like the best feeling I've ever felt, all over my body, and I don't even try to pull away. I just sit there, holding the energy drink, not even hugging him back, just feeling his body against mine.
And then he pulls away and smiles at me and says, “You need a vacation.”
I laugh and say “A vacation is not an option for me.”
His face gets all sad then, and he reaches up and puts a hand on the back of my head and he says “Aaron, you make me so sad.”
And I have no idea how to respond to that.
“You're such a great person, you've got everything to offer, and you could be so happy if you knew what you wanted,” he says.
If I knew what I wanted. I'm hoping he doesn't read minds.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say to him.
He smiles, moving his hand in my hair, and I close my eyes, focusing on how it feels.
“We have to get you out of there, even for the night. You have to think about stuff.”
“Think about stuff,” I mumble with my eyes closed, brain-dead from the feeling of him touching me.
Then he takes his hand away, and I almost cry, opening my eyes.
He's still smiling. And he says, “You're amazing.”
And my heart is pounding again. I'm probably dying this time.
*
I'm so not okay right now.
My heart's still pounding.
Like some stupid teenager.
My knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
*
Warren works at a warehouse on the other side of town. My car is tiny in the parking lot. Most of the workers are on lunch. I've brought some food with me from another fast food place. I wasn't about to go back to work to get food.
And when he gets into the car, he smells like work.
I hand him his food. “I'm not going to be home tonight,” I tell him.
Then we're silent. He doesn't eat his food at first. Then he says, not looking at me: “I'm sorry about last night.”
I smile at him, suddenly calm, and not knowing why. I never know why my mind works the way it does. “I know you are,” I tell him. I think of the living room.
*
And then there's the matter of getting shit packed. Don't even get me started. Part of me doesn't want to be home when Warren gets home. It would just be harder to leave. So I pack fast. It's only for the night, but it feels like forever. And part of me wants it to be forever. But the house will be here when I get back, and Warren, waiting for me to come home.
*
There's a motel on the edge of town I pass sometimes, on my way to wherever. The Vegas Motel. And I've never actually been inside, or even in the parking lot. It's this huge old 1950s roadside motel, and here I am in the parking lot, my backpack of clothes leaning against the tire of my car.
Freedom is all around me. This is the farthest step I've taken so far.
I pick up my backpack and go inside and I ask for a room.
The little man behind the counter gives me the key and I leave the glass-walled lobby and climb the stairs and walk along the balcony until I get to my room. It's the one on the end, where the balcony ends in another stairway and some vending machines.
And this room is my room.
This is the best moment. I swear it is.
I know it's not real; I know it's just for now. But I could die like this.
Maybe I will.
But probably not.
*
It's about 3 in the morning, and I'm in tears again. Fuck my life. I'm such a pathetic person. I'm on a one-night vacation and I can't stop crying long enough to have fun.
I just keep thinking about Warren cleaning the living room and how alone he must be right now.
And how alone I am.
I can't go back yet. I don't want to go back.
And the phone is on the bed in front of me, with an unread text message from Harrison. It's been that way for an hour.
Why is this happening to me?
And I pick up the phone and call him, not even reading the message.
*
It takes Harrison about twenty minutes to get here from across town, and when the knock comes at the door, I nearly shit myself. And then there's the hesitation. Now that he's here, I don't know if I want to talk to anyone. But then I get up and go to the door.
And he's waiting on the other side, still in his pajamas, his hair wet from sleep, and his eyes tired, but he's smiling.
“I'm sorry I woke you up,” I say, feeling stupid.
He comes in and closes the door behind him. He says: “It's not a big deal. I don't have class or anything.”
He looks around the room and then at me, and I sit down on the bed, all weird and abrupt. And he says to me: “Where's the pizza?” And he smiles again, rubbing one eye.
*
After having pizza delivered and watching a movie or six, I guess I must have passed out. Only I don't remember passing out. And Warren is pressed against me from behind, sleeping.
But then I remember that I'm not at home, but there's still someone laying behind me on the bed, arms around me, and body pressed against mine.
And my heart is racing. I'm still in the motel room, and I'm laying in the bed with Harrison, our bodies pressed together, and this is worth dying for.
I imagine water trickling from the ceiling and onto the floor, and then running down the walls, pouring out of the faucets in the sink and bathtub, even overflowing from the toilet.
And he moves against me, his arms tightening, and there's a shortness of breath that keeps me there, not moving, not fighting. And it's just like the first night Warren and I spent together. It's so familiar to me, and so beautiful that I can't think of anything but how bad my chest hurts thinking about it.
And the water level is rising. Bubbling out of the sink and the bathtub and the toilet, falling from the cracks between the ceiling and the walls, filling the room with water from pipes that lead to rivers that lead to oceans.
And he says to me, dreaming, his voice soft against my hair: “You're right. It's hard to breathe when you're gone.”
And it is. It's hard to breathe.
Because the water is coming up over the bed now.
And I'm just lying there like a dunce, waiting to die.
But I'll die happy this time. I'll be okay this time.
I don't want to be alive anymore.
And the water closes over my head.
(c) 2011 Roman Theodore Brandt
(c) 2011 Roman Theodore Brandt
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